The Hidden Millions

Homelessness in Developing Countries

Graham Tipple, Suzanne Speak

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781134091386
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book explores the extent, causes and characteristics of homelessness in developing countries. Bringing together a major review of literature and empirical case studies, it is invaluable for those studying, researching or working in housing, homelessness, social policy or urban poverty.

Drawing on local research in nine countries in the global south, this book offers an insight into the lives of homeless people, public perceptions of homelessness, and the policies and interventions which might variously increase or reduce homelessness. Exploring the human context as well as policy and planning, it will challenge preconceptions.

1 Current understandings of homelessness

The developing world is urbanising at a rapid rate. In 1990 only 35 per cent of people in developing countries lived in cities. In 2006, however, UN-Habitat predicted that someone would move to, or be born in, a city in 2007 who would cause the balance to tip from a majority rural world to one in which most people live in cities. In the same year, it predicted, the number of people living in slums would reach one billion (UN-Habitat, 2006b). The majority of the growth in cities and in the slums therein will be made up of people living in poverty. This rapid urbanisation of poverty is having a significant impact on poor people as they migrate from rural areas in search of paid employment in cities and towns and become homelessness.

There is a lack of literature on homelessness in developing countries, as attested in UNCHS (2000)¹ which specifically set out to give the developing world an equal focus but could not locate enough literature except on street children. Current international reviews of homelessness tend to concentrate on industrialised countries only (e.g. Christian, 2003) with a very few developing countries case studies within volumes heavily focused on industrialised countries’ contexts and issues (e.g. Glasser, 1994). In the few cases where homelessness in developing countries is explored, it tends to look at individual countries or individual aspects of homelessness within a single country or a small number of countries. At the time of UNCHS (2000), there was a little on South Africa (Olufemi, 1997, 1998, 1999), India (Swaminathan, 1995) and Nigeria (Labeodan, 1989),² but almost all the literature on developing countries concentrated on street children. The adults were nowhere to be seen and nor were the children living with those homeless adults. Furthermore, the literature on homelessness, being so concentrated in industrialised countries, had little relevance to what seemed, intuitively, to be the main problem in developing countries; namely that there just was not enough housing to go round and that it was much too expensive for quite a large portion of the population. In addition, it concentrated on issues which seemed to be much less central in developing countries: social isolation, substance abuse, mental illness and the design of welfare interventions. This book attempts to redress the balance between industrialised and developing countries’ experiences a little by bringing together both empirical evidence and literature on homelessness in a broader range of countries.

It is particularly important that we set out, at the beginning of this work, the theoretical context within which most of the existing literature on homelessness in industrialised countries is based. In doing this we highlight that, to a great degree, the theoretical building blocks for our understanding of homelessness in industrialised countries do not prepare us well to understand the realities in developing countries.

This chapter establishes the context for what follows by briefly exploring our current understanding of homelessness in terms of theories, typologies and rights. Two concepts which underpin an understanding of homelessness are those of citizenship and human rights. As it is bound up with notions of rights and responsibilities, the concept of citizenship suggests ideas of deserving and undeserving. Moreover, not all those living in a country will be seen as its citizens, thus, however deserving they might be, they may not be entitled to the same rights as those who are citizens. This is becoming ever more evident in the context of migration and asylum seeking. Thus, the concept of citizenship does not suffice as a framework for understanding or addressing homelessness. As Turner (1993) notes, human rights can be grounded in the sociological concept of human frailty, especially the vulnerability of the body and the idea of moral sympathy. It is, perhaps, this moral sympathy which drives much of the work on homelessness and argues that all people are entitled to an adequate home irrespective of their deserving it.

Theoretical contexts within which homelessness is studied in industrialised countries include those from the interface between health and criminal behaviour (e.g. Martell, 2005), deviance and risk amplification (Whitbeck et al., 1999, 2001), subcultures (e.g. Tait, 1993) and feminist theory (Neale, 1997). Not all of these contexts can be covered in this work. Nevertheless, here we highlight some of the theoretical issues surrounding homelessness which arise throughout this book.

Theoretical concepts of home

• Home is the place where,
  When you have to go there,
  They have to take you in.

(Robert Frost, ‘The Death of the Hired Man’)

Home is a very rich concept, embodying many ideas such as comfort, belonging, identity and security. Kellett and Moore (2003: 216) stress the need to examine the context of homelessness in the ‘wider processes of home-making and belonging in society’. Writers such as Dovey (1985), Somerville (1992), Watson and Austerberry (1986) and Kellett and Moore (2003) have explored the meaning of home and homelessness in depth. Home can be defined as a relationship between people and a place, ‘an emotionally based and meaningful relationship between dwellers and their dwelling places’ (Dovey, 1985). From qualitative evidence in Colombia, Kellett and Moore (2003) suggest that the owning of some tangible structure called home, no matter how poorly constructed it may be, is very important for a household’s security, freedom, autonomy, well-being and opportunity.

Somerville (1992) suggests that home is ‘physically, psychologically and socially constructed in both “real” and “ideal” forms. It is where we construct and manage our relationship with the physical and social worlds. It represents not only how we live but who we are’. Fuhrer and Kaiser (1992: 105; quoted in Oswald and Wahl, 2005) describe home as the ‘extension of self through place’. If this is true, does the loss of home, especially through eviction or crisis, represent the loss of self? This is important in developing an understanding of the implications of evictions, even from the very poorest settlements of the lowest quality dwellings.

Despres (1991) distinguishes ten characteristics of home, as follows:

1. permanence and continuity;
2. centre for family relationships;
3. security and control;
4. mirror of personal views;
5. influence and place for change;
6. retreat from the surrounding world;
7. personal status indicator;
8. centre for activity;
9. concrete structure; and
10. (a place to own).

Somerville (1992: 532-4) also attempts to tease out the multi-dimensional nature of the meaning of home and its converse, homelessness. He presents seven key signifiers of home – ‘shelter, hearth, heart, privacy, roots, abode and paradise’. To these, are added the connotations they have for dwellers (warmth, love, etc.), the nature of the security they give (physiological, emotional, etc.) and how these affect them in relation to themselves (relaxation, happiness, etc.) and others (homeliness, stability, etc.). Homelessness is the condition that represents the opposite of these, expressed in connotations of coldness, indifference, etc., presenting stress, misery, alienation, instability, etc. These are similar to the characteristics listed by Despres (1991) but expressed in different ways. For example, Despres’s permanence and continuity is contained within Somerville’s ‘source of identity’ and, perhaps, ‘materiality’. Somerville’s concept of home presents a very positive and optimistic view of life. In contrast, Somerville’s concept of homelessness presents a dark and pessimistic view of the absence of home, one in which anomie, indifference, stress, powerlessness, vulnerability and a denial of individuality dominates.

Both Despres (1991) and Somerville (1992), therefore, express ‘home’ as a place where a person is able to establish meaningful social relations with others through entertaining them in his/her own space, or where the person is able to withdraw from such relationships. ‘Home’ should be a place where a person is able to define the space as their own, where they are able to control its form and shape. This may be through control of activities and of defining their privacy in terms of access to their space. When this is done, they have made a home with a sense of their identity (Cooper, 1995).

However, based on some of the characteristics of home, suggested by both Somerville (1992) and Despres (1991) – for example, concrete structure, a place to own or security and control – much of the world’s adequately housed population would be classed as homeless. By virtue of not owning their home, it offers them little security, they cannot exercise control over it nor is it a mirror of their personal views. This might be the case for those living in perfectly adequate rented accommodation with strict conditions, or for those sharing with others who dominate the space.

Moreover, in developing countries, many people live in the most physically inadequate forms of shelter, for example, rag pickers living under very makeshift shelter in the cities of India. Even so, they form lasting social relations with those around them, entertain them in their meagre dwellings and can withdraw into their shelters where their privacy is respected by those around.

In the context of defining homelessness, it might be argued that home is qualitatively different from adequate shelter in that it provides a set of essential social and emotional requirements separate from shelter and which cannot be provided by adequate shelter alone. Indeed, in some cases, it may be necessary to forfeit adequate accommodation in order to achieve these social and emotional requirements. Such is the case for women and children made homeless through fleeing familial violence (Brown, 1997; Browne and Bassuk, 1997). Conversely, in the context of defining adequate shelter, it could be argued that shelter is not adequate unless it provides such essential requirements. These interlinked arguments have relevance for definitions of homelessness that we discuss in Chapter 4.

Debating the causes of homelessness

As our understanding of the meaning of home has grown, so too has our insight into the causes of homelessness. Two main approaches dominate the debate. The first suggests that homelessness is the result of an individual’s actions and choices. The second, that it is the result of wider structural problems outside their control. This sets up a dichotomy between what Jacobs et al. (1999) termed ‘minimalist’ and ‘maximalist’ approaches and what Neale (1997) refered to as ‘agency’ or ‘structural’ explanations.

From the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, at a political level, the causes of homelessness were increasingly associated with the minimalist approach and cited individual pathology of the homeless person as the main underlying cause (Jacobs et al., 1999). The ‘agency’ explanation locates causes of homelessness either in an individual’s inadequacy, for example, learning difficulty or mental health problems, or in their behaviour, such as drinking or drug abuse. The agency explanation seems to have been something of a preoccupation amongst academics, at least until the late 1990s, with ten times more reports on homelessness with a focus on mental illness than with a focus on poverty or housing (Juliá and Hartnett, 1999).

Individual pathology approaches hint at the notion of deserving and undeserving homeless and has found its way into homelessness legislation in the UK in the form of ‘intentionality’. That is to say, some people might be without shelter but would not be considered eligible for support or housing if they were perceived to have brought their homelessness about by their own actions.

Since the arrival of social exclusion as a basis for policy development, there has been a return to a focus on structural causes. Recently, therefore, a structural view, which places the responsibility for homelessness outside the control of the homeless person has been increasingly dominant in the theoretical debates around homelessness (Neale, 1997; Kennett and Marsh, 1999).

For those who prefer the structural explanation, understanding is complicated further by disagreement over the nature of structural causes. It remains unclear whether they are a result of the failure of the housing market to provide adequate, affordable housing, or are underpinned by wider, global economic factors, linked to what Kennett and Marsh (1999) consider the ‘new terrain’ of homelessness. The fiscal crisis affecting local, national and global economies has brought about major structural changes with resultant reshaping of welfare policies, ostensibly in an unavoidable attempt to curb public spending (Foster and Plowden, 1996). These structural changes have led to a weakening of the welfare support system in many developing countries and an increased risk of poverty and homelessness for the mass of the population (Kennett and Marsh, 1999). As we will see in Chapter 8, this new understanding of increasing vulnerability for the mass of the population in industrialised and transitional countries has resonance with homelessness in developing countries, where state-run welfare safety-nets have never existed.³ Thus, developing countries might offer an insight into things to come in industrialised countries.

Whilst this vulnerability could affect most people, it does not affect them constantly or equally. As Forrest (1999: 17) notes, ‘there is a continuum of security and insecurity in terms of factors such as employment, income, family life and social networks’. One could argue that such a continuum always existed. What is new is the degree to which many more households find themselves moving, both backwards and forwards, along it as the social networks and welfare regimes, which once kept them constant, decay.

Just as households are subjected differently to the risk of homelessness, so they also experience and perceive their place on the risk continuum differently. Even at the extreme end of the continuum, for example, in local authority shelter, different households experience homelessness differently, depending on a range of factors, including whether they see their life chances as being in an upwards or downwards trajectory. In Chapter 5, we posit that having the possibility of an upward trajectory identifies the boundary between homelessness and inadequate housing.

An alternative view of the structural approach suggests that a fundamental failure of the housing market to deliver adequate, affordable housing plays a major part in the increase in homelessness. Most industrialised countries have relatively well-functioning housing markets and housing finance markets. Except for a few years following the massive displacements and urban destruction of the Second World War, not since the 19th century could homelessness be attributed to an acute housing shortage. However, in the UK, and to an extent the USA, inflation in house prices, coupled with a reduction in building, particularly of social housing by local authorities, have impacted on the availability of affordable housing. This impact has not been felt equally in all places. In the USA, Honig and Filer (1993) suggest that the local variations in homelessness are linked to an imbalance between the cost of available housing and a household’s income. It is intuitively evident that, if a household has insufficient income or capital to afford whatever housing is available when they need it, they are in danger of having nowhere to live and thus will become homeless unless helped by welfare measures. While this rather narrow housing market view does not account for all homelessness, it is a factor in regional and local differences, and in the existence of homeless people and empty housing stock in the same locality.

These two main approaches to the causes of homelessness raise dilemmas for governments. The structural approach requires wider societal and economic change, such as improved housing supply or increased employment. The agency approach, however, requires assistance that is more individually directed at the homeless person. Moreover, within these two approaches, we see the emergence of the binary concept of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ homeless people. This is critical to our understanding of the development of welfare policy. If the structural approach is adopted, it could be argued that most homelessness is beyond individual control. Therefore all homeless people are equally deserving of support. If an agency approach is accepted, governments must then decide how to prioritise assistance. It would seem inappropriate to treat someone suffering mental illness, or fleeing an unsafe home, in the same way as someone perceived simply to be willingly vagrant.

Whether the structural or agency explanation is adopted, it is clear that homelessness is a dynamic process rather than a static state. Fitzpatrick (1999) and Anderson and Tulloch (2000) amongst others have sought to explore it using a pathways framework. The metaphor of a ‘pathway’ was first introduced to help understand peoples’ engagement with housing, rather than homelessness. Clapham (2002: 122) suggests that the housing pathway of a household is ‘the continually changing set of relationships and interactions which it experiences over time in its consumption of housing’. The strength of the pathways framework for homelessness is that it acknowledges that people move in and out of homelessness, sometimes on numerous occasions, and that it cannot be understood in isolation from issues and relationships before and after a period of homelessness. Thus, homelessness is seen as an episode within a person’s housing pathway (Clapham, 2003). This is a particularly valuable framework for understanding homelessness in developing countries because, as this work will show, for many in the developing world homelessness is an integral, necessary and even accepted element of a range of survival and housing strategies (Speak, 2004). Moreover, the pathway approach allows us to see how both agency and structural explanations play their part in homelessness. For example, while wider structural issues of housing shortage or poverty underpin homelessness in developing countries, not all people ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of tables
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Current understandings of homelessness
• 2 Homelessness and international housing policy
• 3 The continuing urban housing shortfall and affordability crisis
• 4 Defining homelessness in developing countries
• 5 Accommodation conditions and differentiating between homeless people and those in inadequate housing
• 6 Estimating the hidden millions
• 7 Who are the hidden millions? The characteristics of homeless people
• 8 Economic, social and cultural causes
• 9 Political and legal issues
• 10 Disaster and conflict
• 11 Exclusion, perceptions and isolation
• 12 Children and homelessness
• 13 Towards strategic interventions for homeless people
• Notes
• Bibliography