Homelessness is a punishing condition that inflicts unquestionable harm on those who experience it. It is also a social problem that starkly lays bare deep societal failure.   As this book shows, society – along with the public policy measures intended to address it – treats being homeless as an identity, casting those who experience homelessness as fundamentally different from ‘us’. To be homeless is to face daily victimization, to be a recipient of someone else’s care and to have autonomy taken away. Cameron Parsell shows that we have at our disposal the knowledge and momentum to demonstrably reduce and even end homelessness. Our first task in this pursuit is to confront the fact that homelessness is a relatively predictable phenomenon that disproportionately impacts people who are failed by society in myriad ways. We must then respond to the problem in ways that understand and thus do not recreate the dehumanizing conditions experienced by those who are homeless. Homelessness is a choice: of how we organize society. Sketching the defining features of homelessness, this critical introduction will be a valuable resource for students studying homelessness, housing, marginality and poverty across the social sciences and social work.

Will appeal to a wide international readership interested in the welfare state, social policy, poverty, and charity, by developing transferable conceptual contributions and undertaking cross-national comparative analyses. Conceptualises the role of charity to people who are poor in wealthy countries. Outlines a set of practical and conceptual ideas for how charity can be re-imagined to contribute to justice in an unjust society.

The homeless person is thought to be different. Whereas we get to determine our difference or sameness, the homeless person's difference is imposed upon them and assumed to be known because of their homelessness. Exclusion from housing - either a commodity that should be accessed from the market or social provision - signifies the homeless person's incapacities and failure to function in what are presented as unproblematic social systems. Drawing on a program of research spanning ten years, this book provides an empirically grounded account of the lives and identities of people who are homeless. It illustrates that people with chronic experiences of homelessness have relatively predictable biographies characterised by exclusion, poverty, and trauma from early in life. Early experiences of exclusion continue to pervade the lives of people who are homeless in adulthood, yet they identify with family and normative values as a means of imaging aspirational futures.

Homelessness is a punishing condition that inflicts unquestionable harm on those who experience it. It is also a social problem that starkly lays bare deep societal failure.   As this book shows, society – along with the public policy measures intended to address it – treats being homeless as an identity, casting those who experience homelessness as fundamentally different from ‘us’. To be homeless is to face daily victimization, to be a recipient of someone else’s care and to have autonomy taken away. Cameron Parsell shows that we have at our disposal the knowledge and momentum to demonstrably reduce and even end homelessness. Our first task in this pursuit is to confront the fact that homelessness is a relatively predictable phenomenon that disproportionately impacts people who are failed by society in myriad ways. We must then respond to the problem in ways that understand and thus do not recreate the dehumanizing conditions experienced by those who are homeless. Homelessness is a choice: of how we organize society. Sketching the defining features of homelessness, this critical introduction will be a valuable resource for students studying homelessness, housing, marginality and poverty across the social sciences and social work.

The homeless person is thought to be different. Whereas we get to determine our difference or sameness, the homeless person's difference is imposed upon them and assumed to be known because of their homelessness. Exclusion from housing - either a commodity that should be accessed from the market or social provision - signifies the homeless person's incapacities and failure to function in what are presented as unproblematic social systems. Drawing on a program of research spanning ten years, this book provides an empirically grounded account of the lives and identities of people who are homeless. It illustrates that people with chronic experiences of homelessness have relatively predictable biographies characterised by exclusion, poverty, and trauma from early in life. Early experiences of exclusion continue to pervade the lives of people who are homeless in adulthood, yet they identify with family and normative values as a means of imaging aspirational futures.