Perceptions, Persecution and Pity: The Limitations of Interventions for Homelessness in Developing Countries

Abstract

Interventions for homelessness in developing countries are frequently negative and unhelpful. They tend to exist in an environment of hostility, suspicion and apathy towards homeless people. This environment is cultivated and enhanced by negative and derogatory language and images used by politicians, the public and the media in their portrayal of homeless people as unemployed, beggars, drunks and criminals. Findings from a recently completed study of homelessness in nine developing countries suggest that this perception is largely false. This article argues that, until the popular misconception of homeless people is corrected, even the most well-intentioned interventions will have little long-term effect. Copyright (c) 2006 The Authors. Journal Compilation (c) 2006 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

If this is not an Urban Crises, what is?

“…Wer mit der Komplexität des Wohnungsmarktes in der Stadt zurechtkommt, wohnt schließlich im weiten Netz der Slumsiedlungen. Die Stadtlandschaft zeichnet sich durch mangelnde Hygiene und Sanitäreinrichtungen, verdichtetes Wohnen (in den Slums), schlechte Wohnverhältnisse sowie Mangel an Trinkwasser und anderen wesentlichen Einrichtungen aus (Speak/ Tipple 2006). Derlei Umstände sind auf die ungleiche Struktur der Stadt zurückzuführen, die die Schaffung von Slums zum Wohnen fördert und die Migrant_innen mit andauernden Räumungsdrohungen in den öffentlichen Raum drängt.…”

Signposting invisibles

“…Declaring 1987 as the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless, the United Nations defined a homeless person as not only someone who lived on the street or in a shelter, but also someone whose shelter or housing failed to meet the basic criteria considered essential for health and social development (Jha & Kumar, 2016). These criteria included security of tenure, protection against bad weather, and personal security as well as access to sanitary facilities and potable water, education, work, and health services (Speak & Tipple, 2006). Moreover, census enumeration also poses the problems related to coverage of the homeless population.…”

“…In some contexts, homelessness is understood as a lack of access to land as well as to shelter. In rural Bangladesh, for example, homelessness is assessed on the basis of whether a household has a regularized plot of land as well as a roof overhead (Speak & Tipple 2006). Another aspect of defining homelessness is the pattern of time spent outside of conventional housing.…”

Complexity not collapse: recasting the geographies of homelessness in a ‘punitive’ age

“…Indeed, they would do well to look beyond the Minority World. The scale of both homelessness and the aggressive, often deadly, attempts to deal with it takes on a new dimension in cities such as São Paulo, Cairo, Mumbai or Manilla, where upwards of half the population live in precarious or informal shelter and where tens of thousands of children live (and die) on the streets (Dos Santos, 2003;Roy, 2003;Davis, 2006;Speak and Tipple, 2006). Geographers working on homelessness have been remarkably reluctant to engage with the problems of homelessness in the Majority World (though see Beazley, 2002), even though it is plain that such an engagement would signifi cantly enrich the geographical imaginations of those working in both urban and development studies (Robinson, 2002).…”