Defining homelessness and hunger in terms of basic needs insecurities.

When we talk about social justice issues there can be a lot of context, history, and even information lost in translation; the words we use matter, sometimes the colloquialisms of civil equity can obfuscate the realities of its subjects. It’s very common for people to refer to the phenomenon of housing insecurity as “the homelessness problem,” to refer to people experiencing housing insecurity as “homeless people.” The issue of “homelessness,” framed as such in terms of the “home,” entails a normative definition of “home” as a place that one lives. By assuming a normative definition of “home” as the foundation of this identifier its meaning becomes twisted into something that it isn’t. Home is more than a location of habitation; it’s a complex concept of personal history, sentiment, community, and locality. Do Good Multnomah, a nonprofit organisation that works to provide “permanent supportive housing and low-barrier emergency shelter to houseless Veterans in Portland, Oregon” uses the term “houseless” instead of homeless. They argue that a house is simply a (typically permanent) inhabitable physical space, so when someone is “houseless” it means that they are without said space. We can see here how “homeless” might not really represent what is happening for those being given that identifier, as well as how the ascription of such a title might erase the histories and realities of those suffering from housing insecurity.

Additionally, the matter of houselessness is more complex than a simple binary apprehension, where there are those who have physical spaces to live and those who don’t. In the Fall of 2019, Portland State University’s HRAC (Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative) distributed a survey, which sought out information about basic needs insecurity levels amongst all faculty and student bodies. By the end of the collection period 15% of the student body and 28% of the faculty body responded, in 2020 PSU released the findings in an exhaustive report titled “Housing and Food Security at Portland State University.” What is most interesting about this report, beyond the alarming 44.6% of students that experience housing insecurity, is how it details the intersections of the foundation of the phenomenon of houselessness: basic needs insecurities, which include food, water, shelter, and safety securities. In the world of schooling a student who is hungry, or is malnourished, or has not slept is a student who will struggle to perform against academic rigor. Within PSU’s report these basic needs have been divided into three major categories: food insecurity, housing insecurity, and houselessness. They go further than just these divisions though, they also highlight all the different modes of these phenomena. What we learn through this elaboration is that houselsessness, food insecurity, and housing insecurity are all intertwined, and typically are compounded by one another. In the “Intersections” section, the PSU report indicates that, out of the 61.6% of students experiencing basic needs insecurities, 25.4% of these students were experiencing two at once. Within that quarter, 84.6% of students were experiencing housing and food insecurity simultaneously. 

When thinking about houselessness it is important to understand the many frames it may manifest within; the PSU report notes individual sections of students experiencing different forms of housing insecurity. These variations include: having to move in with other people due to financial struggle, having their rent or mortgage increase,being unable to pay utility bills or rent, having to sleep somewhere on campus because they had nowhere else to go, joining a house without informing the landlord, getting evicted, and leaving their homes because they felt unsafe. What this illustrates is the sheer variety of forms that housing insecurity can present itself. This same delineation of variation is shared among houslessness and food insecurity in the report. You can read the full report in the links below, as well as some light reading about the term “houselessness” that I have used throughout this post.
Links:
Why do we say houseless? — Do Good Multnomah
Housing and Food Insecurity — Portland State University