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Homelessness
Research, Practice, and Policy

S. P. K. Jena
First published 2020
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 S. P. K. Jena
The right of S. P. K. Jena to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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ISBN: 978-0-367-42586-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-85371-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
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For my parents
Contents

List of figuresxii
List of tablesxiii
Prefacexiv
List of abbreviationsxviii

PART 1
Issues and problems1

1 Homelessness: a conceptual analysis 3

Definition 5
Classification 7
Prevalence 8
Development and delusion 9

2 Causes and correlates 12

A global framework 12
Causes 13
Forced homelessness 13
Conflict-induced homelessness 13
Development-induced homelessness 16
Disaster-induced homelessness 17
Voluntary homelessness 18
Existentialism, spiritualism, and minimalism 18
Nomadic and semi-nomadic communities 19
Housing stress and affordability 20
Methodological issues 21

3 Survival behaviour 23
Survival on the street 23
Charity 24
viii Contents
Begging 25
Between the horns of dilemma 26
Child beggars 28
Law as deterrent 28
Begging as an operant response 30
Behaviour modification 32
Prevention 33

4 Trauma, marginalization, and citizenship 34

The trauma theory 34
Mental health 36
Brain damage and cognitive dysfunction 37
Psychopathology versus capability deprivation 39
Relationship issues 40
Social capital 40
Cohesiveness 41
Identity 42
Uprootedness 45
Therapeutic implications 46
Theory of mind of the homeless 46
Outsiderness 47
Identity crisis 48
Citizenship 49

5 Deprivation and human development 50

Introduction 50
Deprivation as ‘object loss’ 50
Motivation for change 51
The poverty syndrome 51
The dehumanizing process 52
Poverty as a metaphor 53
Hunger and malnutrition 56
The building block 56
Productivity and nutrition 57
Breakfast and schooling 58
The midday meal programme 58
Feeding the poor 59
Water 61
Sanitation 63
Hygiene 63
The reality testing 64
Housing: a fundamental need 66
 Contents ix
Judicial activism 67
Rain Basera 68
Policy issues and the paradox 69

6 Fostering human development 71

Introduction 71
Responding to community needs 72
Nurturing literacy 73
The inner wheel 74
Right to education 75
The core issue 76

7 Social change 78
Introduction 78
The wind of change 78
Trends of research 79
Inter-subjectivity 80
Autoethnography 81
Narratives of the homeless 82
Problematization 83

PART II
The field study85

8 The process of enquiry 87

Constructing the reality 87
Empathy-driven research 88
Objectives 89
Participants 90
Setting 92
Measures 94
Body mass index 94
Raven’s progressive matrices 94
Human figure drawing 95
Bender-Gestalt Test 95
The procedure 98
Behavioural sampling 98

9 The journey 101

Rolu 101
The nostalgia 104
x Contents
The protagonist 105
Social networking 107
Extension of services 108
Street as a laboratory 108
The ‘response-driven’ approach 110
Language learning 111
Writing numbers 111
Graphomotor skills 111
Formal schooling: ground realities 117
Psychopathology 120
Postscript 122

10 Housing 123
The preoccupation 123
The comfort zone 124
The threat of eviction 125
Night shelter 125
The inside view 125
Return to ‘home’ 126
In search of relief 128

11 The demolition 130

Rahim 130
The call 131
The shock wave 131
Resilience-building 132

12 Health care 134

Hygiene and health behaviour 134
Violence, accidents, and injuries 134
Community health care 135
Reality and illusion 136

13 Results and discussion 138

Demographic variables 139
Body mass index (BMI) 139
Intellectual ability 140
Graphomotor skills 143
Bender-Gestalt Test 143
Human figure drawing 143
‘Mental sameness’ hypothesis 144
Large head and ‘stick figures’ 146
 Contents xi
Simplistic representation 148
Anatomical details 149
Object relation and caregiving 150
Anxiety and conflicts 155
Resilience 156
Summary and evaluation 157

PART III
The road ahead159

14 Bridging the gap 161

The call for change 161
Investing in the community 162
Responding to homelessness 163
Measuring poverty 163
Social security 164
Paradigm shift 164
‘Shame-proof’ policy 166
Law enforcement 167
Empowerment 168
Counselling and psychotherapy 170
School reform 170
Conditional cash transfer 171
Building sustainable communities 171

15 Epilogue 173
Combating homelessness 173
Behaviour change 175
The challenge 176
Welfare audit and corporate social responsibility 177
Relationship and ‘cure’ 177
Community responsibility 178

References180
Index204
Figures

3.1 (a)–(b) Begging by red-capped mangabey 31

8.1 A vehicle used as mobile psychometric laboratory 99
9.1 A teaching session on the pavement 109
9.2 A participant of the session 110
9.3 Inappropriate grip posture while writing 114
13.1 Drawing of human figures by a Bori youth of
Northeast India 145
13.2 Drawings of men by Ghanaian tribe Tallensi 146
13.3 Drawing of men by a Brazilian tribespeople 146
13.4 (a)–(c) Human figure drawings of a 3.5-year-old European
girl, (b) a South Sea Islander, and (c) a 4-year-old
homeless child from the present study 147
13.5 (a)–(b) Human figures drawn by two homeless adolescents 152
Tables

1.1 National estimate of regional distribution of homeless

population in India 8
2.1 Proposed global homelessness framework 14
5.1 How investing in nutrition is critical to achieving the
(MDGs)60
9.1 Numerical skills of homeless children 6–15 years old 112
Preface

Homelessness is witnessed in cities all over the world, from the most affluent
nations to the poorest ones. It is considered one of the worst forms of deg-
radation of human dignity and an index of extreme poverty – a sad global
phenomenon. Homeless people are often excluded from effective social par-
ticipation. It paves the way for human rights violation. Social exclusion is
a disabling factor for human development. Severe deprivation ultimately
forces them to lead a miserable life and that becomes irreversible.
Homeless people are seen in almost every city, on the street, under the
flyover, in tattered tents of plastic sheets, broken asbestos, even under the
trees; they’re seen in the biting cold of the winter, under the scorching sun
of the summer, and in pouring rains of the monsoon. They beg for money,
food, or clothes. The young homeless boys and girls are seen selling flow-
ers, balloons, toys, or cheap consumable goods for their survival. I have
attempted to take a closer look at their conditions of living, their psycho-
logical trauma, and problems of day-to-day living and reflect on their expe-
riences of the world, which is the soul of this book.
Many ask: Why do people become homeless live on the streets helplessly,
in unhygienic and inhuman conditions throughout their lives, and fail to
come out of this ‘poverty trap’? Are they really less intelligent? Do they
have poorer survival skills than those who have roofs above their heads?
Are they intellectually subnormal and less capable to adapt themselves?
Are they victims of atrocities or suffer from gross psychopathology? Do
they just want to live on charity? There are many such questions. There
cannot be a single answer to these questions. Practitioners of social sci-
ence, education, and medicine have grappled with these challenging ques-
tions. Although ‘poverty’ accounts for a large part of it, there are several
other factors which lead to homelessness. Generic theories of poverty are
many. Some focus on inequality (e.g., Castells, 2000); and others, on dep-
rivation of capability and lack of power. The roots of their inequality are
unclear. Similarly, effective interventions are also microscopic. According
to the capability theory (Sen, 1999), people ideally should have freedom to
be healthy, have an education, find decent work, and live to a decent age
with a decent quality of life. Whereas most homeless people are deprived
 Preface xv
of all of these. This lack of the capability to sustain is the core feature of
their homelessness.
More specific theories outline the typologies of poverty – for instance,
‘absolute poverty’ or total destitution, ‘poverty by others’, ‘social poverty’,
or ‘consumerist poverty’ (e.g., Lummis, 1991). However, they do not explain
the inner dynamics and human experience that mediates this condition as
well as perpetuates it. It requires an idiographic, case-by-case approach to
understand its nature instead of seeking a generic answer.
They have too many problems to solve in their everyday life – and have
too many questions to answer. Unhygienic conditions of living, malnutri-
tion, illiteracy, unemployment, and poor social support systems make them
vulnerable to disease, disability, and crime. For many of them, life is a night-
mare and the future is a fearsome darkness. Quick-fix solutions such as pro-
viding financial packages and other social benefits to ease their stress may be
helpful, but they are insufficient in improving their conditions of living. It is
not only that there were many obstacles to growth, but also it generates psy-
chological resistance, which fails to motivate them enough to change their
lives. Apart from providing tangible incentives, there is a need for creating
‘motivation for change’, sensitization, as well as skill development. In this
context, education, empowerment, and catharsis of their feelings play key
roles for their psychological transformation.
Although, there are several government programmes for the poor, liv-
ing in the slums, and several welfare measures, many of these benefits do
not reach the homeless. The distance between policies and postures is wide
enough. The process through which urban policies and programs evolved,
leading to eventual legislation, is torturous. Therefore, it is often not easy to
distinguish between policy and postures in urban matters. The country has
taken several decades to make note of its urban realities (Sivaramakrishnan,
2011). Now, we speak about the management of urban matters such as edu-
cation and rehabilitation of the homeless more widely and more frequently
than ever before. This has definitely helped us to raise awareness and concern
about the problems of the homeless, but solutions are still elusive. Life of the
homeless people, particularly the younger ones, are lamentable. Due to lack
of education and social support, many children engage in unconventional
survival strategies. Many of these strategies involve the street economy that
is illegal (e.g., theft, prostitution, drug and human trafficking). A majority
of them engage in begging or selling of consumable goods. These strategies
provide resources for street survival. As Snow (2000) argues, children need
to be schooled, as they need to learn ‘schooled’ literacy in addition to their
non-standard ways of acquiring literacy. This is necessary for surviving in
educational settings. Within curricula constructions and pedagogical con-
cerns, schooling develops a conservative, powerful discourse of regularity
and normativity compared with literacy as it is lived in daily lives which
flow, sometimes invisibly, across the day and involve a number of com-
plex, interlinked practices (Rowsell and Pahl, 2015). Engaging in classroom
xvi Preface
activities prevents them from engaging in various illegal and commercial
activities early in their lives. Further, earning early in their lives and paren-
tal encouragement for the same does not motivate them to go to school.
Involvement in crimes leads to exclusion from labour force due to convic-
tions. Apart from illicit survival behaviours, poor hygiene and health condi-
tions as well as poor job skills often prevent them to be on any job for long.
They are often marginalized from formal education and economy. Even if
they are put in schools, they often drop out or fail to attend regularly due to
many reasons. Lack of encouragement for schooling, discrimination in the
schools, poor performance, and unavailability of specially trained teachers
make their schooling a nightmarish experience, leading to drop out. Due to
poor education, their chances of regular employment decline substantially.
The assimilation of experiences obtained from them has shaped a large
part of the present work. In this sense, this is a response-guided research. The
purpose of which was to improve their social inclusion through schooling
and other activities. Apart from making a broad-spectrum analysis of their
problems, an ethnographic fieldwork was conducted with a few homeless
families for an intimate understanding of the experience of homelessness.
The book is in three parts. The first part of this book – Issues and prob-
lems – contains theoretical analysis of the basic construct of ‘homelessness’
and its prevalence in the community, the paradoxes, and delusions of devel-
opment. The opening chapter discusses the homing desire and its impor-
tance in the context of human development. Homelessness is viewed as an
index of acute poverty. The census figures of homeless are grim reminders
of our failures to provide adequate shelter to our citizens. This is viewed
seriously as a human right violation. From this perspective, the need for
participatory research is highlighted. A considerable part of this section is
focused on exploring the identity crisis of the homeless due to loss of their
temporary shelters due to migration and eviction. Homelessness is viewed
as a by-product of growing economic prosperity. The discussion embodies
various causes of homelessness. Apart from their survival issues, experience
of trauma, feeling of marginalization, learning problems, and sense of dep-
rivation constitute the core theme of this section.
The second part of this book – The field study – attempts to examine
the impact of homelessness and displacement on human behaviours. The
study unfolds with a casual encounter with a child begging on the street,
which gradually exposes us to the struggles and complexities of day-to-
day life. In this sense, it was not a pre-planned and pre-designed research.
The variables and themes of this work were determined by looking at the
immediate requirement, the account of which is worth mentioning. This
has been discussed through case studies, psychometric tests, and body mass
index (BMI).
The third and concluding part – Road ahead – elaborates on the insight
drawn from the literature, personal acquaintance, and observations from the
study, which provides a roadmap for alleviating homelessness. The welfare