Constructing the Vulnerable Body: Authenticating and Documenting Eligibility in an Era of Housing First Homelessness

• In Event: 189 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 05. Homelessness and Housing Insecurity

Abstract

This study is an ethnographic investigation of how national and local level policy shifts have impacted the way that homelessness is treated, conceptualized, and experienced at the organizational and individual level. This article examines how programmatic and ideological resolutions have reorganized the parameters for service eligibility and changed how resources are prioritized. Specifically, the new role of vulnerability as a means for determining eligibility is considered and its impact on frameworks for conceptualizing homelessness is underscored. Ethnographic data provides a rich depiction of how vulnerability is authenticated and documented by individuals, and an extended discussion demonstrates how stringent eligibility requirements create more opportunities for failure than for success. By including the shelter context alongside existing literature on how social and political shifts have impacted street-dwelling populations, a more robust and exhaustive understanding of contemporary homelessness becomes available.

Author

• Melissa Osborne, University of Chicago