For the last couple of years I have been working to better understand the epistemic geographies constituting the politics of homelessness in Canada. After following the rise of policy models such as Housing First it became more apparent to me that calculative practices, particularly ones that measure social costs, have proven instrumental in transforming social service systems addressing chronic homelessness. Damian Collins and Jalene Anderson (both at the University of Alberta) and I recently published an article in Social Science & Medicine – entitled Homelessness, Bedspace and the Case for Housing First in Canada – that offers a preliminary attempt at mapping this calculative geography. We arrived at the term ‘bedspace’ to describe this political spatiality. Abstract and link to the article is below.
Homelessness, Bedspace and the Case for Housing First in Canada
Abstract
The act of problem formation is integral to the policymaking process. Moreover, the process by which certain situations, experiences or events are rendered problematic hinges upon the places, spaces and networks through which the issue is made visible and intelligible to policy makers and decision makers. In this paper, we explore these epistemic geographies by unpacking one such example e the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s At Home/Chez Soi study, a federally funded, $110 million field trial of the Housing First (HF) model. HF prioritizes rapid rehousing of the chronically homeless, followed by separate support and treatment services. The model has become widespread in Canada since 2005, based in large part on understandings of its cost-effectiveness. In this article, we utilize At Home/Chez Soi as an illustrative case for examining how ‘chronic homelessness’ is translated into a discourse of costs and benefits, and given an accounting value, through a series of translations. This problematization advances a particular logic, what we refer to as ‘bedspace’.
Joggerfry 