Recently, I was asked why we consider a family or individual living in desperate housing conditions as “homeless”. Most often without heat or hot water, sometimes with no door or bathroom, we believe that no one could honestly call such places “homes”.
Sadly, the families we find living in such awful places have strong opinions about homeless shelters, most often citing the potential dangers to their children as the reason they have stayed where they are. They, like the men (and some women) on our streets, in abandominiums and elsewhere have voted with their feet about shelter conditions.
Always looking for better solutions to prevent or quickly end homelessness, I’ve been researching other countries’ approaches. I found that Great Britain employs the term “bad housing” – covering the range from conditions I just described to living in homeless shelters.
I think that this is the smartest definition of the problem that I have ever heard. Any living space which is harmful to its occupants’ mental and physical health and general well being – particularly – young children – is unacceptable. That includes the streets, shelters and any other form of dangerous housing. A study of the difference between children living in good and bad housing concluded:
“Children who lived in bad housing were more likely to experience a low standard of living across a number of areas, including health, education, quality of life and aspirations for the future.”
[National Centre for Social Research, “The living standards of children in bad housing”, 2006]
This should be the central message for public policies we pursue as anti-homelessness advocates – no bad housing for any human being, and most emphatically, no child, not one child, should spend one night in bad housing – shelter, street, car or unfit housing.
I believe that the flaw of public policy is that housing is deemed a “commodity” when it is really a basic necessity. Public resources should be wisely invested in housing for those who need assistance because it is of paramount importance for every person’s good health, educational development, employment stability and general well being.
