Home Spaces and Rights to the City: Thinking Social Justice for Chronically Homeless Women

Abstract

The central argument of this paper is that current Canadian discussions about the relative merits of Housing First and Continuum of Care raise both theoretical and substantive questions about neoliberalization as an orientation that, following Graefe (2006), promotes certain types of social rule at the expense of other considerations. The possibility is raised that a wholesale shift to Housing First might well become a vehicle for further excluding marginalized people, not only in terms of their rights to public space but also their visible presence in any spaces in the city, including the specialized congregate spaces of emergency, transition, and supportive housing associated with Continuum of Care. Through a focus on the particular situations and challenges faced by chronically homeless women, using a gendered and race-sensitive analysis, an alternative policy framework is offered that is informed by the social justice perspectives of Fraser (2003) and Purcell (2008).