Reading Broken Cities: Inside the Global Housing Crisis

Anna Lindley writes:

In large cities all over the world, people talk about ‘the housing problem’ or the ‘housing crisis’ – but what exactly do they mean? And to what extent is it a global problem, or many different problems? Are we on the edge of a very different kind of urban future? These are the questions that Deborah Potts tackles in her tour-de-force book Broken Cities, published by Zed earlier this year. The neoliberal approach tends to frame the problem as one of market supply – that there is a shortage of housing or land to build on. If enough houses are built, the market logic goes, prices will fall and become affordable. But research suggests that while house-building may help those on the edges of the affordability line, they tend to have limited impact on the majority of those on low incomes, who fall well below. Drawing on decades of research and teaching focusing on urban centres in Southern Africa, the UK and elsewhere, Deborah Potts emphasizes the role of demand-side problems driving the affordability conundrum. While poorer people in these cities undoubtedly need housing, they do not have near enough income to secure what is understood as a ‘decent’, ‘legal’ home. While unemployment can make this worse, most people thus affected are in fact in work – the stark reality is that their employers just do not pay truly liveable wages. In many cities, incomes at the bottom end of the spectrum have long fallen short of the cost of social reproduction (particularly the rising cost of housing) and the minimum pay and pensions increases that would be required to rectify this are so big as to be unlikely without major political transformation. 

Broken Cities illuminates common responses of low-income city-dwellers to the affordability challenge. People may squeeze on space (e.g. crowding families or co-workers into one room, co-ordinating bed use around shift patterns); they may resort to more basic or improvised structures (e.g. trailers, subdivided housing units, office conversions, backyard shacks, squats); they may live in informal settlements on city peripheries (in cheap housing close enough to employment opportunities but with insecure tenure and poor conditions); they may fall into an itinerant, ‘hidden homeless’ existence (sofa-surfing or spending prolonged periods in ‘temporary’ accommodation). These are pragmatic, bottom-up, informal ‘solutions’ that avoid street homelessness but are a very long way from what most people think of as an appropriate home – and indeed may be endangering to health and contravene local housing standards. A particular strength of the book is its global and historical reach, connecting urban housing problems across the world, probing contextual detail, differences and distinctiveness, but always with a close eye on common features and the core conundrum of affordability of decent housing for the poorest in society.

COVID-19 and informal settlements

Photo: 1to1 Agency of Engagement, 2020

Chloe Loader writes:

The emergence of novel coronavirus COVID-19 has had huge social and economic impact, causing high excess mortality and significant economic decline. The pandemic has and is affecting different groups disproportionately, its effects amplified by existing challenges in housing. As humanitarians respond to the ongoing crisis, it is vital to understand and implement key aspects of the humanitarian development nexus to address long-term impacts. This blog post will focus on the risks being faced by those in informal settlements during the pandemic, predominantly considering those in South Africa. Inadequate housing is strongly linked to an increased vulnerability to disease due to overcrowding, poor ventilation, sanitation and lack of services This particularly impacts communities facing additional hazards such as flooding and fires, increasing the risk of transmission and chance of infection. The pandemic has highlighted the inequality experienced by these communities, with social distancing and self-isolation a privilege not accessible to all.

Key questions:

What are the increased risks for residents of informal settlements to infectious diseases, such as COVID-19?

How can design principles be implemented in informal settlements to allow for social distancing and/or safe hygienic practices?

How can humanitarian responses to COVID-19 incorporate development initiatives that prevent communities from facing long-term vulnerability to infectious diseases?

Existing literature on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on residents of informal settlements is so far limited due to a lack of quantitative data. However, there are organisations such as 1to1 Agency of Engagement that are working on the ground directly with residents to engage communities with making masks and provide handwashing facilities and soap. There is however literature discussing the impacts of other infectious diseases, which will impact residents in similar ways.  Investigation of the impacts of COVID-19 on informal settlements is vital so that long-term management practices, spatial adaptations, attitude changes and increased availability of resources can be implemented for residents. With unreliable data available for many countries, particularly for informal settlements, it is difficult to establish the extent of the issue. Cases for low and middle income countries, such as Brazil, Peru and South Africa are currently rising, highlighting the increased risk to poorer communities.

My personal experience working in South Africa this year in January, not long before the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the country, highlighted to me the risk of infection for people living in informal settlements. It is difficult to understand fully the conditions of a slum until you have experienced it. Overcrowding and lack of hygiene/access to facilities is a daily norm. In South Africa, residents have been fighting for their homes to be legalised, electricity and water to be installed and conditions to become safe. This is a long process, with many political and economic hurdles to overcome. On my return to the UK, the people I met in South Africa have been at the front of my mind as the pandemic has worsened, unable to comprehend the risk that these vulnerable communities now face. While COVID-19 has caused suffering for so many globally, the impact of livelihood/education/living conditions of many in developed countries is minimal in comparison to the most vulnerable communities.

Cendep Wins Research Award for Innovative Research Solutions to Help the World's Most Vulnerable People

Charles Parrack writes:

Earthquakes, storms, floods, and conflict cause untold damage to housing, infrastructure, services, agriculture and livelihoods. Householders themselves are invariably the first to respond, and the majority - 80 to 90% - receive little or no assistance from the international community and they become the main drivers of their own recovery process. This process has been termed 'self-recovery'.

This project, led by the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice at Oxford Brookes and CARE International UK and in partnership with Catholic Relief Services, Habitat for Humanity, CRAterre and the British Geological Survey, builds on previous research focused on understanding how housing self-recovery works to develop guidance and tools, which will help operational agencies support the process.

The Funder, UK Research and Innovation, made the following announcement:

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has awarded 18 international partnerships, £14.8M – shared between UK HEIs and global research partners. They are specifically aimed to deliver scalable solutions to issues faced by low and middle-income countries.
  
The projects have been funded as part of UKRI’s GCRF Innovation and Commercialisation Programme, developed to fast track promising research findings into real-world solutions.
UKRI Director of International Development, Professor Helen Fletcher, said:

“This is a really exciting opportunity to fund 18 projects through the Global Research Translation awards. Each and every one will make a massive difference to peoples’ lives in communities spread across the world to ensure some of the most challenged communities have a brighter future.

“Over the next year and a half, UK researchers will work with their international counterparts, policy makers, businesses and local organisations to turn promising research into solutions that can be taken forward through various pathways such as spin-out companies and social enterprises to make a positive difference to people who live with the reality of challenges such as climate change, poor sanitation and disease every day.”

https://www.ukri.org/news/innovative-research-solutions-identified-to-help-the-worlds-most-vulnerable-people/

For more information contact Charles Parrack cparrack@brookes.ac.uk

Displaced in cities: who are the hosts?

Zoe Jordan writes:

The recent ICRC report, Displaced in Cities, shines a much-needed light on experiences of hosting IDPs in urban centres. This is an increasing area of focus for humanitarian action, but understanding of this phenomenon is sorely lacking. While humanitarian agencies are increasingly considering hosting at the national, regional and city scale, there remains a significant gap in understanding and working with host families—those individuals who share their accommodation and resources with displaced people.

Hosting practices are more diverse than currently portrayed, forging relationships between unrelated individuals and offering protection, belonging and identity, as well as meeting basic needs. To provide better humanitarian support we need to question underlying assumptions about host families and to identify ways to better engage with this vital support system.

Taking the Displaced in Cities report as my starting point, I offer my own reflections on hosting practices for displaced populations. In doing so, I draw on my PhD research around refugee hosting practices in the protracted urban context of Amman, Jordan and experience working with hosts and IDPs in DRC.

Host families in urban environments

ICRC’s report is a valuable contribution, drawing attention to the little understood issue of IDPs in urban areas. In putting people’s own experiences and understandings at the forefront of the report and questioning existing humanitarian approaches and assumptions, it makes a call for humanitarian actors to reconceptualise their work with displaced populations in urban environments.

The recognition of the importance of host families within the report is a welcome inclusion. Though humanitarian agencies are demonstrably aware of the importance of these support networks, I’ve found there is little detailed information available on host families. Where reports and studies mention host families, this is often merely one line, or at best a paragraph. With so little in-depth information available, it’s difficult to put figures on the number of people living in such arrangements. The available evidence suggests hosting practices are widespread and large-scale. In Jordan, CARE found that 23% of Syrian refugee households were sharing accommodation with non-family members in 2017.  I believe rates to be higher among other refugee populations in Amman, who have less access to assistance and do not have access to camps. In DRC, OCHA estimates that 96% of the 16,000 people internally displaced in December 2017 were living with host families.

In the opening pages of the Displaced in Cities report, the authors rightly note that there has, as yet, been little focus on the experiences of IDPs in urban environments. They also point out that IDPs in different cities will face their own political, economic, social and legal constraints, in ways that differentiate their experiences from those of refugees and non-displaced city residents. To me, this gap in the analysis also applies to hosting arrangements for both refugee and IDP populations living in cities.

One of the key recommendations outlined in the report is the need for responses to be built upon reliable data and analysis, rather than generalisations and assumptions. In my experience, despite frequent references to host communities and host families there is little insight into who hosts are, what the experience of hosting and being hosted is like, and how humanitarian agencies influence these relationships.

Are people better off being hosted?

I find that it is often assumed that displaced populations living in cities are better off than those in camps. In addition to increased economic opportunity and freedom of movement, the possibility of living with a host family is often cited as an explanation of why cities can be a better option. While hosting can present many benefits and is largely seen as a positive coping mechanism, it is also often the only option for those who do not have access to camps. With high rental costs, many urban refugees and IDPs have little choice but to live with others.

Hosting can provide shelter, access to food, water and sanitation facilities, connections to work, safety and protection, and psychosocial support and advice. My research suggests it can also contribute to a sense of belonging, by maintaining or restoring someone’s identity and sense of connection to their culture, history and place of origin, and to beginning a process of integration in their place of displacement. Hosting can also present a danger—overcrowding, poor living conditions, ill-health, stress and a lack of privacy, exploitation and abuse. With so much at stake, I think it’s essential that humanitarian actors better understand how hosting works and the impact their policies can have.

Who are the hosts?

The hosting relationship is often seen in terms of securing access to resources to meet basic needs and described as a burden on hosts or exploitative of guests. It is also assumed to take place between family/kin, and between citizen-hosts and displaced-guests. To me, this misunderstands the basis of many hosting relationships and the decision-making processes and expectations involved. Thus, it misunderstands which factors may influence the experience of being hosted and the ‘terms of agreement’. It avoids engaging in the complex societal and personal relations and norms around hosting. Furthermore, it fails to recognise the huge role hosting relationships play in the lives of displaced persons and hosts, beyond the provision of shelter and basic assistance.

While in many cases displaced people are hosted by family, or draw on pre-existing relations to find a host, this is by no means universal. In Jordan, I found that hosting arrangements between non-family members is common, especially in non-Syrian and non-Iraqi refugee populations, and particularly among young men. In many cases, single people join together to share accommodation, or un-related families form a new household. Importantly, these relationships aren’t just about sharing rental costs but are a vital safety net in a context of uncertain informal employment and low levels of humanitarian assistance.

Unlike the increasingly-popular refugee hosting programmes in Europe, in many places in the global South host families are not organised by an NGO or another organisation. Rather, they are formed by the people involved, sometimes with the support of their church or mosque, a community leader, or a community group.

In all of the hosting arrangements that I encountered in Amman, refugees were not being hosted by Jordanians, but rather by other refugees, normally of the same nationality. While Syrian and Iraqi refugees were often hosted by family relations, normally those who had arrived in Jordan a few years or months earlier, Sudanese and Somali refugees rarely had these options, and usually arrived in Jordan without knowing anyone. Instead, they created hosting relations based on ideas of sharing and solidarity (for a brief discussion of the motivations to host, please visit the CENDEP blog).

What is the role of humanitarian actors?

Humanitarian actors have a great influence over hosting arrangements. Most obviously, in situations where humanitarian agencies have the capacity to distribute cash grants and offer rental support, this assistance plays a major role in influencing people’s housing decisions and their experience of hosting. For example, Waseem, a young man with a serious injury that prevented him from working was at risk of having to leave his hosting arrangement because he could not contribute to the rent costs. Recognising this, Waseem did all the cooking and cleaning at home as his contribution towards the household. Though most of the nine men he shared with were happy with this arrangement, several of them weren’t, creating tensions and arguments at home. Waseem told us that once he started receiving monthly cash assistance, the situation at home stabilised and he no longer felt under threat.

Some NGOs have run pilot projects working with landlords to offer secure space to refugees in return for home improvements. Interventions aimed at improving tenure security are welcome, with the recognition that many hosting arrangements are informal and that for many their flexibility is desirable, though risky.

Other impacts of humanitarian assistance are subtler. For example, many of the men I worked with in my research met each other during activities run by NGO community centres—English classes, football matches and dance showcases. In places where public space is limited or inaccessible (either due to cost barriers or fears of harassment), community centres become vital spaces to develop relationships. Similarly, workplaces become crucial sites for solidifying existing relationships. Though NGOs may have limited influence in these sites, a recognition that work is providing more than an income is important

Recommendations

As recommended in the Displaced in Cities report, we need further and better analysis of the situations of host families in order to capture the impact of displacement on them and to understand how they support displaced persons. Doing so would provide us with greater insight into how humanitarian action already influences such practices and what we as humanitarian actors can do better. This would allow us to support positive aspects of hosting while minimising the risks and protection concerns of everyone involved in the hosting relationship.

By placing people at the centre of response and focusing on dignity and resilience, we can enhance and promote existing support mechanisms—such as hosting—and prioritise the choices and preferences of people affected by displacement. In this regard, the 2016 localisation agenda emerging from the World Humanitarian Summit is a positive development. Beyond just looking at increasing and improving equal partnership with local organisations, we need to maintain this energy to look at what people are doing for themselves. In particular, we need to look at the ways that refugees are helping other refugees, acknowledging that the main source of assistance is frequently not citizens of the host country nor governments or humanitarian actors, but rather other migrants, displaced populations and refugees.

Humanitarian actors are still learning how to work in urban environments. In doing so, we need to make sure that we’re taking a step back and looking at the whole urban environment, rather than working in sectoral silos or focusing on humanitarian action to the detriment of medium and long-term development. As part of that, we need to pay more attention to which spaces and services are accessible to refugees. We should see how refugees are creating, using, and perhaps changing them in ways we have not considered. This includes looking beyond the places we’re used to working in—NGO offices, community centres, and schools—and focusing also on workplaces, public places, and homes (with appropriate privacy and safeguarding protections).

Host families play a critical role throughout displacement. They are not only the first responders, but also a vital connection to the urban environment, sharing resources, knowledge and experiences. As summed up by S, a young Sudanese man living in Amman, ‘if someone comes, maybe I can allow him to live at my house. I’ll welcome him. Why would I not help him, of course I’m going to help him…It doesn’t depend on my situation, it just depends on my humanity. I am a human being, like him. He is Sudanese, and I know this country. It is difficult here.’

This is cross-posted from the blog of the International Committee of the Red Cross 

For further reading

• ICRC Report – Displaced in Cities: Experiencing and responding to urban internal displacement outside camps, 2018
• Blog post – Internal displacement: Some reflections on cracking the urban challenge, Catherine Lune-Grayson, 23 September 2018

Work in Progress: Rethinking domicide

Dr Mel Nowicki is a Lecturer in Geography at Oxford Brookes. She introduces her research, which she will present at the Work in Progress seminar on Thursday 29 November at 4.30pm:

I'll be discussing the concept of domicide, or the intentional destruction of home. Reflecting on research conducted in London and Dublin with a range of people, from squatters to formerly homeless families, the talk will focus on the ways in which domicide is enacted not solely through the physical destruction of or displacement from the dwelling, but socio-symbolically through the delegitimisation of particular groups' rights to home. I do so through examining the ways in which the idealisation of homeownership in particular justifies stigmatisation of those unable, or unwilling, to confirm to these idealised constructions of home. 

The seminar will be in Abercrombie, third floor, Student Hub/White Space. This is the last Work in Progress session this semester. All are welcome.

Humanitarian Evidence Week: Long-term impacts of shelter programmes

Charles Parrack writes:

Earlier this year, in 2018, CENDEP hosted a one-day workshop on longitudinal studies in shelter at Oxford Brookes University. Attendees came from a wide range of backgrounds with experience in the humanitarian sector, shelter and academia.

The topic has been raised in various shelter cluster and non-cluster meetings over several years. At the Global Shelter Cluster meeting in Geneva 2017, the Shelter Projects working group found strong interest in longitudinal studies and, as a result, proposed to advance discussions on a more organised approach to methodology, procurement, dissemination and sectoral learning/evidence.

Longitudinal studies are by no means a new concept; indeed, evidence shows them to be a part of other sectoral practice, however they are something that the shelter sector does not yet embed into its own practice. Why is this? Some thoughts from the workshop suggested the answer to be a combination of rapid agency staff turnover, funding challenges, a lack of accountability and perhaps a fear of sharing programme failures.

Photograph: © Patrick Brown/UNICEF/Panos Pictures

Why are they needed?

Discussion ranged over the following questions: How would impact measurement benefit the sector? How would it benefit affected communities? There was a consensus that the outcomes of impact studies would encourage institutional learning particularly if disseminated and shared as best practice. There is a need within the sector to see the long-term consequences of our actions; to understand how beneficiaries take ownership of shelter and how safety is enhanced or reduced after implementation. Following up on programmes, two years, five years or even ten years after completion can enable agencies to better understand and engage with issues of prevention, sustainability, resilience and cost-efficiency which can feed back into and improve future programming. Whether it is the original agency who carries out the study, or an independent organisation, it is important that the results consider the context both past and present and are not a biased representation. Consideration of the learning opportunities for affected populations, implementers and donors drew an extensive list in the workshop highlighting a strong benefit for many actors.

Methodology

Longitudinal studies involve repeatedly gathering data on the same focus area over a long period of time. The unit of analysis, that is what is being measured, can be a person, shelter, household or community. It is important the unit of analysis is confirmed and remains the focus of the study as the methodology’s most important aspect is being able to compare in order to fully understand change overtime. Time is the best test of a programme’s viability, effectiveness and sustainability.

Shelter is delivered in various forms, both soft and hard interventions, and it is not necessarily a structure in the physical sense of the word. Perhaps 90% of what the shelter sector delivers is provided to meet short-term emergency needs. It does not take into account the future long-term consequences and may therefore, be difficult to locate, let alone measure. With this in mind, discussion looked towards certain shelter interventions that are quick and common enough for us to be able to find out what their impact has been, for example, transitional shelters. Transitional shelters are intended to be transformative in their nature, therefore it may be possible for us to track their transformation. The question of how their transformation may be followed and what exactly we may want or need to understand generated further conversation. What was voiced by many was the role of the affected communities in longitudinal studies; that perhaps it is the residents themselves who document their own recovery and their qualitative data can be understood by agencies in a more quantitative way if preferred. Participation from affected communities must continue to happen to institutionalise the process of learning so we, as a sector, can continue to develop and improve programming that meets the needs of the user. For shelter in the context of conflict, the journey of displaced populations may offer the opportunity to study soft modalities in the form of long-term displacement.

Questions and challenges

As long-term studies are not standard practice in the shelter sector challenges and questions surrounding the implementation of such studies were raised:

-          What are the criteria for success?

-          Do long-term studies link with the localism agenda?

-          Changing the building culture takes time and is not part of the emergency     programme

-          How to fund studies with long-term intentions when the programmes are inherently short-term?

Conclusions

Long-term effects of shelter programming can be both positive and negative but these effects cannot be quantified in the end of a project evaluation; they require time to develop and change in response to the intended user. It is clear from this workshop and Global Shelter Cluster findings that many organisations have the willingness to carry out long-term studies, but do not have the time or indeed, the funding. Understanding the consequences of our actions will enable better design and implementation of improved shelter programmes for reduced costs and greater effectiveness.

The group suggested many ways we can measure shelter, from technical standards like the Sphere Standards to quantifiable measures like value for money; to less tangible, but just as important, indicators such as level of happiness and sense of ownership. The shortlist of these was; safe shelter and settlements, user satisfaction, enabling informed decisions, adaptability, saving lives and value for money. Uninterrupted sleep and beauty were shortlisted as overall proxy indicators of a successful shelter. In general, the discussants agreed that the Sphere Standards offered good indicators for identifying success when looking at; security, peace, dignity, security of tenure and protection from forced eviction.

Based on the day’s thoughts, it is likely that these studies would have a varied audience including funders, agencies and university courses with wide opportunities for learning and improving practice for all. Whether you prefer to call them ‘longitudinal studies’ or ‘long-term impacts’, the interest for putting them into action is strong and we look forward to continuing the conversation from the workshop.

Charles Parrack presents shelter research at Global Shelter Cluster

At the Global Shelter Cluster annual conference in Geneva on 3-4 October Charles Parrack presented the chapter he co-authored with Professor Ian Davis on ‘The Long View of Shelter’, reviewing progress and changes in the shelter sector over the past 40 years. The chapter also discusses how lessons can be learned from disaster response from as long ago as the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, as well as more recent disasters such as the Haiti earthquake of 2010. The chapter is part of the inaugural publication of the State of Humanitarian Shelter and Settlements.

One of the main findings when reviewing shelter responses was that a separation continues to exist between emergency shelter response and permanent housing development. This reflects the division between the humanitarian sector, which focuses on short-term disaster relief, and the development sector, which works towards long-term recovery. Although efforts are under way to close this well-recognized gap, through initiatives such as the World Humanitarian Summit ‘Humanitarian - Development Nexus’ and the rise in prominence of the concept of resilience, progress remains slow.

Few humanitarian agencies possess an in-house technical capacity to create dwellings, or desire to become involved in permanent shelter and settlement, due largely to their restricted operational mandate, and time and financial constraints. For surviving households, the sheltering process from immediate protection to permanent housing is a continuous one. But for supporting agencies the process is usually fragmented into discrete phases (relief, recovery, reconstruction) due to budgets, capacities and timeframes. This fragmentation ultimately undermines longer-term recovery.

The consequences of shelter assistance are long lasting: settlements become housing, camps become temporary cities. The responses to some of the most significant disasters in history not only determined subsequent development patterns for the cities affected, but led to changes and developments that continue to influence housing and city design around the globe today. The 1666 Great Fire of London led to the first building regulations, while the 1755 Lisbon earthquake resulted in the world’s first urban plan designed to reduce the risks posed by earthquakes, tsunamis and urban fires.

Despite a wealth of evaluations, there has been little long term assessment of the harms and benefits of more recent shelter responses. The chapter calls for more initiatives in this area.

Forum discusses design in disaster and development

Charles Parrack speaks at the Barcelona forum

Charles Parrack presented the work of CENDEP at the Design Disaster and Development Research Forum in Barcelona on 6 July. The event was hosted by RMIT (Melbourne University Barcelona campus) and was attended by university and operational partner representatives.

Participants are all engaged in knowledge production in humanitarian response or development contexts. Presenters included UIC Barcelona, KU Leuven, University of Westminster, Aalto University, Paris Belleville ENSAPB, Oslo School of Architecture, UCL, Lisbon University, UNHCR, Global Alliance for Urban Crises, and Catholic Relief Services.

The agenda consisted of three main themes. First, pedagogical approaches to learning about the role of design in disaster response and development contexts. Secondly, discussion of graduate attributes needed for successful employment. Thirdly, development of research questions that are most important to focus on in this field.

The meeting called for formation of a research network to progress these issues.

Apologies for the long period of silence. The custodian of the blog has been travelling, and plans to blog from far-flung places have been undermined by a) poor internet and b) being very busy. Over the next few weeks normal service will be resumed.

Why host refugees?

Zoe Jordan writes:

Many refugees around the world do not live in refugee camps, but in towns and cities, alongside citizens and residents of the host nation, and other migrants and refugees. In urban neighbourhoods across the globe, refugees are hosted by others. They are invited to share a house and resources with another family – who may be from the host country, or may also be refugees.

Refugees who are hosted gain access to shelter, most obviously, but may also be able to share other resources – sharing food, using electricity and water supplies, support in the costs of education for their children, and any healthcare costs. Hosting relationships can also provide access to less tangible resources – connections to jobs and social groups, important emotional and psychosocial support, and can help refugees to define their identity within a new community. This might all sound quite nice, but there are concerns about exploitation within the hosting relationship – for example enforced labour and child labour, physical and verbal violence, particularly towards women, overcrowding, poor hygiene, and unequal treatment of different households involved, with effects on the 'inferior' family's well-being. The arrangements underpinning these relationships change over time, based on the length of time spent living together, participants' expectations of themselves and others, and in response to external influences – for example, legal status, wider community acceptance or discrimination, humanitarian assistance, and the perceived welfare of refugees and host nationals. For those refugees who are hosted, it’s not just an economic or material calculation, but is also quite closely bound with how people see themselves and others, how they relate to those around them, and their expectations and plans for their lives while displaced.

Less commonly considered is the perspective of the hosts. Why do individuals and their families decide to share space and resources with refugees?

As Ibrahim (not his real name) told me:

“I live with one friend and my brothers. I met my friend here in Jordan. Before he came, I was living with my brothers, and we had five or six others with us. But they were all deported – I am a survivor with my brothers too…So we are just 3, and then I found my friend, he is alone. So I was sure with him, I said “You have to come with us. First, because you live alone, and second your home is unallowable or unacceptable to us because you are a member of our community.” “Yes”, he told us “ok no problem” and he came...When I met him, the first thing for me is that all the Sudanese here are from Darfur, and the second thing is about our environment, or community - with Sudanese, the first time I see you, I will know if you are from Sudan or not, and if you are from Sudan of course it is my pleasure to try to know you…Another reason to live together, a good strong reason, is because I can defend them and they can defend me.

Currently, there are three dominant images of host relationships. Firstly, that the majority of hosting takes place between extended family members, secondly that refugees are an economic burden on the host family, and finally that refugees are exploited by hosts. While all of these are undoubtedly true for certain people at certain times, they do not account for the whole picture. Instead, as Ibrahim’s account shows, we also need to consider social motivations, including solidarity, compassion, and obligation. This isn't to do away with the recognition of personal gain from participating – either as a host or refugee – in the relationship, but to recognise that the social motivations for hosting are perhaps as important as the economic ones, and we need to better understand how these different interests intersect.

Current understanding of hosting fails to explain why both hosts and hosted refugees choose to engage in hosting relationships, relying un-nuanced understandings of kinships relations and economic costs and benefits, rather than social explanations. Drawing on these additional concepts isn't to accept them unquestioningly – we need to make sure that we avoid romanticising them, recognise the power dynamics contained within them, and consider who they apply to and who they exclude, and how and when the different concepts feature more strongly in people's accounts of their actions.  We also need to consider how our understanding of these concepts may be challenged or expanded by thinking about their relevance in long-term displacement, urban environments, in relation to refugees, and in non-Western settings. We need to incorporate all of these explanations into our understanding of why people engage in hosting relationships, if we want to understand how community support mechanisms work and the impact of external actions, including the unintended consequences of humanitarian assistance.

Precarious housing: Reading “Evicted” by Matthew Desmond

Cathrine Brun writes:

I have just embarked on a new project: With Oxford Brookes colleagues from Architecture and CENDEP (Julia Wedel and Aparna Maladkar), Built Environment (Sue Brownill) and Social Sciences (Maja Cederberg) I work on a university funded project on precarious housing in the UK. This is a pilot project where we aim to understand what precarious housing may mean and how we can best study the experience of precarious housing.

In this context, I was reading the brilliant book by Matthew Desmond, titled Evicted. It is a book that follows the intertwined stories of eight families always in danger of being evicted: always on the edge, in debt, not certain when and if they can pay the next rent. The book is set in Milwaukee, US. When in danger of being evicted, precarious housing can be seen to have a particular meaning. Susan Banki (2013) describes this condition as ‘not quite, not yet’ and introduces the concept of ‘precarity of place’. Her work on precarity of place concerns non-citizens, whose right to stay in a place (nation state) is uncertain. However, in the work on housing, the understanding of ‘precarity of place’ can, at a micro-scale, be transferred to tenure security and the right to stay, have a home and dwell: the right not to be physically removed. Housing precarity may then be understood as the not quite, not yet homeless.

In Desmond’s book Evicted, the constant danger of eviction comes from being in chronic debt (mainly to the landlord). The challenge is when more than 80% of your income may go towards rent, there is nothing left for essential medication, food, and clothes for the children. There is a race-dimension to it, and there is a gender dimension to it: More women than men are evicted: women earn less, they have more difficulties in accessing employment as a result of the requirement to care for dependent members of their families.

The book’s personal stories about eviction gives very strong testimony of dwelling in the temporary and the challenges of creating a future, of moving on. They cannot establish the stability that they may be longing for. People are unable to save. With evictions their belongings may be forcibly put in storage if they have not found another place to live and when they cannot pay the storage-rent, they will lose all their belongings which restricts them in getting on with their lives in a new dwelling. Without a permanent – or long term address – you may miss out on letters about appointments to secure benefits and other assistance. It becomes a vicious circle that is difficult to escape.

Desmond shows the consequences at different levels. Evictions ruin everyday lives and neighbourhoods. When key figures that maintain the social environment are evicted and forced to leave an area to find even more precarious housing, the social glue disappears: 

“For most residents (…), the goal was to leave, not to plant roots and change things. Some residents described themselves as ‘just passing through,’ even if they had been passing through nearly all their life. One, an out-of-work father of three who powered his trailer with stolen electricity, said, ‘We don’t let family come here. It’s not us. It’s lower-class living, and I didn’t come from this.’ (…) Tam, the pregnant drug addict, thought of the trailer park “as a hotel.” (Page 180)

People do not want to stay in these conditions, they long for another life, their lives are on hold, kept on hold because they are caught up in a crisis with little political willingness to find solutions. Desmond shows that people are awaiting another time: a time where they would move out of the just-surviving mode, but till that happens they adjust to the situation. The families in Evicted spend all their time dealing with the consequences of the bad quality, uncertain housing, unable to invest in the future for themselves and their children, and being time-poor on a daily basis: when Arleen, one of the protagonists in the book, calls more than 90 landlords to try to get a new place to live and do not succeed, for example. She does not have time or energy to deal with any other aspects of her life. She is caught in the housing crisis.

Desmond shows that poverty creates homelessness, but homelessness and evictions also create further poverty. The housing situation in Milwaukee and US generally may not be comparable to the situation in the UK. However, the organisation Shelter estimates that a million families in the UK are threatened with evictions by 2020 due to a combination of low wages, freezes to benefits and costs of renting (see Helm 2017). The not yet, not quite homeless seems to be an expanding category, which will, if we are to accept Desmond’s thesis, create further cycles of poverty.

References

Susan Banki. 2013. Precarity of Place. A complement to the growing precariat literature. Global Discourse 3(3-4): 450 – 463.

Matthew Desmond. 2016. Evicted. Poverty and Profit in the American City. Crown Books. 

Toby Helm. 2017. Housing Crisis threatens a million families with eviction by 2020. 

Guardian 24 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jun/24/social-housing-poverty-homeless-shelter-rent