Home is Where the House is: The Meaning of Home for People Sleeping Rough

Contributors to the housing field broadly agree that home is a multi-dimensional concept. Indeed, informed by the proposition that home and housing should not be conflated, the social, psychological and emotional elements of home have been well documented. Home is thought to be subjectively experienced. As such, some have shown that people defined as homeless may not actually feel homeless, but rather experience their accommodation or situation as home. This paper is based on ethnographic research with a group of people sleeping rough in Brisbane, Australia. It argues that their problematic experiences residing in public places, together with their biographies of feeling disconnected from society, underpinned their ideas of home. For people in this study, housing and home were synonymous. The physical structure of a house was important to assume control over their day-to-day lives. Home, however, stood for something beyond housing. Home was constructed as a signifier of normality, and as a commitment to participation in Australian society.