Homelessness and the Meaning of Home: Rooflessness or Rootlessness?

Introduction This paper has several objectives. These are: (1) to analyse the meaning of homelessness in the light of recent contributions on the meaning of home; (2) to criticize some current perspectives on homelessness as a social problem; (3) to identify and explore a number of different dimensions of the meaning of home and homelessness; (4) to reassess the evidence on the context of home and homelessness, and re examine the meaning of homelessness in the light of that reassessed evidence; and (5) to explain the political meaning of homelessness as expressed in official definitions, legislation and state provision (or lack of it).