Polarity or Integration? Towards a Fuller Understanding of Home and Homelessness

INTRODUCTION There has been an increasing focus on the importance of the personal, social, and cultural variation and diversity in homelessness debates. Researchers are demonstrating a growing awareness of the complexity of homelessness through an emphasis on sub-groups and contexts. The particulars of the homeless experience are increasingly recognized as being central to understanding the deprivation that homelessness brings. In this way, the debate on homelessness has moved slowly from rooflessness to homelessnes, less a lack of physical shelter and more as a loss of home. The homeless experience as a lack of belonging or being can result in a person being "out of place". In a broader sense, this has contributed to a polarized relationship subtly underpinning much of the sociological and psychological debates on homelessness. This polarization has not adequately represented the complexity of the concepts of home and homelessness.