Rethinking of the Complicities between Housing First and Neoliberalism

Abstract

  Housing first is supporting practices aims to provide immediate residence to homeless people under chronical conditions. It is often considered as extraordinarily innovative practices compared to the past policies for given immediate priority to ‘housing ready’ on homeless people under any circumstances, and it espouses recovery approaches. Meanwhile, the housing first has been received various criticisms, and accused of complicity with neoliberalism. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to reconsider the complicity by critically focusing on following three dimensions of neoliberalism; ideologies, governmentalities, and policies. It is found out that ideas of homeless-zero, self-responsibility, and cost reduction are the points of complicity among them. In order to overcome such complicities, this paper explores an alternative way for supporting homeless people based on the innovative logic of housing first by avoiding complicities, and relocates housing first as a social movement in the context of homeless movement in Japan. Overall, this paper points out that the essences of housing first toward radical social movement are circulation, dialogue, and universalization.