Fair space? Community relations as a booster for improving resilience

Area of Science:

• Social Sciences
• Public Health
• Sociology

Background:

• Health and happiness opportunities are unequally distributed, with social exclusion and homelessness as significant outcomes.
• Existing efforts to counter health inequity have been insufficient.
• Ethnographic research is crucial for understanding the social pathways of individuals experiencing homelessness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the social pathways of citizens deprived of a home.
• To identify how to sustainably promote fair opportunities for all.
• To examine the interactions between homeless service users and their environments from a human rights perspective.

Main Methods:

• Field research conducted among Dutch homeless service users (2015-2017).
• Semi-structured interviews focusing on health, needs, and recovery themes (meaning, symptoms, social dimension).
• Dual snowball sampling across 16 facilities, yielding 436 participants.

Main Results:

• Identified numerous interrelations between multiple needs among homeless service users.
• Uncovered systemic failures in meeting the vital needs of the most vulnerable populations.
• Demonstrated how social decline occurs over time and identified opportunities for improvement, noting stress-induced communication barriers and negative impacts on self-image and social integration.

Conclusions:

• Despite extensive facilities, many homeless individuals feel abandoned, indicating systemic issues within healthcare and welfare.
• A rights-based ecosystem approach reveals root causes of unfairness in care systems.
• Fostering societal resilience requires meaningful social relationships and creative solutions, applicable to modern care systems in high-income countries.