House or Home? The Difference Belonging Could Make

Drawing on research with young homeless people in inner Sydney and experience working with young homeless people in crisis accommodation, in this paper, I begin to unpack debate around Australian definitions of homelessness. In a context in which leading scholars in the field such as Chris Chamberlain and David Mackenzie have stressed an ‘objective ’ definition of homelessness, I consider the dangers of limiting the arena of a debate which clearly spills over the propped up boundaries of objectivity. Using examples from my research I look at the contamination of the concept of homelessness by experiences suggestive of home and belonging. Further, I raise the issue of experiences of feeling homeless at ‘home’. In taking the ambiguity of homelessness seriously, I propose an exploration of relations of place and self as a key to understanding and responding to homelessness. As many authors point out, though from different perspectives (Bessant 2001; Wardhaugh, 2000; Chamberlain and Mackenzie 1998; Hopper 1997) there is a long history of the attempt to define what homelessness is, and who and what constitutes a homeless subject. In general, the purpose for a definition of homelessness determines how it is defined, but because of the hidden and deeply personal nature of being homeless, unlike measurin