“The Comfort to Be Me”: Home and Housing Struggles in St
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“THE COMFORT TO BE ME”: HOME AND HOUSING STRUGGLES IN ST. JOHN'S by Nicole Wilson A Thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Anthropology Memorial University of Newfoundland May 2014 St. John’s Newfoundland and Labrador ABSTRACT This thesis was completed as part of a Master’s program in Anthropology and examines individuals’ experiences with housing struggles, home, and homelessness in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Three main topics are explored within this thesis: the participants’ experiences with finding and keeping housing; what home and homeless meant to the participants; and lastly, how the term homeless as a term does not adequately describe real life experiences. I propose that we replace the terms homeless and homelessness with a spectrum and instead use the phrases sleeping rough, temporary institutional housing, precarious housing, and bereft-of-home to discuss the range of housing issues and the emotional turmoil that comes with such struggles. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As with any aspect of life, this thesis is not the accomplishment of just one person. I am an extremely lucky person to have the supportive family, friends, and department that I do. Without all three of these groups of people helping me along, I would never have completed this project. Below you will find a list of people I would like to thank specifically (I am bound to miss a few). Outside of those mentioned below, I want to thank everyone who has said a kind and encouraging word. Thank you for believing that I could and would finish this thesis. I would like to thank The Lantern for donating such a wonderful space for me to complete the interviews in and for having such a commitment to bettering our community. I thank The Gathering Place for allowing me to volunteer with them. The days I spent with you have been some of the most rewarding of my life and I miss the wonderful people and my days there. Thanks also to Fixed Coffee and Baking, Hava Java, and Rocket Bakery for providing me with ‘offices’ and delicious tea. Thank you to the J. R. Smallwood Foundation for Newfoundland and Labrador Studies for the financial support in the form of a grant in 2010; the Graduate Student Union and School of Graduate Studies of Memorial University for financial assistance to attend The 45th National Conference on Housing & Homelessness and present as part of the CHRA Emerging Professional Research Colloquium. Bruce Pearce has been a wonderful resource for St. John’s and myself, as he is dedicated to finding a way to end homelessness and gets closer every day. Thanks for ii answering all my questions, opening up the world of the housing services to me, and being so dedicated to helping those in need. Katie Cull: thanks for helping me come up with the phrase bereft-of-home and being a wonderful friend all the time. Ben Rigby, Travis Morpak, and Matt Boone: thank you for being the best cohort I could ask for. Your support during the whole program and throughout the writing process has been one of the reasons I was able to follow through with what we all started together. Ben gets extra thanks for forcing me to meet him in the library for months to get this finished, and being around to talk life in general and life as a seemingly drowning grad student. Thank you to John Matchim for your helpful comments on the first complete draft and general awesomeness at being a good friend and roommate by pushing my brain to better places. Uncle Paul (Wilson): thank you so much for all of your editing work and supportive pushes. Hillary Winter, Craig Joseph and Zoe Dempster: thank you for everything; I could never put into words how much you have helped me through this process and life in general. Thank you. To my thesis supervisor Dr. Sharon Roseman, thank you for being everything you are. You are one of the most brilliant and intelligent women I have ever met and I am always blown away by your knowledge and creativity. Thank you for being such a wonderful support and helping hand throughout this process. I am forever grateful that you took me on as a student and helped me to make this thesis what it is. To my brother Chris and sister Katie, thanks for being such excellent siblings. I will always look up to both of you and everything you have achieved. You both have great successes behind you and many more to come. Mom, Dad, and Hayley, thank you for putting up with me and supporting me both financially and emotionally throughout iii my life and these last few years. Thank you for making me who I am and not hating me for it. Thank you for giving me a place where I feel welcome and at home. You are the best parental trifecta anyone could ever ask for. Most of all, I would like to thank all the participants in this research for their willingness to open up to me and discuss some of the most difficult times in their lives. I am forever thankful for your help and I wish you all the best forever and always. Thank you ten million times over. iv Table of Contents ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii Table of Contents v List of Appendices vii Chapter One: Introduction 1 1.0 Marg’s Letter 1 1.1 Overview of St. John’s 6 1.2 Focus of Thesis 12 1.3 Theoretical Approach 16 1.3.1 Theory Overview 16 1.3.2 Existential Anthropology and the Anthropology of Events 16 1.3.3 Ideas of Home 19 1.3.4 Structural Violence 22 1.3.5 Feminist Anthropology and the Public-Private Dichotomy 24 1.4 Relevant Ethnographies on Poverty and Housing Struggles 27 1.5 Chapter Overview 34 Chapter Two: Introduction to the Research Participants 35 Chapter Three: Methodological Approach 45 3.0 Introduction 45 3.1 Participant Recruitment 45 3.2 Data Collection 51 3.2.1 Interviews: Semi-Structured and Life Stories 51 3.2.2 Participatory Photography and Photo Elicitation Interviewing 54 3.2.3 Notes on Transcribing 57 3.3 Relationships with Participants 60 3.4 Chapter Conclusion 63 Chapter Four: Homelessness and Being at Home 64 4.1 Introduction 64 4.2 The Term Homeless 65 4.3 Relevant Research on Concepts of Home 69 4.4 Participants’ Experiences with Home and being Bereft-of-Home 75 4.5 Chapter Conclusion 144 Chapter Five: Living in St. John’s. The Specifics 148 5.1 Introduction 148 5.2 Hidden Homelessness in St. John’s 149 5.3 Finding a Place to Live in St. John’s 153 5.4 Keeping Housing 175 5.5 Conditions of Apartments 184 5.6 Transportation 199 5.7 Chapter Summary 207 v Chapter Six: Possible Solutions 211 6.1 Participants’ Thoughts about Eliminating Housing Struggles in St. John’s 211 6.2 Recommendations for Action 219 6.3 Chapter Conclusion 222 Chapter Seven: Conclusion 225 References Cited 232 Appendices 240 vi List of Appendices Appendix A - First Poster used to Recruit Participants 240 Appendix B - Second Draft of Poster Used to Recruit Participants 241 Appendix C - Schedule for Semi-structured Interviews 242 Appendix D - Interview Schedule for Life Stories 244 vii Chapter One: Introduction 1.0 Marg’s Letter In preparation for our interview, Marg wrote a letter containing what she wanted to tell me in order to make sure that she expressed everything clearly. She read this letter out to me in the interview.1 Marg: So I just got it titled “Homelessness.” There’s stigma attached to homelessness. We view such a state as a person’s own fault. That is: the lazy the uneducated the alcoholics even criminals or the mentally insane. I entered Kirby House2 in February 2000 I feel I didn’t fit into that description. I fled an abusive marriage after 28 years. I had finished high school and graduated as a registered nurse in 1965. I was 52 years old at the time when I left the marriage in 2000. I left with only the clothes on my back. No money, no income. I had been injured on the job and retired at age 49 to try and regain my health. I was at Kirby House for four months. I had family and friends who had taken me in four years earlier when I left my marriage hoping things would get better and I returned to the marriage at that time ah 1 I have changed some of the personal details and all of the dates referred to in this letter to protect Marg’s identity. 2 Iris Kirby House is often referred to as Kirby House for short. 1 this time 2000 there was no going back and I didn’t want my family and friends harassed. I had lived in a lovely home. We never even had a mortgage. To be homeless at age 52, and unemployed because of health reasons, is not a good feeling. I feared I may end up on welfare. …Kirby House itself was better than I imagined. Ahum because we just don’t have a good view of shelters. We think they are really bad, right. … It was wintertime and it was not full so I had my own room. Having a private room was very important to me because I had privacy so I could cry whenever I needed and by god I cried a lot.