DOI: 10.1111/cars.

12369

ARTICLE

Being homeless at the “End” of homelessness

navigating the symbolic and social boundaries
of housing first

Chris Kohut1 Matt Patterson2

1 Independent Scholar
2Department of Sociology, University of
Calgary
Correspondence
Matt Patterson, Department of Sociology,
University of Calgary, 2500 University
Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N
1N4.
Email: Matt.Patterson@ucalgary.ca
Abstract
Housing First (HF) has emerged as the dominant
paradigm in homelessness policy and has been praised
for bringing an “end” to the homelessness crisis. Others
claim, however, that HF facilitates further sociospatial
exclusion of people experiencing homelessness (PEH).
To advance this debate and understand HF within its
larger sociological context, this article examines how HF
policies translate to the lived experiences of those who
remain in shelters and on the streets. Through inter-
views with 22 PEH, we demonstrate how HF confronts
PEH with a set of strategic dilemmas that we frame
using the concept of “boundary-work.” First, PEH must
negotiate the symbolic boundaries that HF establishes
between “worthy” and “unworthy” for the purposes of
distributing housing. Second, once housed, PEH face
challenges in navigating the social boundaries that sep-
arate the private space of the dwelling, the transitional
spaces of homelessness (e.g., streets, shelters), and the
increasingly gentrified public spaces of the city. We end
by discussing the implications of these findings for eval-
uating HF programs and demonstrating the value of a
boundary-work perspective on homelessness.

© 2022 Canadian Sociological Association/La Société canadienne de sociologie

Can Rev Sociol. 2022;59:59–75. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cars 59

60 BEING HOMELESS AT THE “END” OF HOMELESSNESS

RÉSUMÉ
Le Logement d’abord (HF) s’est imposé comme le
paradigme dominant de la politique de lutte contre
l’absence de chez-soi et a été loué pour avoir mis un
terme à la crise de l’absence de chez-soi. D’autres pré-
tendent, cependant, que le HF facilite une plus grande
exclusion sociospatiale des personnes sans-abri (PEH).
Pour faire avancer ce débat et comprendre l’HF dans
son contexte sociologique plus large, cet article exam-
ine comment les politiques d’HF se traduisent dans les
expériences vécues de ceux qui restent dans les refuges
et dans les rues. Par le biais d’entretiens avec 22 person-
nes vivant dans la rue, nous démontrons comment le HF
confronte les personnes vivant dans la rue à une série
de dilemmes stratégiques que nous encadrons à l’aide
du concept de “travail de frontière”. Premièrement, les
personnes vivant dans la rue doivent négocier les fron-
tières symboliques que HF établit entre les personnes “
dignes ” et “ indignes ” dans le but de distribuer des loge-
ments. Deuxièmement, une fois logés, les PEH doivent
relever le défi de naviguer entre les frontières sociales qui
séparent l’espace privé du logement, les espaces transi-
toires de l’absence de chez-soi (par exemple, les rues, les
abris) et les espaces publics de plus en plus gentrifiés de
la ville. Nous terminons en discutant des implications
de ces résultats pour l’évaluation des programmes HF et
en démontrant la valeur d’une perspective de travail de
frontière sur le sans-abrisme.

INTRODUCTION

Within the last decade, Housing First (HF) has emerged as the dominant paradigm in home-
lessness policies across North America. As the name suggests, HF recommends the provision of
permanent housing as the first step in assistance or treatment of the “chronically” homeless, a
population defined by prolonged periods of homelessness and often characterized by mental ill-
ness, addiction and frequent use of public services (Padgett et al., 2015, pp. 2−3). HF has spread
rapidly across North America and Europe, showing success in evaluation studies and being hailed
in the press for “solving” or “ending” the homelessness crisis (e.g., Lawrynuik, 2017; McCoy, 2015).
Its appeal lies not only in demonstrable success in housing the people experiencing homelessness
(PEH) (Tsemberis, 1999), but also the public cost savings derived from the fact that the newly
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 61

housed place less demands on more expensive public services such as hospitals and shelters (Cul-
hane et al., 2002, p. 115).
The apparent success of this approach, and its growing popularity, make it an important issue
for critical sociological analysis. This paper joins a growing literature that seeks to understand how
the abstract principles set out in HF and related policies translate to the lived experiences of PEH
(e.g., Osborne, 2019; Speer, 2017). In particular, we focus on the experiences of those who remain
homeless despite talk of an “end” to homelessness among some policymakers and journalists. In
pursuing this line of inquiry, we examine how HF-based policies create dilemmas in the daily
lives of PEH and the strategies they adopt in response. The research draws on semi-structured
interviews with twenty-two women and men recruited through a shelter in Calgary—one of the
many North American cities to adopt a HF-based homelessness strategy. The participants for this
research were, according to self-reports, all “chronically homeless” by Calgary’s official definition:
“continuously homeless for a year of more, or [having] had at least four episodes of homelessness
in the past three years” (CHF, 2015, p. 3). However, as we will see, not all of these participants
were judged to be eligible for housing.
Our findings are conceptualized around the notion of “boundary-work” (Gieryn, 1983). In
particular, we document how our participants negotiated an interrelated set of “symbolic” and
“social” boundaries established by the HF-based policies (Lamont & Molnár, 2002). First, we con-
sider the novel economic logic by which HF draws symbolic boundaries between those eligible
or not for housing, and the strategies adopted by PEH to present themselves as “service-worthy”
(Marvasti, 2002) and to reconcile this economic logic with their own sense of self-worth.
Second, we examine how those who do receive housing navigate the social boundaries between
the private spaces of the domiciled, “marginal” spaces of homelessness (Snow & Mulcahy, 2001,
p. 157), and public spaces of the city. In particular, we explore our participants’ experiences of
social and physical isolation. Their struggles highlight the fact that securing a personal private
space does protect their “claims to community citizenship or membership [from being] routinely
contested” (p. 154), particularly in a rapidly gentrifying city where HF intersects with larger struc-
tures of socio-spatial exclusion.
At the heart of this paper is a concern for understanding how disadvantaged people navigate
the symbolic and social boundaries imposed on them by institutions over which they have lit-
tle control. In our case, that means homelessness policies based on the HF paradigm, and the
larger socio-spatial context within which those policies are implemented. While we cite evalu-
ation studies of specific HF programs such as “Pathways to Housing,” this study is not itself a
program evaluation of a representative sample of all HF users. Nonetheless, in understanding
how our participants perceive their own position within this policy regime, identify dilemmas
that confront them, and adopt strategies in response, this study offers valuable insights that can
inform further evaluation studies and reforms of HF-based policies.

BACKGROUND

The Rise of Housing First

HF has replaced the previously-dominant “Continuum of Care” paradigm (CoC) which advo-
cated addressing homelessness through a series of treatment and training programs aimed at
making PEH “housing ready” by overcoming addiction, mental illness, and skill deficits (Dordick,
2002). CoC was plagued by multiple problems that ranged from government disinterest in actually
62 BEING HOMELESS AT THE “END” OF HOMELESSNESS

providing permanent housing (Gowan, 2010, p. 190), to the inconsistent and highly subjective
ways that frontline service providers measured “housing readiness” (Dordick, 2002). The result,
according to Gowan (2010), was a “simultaneous narrowing and pathologizing of poverty” (p. 221).
Rather than a lack of affordable housing or living wages, homelessness was attributed to mental
illness, addiction, and other pathologies in a small group of individuals (ibid; Sparks, 2012). Under
CoC, PEH found themselves in a “limbo” of transitional housing, treatment programs, and skill
training sessions, all while waiting for permanent housing that did not exist (Gowan, 2010, p. 188).
During this time, the Pathways to Housing program in New York developed an alternative
approach that inverted the CoC formula: rapidly provide permanent HF, and then offer “con-
sumer choice” in terms of support and treatment programs (Tsemberis, Gulcur, & Nakae, 2004).
Pathways also favored rent subsidies that allow clients to live in existing, privately-owned rental
units scattered throughout the city. This “scattered-site” approach differs significantly from the
purpose-built public housing developments popular in decades previous (Gaetz et al., 2013, p. 3),
and is intended to foster “community integration” (Anderson-Baron & Collins, 2019, p. 1288).
Research has shown positive results for the Pathways program, particularly with regard to peo-
ple dually diagnosed with mental illness and addiction, in terms of housing retention (Mares &
Rosenheck, 2010; Tsemberis, 1999; Tsemberis et al., 2004), public service reductions (Culhane
et al., 2002; Gaetz et al., 2013), and (less consistently) psychiatric wellbeing and substance abuse
(Mares & Rosenheck, 2010; Padgett, 2007)1 . These successes have drawn a great deal of attention
to Pathways and its founder Sam Tsemberis. The Washington Post, for example, hailed Tsemberis
as “the outsider who accidentally solved chronic homelessness” (McCoy, 2015, italics added).
The success of Pathways gave rise to a larger HF “paradigm” (Waegemakers Schiff & Schiff,
2014) that has spread across North America, rapidly replacing the remnants of CoC (Gaetz, Scott,
& Gulliver, 2013, p. 4; Padgett et al., 2015)2 . The 2000s saw a proliferation of “10-year plans to end
homelessness” that were centered on HF principles, which were adopted by over 300 communities
in the United States in Canada (Waegemakers Schiff & Schiff, 2014, pp. 82–83; Evans & Masuda,
2020). In a few cases, cities have declared themselves “homeless-free” after having implemented
such plans (e.g., Lawrynuik, 2017).
The rise of the HF paradigm has also been supported by larger philosophical changes in aca-
demic and public policy circles, including a reconceptualization of housing from a “commodity”
to “right” (Pattillo, 2013), recognition of the effectiveness of “harm reduction” policies over absti-
nence (Tsemberis et al., 2004), and more nuanced definitions of homelessness that distinguish
“chronic” homelessness from “transitional” or “episodic homelessness” (Kuhn & Culhane, 1998).
The “chronic homeless,” characterized by prolonged periods of homelessness and high service-
use, became the ideal targets for HF-based policies.
The move to distinguish and target a core group of “chronic homeless” occurred alongside
increased recognition of what Glaldwell (2006) calls the “power-law distribution” problem: that
a tiny fraction of chronically homeless people place the greatest pressure on public services and,
in the end, it is cheaper to provide them with housing than leave them on the streets. Gladwell’s
influential New Yorker article “Million Dollar Murray” popularized this cost-benefit analysis of
homelessness, which has emerged as one of the core justifications of HF-based policies (Evans &
Masuda, 2020; Gaetz et al., 2013; Willse, 2015).
1 Other studies have shown no significant difference between HF and CoC with regard to psychiatric wellbeing or sub-
stance use (e.g., Mares & Rosenheck, 2010; Tsemberis, Gulcur, & Nakae, 2004).
2 SeeAnderson-Baron and Collins (2019) for an in-depth analysis of how the principles from Pathway have evolved and
been incorporated into Canadian policy. In this article, “HF” will refer to the broader HF policy paradigm rather than the
specific Pathways programs.
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 63

Critical and Sociological Accounts of Housing First

With its apparent success and popularity, HF has also drawn the attention of more critical schol-
arship. The most common critique in the academic literature draws connections between this
policy and a larger “neoliberal” agenda that promotes the expansion of the private market and
consumerism into governance and social services (Sparks, 2012; Speer, 2017). This critique has
many dimensions. Willse (2015) and Gowan (2010) argue that an exclusive focus on mental health
and addiction among the “chronically” homelessness distracts from larger system problems and
“mundane poverty” (Gowan, 2010, p. 272). Klodawsky (2009) and Hopper (2012) argue that HF
policies seek to “warehouse” the poor and exclude them from public spaces. Others have criticized
HF for managing PEH through highly professionalized and technocratic methods that prioritize
quantitative cost-benefit analysis (Evans et al., 2016; Evans & Masuda, 2020; Willse, 2015) while
excluding homeless voices (Sparks, 2012, p. 1512).
Proponents of HF, however, have dismissed such criticisms as coming “from the lofty realm of
academic criticism” (Padgett, 2007, p. 345) because they are based primarily on discourse anal-
ysis of policy documents as opposed to evaluating how HF works in practice. Indeed, sociologi-
cal studies of homelessness have long demonstrated that public policies manifest themselves in
unpredictable ways and confront PEH with dilemmas that require creative and strategic responses
(e.g., Duneier, 1999; Gowan, 2010; Marvasti, 2002; Snow & Anderson, 1993).
Following in this tradition of the sociology of homelessness, this study contributes to a growing
literature that applies a human-based, interpretive approach to HF. While much of this research
is on clients enrolled in HF programs (Henwood et al., 2018; Hsu et al., 2016; Padgett, 2007), fewer
studies have examined those who remain “chronically homeless” in the face of HF-based reforms
(Murphy, 2009; Osborne, 2019, pp. 420–23). Focusing on this latter group, we examine how people
currently experiencing chronic homelessness perceive their own exclusion from HF programs
and the strategies they adopt in negotiating the larger policy environment in which they find
themselves.

THE BOUNDARY-WORK OF HOUSING FIRST

In pursuing this goal, we adopt the sociological concept of “boundary-work” which refers gener-
ally to how people construct, maintain, navigate, and cross social and symbolic distinctions. First
introduced by Gieryn (1983) to describe how professionals carve out areas of authority, the con-
cept was subsequently adopted by Michèle Lamont in a study of class distinction (Lamont, 1992)
and then developed the into a broader, more abstract theoretical perspective that distinguishes
between “symbolic” and “social” boundaries (Lamont & Molnár, 2002). While boundary-work
has not been widely adopted within studies of homelessness, as we will demonstrate, the con-
cept is applicable to a wide range of core issues within the literature. In fact, symbolic and social
boundaries are far more concrete and consequential for PEH than for the domiciled.
In applying boundary-work to homelessness, we also draw on insights from pragmatist theory.
In particular, we conceptualize boundary-work as strategic actions that are taken in response to
dilemmas or “problem situations” that emerge it the course of everyday life (Gross, 2009). As
mentioned, this dilemma-centered approach is well established within sociological studies of
homelessness. In our case, we focus specifically on the boundary-work that PEH adopt in nav-
igating two sets of boundaries established by HF: symbolic boundaries separating those worthy
64 BEING HOMELESS AT THE “END” OF HOMELESSNESS

and unworthy of housing and social boundaries separating the private spaces of the home and
public spaces of the streets.

Symbolic Boundaries: Evaluating Worthiness

Lamont and Molnár (2002) define “symbolic” boundaries as “conceptual distinctions made by
social actors to categorize objects, people, practices, and even time and space” which serve as “an
essential medium through which people acquire status and monopolize resources” (p. 168). Much
homelessness research has examined how policymakers draw symbolic boundaries between those
“worthy” and “unworthy” of various forms of support (e.g., Dordick, 2002; Marvasti, 2002; Mohr
& Duquenne, 1997; Murphy, 2009; Osborne, 2019).
Examining the history of American homelessness policy, Gowan (2010) has identified three
distinct logics for distinguishing worth, which she terms “sin-talk,” “sick-talk,” and “system-talk.”
Each of these logics provides an explanation for the cause of homelessness (immorality, illness,
and injustice), and suggests associated responses (punishment, therapy, and social reform). CoC,
for example, exemplifies “sick-talk” since it is based on the idea that homelessness is caused by
medical pathologies that require clinical solutions (Gowan, 2010).
While HF is based on the idea that everyone who needs a home should get one as soon as pos-
sible, in practice the supply of affordable housing is often limited (Anderson-Baron & Collins,
2019) and policymakers must inevitably draw boundaries between those most “worthy” of hous-
ing (Osborne, 2019). How exactly is “worthiness” evaluated in HF? Proponents of Pathways con-
sistently adopt “sick-talk” in presenting this policy as a “clinical” strategy (Padgett, Henwood, &
Tsemberis, 2015:3), but there are significant differences between the “sick-talk” of CoC and the
way the HF works in practice. First, “consumer choice” diminishes the authority of the clinician
to categorize people and assign treatments. Second, evaluations of HF programs have prioritized
non-medical criteria such as housing retention and cost savings.
Finally, because HF policies are often justified by cost-benefit analysis, policymakers can be
largely agnostic about why people are homeless. The costliest individuals are prioritized irrespec-
tive of whether that cost is driven by immorality, illness, or injustice (Evans & Masuda, 2020,
p. 518). “Sickness” still matters in HF, but it is often recast from a pathology that needs treatment,
to an economic cost that needs to be minimized (Willse, 2015, p. 159). Thus, worthiness takes on a
“post-social” (ibid) economic logic that is arguably distinct from all three of Gowan’s categories.
This economic logic has manifested itself in the form of quantifying technologies such as the
Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool (SPDAT) developed by OrgCode Consulting (2015).
The SPDAT is not designed for clinical diagnosis (p. 11). Rather, it allows service providers to
establish program eligibility and rank applicants based on 15 dimensions including mental and
physical health, substance use, past use of EMS, and legal history (OrgCode, 2015, p. 14). It is just
one of several quantifying tools that facilitates cost-benefit analysis (Evans & Masuda, 2020).
Policymakers are not the only ones who engage in symbolic boundary-work, however. Research
has demonstrated how PEH actively adopt strategies aimed at interpreting, navigating, and some-
times challenging notions of worthiness in order to influence how they are positioned (Marvasti,
2002; Smith & Anderson, 2018). To elevate their own sense of self-worth, PEH also engage in
“associational distancing” by drawing rhetorical boundaries between themselves and other PEH
they regard as worse-off (Snow & Anderson, 1993, p. 215). Likewise, they often draw bound-
aries within their own biographies, as with the notion of “going straight” (e.g., Gowan, 2010,
p. 94). Through such strategies, PEH attempt “to construct and maintain a sense of meaning and
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 65

self-worth that helps them stay afloat” in the face of debilitating social exclusion and stigma (Snow
& Anderson, 1993, p. 229).
The potential for conflicting notions of worthiness between policymakers and PEH leads to
our first research question. How do those seeking housing understand and navigate HF’s logic of
worth, and how does this logic intersect with their own understandings of self-worth? In answer-
ing this question, we examine PEH experiences seeking housing, including how they attempted
to construct “service-worthy narratives” (Marvasti, 2002) aimed at securing access to housing and
their own normative assessment of the HF system (as they understand it).

Social Boundaries: Separating People, Practices, and Places

For Lamont and Molnár (2002), symbolic boundaries are distinct from, but closely related to, social
boundaries, defined as “objectified forms of social differences manifested in unequal access to and
unequal distribution of resources (material and nonmaterial) and social opportunities” (p. 168).
Homelessness creates a social boundary between those with and without access to housing and the
private, personal space that it affords. Without access to private space, taken-for-granted activities
such as sleeping or urinating become complex social dilemmas (Duneier, 1999). Thus, Anderson
and Snow (1993) argue that PEH are forced out of “prime space,” which is dominated by domiciled
citizens who enforce norms of civility—norms which are based on the implicit assumption that
one has access to private space. Instead, PEH are pushed into “marginal spaces” such as encamp-
ments or shelters where their presence is contained and tolerated (at least temporarily) (p. 103).
Social boundaries are also imposed by policy regimes. Symbolic boundaries around notions of
worth become the basis for distributing resources (e.g., cash or therapy) and assigning people to
particular physical spaces such as shelters, jails, hospitals, or private housing (Mohr & Duquenne,
1997). CoC policies established “transitional spaces” where PEH were (in theory) given the oppor-
tunity to become “housing ready” (Dordick, 2002). By contrast, HF seeks to eliminate transitional
spaces by moving PEH directly from the marginal spaces of homelessness to a private home. More-
over, HF seeks to further reduce social boundaries and facilitate community integration by placing
PEH into “scattered-site” housing that is physically embedded within larger residential neighbor-
hoods (Gaetz et al., 2013, p. 3).
While HF attempts to eliminate social boundaries by rapidly relocating PEH from marginal
spaces to private homes, “exiting homelessness” is a complex, multidimensional process that
involves significant cognitive and behavioral reorientation (Marr, 2015, p. 13). For example, studies
have shown that experiences of loneliness and social isolation are common barriers to recovery
(Yanos et al., 2004; Patterson, 2012, p. 22; Gaetz, 2014, p. 31; Padgett et al., 2015, pp. 70-71; Speer,
2017, p. 530). These findings are supported by network analysis that shows a loss of social contacts
among clients of HF programs (Golembiewski et al., 2017; Henwood et al., 2017). Furthermore,
while housing retention is consistently better under HF than CoC, research has nonetheless found
a significant minority of clients return to the streets3 .
These struggles should, however, not be taken as evidence that PEH in general are “service-
resistant” (Murphy, 2009, p. 321). Rather, they point to the fact that transitioning from the street
to the private home is potentially a problem situation that involves significant boundary-work

3 Goering et al. (2014) found that only 62 percent of HF clients remained housed full-time (p. 17). Other studies have found

that HF clients spend about 70–80 percent of their nights stably housed by the 2-year mark (Goering et al., 2014:18; Tsai,
Mares, & Rosenheck, 2010:16; Tsemberis, Gulcur, & Nakae, 2004).
66 BEING HOMELESS AT THE “END” OF HOMELESSNESS

on the part of PEH. This leads to our second question: among the minority of people who leave
permanent housing, what challenges did they encounter while making the transition from unhoused
to housed and how do they make sense of their subsequent transition back to the street?

THE CASE: CALGARY’S 10-YEAR PLAN TO END HOMELESSNESS

Our study takes place in Calgary, a city of 1.3 million residents. As the corporate center of Canada’s
oil and gas industry, Calgary has a high median income, a rapidly growing population, and experi-
ences frequent economic cycles of boom and bust. Homelessness in Calgary had been increasing
rapidly throughout the 1990s and 2000s at a rate of about 30 percent biennially (CHF, 2015, p. 20).
Point-in-time counts reveal that homelessness peaked at 3601 people in 2008 and has remained
consistently above 3000 since then (ibid).
In 2008, the municipal and provincial governments partnered with the non-profit Calgary
Homeless Foundation (CHF) to create a “10-Year Plan to End Homelessness.” The plan tasked
the CHF with consolidating all existing services and resources into a single system based on the
“principles” of the HF paradigm (CHF, 2015), including identifying a core population of chron-
ically homeless to permanently house in privately-owned, “scattered-site” units. Other princi-
ples included providing services “guided by consumer choices,” reducing “the economic cost of
homelessness,” and “maximizing” the market and private sector involvement (p. 1). The latter
two principles are not part of Pathways or the Federal Government’s HF policy statement (see
Anderson-Baron & Collins, 2019, p. 1289).
At the 10-year endpoint, proponents of the plan have pointed to several measures of success,
including stabilization in the city’s homeless population. There is also evidence of decreasing
reliance on emergency shelters (Gres Wilkins & Kneebone, 2017) and associated cost savings
(CHF, 2015, pp. 8–9). However, as Anderson-Baron and Collins (2019) report, the program has
been hampered by a shortage of affordable housing units and the City of Calgary (2018) reported
that the wait list for subsidized housing has more than doubled since 2006 and now exceeds 4000
households (p. 37). Moreover, the CHF estimates that almost 20,000 Calgarians continue to expe-
rience homelessness at some point annually with thousands living in shelters for months or even
years at a time (pp. 20-21). These findings have led to widespread media discourse over the “fail-
ure” of the 10-year plan to “end homelessness” (e.g., Kaufmann, 2018; Markusoff, 2018).
Given Calgary’s 12-year experience with a HF-based plan to end homelessness, the shortages
of housing which have forced service providers to prioritize applicants, and the large population
of Calgarians who continue to live in shelters and encampments, the city is a valuable case study
for examining our two central research questions.

METHODOLOGY

As mentioned, this study seeks to understand HF from the perspectives of people currently experi-
encing chronic homelessness. To this end, in 2016 and 2017, we conducted semi-structured inter-
views with 22 individuals recruited from a shelter in Calgary’s inner-city (which we refer to as
“The Shelter”). The Shelter is funded primarily through CHF and provides short-term, emer-
gency housing. It also serves as a gateway for the CHF’s larger HF-based system. Recruitment
was conducted within The Shelter through information posters and the help of Shelter staff mem-
bers. Interviews were limited to those who fit the definition of “chronic homelessness,” having
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 67

experienced homelessness for at least a year. Participants received a $10 fast food gift card as an
honorarium for their participation in the study.
Among our participants were seventeen men and five women. Fifteen were white, five were
Indigenous, and two were people of color. Years spent homeless ranged from three to over forty.
Also, while most of the participants were born in Canada, most were born outside Calgary itself.
All participants were given pseudonyms to ensure anonymity.
Interviews focused first on our participants’ thoughts about housing and homelessness in gen-
eral. Did they identify with the term “homeless”? Where did they prefer to sleep on a nightly
basis? To what extent was finding permanent housing a priority for them? Second, we asked our
participants about their experiences with housing programs and agencies.
To dispel any notion that participation in our study would affect access to services, we decided
not to conduct interviews within The Shelter. As a result, the interviews were all conducted in two
cafés located a brief walk from The Shelter. Reflecting the gentrifying status of the area, both cafés
cater primarily to professional-class customers. In some cases these locations provoked meaning-
ful responses from our participants. We return to the significance of this issue in our findings
section.
The interviews were supplemented with a review of relevant policy documents related to home-
lessness in Calgary and a few informal conversations with policymakers and service providers
to confirm interpretations of the policies. The research was approved by the Conjoint Faculties
Research Ethics Board at the University of Calgary in September 2016 (REB16-0385).

FINDINGS

We present our findings in two sections corresponding to our two research questions concerning
symbolic and social boundary-work respectively.

“You gotta be really, really homeless”

As mentioned, shortages of affordable housing undermine the principle of a right to housing

(Osborne, 2019) and this is certainly true in Calgary as well (Anderson-Baron & Collins, 2019).
As a result, service providers are forced to rank applicants. Like more than 100 other communi-
ties across North America, Calgary has adopted OrgCode’s SPDAT (Evans & Masuda, 2020, p. 513).
Those seeking housing must fill out a SPDAT survey at either a shelter or, increasingly, at a newly
created central assessment center. The results are then evaluated by the CHF in order to prioritize
applicants and match them to any available housing.
Our interviews revealed that, from the point of view of PEH, the SPDAT is one of the most
salient aspects of the HF-based system and the primary window through which they come to
explicitly understand its underlying logic. All 22 or our participants were aware of the SPDAT, 18
had completed the survey, and 12 had received housing in the past (though none were housed at
the time they were interviewed).
Most of our participants had fully-formed opinions on the survey, alerting us to its salience
to them. In essence, the SPDAT confronts our participants as a problem situation that demands a
strategic response. The challenge is to convince housing agencies of what our participants already
know about themselves: that they were worthy and in real need of housing.
68 BEING HOMELESS AT THE “END” OF HOMELESSNESS

Addressing this challenge typically requires constructing a “service-worthy narrative” (Mar-

vasti, 2002), an act of self-classification requiring two steps: (1) developing an understanding
of HF’s institutional logic and its corresponding system of classification; (2) employing various
“interpretive practices” in order to translate one’s own situation such that it can rationally and
clearly be categorized as “service-worthy” (ibid).
With regard to the first step, many of our participants reported using their social networks to
learn about HF. Gabriel is a man in his mid-30s who reported being homeless since he was 15.
Before deciding whether or not to fill out the SPDAT, he asked around in order to learn more
about the system:

I proceeded to go and ask people, ‘well, how do I get into that program?’ Oh, you gotta
really qualify. You gotta be really, really homeless. Really, really sick. And they started
to tell me what they went through to get their housing I could not believe it! I could
not believe my ears ’cause they said the sicker you are the more you score on these
points, and the more you score on these points the more chances you get of getting a
place.

Upon learning this information, Gabriel decided that he was not sick enough to qualify and
decided not to apply. “I’m not gonna brag. . . but I’m quite an intelligent individual,” he said before
lamenting that this trait, along with his mental and physical health, would work against him.
Darlene, a woman who reported being without permanent housing for the past 10 years, also
decided not to apply. For her, this decision was based on the advice of shelter staff. As with Gabriel,
Darlene expressed frustration that her positive traits disqualified her: “[these] agencies are set up
more to help people that are more drug addicted or medically down than I am. They are not able
to help the person who wants to work and get on their feet.”
Some of our participants recounted entering into the application process without first grasping
the logic of HF. Steve, for example, has been experiencing homelessness for over 40 years. After
filling out a SPDAT, he claims that he never heard back from the CHF. Reflecting on why he was
not offered housing, he admits to misreading the situation:

I lied [on the SPDAT]. I said I was employable and that I worked and stuff like that
’cause I thought maybe it would benefit my [chances]. But I was wrong. I should have
just told them the truth. I had mental health disorders and that I’ve been homeless
basically my entire life. . . [But] I just thought that maybe if I brighten it up a little bit
it would look better and maybe I would be qualified for housing. So, it was just my
mistake. I mean, just ’cause you got $100 you might say you have $200, right?

Unlike Steve, Denzel scored high enough on the SPDAT to be eligible for housing and was
invited to an interview with a local housing agency. Before heading to the interview, he recalled,
“[I] cleaned up myself; I shaved. I had a beard two hours before my meeting and longer hair and
I just tried to look decent ’cause I was so excited.” However, in his own view, “looking decent
backfired on me. . . I just should have went the way I looked but I was trying to have more hope.
[I thought that] maybe if I look better they would help, but it backfired on me.” Thus, in Denzel’s
account, failing to look the part of the homeless man caused him to lose his chance at housing:
“The people I was doing the interview with kinda were surprised what they seen on paper and
what they seen in person. . . . I guess they were being stereotypical.”
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 69

We cannot say whether Steve and Denzel are correct in their assessment of the SPDAT. Nor
can we say how Darlene or Gabriel might have scored if they had completed the SPDAT. What
these examples do show, however, is a perceived contradiction between the logic of HF and our
participants own sense of self-worth: the qualities that made them better people also made them
less worthy of housing.
Frustration stemming from this moral contradiction was most evident when our participants
raised the obvious implication that followed from their understanding of HF: that they should
embellish or even lie about their problems in order to make themselves look worse off. In the
words of Darlene, “everybody is telling me just lie, lie, lie, you will get ahead faster. And now I
believe them, [but] it’s just not who I am.”
While participants like Steve readily admitted to lying in order to make themselves look better,
the idea of lying to make themselves look worse struck all of the participants who raised this
possibility as unacceptable. For DJ, a man experiencing homelessness in his mid-30s who was
formerly housed through HF, this perceived pressure to lie called the entire system into question.

I’m not saying so much that it goes against my morals, but it doesn’t make sense to
me. Like they are coming to us to help us with housing, why should we have to lie
about our past in order for us to get housing? Like if you’re coming to us dangling. . .
the keys in front of your face and you don’t score high or low enough and then it gets
taken away?

A similar view was expressed by Gabriel, who claimed that “having to lie would take a lot of
courage. . . I want to go in there and be honest. Look I have drug problems I need help. . . I’ve been
homeless my whole life. I need help. That should be simple enough!”
Some of our participants spoke of the psychological tension between pushing back against these
stereotypes or giving into them. This seemed to be particularly aggravating when these stereotypes
were seen as coming from service providers themselves, because of the power relations at play.
Clarke, who was also formerly housed under HF, describes this frustration:

When I’m placed in that box [i.e. stereotyped] it’s easier just to make people happier
and just do whatever or give them what the fuck [they] want. . . I will just become
whatever you want me to become. If you want me to say I’m just a drug addict and
a crazy person then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll be a crazy drug addict person. You think I
am so that’s what I will become. Life is just easier that way.

Because of this perceived need to perform a stereotype, Clarke saw his relationship with service
providers as a zero-sum battle with winners and losers: “I said fuck it, I will just become what they
want cause you can’t, always, like when you’re beat down so much you just say I’m not gonna
fucking win this one so I will just become whatever they want me to become.”
Clark’s sense of frustration conforms to existing findings (e.g., Snow & Anderson, 1993, pp. 198-
230; Gowan, 2010, pp. 181-84). PEH frequently express a sense of tension between conforming
to a label in order to become service-worthy (e.g., “sick,” “sinner,” etc.), or resisting and forfeit-
ing services. Under HF, however, this tension takes on a new dynamic. Being sick or a sinner is
an identity that PEH can and do adopt in order to make sense of their own situation. But these
identities are not a core part of HF, where service is provided based on the economic logic of the
“power-law distribution” problem. Services are not provided to those who “go straight” by over-
coming their addictions or renouncing their sins. Rather it is provided, in the words of Gabriel, to
the “really, really homeless”—those who tip the cost-benefit analysis in the right direction.
70 BEING HOMELESS AT THE “END” OF HOMELESSNESS

Nonetheless, while quantitative tools like the SPDAT are designed to provide objective mea-
sures that facilitate cost-benefit analysis (Evans & Masuda, 2020), to PEH they become strategic
dilemmas to be resolved by playing up or down their problems and adopting or resisting stereo-
types. This creative, performative boundary-work on the part of our participants likely helps to
explain why SPDAT-like surveys have been shown to suffer from poor reliability (Brown et al.,
2018): PEH are making active decisions about how they will present themselves, and these deci-
sions change as they learn more about the program from their experiences and social networks.

“When you have a house. . . you’re all by yourself”

Although previous experience with housing was not a criterion for recruitment in this study, over
half of our participants (12 of 22) had previously received housing before returning to the streets.
What leads some people to leave housing that is intended to be permanent? According to the ser-
vice providers we spoke to, the immediate reasons people lose housing within HF include aban-
doning the home, inviting too many people over, damaging the home, or experiencing a severe
decline in health or substance abuse within the home. These responses conform to Evans and
Masuda’s (2020) research on HF in Alberta, which revealed that service providers struggle to keep
their clients housed (p. 516). While this study is not aimed at uncovering the underlying causal
factors that determine housing retention and stability in general, we are able to draw on our par-
ticipants’ experiences of being formerly housed to explore why some people struggle with the
transition to a private home and the shifted social boundaries that this transition entails.
To begin, almost all of our participants voiced a relatively strong desire to gain their own per-
sonal, private dwelling. In this sense, while many of our participants were critical of the logic
behind HF, few questioned the underlying assumption that securing a private home was an impor-
tant goal. Even Darlene, who decided not to apply for housing, spoke longingly about the idea of
having her own home, emphasizing privacy and a perceived level of freedom:

[Having a home would allow me] to open my own fridge and cook my own meals
and shower in a shower that I don’t have to wear flip flops in. Have all my stuff in
the bathroom so I don’t have to carry in, carry out. Having drawers to put my clothes
away, and hangers. And to get up in the morning and go to work and come home and
have supper and watch Coronation Street. I’m artsy, I do a lot of art and stuff like that.

The home, for Darlene, is a place for self-care and leisure. In North America, access to a private
home for these purposes is seen as a natural and necessary requirement for proper daily living.
Conversely, these activities are not tolerated in the public sphere, which is why PEH are relegated
to “marginal” or “transitional” spaces (Snow & Mulcahy, 2001).
Our participants who were previously housed presented a different picture than the idealized
situation described by Darlene. First, many expressed a sense of being overwhelmed by the tran-
sition involved in taking possession of a house and would often seek out familiarity on the street
or in the shelters. Such was the case with Jorge, who told us,

I wasn’t used to having a place of my own, you know? So, I didn’t know how to keep
it, maintain it. So, I wouldn’t be home. I would be home maybe once a week because
I wasn’t used to having a place of [my] own. So, I would go back to what is familiar
for me, which is the streets.
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 71

Notably, our participants often blamed themselves. Jorge told us, “How am I going to maintain
this [house], because I self-sabotage. I don’t feel as if I deserve it, so I sabotage it.” This self-blame
further reveals the power that the private home has in the minds of our participants: that they
are more likely to blame their own deficiencies than question the appropriateness of the types of
housing they received.
One of the challenges of this transition was the physical isolation created by suburban sprawl,
which is characteristic of most North American cities. Calgary is no exception. According to the
2016 city census, 70 percent of Calgarians commute in a private vehicle. While most of the shel-
ters and other social services are located in Calgary’s denser, more walkable core, several of our
participants had been housed further away due to the “scattered-site” approach adopted by the
CHF. Sheldon, for example, describes the difficulty of commuting.

The time I had I broke my ankle, I had a cast and I couldn’t really go anywhere. It was
wintertime. . . I can’t go anywhere cause of my cast and the elevator wasn’t working
there. I was up on the 3rd floor and I had to walk down the stairs. . . They would give
me bus tickets and I had to walk down a hill, like 3 blocks down a hill [to the bus
stop].

Even without injuries, when faced with long, inconvenient bus trips, several of our participants
reported avoiding going home altogether.
With physical isolation comes social isolation. While scattered-site housing is supposed to facili-
tate “community integration” (Anderson-Baron & Collins, 2019, p. 1288), social isolation was actu-
ally the most cited problem with private housing. Jasmine, a woman in her late-50s, described her
experience of “loneliness [and] helpless. . . like nobody cares.” However, she added, “when you’re
homeless you have more community then when you have a house ’cause you’re all by yourself.
But when you’re out here with everybody. . . people watch everyone’s back.” Participation in com-
munity was one of the reasons given by our participants for leaving home.
Relatedly, the most positive accounts of housing we heard were from those who discussed using
their home to host friends and family. Sheldon, for example, told us that his home allowed him to
reconnect with his son. Prior to that, Sheldon explained, he was not living in the kinds of places
that his son (who lives with foster parents) felt comfortable visiting. Elroy, on the other hand,
talked about opening his home up as a kind of hang out for his circle of friends. His home, he
said, was “just like a shelter, but a smaller version,” a place where “we can nurture [ourselves]
and work together as a unit.”
Nonetheless, Sheldon and Elroy’s accounts were rare and provide only a partial picture of their
situation since both eventually lost their housing. It is worth noting that those like Elroy who treat
their private homes as a communal space similar to a shelter or encampment often run into prob-
lems with landlords, neighbors, and housing agencies and, ultimately, risk eviction. Indeed, sev-
eral of our participants mentioned getting into conflicts with their landlords over inviting friends
over.
Following the HF principle of “community integration” (Gaetz et al., 2013, p.6), agencies
have introduced various programs designed to combat social isolation. However, none of our
participants discussed a desire to participate in a formal social program. What they discussed was
something more informal and spontaneous: hanging out with friends, camping together, being
among equals as opposed to those in positions of authority and control.
Challenges of maintaining a social life extend beyond the private home into the streets, which
are becoming more hostile to PEH. The Shelter was once part of a landscape of “marginal space”
72 BEING HOMELESS AT THE “END” OF HOMELESSNESS

surrounded exclusively by empty parking lots, fast food restaurants, and dilapidated pre-war
houses. Today gentrification has brought high-rise condominiums, office buildings, and high-
end amenities, to the point that The Shelter has become an island of marginality surrounded by
“prime space” (Snow & Anderson, 1993, p. 103).
As new businesses and residents have entered the neighborhood, “hanging out” around The
Shelter has become difficult, disrupted by police, private security guards, and hostile urban design.
Currently, new residents in the area are campaigning to relocate The Shelter and the local city
councilor has even suggested redirecting funding for housing programs to compensate property
owners for costs attributed to vandalism and added security.
A sense of alienation from the changing neighborhood was evident in our interviews. Elroy
articulated this feeling well, commenting on the location of his interview.

Right now we’re in the posh part of town. . . . Ok? I’m at Starbucks, for fuck sakes! Like
seriously, come on! I go to Timmy’s [Tim Hortons]. I used to work there. I know the
order there: just a double-double [coffee with two creams and two sugars], not some
fucking crazy name for a, you know, iced tea or whatever!

In this sense, HF policies cannot be understood outside the context of neighborhood- and city-
level spatial processes. As others have argued, adaptation to private housing is greatly influenced
by what occurs outside the home (Henwood et al., 2018; Hsu et al., 2016). In particular, when
it comes to social boundaries, feelings of social and physical isolation in the private sphere are
exacerbated by physical and psychological exclusion in the public realm. We expand on this idea
in our conclusion.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: THINKING OUTSIDE THE HOUSE

The debate over HF often occurs at a high level of abstraction. Proponents point to seemingly
objective, quantitative measures such as housing retention rates and cost-benefit analyses, while
critics point to neoliberal ideology embedded within policy discourse. This study joins a growing
literature that has sought to ground this debate in an interpretive sociological understanding of
how HF-based policies are actually experienced by their target population: the chronically home-
less. In particular, we sought to understand the conditions of exclusion among people who remain
homeless at the end of 10-year plan to “end homelessness.” Our interviews reveal key reasons for
exclusion. Some applied for housing and were denied. Others did not apply at all, anticipating
that they would be unsuccessful. Finally, more than half of our participants received housing at
some point but eventually returned to the streets.
Seeking to make sociological sense of these experiences, we adopted the concept of boundary-
work. We identified the distinct way that HF establishes symbolic and social boundaries and
how these boundaries create dilemmas in the daily lives of PEH which must be creatively man-
aged through boundary-work. In doing so, this paper demonstrates the value of boundary-work
as a unifying concept that can be applied to a wide variety of distinct issues within the sociol-
ogy of homelessness. The way service providers establish program eligibility (Osborne, 2019), the
self-narratives and daily routines of PEH (Snow & Anderson, 1993), the transitions involved in
exiting homelessness (Marr, 2015), and the strategies of spatial “dislocation” and “exclusion”
employed against PEH within gentrifying neighborhoods (Snow & Mulcahy, 2001, p. 160) can
all be understood as interrelated forms of boundary-work.
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie 73

As we demonstrated, boundary-work provides a valuable locus for comparative analysis,

including comparing different policy regimes (CoC vs. HF), comparing how symbolic boundaries
are established discursively in policies versus how they become enacted in practice, and, finally,
comparing the logic of boundaries from the perspective of policymakers to how those bound-
aries are experienced and negotiated by PEH. Indeed, this approach allows see how policymakers
and PEH are engaged in the same enterprise of boundary-work, albeit with different goals, meth-
ods, and levels of power. Policymakers adopt technocratic methods in order to distribute limited
resources in a way that can be justified to public authorities. PEH are more concerned with creat-
ing service-worthy narratives and bolstering their own sense of self-worth. Both groups, however,
create narratives and discursive categories—sometimes congruent, sometimes contradictory—
aimed at influencing the distribution of resources and access to different types of spaces.
This comparative, boundary-work approach could be extended in future research to examine
variations in how boundaries are established among different HF-based programs. As well, while
this study focused specifically on people currently experiencing chronic homelessness, future
research can examine how HF clients who remain in housing manage to accomplish the same
boundary-work that proved challenging for our participants.
Finally, our boundary-based analysis points to the importance of thinking “outside the house,”
so to speak, when it comes to homelessness. Despite our participants’ tendency to self-blame, we
argue that their struggles are not indicative of their personal failings, but rather the limitations
of the housing they received. The scattered-site approach is designed to achieve community inte-
gration by placing PEH into “ordinary housing” (Tsemberis quoted in Gaetz et al., 2013, p. 3).
However, “ordinary housing” typically assumes access to a private car and that one’s social life
takes place mostly outside the home in consumer-oriented spaces like malls, restaurants, and
cafes. As Speer (2017) argues, we need to “trouble the notion of home as a market-based and pri-
vatized structure rooted in the model of the isolated nuclear family or individual” (p. 531) which
is tied to a “vision of domesticity [based on] white, middle-class, and masculine norms” (p. 519).
Unfortunately, providing a greater diversity of unconventional housing options has been greatly
undermined by a shortage of affordable housing in general (Anderson-Baron & Collins, 2019).
Furthermore, we must also “think outside the house” by understanding how housing fits into
larger socio-spatial structures of exclusion (Henwood et al., 2018; Hsu et al., 2016). While the
scattered-site approach physically integrates HF clients into middle-class neighborhoods, our
findings suggest that this same strategy can actually reinforce social boundaries by restricting
mobility and creating situations where HF clients feel surveilled and discriminated against by
landlords and neighbors. Community integration is further undermined when PEH find that their
access to public spaces are curtailed through anti-homeless practices that have implemented con-
currently with HF in Calgary and cities across North America (Murphy, 2009). It is therefore essen-
tial that providing “housing first” must go hand-in-hand with making urban public spaces more
accessible to the poor, housed or unhoused. In other words, to echo Klodawsky (2009), the “right
to housing” that has accompanied the rise of HF must be situated within larger “rights to the
city.”

AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S
The idea for this paper came about while Chris was enrolled in a course on homelessness taught by
Dr. Annette Tézli. We thank her for the guidance and input she provided in shaping the project. We
also thank the Dr. Tracey Adams for her editorial guidance and the comments of the anonymous
reviewers at the Canadian Review of Sociology.
74 BEING HOMELESS AT THE “END” OF HOMELESSNESS

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How to cite this article: Kohut C. & Patterson M. (2022) Being homeless at the “End” of
homelessness navigating the symbolic and social boundaries of housing first. Canadian
Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, 59, 59–75.
https://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12369