"The comfort to be me": home and housing struggles in St. John's

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.