It's your own fault...right? A comparative, urban sociological explanation of homelessness in the interplay of individual, institutional, and structural factors

• Applicant: Professor Jörg Timo Weishaupt, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 441782944

Why do people in Germany become (and remain) homeless despite an extensive range of social policies? This project aims to not only advance sociological research on the topic of homelessness theoretically and methodologically, but also to enrich it empirically with new data. Its focus lies on a systematic assessment of individual behavioural patterns within different local social care systems and urban structures over time. The cities of Göttingen, Kassel, and Paderborn were selected as case studies. Although they are similar in many aspects relevant to homelessness, they still differ in important aspects of their local care systems. On the one hand, all three cities are medium-sized university towns with 120,000 to 200,000 inhabitants with a limited financial manoeuvring room. On the other hand, the governance structures and the actors involved in the respective care systems differ considerably. In Göttingen, the city itself offers a (men’s) night shelter and cooperates closely with the Protestant Diakonie as a service provider. In contrast, the city of Kassel does not have its own night shelter. It rather has rented 350 flats from private property owners, while commissioning welfare associations to manage various shelters (including one specifically for women). The city of Paderborn, finally, differs from Kassel and Göttingen in the strong presence of Catholic Caritas and the existence of the initiative programme "Help in housing emergencies" of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The relevant empirical data are to be collected by means of a qualitative panel analysis over a period of 18 months. Approximately 12 people per city will be interviewed three times (i.e. every six months) in order to explore the experiences of homeless people over time. In addition, semi-structured interviews will be performed with practitioners in order to capture the experts’ perspectives as well as local (regulatory) practices and structural context conditions. Using the software MAXQDA, the interview material will be evaluated in a systematic and category-forming way, allowing us to then generate hypotheses about concrete inclusion and exclusion mechanisms.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants