Rethinking Domicide:
Towards an expanded geography of home
- CENDEP Work in Progress 29.11.18, Mel Nowicki, Human Geographer
"Home.... is a place, a site in which we live. But, more than this, home is also an idea and an imaginary that is imbued with feelings"
- Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling, Home (Key Ideas in Geography), 2006
Mel's talk on domicide was particularly interesting. I hadn't heard of the term before and she defined domicide as:
"The intentional destruction of home - destruction of, or displacement from.."
She speaks of a narrative in which home is beyond the dwelling. Beyond the 'four walls and a roof' notion but also involves our emotional state and being. The term domicide was initially coined by Porteous & Smith in 2001, in their text Domicide: The Global Destruction of Home.
Socio-Symbolic Domicide:
Mel defined this as the home being intentionally destroyed socially or symbolically. This can be done by the stigmatisation of groups deemed 'non-normative' in order to legitimise their precarity of home. For example, legitimising the desire fore a reduction in social housing by labelling people who access it benefits scroungers.
In the 1980s, Thatcher pushed more of a notive of home ownership as aspirational. This rhetoric that she spearheaded came with the 'Right to Buy' policy, which gave council house residents the option to purchase their rented property at a largely reduced market value. Shifting council housing into private housing. This came with an ongoing discourse of homeownership being the mark of a 'good citizen'.
Another aspect is the criminalisation of squatting in England & Wales. This whole narrative managed to disconnect those who are homeless and those who are squatting, and it regarded squatting, which can be seen as a form of 'home making' as offensive.
The bedroom tax, which reduces the amount of housing benefit a tenant is entitled to if they are deemed by the state to have one or more 'spare' bedrooms. This created socio-symbolic domicide, especially for those who are disabled and may need the assitance of carers, a spare room to house a wheelchair etc. It also affected some complicated issues surrounding divorced parents and children, for example, children can only be registered at one address with regards to benefits and social housing, and most of the time they would be registered under the mother. The father's 'spare room' would be for the child whenever they would come to stay, but the government would overlook such scenarios. This also raised questions on whether it labels the social housing market as having wasted space, but not questioning private homeowers who would also be 'wasting space' by having offices and spare rooms.
Less worth is attached to social housing tenants than private housing.
Mel research temporary modular housing in London & Dublin which were made to address homelessness issues. There are generally assumptions that people have become homeless due to personal, rather than institutional failings. However, most of the people she came into contact with were homeless due to institutional failings.
Ladywell Temporary Housing Project:
In London, a recent project was constructed in 2017 to house 24 families in Ladywell. It is a temporary building, with lego-like cladding, which would stay for 3 years to house homeless families. It was interesting to hear Mel's research as she stated that the cladding had a negative impact on the residents, especially after the Grenfell tower incident. They internalised feelings of being treated like the Grenfell residents, and had less of an understanding of themselves and gave their homes less value. The project also isn't long term, which may cause issues for some of the families, especially as the project is in an expensive area of London.
Ballymun Rapid Housing project :
The Ballymun rapid housing project is a modular rapid build housing project in Dublin which was initially intended to provide accommodation for each family for one year, but it is now being offered as permanent tenancies. The residents there feel a sense of security, home and worth, as outlined by the report 'Home at Last' and Mel's own research.
The project uses a brick clad exterior which was actually found to be very important to the scheme, although perhaps not necessarily considered so by the designers of the scheme. The residents felt very 'normal' by having this, in a positive sense, it made them identify with other British housing and also made them feel a sense of belonging and permanence, with the intention of the 'bricks and mortar' British homes. One can also look at this skeptically and observe how the design isn't actually incorporating bricks and mortar, but the social aspect of home was positively affected by the simple notion of having a simple homely design with brick cladding.
Final thoughts:
I really enjoyed the talk, as it opened my eyes to considering how normative constructions can help people to have a sense of home, although it can also be destructive, so the nature of this area needs to be treaded carefully. It was interesting in the Q&A when she spoke of the fact that the Dublin scheme ended up having a mixture of social housing of people from the waiting list and homeless people, as people originally were uncomfortable with the idea of 'homeless families' being the only residents in the area. Which furthered the stigma of how people can view 'homeless' people differently to social housing. She also noted how almost all of the people that were made homeless were in the private rental sector but were kicked out by their landlords or could not afford rent any longer.
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