ABSTRACT
Times of disaster and conflict bring homelessness into the headline news. One of the figures quoted by the press for any disaster is how many people have been made homeless. In the context of this book, this is an imprecise conceptualisation of homelessness as it includes both rich households temporarily decamped from their mansions for fear of aftershocks and destitute households who have lost everything and may have seen even their farmland washed away as a mighty river changes course during a flood event. For a time, all are accommodated in transit accommodation, reduced to camping in serried ranks of tents on a barren hillside or in a sports stadium. But their chances of recovery and being housed in the short term could not be more different. Thus, disaster-related homelessness figures hide almost as much as they reveal.
