ABSTRACT
Health and homelessness are strongly inter-related. Clinical and demographic studies have long shown that poor health can be a contributing factor to homelessness, can be an effect of homelessness and can impede an exit from homelessness. This chapter emphasizes the contributions of health geographers. One of the most significant contributions made by health geographers has been to examine the role of homeless service spaces in the medicalization of homelessness. The chapter outlines the historical development of medicalized homelessness, drawing on sociologist Teresa Gowan's key text Hobos, Hustlers and Backsliders. It discusses how research within health geography suggests that homeless service spaces serve two key functions in the medicalization of homelessness. Homeless service systems allow for the objectification of homeless people as members of a (sub-)population with distinctive health characteristics and therapeutic needs. Homeless service sites allow for members of those populations to be subjectified in accordance with social and political norms relating to the healthy individual.
