ABSTRACT
There is a lack of literature on homelessness in developing countries, as attested in UNCHS (2000)1 which specifically set out to give the developing world an equal focus but could not locate enough literature except on street children. Current international reviews of homelessness tend to concentrate on industrialised countries only (e.g. Christian, 2003) with a very few developing countries case studies within volumes heavily focused on industrialised countries’ contexts and issues (e.g. Glasser, 1994). In the few cases where homelessness in developing countries is explored, it tends to look at individual countries or individual aspects of homelessness within a single country or a small number of countries. At the time of UNCHS (2000), there was a little on South Africa (Olufemi, 1997, 1998, 1999), India (Swaminathan, 1995) and Nigeria (Labeodan, 1989),2 but almost all the literature on developing countries concentrated on street children. The adults were nowhere to be seen and nor were the children living with those homeless adults. Furthermore, the literature on homelessness, being so concentrated in industrialised countries, had little relevance to what seemed, intuitively, to be the main problem in developing countries; namely that there just was not enough housing to go round and that it was much too expensive for quite a large portion of the population. In addition, it concentrated on issues which seemed to be much less central in developing countries: social isolation, substance abuse, mental illness and the design of welfare interventions. This book attempts to redress the balance
between industrialised and developing countries’ experiences a little by bringing together both empirical evidence and literature on homelessness in a broader range of countries.
