Home-Making: Supports and Barriers to the Process of Home

The process of home-making changes over a lifetime. For many, including newly resettled homeless people, the home-making process is difficult, challenging, and sometimes unsuccessful. This paper draws on research concerning the experiences of homeless individuals and families in New York and studies of single homeless adults in London and Dublin. It argues that there are supports and barriers to the home process, which include social, physical, environmental, financial, and practical factors. Central conclusions are that home does not arrive with a roof over a person's head, but rather that home-making is a complex social psychological process. Developing supports to home-making may offer tangible ways to enable this process to flourish.