Community narratives on rural homelessness: Tales of terror and tales of compassion

Abstract

Homelessness is often assumed to be mostly confined to urban spaces, leaving experiences of homelessness in rural contexts largely unexamined. The present study aims to understand the discursive context, or public understanding, of homelessness in rural communities. We examined community narratives related to the idea of “homelessness” in rural spaces. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 70 key stakeholders from four rural communities in the U.S. State of Maine. Participants were asked to give their impressions related to homelessness in their community. We conducted a systematic qualitative analysis of these interviews and our analysis was grounded in a critical discourse analysis perspective. Using Rappaport’s framework for understanding helpful and harmful community narratives, we identified three community narratives that harm by stereotyping or erasing homelessness in rural communities: Not Here, That One Guy, and Mainly Outsiders. We also examined counter-narratives that worked against each of the three primary narratives: It Looks Different, It’s More Hidden, and Local Struggle and Lack of Resources. The counter-narratives tell a different, more compassionate, story of homelessness in rural spaces. Our main goal was to analyze the “work” that each of these narratives were doing in terms of constructing different understandings of “rural homelessness.” The implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Keywords:

• Community narratives
• homelessness
• housing insecurity
• narrative analysis
• rural homelessness
• rural housing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While we understand a social justice oriented discursive preference for the term “houselessness,” we chose to use the term “homelessness” because this is the term is most often deployed by the public and used by our participants. It is, therefore, the construction of “homelessness” that is the main focus of our inquiry in this study.

Additional information

Funding

Funding was provided by a University of Southern Maine Faculty Senate Research Grant.