Homelessness and Housing Stress

“Acts of Homefullness offers valuable and inspiring perspectives on the complex and interconnected nature of homes, homelessness, migration, care, kinship and their politics. Combining creative experimentation and analysis, including perspectives from architects, activists, artists, social workers and others, it offers new insights along with potential responses and interventions to address inequity in global housing, relevant too to other urgent challenges facing places and communities.”

Lucy Kimbell, Professor of Contemporary Design Practices, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK

“Acts of Homefullness is a deeply humane and timely collection. It refuses narratives of blame and scarcity, centering care, relational responsibility, and lived experience as foundations of housing justice. Through interdisciplinary voices and acts of resistance, the book reframes home as a fundamental human right and shared ethical commitment. It offers a hope-full invitation to imagine and practice forms of belonging that honor dignity, interdependence, and our collective responsibility to one another.”

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW, Founder of Social Workers Who Design, Illinois, US

“What seems intractable is so only from existing ways of looking. Situations, especially ones that are intolerable, like people subject to housing stress or people not allowed to feel at home where they are, can always be reframed despite their urgency. This collection demonstrates the loosening power of design interventions; communicative acts of design in practice and theory, that open up transition pathways out of the seemingly intractable. In doing so, they also sketch out a new political home for design.”

Cameron Tonkinwise, Professor of Design Studies, University of Technology Sydney, AU

“This interesting and important new edited collection questions the ways in which we define and respond to states of homelessness as a primarily physical experience, the absence of conventional living arrangements in conventional housing and explores the social, cultural and wider dimensions of what we mean by ‘home’. Homefullness, as a concept and as a philosophy raises important questions about how we currently think about and respond to housing exclusion and homelessness.”

Nicholas Pleace, Professor of Housing and Society, University of York, UK