SPSSR Lecturer in Social Work, Dr Carin Tunåker, has secured £15.5k funding to co-lead innovative, interdisciplinary research that seeks to reduce levels of rural homelessness in the UK.
‘Homeless in the countryside: a hidden crisis’ is a collaboration between Dr Tunåker, Professor Helen Carr (University of Southampton) and a consortium of the UK’s leading homelessness charities.
The project, which will include ethnographic research, will be intersectional in its approach. It will consider the complex and cumulative disadvantages that make groups and individuals susceptible to experiencing homelessness. And it will employ both quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate the causes and characteristics of homelessness in rural settlements.
Rural (and all types of) homelessness has been rising steeply in the last decade, a trend that is likely to continue as the economy moves into recession in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr Tunåker said: ‘The pandemic has revealed serious inequalities among people with protected characteristics and these individuals will now be susceptible to loss of housing and homelessness. Areas that are in less focus, such as rural areas, face different challenges and have potentially different risk factors that increase the likelihood of homelessness.’
The consortium that funded the project will play an active role as the project’s steering group. It is spearheaded by English Rural, a leading national advocate on affordable rural housing issues.
The team will work collaboratively over the next 12 months to investigate whether ending rural rough sleeping by 2024 requires distinct policy responses. Their aim is to produce a final report, grounded in evidence, that will incorporate policy recommendations, participant stories, and an accessible executive summary.
Dr Tunåker is a social anthropologist and ethnographer, with a focus on homelessness, social justice and inequalities. Her primary focus is youth homelessness as well as intersectionality and social disadvantage based on, for example, gender, age, sexual orientation and disabilities.
Until 1 October 2021, Professor Carr was a Professor of Law at the University of Kent. She has published extensively on housing and homelessness and is an expert in research impact. She is a Judge with the First Tier Tribunal Property Chamber.