Climbing, stalling, falling: How people experiencing housing instability anticipate their futures

Abstract

For people experiencing housing instability, considerable uncertainty and future risks coincide with a lack of affordable housing supply. Housing instability often entails movement across different forms of accommodation while facing the possibility of homelessness. Thinking with anticipation outlined by Adams et al. as a regime of knowledge espousing specific governing principles, this study explores storytelling about the future by people experiencing housing instability. Here, anticipation manifests as agentic future orientation in hopes, practices and social norms geared towards secure housing. Drawing on narrative interviews and participant-produced photographs collected in 2022 in an urban centre in Queensland, Australia, we analyse how participants imagine their futures and what they consider right and actionable. Our findings highlight how such imaginings leaned on and challenged the linearity inscribed in metaphors depicting a predictable progression towards stable housing through appropriate action in the present.