Breaking the Societal Status Quo:

Homelessness is often used to describe and classify those people within society living in a street or a shelter without a home. Moreover, it is one of the socio-economic challenges that has proven to be prevalent and dominant worldwide. Surprisingly, dominant as it is, it receives minimal attention not only from policymakers and politicians but also from academics as well as other institutions such as civil society organizations and Higher Education today. Furthermore, this has led to the normalization of the issue of homelessness instead of being treated as an important social ill that exacerbates and worsens poverty. As a result, this has far-reaching consequences, leading to the disintegration and overlooking issues of homelessness in development debate and agenda. Hence, this myopic attitude has resulted in homelessness being perceived as an individual choice without a critical assessment of the causes of homelessness. Therefore, it is against this negative background that this essay is written, to advocate for the integration of homelessness into the global agenda and development programmes as a crucial tool to break down the stigma attached to homelessness.