Persistent precarity and the disaster of everyday life: homeless people’s experiences of natural and other hazards

Abstract

Knowledge of how homeless people deal with natural hazards and disasters is sparse and there is a remarkable absence of homeless people in policies and practices for disaster risk reduction (DRR). This article aims at filling this gap by exploring the lives of homeless people in two New Zealand cities that are exposed to natural hazards. It shows that natural hazards are of marginal concern to homeless people in comparison to the everyday hazards that they experience and that make their everyday life a disaster in itself. The disaster of everyday life is created and compounded by homeless people’s precarious lifeworlds. The article, nonetheless, shows that homeless people’s vulnerability to natural hazards remains high as they lack power to control the processes that shape their everyday lives, to prepare for large-scale events, and to be represented in DRR policy. Therefore, the article ultimately argues that disaster policies require greater attention to be paid to the power structures that create persistent precarity and the ways in which this is experienced in everyday life