Welsh, Scott ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9707-8557 (2026) Being homeless and becoming Homefull: Homefullness as an ontological state. In: Homelessness and Housing Stress : Acts of Homefullness. Haslem, N, Knutgard, M and Macarow, K, eds. Routledge Advances in Health & Social Policy, 1 . Routledge, London, pp. 74-85.

Abstract

ABSTRACT BEING HOMELESSNESS AND BECOMING HOMEFULL: HOMEFULLNESS AS AN ONTOLOGICAL STATE It has been 15 years since I lived rough and yet still everything I do can be accounted for as an act of homefullness, an attempt at individualisation, at reclaiming a sense of lost citizenship. I am not sure how long I was homeless, or lived rough for, anymore, but it was over a decade. I remember living in the trees at Bondi Beach in a tent for maybe months or years before I was moved on. I know I stayed at a caravan park in Byron Bay, until I lost my poetry with which I used to beg. Having met people on the street, born into poverty and degradation, physically dying of drug addiction, often from backgrounds of abuse-physical abuse, sexual abuse, and severe emotional abuse, I saw my own homeless experience as one of privilege. There is a pertinent comparison here with Ferrell’s (2018) ‘ethnography.’ This work will explore my own and others’ struggles to acquire an identity that frees oneself from the trauma of homelessness and social displacement as an isolated phenomenon, quite apart from other traumas that ordinarily associate themselves with homelessness. I will explore various ontological stages in the journey from homelessness to homefullness and the disruptions of consciousness or deep memory (Langer 1993).

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