Whose ‘fault’ is it? Becoming homeless in Singapore

Abstract

Chinese

Singapore is a country that prides itself on providing cheap affordable public housing for its citizens. Nonetheless, the increased visibility of older people sleeping rough in public spaces has led to a contentious debate in recent years about why they are becoming homeless. The article first examines this debate from the different interpretations offered by the government, the national print media and local internet blogs and forums. Homelessness tends to be invariably attributed to personal problems for which the government is not held responsible or to broader structural problems resulting from government policies and bureaucracy. Our findings, from a two-year ethnographic study of older homeless people in Singapore, show that such one-sided causal explanations of homelessness are fundamentally flawed and provide inadequate explanations of why older people become homeless. Rather than asking whose fault is it, we adopt the pathways approach to highlight homelessness as a process involving personal decisions as well as structural factors. The article thus presents two key findings of our research. First, older people in our study did not become homeless from a specific pathway but encountered multiple pathways during their lives. Second, these older people began to sleep rough when the multiple pathways led to the weakening and subsequent loss of structural resources from work, family and friends and government assistance in Singapore.

Keywords

homeless pathways homelessness older homeless people public space Singapore

Introduction

Angry with himself, Ganesh¹ uttered: ‘Yah, eventually everything runs out’. He recalled the time when his heavy alcohol and drug consumption had depleted his entire savings. Jobless, he could no longer pay his flat mortgage and it was duly repossessed by the Housing Development Board (HDB) – the statutory board responsible for public housing in Singapore. When that happened, Ganesh was out on the streets. He explained: ‘That’s [sleeping rough] carefree life lah [Singlish word used at the end of sentences for emphasis]. I don’t want to worry, don’t want to bother, don’t want to think! Just be on my own’.

During the interview, Ganesh recounted his failed relationship with his girlfriend, the death of his mother, his struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, his two previous prison sentences, the stays at halfway houses, and a difficult relationship with his sister-in-law. He sat opposite the lead author revisiting one painful episode after another, clearly indicating that his homelessness could not be attributed to a single point in his life. Being addicted to drugs or alcohol did not necessarily mean he would have to sleep rough on the streets. Becoming homeless in Singapore was just as he said, eventually, everything did run out.

Until 2010,² ideas about homelessness in Singapore have seemed far removed from the image of the country as an efficient provider of cheap affordable public housing for its citizens. In fact, Singapore’s public housing policy was deemed such a success that the United Nations (UN) project for the homeless invited other countries to study the Singaporean model (The Straits Times, 1987). This success meant that it is commonly assumed (by both locals and foreigners) that there are no or few homeless people in Singapore. In recent years, the increased visibility of older people sleeping rough in public spaces such as beaches, parks, sheltered pavilions or public housing’s void decks (open spaces located at the ground floor) has begun to challenge these assumptions.³ More so, it has led to a contentious debate within Singapore about why they are becoming homeless.

The article first examines this debate from the different explanations offered by the government, the national print media and local internet blogs and forums in Singapore. They either attribute homelessness to personal problems for which the government is not held responsible or to broader structural problems resulting from government policies and bureaucracy. Our findings from the six-month ethnographic phase of the study of older homeless people in Singapore show that such one-sided causal explanations of homelessness are simplistic and suffer from the same structural and agency biases inherent in traditional homeless research.

To avoid this bias, we adopt the pathways approach (Chamberlain et al., 2014; Fitzpatrick et al., 2013; Piat et al., 2015; Ravenhill, 2008) to highlight homelessness as a process involving personal decisions as well as structural factors. We present two key findings about how older people in our ethnographic study became homeless. First, older people in our study did not become homeless from a specific pathway; rather, they encountered multiple pathways throughout their life that led them to homelessness. Second, these older people began to sleep rough when the multiple pathways led to the weakening and subsequent loss of protective factors from work, family and friends and government assistance. The significance of these social institutions will be discussed in relation to the Singapore government’s ‘social safety net’ that is centred on self-reliance and mutual obligation.

The pathways approach: Integrating structural and individual biases

Traditionally, definitions and explanations of homelessness can be organised into two broad mutually exclusive categories: structural and individual (Fitzpatrick and Christian, 2006; Neale, 1997).

In definitions that consider homelessness in relation to structure, housing circumstances of individuals (which include both material and non-material structures) are often the leading criterion. The statutory definition of homelessness as established by the UK Housing (Homeless Persons) Act (1977) is an example. It states that a person is homeless if: (1) they have no accommodation they are entitled to occupy; (2) they have a home but are in danger of violence from someone living there; (3) they are living in accommodation meant only for an emergency or crisis, such as a night-shelter; (4) they are a family who are normally living together but are living in separate houses because they have nowhere to live together; and (5) their accommodation is movable, for example a caravan, and they have nowhere to place it (Crane, 1999: 13–14).

When structural definitions suggest that homelessness is an external condition that is independent of humans, there is a tendency to assume that the reasons of homelessness are also found in structures that are external to people. As such, external structural constraints are cited as reasons for homelessness. For instance, structural disadvantage, reduced income in older age, escalation of living costs, lack of low-cost housing, disruptive early family life, breakdown of family households and relationships, itinerant working lives have often been cited as explanations for homelessness in studies of older homeless people (Cohen and Sokolovsky, 1989; Crane, 1999; Peterson et al., 2014). Since homelessness is attributed to external constraints that are independent of people’s decisions and/or actions, the notion that a homeless person is deserving of assistance is reinforced.

Definitions that consider homelessness in relation to the individual hark back to medieval British and European legal classifications (Ribton-Turner, 1887; Webb, 1928). Homeless people were defined as vagrants: ‘valiant beggars, [who] as long as they may live of begging, do refuse to labor, giving themselves to idleness and vice, and sometimes to theft and other abominations’ (Chambliss, 1964: 68). The homeless person here, is viewed as an acting and willing person and homelessness is thus explained as a consequence of one’s personal character flaws (Beier, 1985). Some contemporary definitions however focus on people’s ability to attach subjective meanings to their actions. For example, the National Youth Coalition for Housing (NYCH) in Australia defines homelessness as the ‘absence of secure, adequate and satisfactory shelter as perceived by the young person’ (Chamberlain et al., 2014, my emphasis). The premise here is that it is not possible to understand and define what homelessness is without first establishing what a ‘home’ means to people (Ravenhill, 2008).

Two types of individual explanations have emerged in the field of homelessness: one strong and one weak. The strong version – akin to medieval explanations – maintains that people are homeless because of poor personal choices in life; a result attributed to character or personality flaws (Chamberlain et al., 2014; Neale, 1997). The weak version suggests that people become homeless because of ‘personal failure or inadequacy for which they cannot be held entirely responsible’ (Neale, 1997: 36). An example would be a person with mental health issues or a young person from a dysfunctional family. While the weak version maintains that a person cannot be held entirely responsible for becoming homeless, research shows that older homeless people suffering from poor or declining mental health (Jones and Peterson, 2014) or homeless youths who are abused at home often exhibit ‘challenging behaviours’ that exclude them from services of support organisations (Johnson et al., 2008). Both versions inevitably focus on people’s personal choices, actions, failures and their inadequacies.

The idea that one group of homeless people deserves assistance while another does not is fundamentally problematic, and contemporary scholars (Chamberlain et al., 2014; Fitzpatrick et al., 2013; Johnson et al., 2008; Ravenhill, 2008) recognise this as a key limitation of adopting a strictly structural or individual interpretation of homelessness. The challenge then is to think about homelessness without being limited by these basic categories. A prominent response to this challenge is the pathways approach, which focuses on developing pathways into, through and out of homelessness (Chamberlain and Johnson, 2011; Fitzpatrick et al., 2013; Johnson et al., 2008; Ravenhill, 2008; Wiesel, 2014). The result is a shift from causal explanations to process-driven explanations of homelessness that sought to highlight homelessness as a process involving structural factors and personal decisions.

For example, Chamberlain and Johnsons’ (2011) homeless pathways model identifies five pathways into homelessness: (1) housing crisis; (2) family breakdown; (3) substance abuse; (4) mental health; and (5) youth to adult (Chamberlain and Johnson, 2011). In each pathway, different structural factors become key as individuals make decisions about their lives (Johnson et al., 2008). To elaborate, people who become homeless through the housing crisis pathway often experience financial problems brought about by loss of employment or a small business collapse. Isolation from the labour market structure may require decisions about living expenses, rent payments, house mortgages. A decision to sell off property to repay business debts for example may result in a housing crisis and subsequent homelessness. This example is indicative of the pathways approach, which moves away from one-sided causal explanations to consider homelessness as a process involving interrelated structural and individual dimensions (Johnson et al., 2008). To avoid the same structural and individual biases mentioned in this section, we adopt the pathways approach as a framework for our research.

Methods

This ethnographic study involves two stages. First, documentary and archival research were conducted during 2015 prior to undertaking fieldwork. Existing laws regulating the homeless in Singapore were collected from the online database of the Attorney-General’s Chambers of Singapore. Government policy documents and speeches about homelessness in Singapore were accessed online from the website of the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) – the ministry responsible for the regulation and administration of homelessness in Singapore. Newspaper articles (136 in total) dating back to the 19th century were collected from the National Library Board (Singapore) microfilm archives and its electronic databases. Further analysis was undertaken of 21 of the most recent articles from 2006 to 2016. Online public discussions about older homeless people through internet blogs and forums are a recent development in Singapore. In total, 53 online blog and forum articles from 2006 to 2015 were found using the key search terms ‘homelessness’, ‘homeless people’, ‘older homeless people’, ‘vagrant’, ‘sleeper’, ‘destitute’ and ‘Singapore’. The contents of the above documents were analysed thematically for this article with emphasis placed on how the government, national print media and local internet community explained the increased visibility of older people sleeping rough in Singapore.

The second stage comprised the main fieldwork, which was conducted from February to July 2016 by the lead author, a Singaporean with four years volunteering work experience with the homeless in Singapore. A key challenge in doing ethnographic research among a vulnerable population such as older homeless people is gaining entry. In this regard, entry into the field was facilitated by the lead author’s past and continuing volunteering work⁴ with four local Voluntary Welfare Organisations (VWOs): Mercy Centre Singapore, Paya Lebar Homeless Ministry (PLHM), Catholic Welfare Service (CWS) and We Care Community Services Ltd. All four VWOs acted as gatekeepers.

The main fieldwork was further divided into two overlapping phases. Phase one involved participant observations, conversations with older homeless people and keeping a field journal. In the field, the lead author adopted the dual role of a volunteer/researcher. This was vital in establishing and maintaining trust among the homeless in the field. It also made approaching new homeless people easier in a country where a person sleeping rough can be statutorily institutionalised into a state-sponsored welfare home. Homeless people in Singapore are generally very wary of who they speak to for fear of being ‘caught’ by the authorities. In total, there were regular interactions with approximately 60 older homeless Singaporeans.

The second phase of fieldwork involved formal in-depth interviews conducted by the lead author from March to July 2016. Each interview lasted between 45 and 90 minutes. Respondents were invited to participate in the interview from the larger pool of 60 older homeless people. The questions focused on the socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents, experiences of homelessness, interactions with social groups and individual life-course experiences. These questions were tested in two pilot interviews conducted in August 2015 and further refined to include questions relating to exiting homelessness. The total number of older homeless people interviewed was 26, including 21 men and five women. The respondents ranged between 50 and 78 years of age.⁵ During this phase, an email interview was also conducted with the Senior Policy Officer in MSF to access and verify government information on the homeless in Singapore.

The data from these interviews were subjected first to open thematic coding (Warren and Karner, 2015). These were then selectively coded to uncover the themes involved in becoming homeless in Singapore. When key themes had been identified, they were then re-categorised according to each of the 26 older homeless persons to better understand their experiences individually. Through this process, three overarching themes emerged from the data in relations to how older people became homeless in Singapore. The themes included work, family and friends and government assistance.

This article draws on data from the documentary and archival research, the in-depth interviews with the 26 older homeless people as well as wider ethnographic notes written throughout the fieldwork. The following sections of the article present: first, the debate between the government, the national print media and local internet blogs and forums about why older people are becoming homeless; and second, our key findings about how older people in our study became homeless in Singapore.

The fault of the individual?

The Singapore government releases information whenever news about the homeless appear in the local media.⁶ In these media releases, it has refrained from commenting about the increased visibility of older people sleeping rough. Instead, government data tend to focus on the number of homeless people it has assisted and explanations as to why they are homeless. For example, the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) indicated to The New Paper that they had picked up and assisted 1121 homeless individuals and 604 homeless families in a five-year period from 2009 to 2013 (Chai, 2014; Ministry of Social and Family Development, 2012). Low levels of education and a series of individual factors were attributed to this group that the government has assisted. They were mostly older men who have attained secondary education or lower (Ministry of Social and Family Development, 2012). Some had sold their Housing Development Board (HDB) flats to resolve financial problems and could not afford alternative housing. Others were unable to stay with their family because of strained family relationships, anti-social behaviours or addiction-related problems.

In an email interview about the homeless in Singapore, the government stated that they ‘provided assistance and support to an average of 300 cases each year’ between 2005 to 2015 (email communication, April 2016). The latest figure in 2015 showed that among those who received assistance, 80% were men and 20% women. Most were ‘between 50 to 69 years old, with about 20% above 70 years old’ (email communication, April 2016). The government also revealed that it faced most difficulties with those with mental health and/or addiction issues:

Some of the challenges and concerns include homeless persons with mental health conditions and/or addictions who may be resistant towards receiving medication and treatment. These persons face difficulties in employment and are difficult to place in co-sharing housing options (e.g. joint singles scheme for public rental). Some individuals return to homelessness even after being released [from the Institute of Mental Health or the Welfare Home] to their families, who are not able to cope with their challenging behaviours. (email communication, April 2016)

In Singapore, the regulation of homelessness remains a complicated matter. While the government recognises that there are people sleeping rough in public spaces, the terms ‘homelessness’ and ‘homeless person’ do not exist in Singapore’s laws. Instead, the enforcement of the Destitute Persons Act (2013 Rev. Ed.) and the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act, Part IV ‘Vagrancy’ (1997 Rev. Ed.) – derived in part from 19th-century British colonial vagrancy laws – perform the simultaneous functions of policing, rehabilitating and providing compulsory care to those sleeping rough (Rusenko, 2017). Thus, ‘any idle person found in a public place, whether or not he is begging, who has no visible means of subsistence or place of residence or is unable to give a satisfactory account of himself’ can be picked up by MSF authorities and admitted into any of the 12 welfare homes for care and rehabilitation (Destitute Persons Act, 2013 Rev. Ed.). Once admitted, a person is under the direct jurisdiction of the Director of the welfare home. The idea that a homeless person needs to be rehabilitated reinforces the government’s stance that homelessness is a result of personal problems and failures.

Given strict media regulation, it is unsurprising that the national print media also portrays older people sleeping rough in Singapore as responsible for their circumstances. For example, Mathi (2008: H10) argued that the majority of the ‘transient homeless’ in Singapore are divorcees and the down-and-out caught in a ‘swirl of bad decisions and poor planning’. Most print media suggest that sleeping in public spaces is a matter of choice. Indeed, according to Lim (2007) these ‘sleepers’ are in fact not homeless but they sleep rough for pragmatic reasons such as saving on taxi midnight charges or proximity to their workplaces. Other reasons reported in the print media include falling out with rental flat roommates, hoarding their flats with too much junk so that there is no room to sleep, and being thrown out by their families (Soh and Ong, 2011). For one 71-year-old man, being homeless was less restrictive than other options: ‘I do not want to live in an old folk’s home. There is no freedom there. Here I can drink coffee with my friends whenever I want’ (Lim, 2007). In a recent article, the notion of choice is tied to ‘an easy way out’ (Tan, 2015). Accordingly, some able-bodied Singaporeans – mostly elderly men – are believed to be choosing a life of vagrancy because $200 dollars can be earnt in Singapore by begging for a few hours. Many older people also tend to refuse help from the authorities and are uncooperative, preferring and choosing to be homeless (Baharudin, 2015; Chai, 2014; Chai and Seow, 2015; Soh and Ong, 2011; Tan, 2015).

The fault of the government?

These individual explanations above are viewed with cynicism by local socio-political bloggers and forum commentators on the internet. For instance, one commentator on ‘SG Forums’⁷ was particularly critical of the national print media and the governments’ official rectitude but was careful to rely on the use of metaphors:

The poodles [government leaders] are too busy hiding their hands in their million-dollar salary. The lackeys [government officials] will clean up the street and sleepers when the poodle visit [sic]. If the poodle sees [homeless people], the lackeys will be sacked. The poodle will not want to solve this problem. How do you expect the problem to be solved if the national press dun [sic] even have the courage of providing a proper heading to the issue, instead choosing a lame label so as not to make their master angry? [sic] (SG Forums, 2007)

Of the 53 blog and forum articles we analysed, 42 blame the government and its rigid bureaucracy for the increased visibility of older homeless people in Singapore. Of these 42, 29 belonged to The Online Citizen (TOC) – a socio-political blog site that is generally critical of the government. For example, TOC described the plight of people who may lose their homes because they could not afford to pay the utility bills, service and conservancy charges, and the mortgage loan repayments to various government agencies (Cheng, 2008). In many articles, these government agencies were described by TOC as ‘heartless’, ‘lacking compassion’, ‘clueless’, ‘high handed’ and mostly oblivious to the plight of the homeless in the country (Cheng, 2008; Leong, 2010; The Online Citizen, 2007).

Socio-political bloggers and forum commentators also see themselves as online activists who are unmasking the ‘real’ truth about homelessness in Singapore. As the author of the blog site Carpe Diem (2010) observed: ‘The actual numbers may be higher. Homeless Singaporeans, especially the elderly, are ubiquitous throughout the HDB flats in Singapore. One need only take a tour at night to find them sleeping at void decks, parks and even in the open’. Others questioned the government’s punitive response to the homeless situation in Singapore. For example, TOC (Loh, 2010) was particularly dismissive of the government’s reliance on the Destitute Persons Act as a standard reply to all matters concerning homelessness and destitution:

Why do the [government] officers, in quoting the Act, immediately assume that there is something ‘defective’ about homeless people, so much so that they have to undergo ‘evaluation’ and ‘rehabilitation’? … More importantly, such a reply smacks of an appalling lack of understanding of what being homeless is and who these homeless people are.

While bloggers and forum commentators may claim to be online activists for the homeless in Singapore, their accounts of events cannot be verified. Many socio-political blogs are especially critical of the government, whether they are discussing older people sleeping rough or other issues in Singapore. In some of these blogs and forums, the social distance between blogger/commentator and homeless person is apparent; and betrayed by the tone used to describe the homeless. For instance, one such commentator wrote in a local forum: ‘If you go HDB KK market [at night] there are loads of such people [homeless people] also. That was last year, not sure if they clean up the place or not’ (SPUG, 2007, emphasis added).

Becoming homeless

Our findings suggest that the one-sided causal explanations offered above by the government, national print media and local internet blogs and forums are simplistic and not helpful in furthering understanding of homelessness in Singapore. Holding either the government or the individual solely responsible for homelessness is counter-productive and does not explain why the people in our study became homeless.

In Singapore, three key social institutions provided the necessary structural resources needed by the older homeless people in the study. These included work, family and friends, and government assistance. Numerous influences led the older people to ‘live outside and sleep on the streets’ (Ganesh), usually when they were no longer able to draw on resources from these social institutions. Table 1 provides a summary of key indicators for all 26 older homeless persons in relation to these three social institutions.

Table 1.

Key indicators of older homeless people interviewed.

Names	Age	Income history^a	Marital status(*= more than once)	Familial relations^b	Friends’ relations^c (not incl. homeless friends)	Government assistance (prior to homelessness)
Male
Johari	50	Irregular	Married	Weak	Average	None
Shawn	50	Mixed	Married	Weak	None	None
Ah Lek	53	Mixed	Single	None	None	None
Ganesh	54	Mixed	Single	Average	Weak	None
Low	54	Regular	Single	Healthy	Healthy	Housing
Aidy	55	Mixed	Divorced	Weak	None	None
Nelson	57	Mixed	Single	Weak	Average	None
Saleh	58	Regular	Divorced	Average	Average	Not eligible
Joe	59	Regular	Divorced	Average	None	Not eligible
Kheng	59	Mixed	Married*	Weak	Weak	None
Ahmad	61	Mixed	Divorced	Weak	Average	None
Samy	61	Mixed	Divorced	Weak	Weak	None
Edward	61	Mixed	Divorced*	Weak	Weak	None
David	62	Irregular	Single	Weak	None	None
Anwar	65	Mixed	Divorced	Weak	Healthy	None
Mr. Neo	65	Irregular	Married	Weak	Healthy	None
Sandeep	68	Irregular	Single	Weak	Weak	None
Wesley	69	Mixed	Single	Weak	None	Housing
‘Old-Town’	69	Mixed	Divorced	Average	Healthy	None
Mr. Han	69	Mixed	Divorced	Weak	Weak	None
Mr. Ng	69	Irregular	Single	Weak	Average	None
Female
Mawar	50	Irregular	Married*	Weak	Average	None
Annie	57	Regular	Separated	Healthy	None	None
Mdm. Toh	69	Mixed	Divorced	Weak	Average	None
Ying	75	Mixed	Widowed	Healthy	Average	Not eligible
Mdm. Goh	78	Mixed	Widowed	Average	Healthy	None
N = 26
Male = 21		Reg.= 4	Md.= 5	H.= 3	H.= 5	N.E.= 3
Female = 5		Irreg.= 6	Div.= 10	Avg.= 5	Avg.= 8	N.= 21
		Mxd.= 16	Sep.= 1	Wk.= 17	Wk.= 6	Hous.= 2
			Wd.= 2	N.= 1	N.= 7

Notes: ^aIncome history defined as respondent’s past earning capacity. Regular income history refers to consistent earnings from full-time employment. Irregular income history refers to inconsistent income earnings from part-time/casual employment or odd jobs. Mixed income history refers to a combination of both.

Familial relations defined as relations between respondents and their immediate and/or extended families, excluding marital relationships. Healthy relations refer to good relationships and regular contact with families. Average relations refer to having intermittent contact with select family members. Weak relations refer to having no or little family contact. None refers to the absence of family in respondents’ lives.

Friends’ relations defined as relations between respondents and their friends, excluding homeless friends – gauged in the same way as familial relations.

Source: In-depth interviews and field notes.

To survive, you need to work

During the interviews, many older homeless people repeatedly commented: ‘To survive in Singapore, you need to work’. The data highlighted two main interrelated difficulties with work: the maintenance of a regular income and the insecurity of irregular casual work and associated low-income.

Earning a regular income enables Singaporeans to accumulate two important resources that are needed for home ownership: personal savings and access to the Central Provident Fund (CPF).⁸ Of the 26 older homeless people interviewed 17 were able to own (or be buying) some form of private or public housing previously because they had jobs that provided a regular income. The majority worked in blue-collar manual labour that provided a low to moderate monthly income from $1000 to $2500. Nevertheless, public home ownership in Singapore is possible even on a low-income wage because those with lower income received additional subsidies from the government.

Edward was an exception to this group of 17 older people. At the height of his career as a managing director in the 1980s, Edward owned four houses. He had a public-housing flat which he bought from the Housing Development Board (HDB) and three private properties, a semi-detached landed property and two condominium apartments. He was earning $12,000 per month at this stage of his career. However, the itinerant nature of work in the textile industry meant that he was constantly travelling in search of customers and entertaining them. As Edward revealed, this led to a penchant for the ‘high life’ and alcohol and the subsequent loss of health, savings and his ability to work when he needed to in his later years:

[My heart problem] was because of my … lifestyle. When I was young, I was an alcoholic and a chain smoker … Well I made a mistake, a big mistake. That is, I do too much … social entertainment and too much alcohol … In one night, I can drink two towers of beers [and] probably one and a half bottle of whisky and brandy [at the nightclubs and karaoke pubs]. One day, I took out my calculator and I made a calculation. Oh shit! On social entertainment, I spent more than a million bucks!

The source of regular income stopped when Edward decided to retire at 41 years old: ‘I thought I could retire, so I stopped working and I considered myself retired. Every day I just go play golf’. More accurately, his retirement was also a result of external circumstances as much as his own individual decision making. The Swiss textile company that he worked for had moved its operations to Indonesia in the 1990s and Edward followed suit. In 1998, the race riots in Indonesia targeted ethnic Chinese and their businesses and it was no longer safe for Edward, a Chinese to work there.

For most of these 17 older homeless people in the study, a combination of external circumstances and personal decisions/factors resulted in the loss of regular income before the official minimum retirement age of 62 years (Retirement and Re-employment Act, 2012 Rev. Ed.). As a result, many of the people in the study had little savings. By the time their housing crisis struck, most had resorted to low-income irregular casual jobs, working as security guards, cleaners and sweepers.

The second difficulty, the insecurity of irregular casual work and associated low-income, meant that home ownership was not an option for some in the study. This group (six out of 26) generally either relied on renting in the open market or staying with their families and friends. Sandeep, a recovering drug addict belonged to this group. Working as a young musician in the 1960s exposed him to a culture of drug usage, especially marijuana and heroin. Eventually, Sandeep became trapped in a cycle of institutional living (prison, halfway houses, rehabilitation centres, welfare homes). The network he acquired while in prison led to more illegal work and a return to prison. Experiences in the group differed, with most indicating a history of irregular low-income casual manual work that was not illegal. Nonetheless, work alone was not sufficient to provide the necessary structural resources when a housing crisis struck.

Losing support of family and friends

Many older homeless people in the study were also unable to maintain healthy relationships with their families. Indeed, 13 of the 26 older homeless people had experienced a failed marriage. Divorce and/or separation from their spouses resulted in an immediate housing crisis with the loss of their marital home. Any children were either too young to provide alternative housing arrangements or unable/unwilling to assist.

Edward’s constant work travels and social entertainment were detrimental for both of his marriages. Twice divorced, Edward was left with depleted housing and financial resources. Edward first lost the HDB flat, a semi-detached landed property and two condominium apartments. His first wife took custody of their daughter. At the time, Edward was successful and not particularly worried: ‘I rebuilt myself from zero!’. After his second divorce, Edward lost the money in a joint account, another HDB flat and his three children. By this time, he was 60 years old, had retired and did not have a regular income. His age meant that it was hard to get a job that matched his past work experiences.

Many (17 out of 26) also had weak familial relations or had lost contact with their siblings, extended families and parents. In these cases, familial ties usually weakened following the sale/loss of the family home or the death of a parent. Wesley, a single homeless man, experienced weakened ties with his family when they decided to sell the family home after the passing of his father. He spoke fondly of how ‘Dad’ struggled to build a home for the family:

My dear dad, he struggled for us lah. From no home, we managed to buy [a landed property], you know? And pay, eventually paid fully! … we live there longest, thirty plus years. How long after my dad passed on, I don’t know. We [the rest of the family] got together, we all decided okay, [we] want to sell it off, and then we share [the money] lah … Today after so many years, in hindsight, we all make so much (sic) mistakes. If dad comes back from the grave, [he] will curse and swear at all of us.

A small number in the study claimed to have relatively healthy relationships with their families but indicated that they did not want to ‘bother them’ when a housing crisis occurred. For example, when Annie’s husband forced her to sell their marital home to pay off his gambling debts, she told her parents and siblings that she was renting outside. Most people in the study also retreated from their old friends once they became homeless. This happened regardless of the perceived strength of these friendships. It was often the humiliation of how far one has fallen that resulted in such a retreat. Edward confirmed: ‘It is a lot of pride. I mean, I can’t swallow it, if I have to go and ask them for help. I can’t’. Seven older homeless people also indicated during the interviews that they did not have any friends in their lives. Annie, for example, described how she spent large parts of her life working alone in her mother’s furniture business:

I have no friends since young until now. Because I [am] helping my mom for thirty over years. I am alone in the office. I seldom go out. [It is] me and my mom only and the workers lah. Not friends [with the workers] lah. [I have] very less (sic) communication [with the workers].

The failed and/or weak relationships with family and friends for many older homeless people in the study meant that the housing and financial support that family and friends could have provided was lost.

Accessing government assistance

Housing assistance is a key structural resource that the government provides for the homeless in Singapore. Financial assistance exists but the amount provided is minimal and subjected to stringent criteria to prevent welfare dependency. Four separate housing assistance schemes exist to date in Singapore: Public Rental Housing, Interim Rental Housing (IRH), Transitional Shelters, and Welfare Homes. Older homeless people in the study typically faced three main problems when it came to government housing assistance. First, they generally struggled with the bureaucracy.

Of the four types of housing assistance, the HDB’s Public Rental Housing was the most sought after. Rental rates were heavily subsidised by the government and varied from $26 to $205 per month for a one-room flat or $40 to $275 per month for a two-room flat. The rent varied according to income earned and applicant type. To prevent abuse of the system, successful applicants must not have sold off property within the last 30 months and have a household income of $1500 and below. The ‘cooling off’ period of 30 months after a previous property sale effectively shuts out all the older homeless people who were in a housing crisis because of a recent sale of the marital home. Ten of the 26 older homeless people in the study were not eligible as a result.

For those who qualified, Public Rental Housings were in high demand with a long wait list. To cope, HDB had increased the number of public rental flats from 42,000 in 2007 to 51,000 in 2015, while the average waiting time to be allocated a rental flat had decreased from 21 months in 2008 to 4 months in 2015 (email communication, April 2016). Nonetheless, four in the study qualified for the scheme but lacked documented proof, including Ahmad, a 61-year-old Indian man who first slept rough with his grandfather as a child.

Ahmad became homeless again later in life when he sold the marital home after his divorce in 2012. Ahmad suspected that his wife was unfaithful to him and claimed that of his four children, only the eldest daughter was his own ‘flesh and blood’. When his children became independent, Ahmad divorced his wife. The money from the sale of the flat was divided among his wife, four children and himself. Splitting the flat sales proceeds six ways meant that Ahmad could not afford to buy a place of his own. Since then, Ahmad either slept rough or rented rooms from the open market. In 2015, he went to his eldest daughter’s flat to stay for a few months. He returned to the streets because he felt that his daughter did not want to take care of him. Ahmad was not able to proceed with the public rental scheme application because his daughter refused to remove his name as a dependent living with her. She wanted to claim income tax reliefs. In the records of HDB, Ahmad had a home to stay in even though he was sleeping rough outside.

Second, many older homeless people in the study were fearful of living in government Welfare Homes. While the government presents the Welfare Homes as a form of housing assistance, they function more accurately as institutions for the destitute in Singapore. As mentioned earlier, there were 12 Welfare Homes established under the Destitute Persons Act (2013 Rev. Ed.), each designed to provide care and rehabilitation of homeless people. Nine interviewees had previously been admitted to a Welfare Home. Wesley described the night he got picked up by MSF officers:

And then one night, I cannot remember exactly two or three [in the morning] or what lah. ‘Come, come, come, come, come quickly!’ Like you are under arrest lah! ‘One more time, see you here, come, come, come! Wake up, wake up, let’s go!’ Put in the van or what. Go to the Home lah.

Once admitted, they were not allowed out except for work purposes. Only one older homeless person in the study did not mind the Welfare Home. The rest felt that it was a place they never want to return to.

Because I was so bored (sic) you know, you are doing the same old thing. Repeating and repeating and repeating. The same old story again and again and again. The guys there you know, will talk the same thing again, again. ‘I am here, I am there, I used to be there [referring to the same stories people tell]’… Yah, so irritating. Then, there was once I was asked to go outside and work. You know, as a cleaner. Then I joined them, went out to work. A few days after that, I ran away from the Home. (Ganesh)

Third, there was a lack of awareness about the types of government assistance available. At least 12 of the 26 older homeless people interviewed indicated that they did not know where to seek help when they faced a housing crisis. More importantly, none of the people in the study planned to be homeless and therefore were not aware of available assistance. When a housing crisis struck, many went out onto the streets, lost and confused. When Annie became homeless, she did not think of seeking help but thought of killing herself:

Oh, actually when … I came out the first night I actually wanted to commit suicide. I went to [a HDB flat], go to nine floor, I was about to jump down. Jump down from the level nine. And then something … there is a picture come into my mind showing of my mother, my father all these (sic). Then I didn’t jump lah. I just come down. That is my first night.

The poignant accounts shared by the respondents in this findings section reveal the complexities of their lives and the various pathways that led to their homelessness. They confirm that simplistic explanations that attribute homelessness to either the fault of the government or the individual do not hold firm.

Discussion

This article first examined different explanations of why older people are sleeping rough in Singapore offered by the government, the national print media and local internet blogs and forums. We show that homelessness was attributed to individual problems for which the government was not held responsible or to structural problems caused solely by government policies and bureaucracy. These structural and individual biases, as we show in our discussion of traditional definitions and explanations of homelessness, lead to the conclusion that one group of homeless people is deserving of assistance while the other is not. Attempting to assess who is at fault when a person become homeless does not adequately explain why and how homelessness occurs.

We adopted the pathways approach to avoid structural and individual biases. The ethnographic nature of the study did not allow us to arrive at the broad conclusions drawn by some scholars adopting this approach (Chamberlain and Johnson, 2011; Crane, 1999; Fitzpatrick et al., 2013; Johnson et al., 2008; MacKenzie and Chamberlain, 2003; Piat et al., 2015). However, the strength of an ethnographic study is that it reveals the complexities associated with the process of homelessness.

When the people in the study spoke about becoming homeless, they did not identify a particular pathway. Neither did they speak of a specific external circumstance or personal issue that made them homeless. Rather, they spoke about different episodes in their lives, different issues they faced, and the decisions they made voluntarily or at other times, felt compelled to make. The many influences and diminishing supports that contributed to the homelessness of the interview participants meant not one singular episode could be considered as the reason for their circumstances. As the previous section showed, challenges included marriage breakdown and divorce, extended family breakdown, peer influence, improvident spending, alcohol and drug addiction, gambling addiction, loss of income, low wages, irregular work, poor physical health, institutional living, housing bureaucracy and generational poverty.

The pathways approach is designed in part to identify the routes into homelessness. The risk, however, lies in overgeneralising and stereotyping an individual action (substance abuse for example) or a structural circumstance (poverty for example) as a pathway into homelessness. In trying to identify these pathways, we questioned how is it that some substance abusers become homeless while others do not. The same question arises for any pathways that may be identified potentially, whether it is vulnerabilities of older age or exposure to systemic disadvantage. Our ethnographic findings show that it was not possible for us to identify specific pathways for the older homeless people in the study. Rather, we can state that all 26 of the older homeless people in this study encountered multiple pathways in their lives.

Homelessness occurred for older people in our study when these multiple pathways led to the weakening and subsequent loss of structural resources from work, family and friends and government assistance. The significance of these social institutions can be further understood in relation to the Singapore government’s ‘social safety net’. The core principles are outlined below ( Ministry of Social and Family Development, 2009; Ng, 2011):

Self-reliance and mutual obligation

Encouragement to work

Families as first line of support; and

Many helping hands in supporting an individual

The government’s foundations of a social safety net are based on self-reliance and mutual obligation, built around the social institutions of work, family and friends, and a ‘many helping hands’ approach that places the government at the centre of a network of voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs) and community organisations. The people in our study generally struggled with holding on to a source of regular income and/or worked in irregular low-waged casual jobs. Many also had weak familial relations. This meant that the only protective layer of the ‘safety net’ that they could rely on was the ‘many helping hands’.

Ideally, a network or ‘many hands’ from the different VWOs and community organisations could help when structural resources are not available from the social institutions of work and family. In reality, there are ‘few hands’ when it comes to the issue of homelessness in Singapore. Besides the government’s financial and housing assistance discussed earlier, there is no official policy that tackles the issue of homelessness directly. The few VWOs that received government funding are those that are running the Welfare Homes and Transitional Shelters. Others that work closely with homeless people are not recognised officially by the government and hence cannot do much without funding. Consequently, the remaining protective safety net for older homeless people in our study was the government assistance schemes. The lack of awareness as well as difficulty in accessing them explains in part why older people in the study became homeless.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank Dharma Arunachalam and Darryn Snell for their many insightful comments and suggestions throughout our discussions in 2015. We also thank Kate Cregan for reading an early draft of this article in 2016.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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