Medicalizing Homelessness

In Chapter two of the book called “Inequality, Poverty, and Neoliberal Governance” written by Vincent Lyon Callo is about medicalizing homelessness which basically means to have the production of self-blame and self-governing homeless shelters. It talks about haveing the practice over self-control and following routine practices in the shelter to help detect, diagnose, and treat disorders that the homeless people have. Reasons that were listed as to why these homeless people are here are due to substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, eviction, loss of income, being new to the area, or being chronically homeless. So a lot of homeless people would come into this shelter not knowing why or how they became homeless. But the staff and clients and this shelter would work together to help the clients find out and learn what their problem is and how to solve it. For example, there was one lady in this chapter who said. “I have always worked and have no trouble finding work. It’s finding work that pays enough to live on that’s hard” (Lyon Callo).  The staff will also spend all of their time monitoring the entire house and all the guests. Any small action that a client shows can help explain what type of problem they may have. For example, they explained how even a client just watching television can show they have depression in their life. The key for many of these individuals is to resolve their homelessness through self-reform. As, one of Lyon Callo’s goal in this book “was to help produce more talk, more reflection, and possibly new understandings and practices to emerge through dialogue about the effects of routine practices (Lyon Callo, pg. 23).”