Between Institutional Loneliness and Visibility: Low-Income Families Navigating Housing Insecurity in Social Welfare Programs

In recent years, as countries worldwide have experienced an affordable housing crisis, housing insecurity among poor families has drawn increasing and diverse scholarly attention. In contrast to other disciplines, social work scholarship has given only scant attention to housing problems. Connecting scholarship on housing insecurity and social work with people living in poverty, this study explores how low-income renting families experience various government social welfare services that address housing hardships. The focus of this study is on services that are provided by state-level agencies as well as local welfare departments, especially social workers. Based on 100 interviews with poor renting families in Israel, our findings reveal that families portray their interactions with government housing programs as an experience of institutional loneliness, stemming from three main tenets: intricate bureaucracy, alienating interactions with public workers and discrimination. However, our findings show that families experience visibility and solidarity during their interactions with social workers, albeit the workers' marginal engagement with housing-related issues and constrained ability to assist. The study urges the social work profession to step into a more significant role in addressing housing instability, discussing implications for research, education, practice and policy.