Group Discussion: Rethinking 'Home'
In the first chapter of this resources, we asked you to consider what home means to you. We also asked you to discuss in groups what home means, and how physical, material, emotional, and social characteristics shaped what home meant to you.
Take 5 minutes to look at your notes and remember the group discussion.
Now that you have worked through the different resources of the PuSH project, we’d like you to return to this question of home and its different meanings. In recent years our understandings of home, and of what we value in housing and homemaking, have faced a series of challenges. The accelerating effects of the climate emergency, the physical and mental demands of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the growing disparity between wages and the affordability of housing, have forced many of us to reconsider what we prioritise in our environment and what, if any, choices we can make to change the environments we live in.
Drawing on these issues, and on the accounts of precarious housing outlined throughout the PuSH resources, we want you to consider what matters to you in housing? To do so, work in small groups to discuss the following questions. Then report back on these discussions
1) What would you prioritise in making positive changes to your living conditions and your housing? This might include access to indoor or outdoor space, affordability, type of property, type of tenure, location, and so on. Why would you prioritise these changes over others?
2) How is your home situated within the structures of housing we have discussed throughout these resources? What type of housing is it? Is it owned or rented? Under what conditions could it be made more or less precarious?
3) What do you think are the most important steps to being able to feel ‘at home’ within housing? What steps can be taken to encourage such a feeling among those social groups most affected by precarious housing?
4) Finally, returning to the question we opened with, what does home mean to you? Has this definition changed following engagement with the PuSH resources? If so, in what ways and why?