A graduate thesis by Barbara Erin Gaede, who is studying at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides a useful reminder that rural homelessness is different from urban homelessness.
The housed population of North America is largely accommodated in urbanized development. Hardly surprising that such an environment offers its own unique solutions to issues facing the unhoused who live in these social spaces.
However, people in rural areas who are unhoused also face housing needs and other related survival necessities that may appear similar to the challenges that face people who are unhoused in urban areas.
Can ‘citified’ solutions be identified and borrowed wholesale from urban communities and be successfully adapted to address rural issues? Gaede’s thesis argues otherwise. Her analysis may be valuable to those working to address housing and related issues in a sparsely populated rural environment. Read more at Minds@UW: Rural Poverty And Social Stigma: Housing Insecurity In America’s Dairyland
