It's your own fault...right? A comparative, urban sociological explanation of homelessness in the interplay of individual, institutional, and structural factors

为什么在德国，尽管有广泛的社会政策，人们仍然无家可归？本项目的目的不仅是在理论和方法上推进无家可归问题的社会学研究，而且要用新的数据丰富它的经验。其重点在于系统地评估不同地方社会保健系统和城市结构中的个人行为模式。Göttingen、卡塞尔和帕德伯恩等城市被选为案例研究。虽然它们在与无家可归有关的许多方面是相似的，但它们在当地照顾系统的重要方面仍然不同。一方面，这三个城市都是中等规模的大学城，拥有12万至20万居民，财务回旋余地有限。另一方面，各自护理系统的治理结构和参与者差别很大。在Göttingen，城市本身提供了一个（男子）夜间庇护所，并与新教Diakonie作为服务提供者密切合作。相比之下，卡塞尔市没有自己的夜间避难所。相反，它从私人业主那里租了350套公寓，同时委托福利协会管理各种庇护所（包括一个专门为妇女提供的庇护所）。最后，帕德博恩市与卡塞尔和Göttingen的不同之处在于天主教明爱会的强大存在以及北莱茵-威斯特伐利亚州“帮助紧急住房”倡议方案的存在。相关的经验数据将通过为期18个月的定性面板分析来收集。每个城市大约有12人将接受三次采访（即每六个月一次），以探索无家可归者随时间的经历。此外，将与从业人员进行半结构化访谈，以获取专家的观点以及当地（监管）实践和结构背景条件。使用MAXQDA软件，访谈材料将以系统和类别形成的方式进行评估，从而使我们能够对具体的包含和排除机制产生假设。

Why do people in Germany become (and remain) homeless despite an extensive range of social policies? This project aims to not only advance sociological research on the topic of homelessness theoretically and methodologically, but also to enrich it empirically with new data. Its focus lies on a systematic assessment of individual behavioural patterns within different local social care systems and urban structures over time. The cities of Göttingen, Kassel, and Paderborn were selected as case studies. Although they are similar in many aspects relevant to homelessness, they still differ in important aspects of their local care systems. On the one hand, all three cities are medium-sized university towns with 120,000 to 200,000 inhabitants with a limited financial manoeuvring room. On the other hand, the governance structures and the actors involved in the respective care systems differ considerably. In Göttingen, the city itself offers a (men’s) night shelter and cooperates closely with the Protestant Diakonie as a service provider. In contrast, the city of Kassel does not have its own night shelter. It rather has rented 350 flats from private property owners, while commissioning welfare associations to manage various shelters (including one specifically for women). The city of Paderborn, finally, differs from Kassel and Göttingen in the strong presence of Catholic Caritas and the existence of the initiative programme "Help in housing emergencies" of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The relevant empirical data are to be collected by means of a qualitative panel analysis over a period of 18 months. Approximately 12 people per city will be interviewed three times (i.e. every six months) in order to explore the experiences of homeless people over time. In addition, semi-structured interviews will be performed with practitioners in order to capture the experts’ perspectives as well as local (regulatory) practices and structural context conditions. Using the software MAXQDA, the interview material will be evaluated in a systematic and category-forming way, allowing us to then generate hypotheses about concrete inclusion and exclusion mechanisms.