“I Always Have my Key in my Hand”: A Photovoice Exploration with Women in Post-Shelter Transition

Abstract

This Photovoice research is situated within a larger study and part of a community-based participatory research (CBPR) partnership, Project Lotus, Hope Together. Project Lotus is a collaboration that began in early 2021 with a network of women’s shelters, women with lived experience of homelessness, and academic scholars in Montreal, Quebec, working towards a broad goal of co-creating supports for women post-shelter stay. Underpinned by a critical feminist lens, the aim of this research was to uncover what helps and what hinders women in their transition from shelter to housing. Using Photovoice as the participatory research method, seven women in Montreal with lived experience of a shelter stay and post-shelter transition to their own housing were interviewed over a 6-month period in 2021. Five key and interrelated themes emerged as central to their experience and process in their transition from shelter to home: 1) Shelter as a safety net; 2) Living with trauma; 3) Moving beyond survival to find meaning in everyday life; 4) Connecting and contributing; and 5) A home. Our findings demonstrated that, while moving into their own living space post-shelter marked a new beginning for the women, it was a beginning filled with various systemic and structural barriers. Our findings also suggest and align with recent literature reviews that there are broad systemic inequalities for women related to housing, gender roles, and poverty. Sustainable wrap-around supports and policy changes using rights-based, systems, and trauma-informed approaches to support women post-shelter are urgently required.

Keywords

• women
• homelessness
• shelter
• transition
• photovoice