Volume 29, Number 3
February 2025
ARTICLE

The Moral Harms of Homelessness

Volume 29, Number 3, February 2025, Pages 355–393
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v29i3.3427
PDFPDF

Abstract

It is well established that those facing homelessness suffer severe harms and deprivations. Homeless persons are among the worst-off people in any given society. And yet homelessness is a relatively undertheorized issue in ethics and social and political philosophy, and it remains an enduring feature of many affluent, liberal democratic societies. This paper aims to provide an account of the underacknowledged moral harms of homelessness that can ground and motivate adequate durable solutions and public policy reform to alleviate homelessness. The paper argues that the few existing philosophical accounts of the moral harms of homelessness—the freedom-based, privacy-based and care-based accounts—reveal important insights but suffer limitations. The paper then advances a novel status-based account that foregrounds the social and moral status poverty of homeless persons. This account reveals an underacknowledged but fundamental moral harm of homelessness, addresses the limitations of existing accounts, and grounds adequate durable solutions. This more complete account can then help challenge the unsettling tacit acceptance of homelessness in contemporary societies and provide a normative framework for urgent reform.
Copyright © 2025 Bradley Hillier-Smith
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
|

The Problem of Basic Equality: A Constructive Critique

Nikolas Kirby

Voter Motivation

Adam Lovett

Unifying Moral and Epistemic Praiseworthiness

Leo Eisenbach

Being Wronged and Understanding Moral Wrongness

Daniel Vanello

When Enough Is Not Enough: Satisficing and Moral Efficiency

Konstantin Weber

Supersession-Proof Reparations: Harms, Wrongs, and Historical Injustice

Felix Lambrecht

Parents and Peers: A Kantian Moral Development

William Grant Ray

Soldiers and Moral Tragedy: Comments on Renzo

Christopher Kutz

Moral Disagreement and the Question Under Discussion

Stina Björkholm

It’s Only Natural! Moral Progress Through Denaturalization

Charlie Blunden

The Overweighted Integrity Problem: Conscience, Complicity, and Moral Standing

Kyle G. Fritz

Moral Worth in Gettier Cases

Neil Sinhababu

Portico