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By Atrooba Chaudhury, Jean Paul Ramírez Echavarría, Nosaiba Fayyaz, and Atiya Mahmood

If you had asked me at the start of this summer what "home" meant, I probably would have answered like a design student: natural light, good proportions, and a well-planned floor plan. The training I received as part of my Mitacs Globalink Research Internship with the Aging in the Right Place (AIRP) Partnership began to shift that.

I am Atrooba Chaudhry, a Interior Design student from Pakistan studying at Lahore College for Women University. This summer, as part of my work with the Inclusive Environments Lab and the AIRP Partnership, my role involved shadowing participant interviews and transcribing them afterwards. That work put me in the room, and later at my desk with the recordings, where I listened closely to people’s experiences moving between hospital beds, shelters, temporary housing, and independent living, asking what it actually meant to "age in the right place."

The AIRP Partnership defines "aging in the right place" as recognizing that "where an older person lives impacts their ability to age optimally" (Canham et al., 2022a, p.3), a fit between person and place rather than a fixed idea of home. This fit has roots in Lawton and Nahemow's (1973) ecological theory of aging, which treats wellbeing as a balance between a person's competence and the demands of their environment. Canham et al. (2022b) adapted this specifically for older people experiencing homelessness, and identified six concrete domains: built environment, access to services, social integration, affordability and stability, emotional attachment to place, and the surrounding political and economic context. Their framing is direct: "secure housing for older adults should support one's unique vulnerabilities and lifestyles" (Canham et al., 2022b, p. 1251). However, it wasn't until I sat with the transcripts and heard participants' own stories that this became real to me—two of the six indicators, social integration and emotional attachment, are about relationships and belonging, not square footage.

When shadowing interviews and reviewing interview recordings, I noticed two distinct kinds of answers, equally common. Some participants described the physical space of the shelter/housing itself—things like accessibility, privacy, or having a room they could call their own. Others described the identity-related side of the shelter/housing program, such as staff remembering them by name instead of by room number, being asked what they wanted instead of being told what would happen to them, and being spoken to as adults still capable of making their own choices, rather than being managed like a case. For many, a sense of control was what grounded their identity and allowed their sense of self to remain intact as the place around them kept changing.

Hearing how much of people's sense of self depended on being trusted with their own choices, rather than managed like cases, pushed me toward a bigger question: what happens when someone's housing status itself becomes the reason they're denied that trust in the first place? That question carried me to the article "Homeism: Naming the stigmatization and discrimination of persons experiencing homelessness" (Canham et al., 2022c). The researchers coin the term "homeism," deliberately drawing parallels to concepts like racism or ageism. The term is rooted in "home" rather than "house," because a house is a physical structure, while a home carries deeper meanings of identity, connection, and belonging. This distinction gave language to what I had been hearing all summer but had not yet known how to name.

Homeism, as the article describes it, is the stigmatization and discrimination people face specifically because of their housing status: being treated as less capable, less trustworthy, or less deserving of a say in their own lives, simply for being unhoused or unstably housed, in the same way racism or ageism singles someone out based on race or age (Canham et al., 2022c). I could feel this playing out in the interviews I observed as well, long before I had this language for it. Homeism came from people including healthcare providers or landlords, who made assumptions about someone based on their housing status. It came from systems, such as a hospital discharge process that leaves someone with nowhere appropriate to go. And it came from within, when a person internalizes what's been said about them, often resulting in them not asking for help. Naming this phenomenon as homeism also gave me a way to explain something else I'd been sensing without words: that "homelessness" isn't one situation or a single experience. Someone sleeping outside, someone in a shelter, and someone living in temporary housing may all experience different kinds of discrimination, even when they are lumped into the same category.

The question of who is responsible for protecting someone's sense of self when a system is involved pulled me straight back to Pakistan and to the way I grew up. My own grandparents have never lived alone. Someone was always nearby and care is often expressed through closeness and dependence rather than independence. Respect is shown by being present and involved in each other's lives. In the Canadian system, by contrast, respect is expressed through autonomy, with housing treated as a right owed to someone whether or not family is nearby. Neither approach is more caring. They're answering different questions about who is responsible for whom. Sitting with the interviews made me wonder what a family-based system quietly misses when there's no family left to absorb that responsibility. In some ways, keeping family close provides an established network of connection and responsibility. However, not everyone has family available to fulfill this role. For those who do not, formal systems including housing, care services, and the environments in which people live become central to how they experience security, dignity, and inclusion. That's where design of these systems is critical in recognizing what may be absent without familial support: to recognize someone, give them a say, and treat them as an individual. These are the same identity-based needs that came up over and over in the interviews, and the same thing homeism strips away.

All of this brought me back to my own field. I used to think good design meant creating a space that was accessible, functional, and well-planned. Now, I think accessibility and identity answer two different questions. Accessibility asks whether someone can move through a space safely and independently. Identity asks whether someone can still recognize themselves within a space. I wasn't taught to design for that directly, but I believe it's where my training can contribute. A layout, a material, or even one small design choice can quietly communicate whether someone is valued and still belongs.

In my own future practice, I’ve considered a couple of the ways that could look, out of many possibilities. First, residents should have control over the personal details of their living spaces, whether through a mailbox or door displaying their name rather than a unit number, or built-in storage and display areas that allow them to arrange and personalize their belongings rather than simply move into a fully furnished, predetermined space. Second, designing shared spaces to allow residents to choose how they participate in social interactions, with movable seating that lets them join a conversation or sit apart on their own terms, without needing to ask staff to rearrange the space for them.

Neither of these examples directly addresses accessibility on its own. A space can meet every physical and functional accessibility standard and still fail to recognize who someone is, give them any say, or let them feel like they belong. This was a recurring insight I took away from the interviews. Small design decisions can communicate whether residents retain control over their lives or are expected to adapt to environments designed around them. If home is about identity and belonging, then design is one of the tools that can support that or work against it, and I want to become more intentional about making sure it does the former.

Home is not just an address and it isn't simply the physical space we spend years learning to care about. It is also about whether your identity is seen and recognized by the people and spaces around you, even as everything else is constantly changing. A house may provide the physical space, but a home is also shaped by the sense of belonging and control that someone can experience within it. This is the difference I want to design for.

References

Canham, S. L., Mahmood, A., Walsh, C. A., Sussman, T., Guérin, B., Chaudhury, H., Colgan, S., Dunn, J. R., Nixon, L., Somers, J. M., & Yan, A. (2022a). Aging in the right place: Building capacity for promising practices that support older people experiencing homelessness in Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver. Social Science Protocols, 5(1), 1–13.

Canham, S. L., Weldrick, R., Sussman, T., Walsh, C. A., & Mahmood, A. (2022b). Aging in the right place: A conceptual framework of indicators for older persons experiencing homelessness. The Gerontologist, 62(9), 1251–1257.

Canham, S. L., Moore, P., Custodio, K., & Bosma, H. (2022c). Homeism: Naming the stigmatization and discrimination of persons experiencing homelessness. Housing, Theory and Society, 39(5), 507–523.

Lawton, M. P., & Nahemow, L. (1973). Ecology and the aging process. In C. Eisdorfer & M. P. Lawton (Eds.), The psychology of adult development and aging (pp. 619-674). American Psychological Association.