INTERDISCIPLINARY WORLD CONGRESS OF URBAN STUDIES: URBAN POVERTY AND HOMELESSNESS

t is a great pleasure to invite you to the hybrid Interdisciplinary World Congress of Urban Studies 2022, which will be held from 25-26 August in Istanbul and on-line. The hybrid format allows participants to attend from all around the globe, but we would also like to express our wish to have as many participants as possible with us personally in Istanbul.Developments experienced during and after the Industrial Revolution where societies started to improve their economies changed the appearance and semantic dimension of poverty. Old poverty, which was a livable and acceptable situation, disappeared with the arrival of new poverty, and misery and hunger took its place. Disintegration and rupture, which were not seen in old social segments, have become more apparent with the presence of modern poverty. Additionally, the poor who experience income insufficiency are not able to afford what the market charges. In addition, because the market returns more profit from housing, the chance of finding a low-priced house has decreased. Basic structural foundations of the poor such as irregular work or unemployment, insufficient social benefits, insufficient income and being unable to afford the budget of high-priced housing have caused “homelessness.” Today, homelessness, for various reasons, has become widespread and is an important burning issue. According to United Nations (UN) Reports, there are 100 million homeless people worldwide. As many as 1.6 billion people lacked adequate housing (Habitat, 2015). Homelessness emerged as an important social problem in the 1980s when individualism came into prominence and capitalism was handling all the institutions, especially in developed countries. The homelessness phenomenon identified within urban areas is a social problem that has drawn the attention of the social sciences more and more each day.