Need for shelter, demand for housing, desire for home: a psychoanalytic reading of home-making in Vancouver

Home is often dually conceptualized as a physical space of living and a psycho-social place of belonging. To engage with this dual nature of home, housing scholars refer to the concept of ontological security to understand how different forms of housing affect subjective well-being. This paper extends the scope of this research. Developing a framework inspired by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, we aim to understand what kind of psycho-spatial arrangements of home-making are involved in establishing ontological security. Based on empirical research in Vancouver, BC, Canada, we suggest three modalities involved in home-making: the need for shelter as the most basic psychic relation to survival, the demand for housing as a psycho-social arrangement with the Other, and the desire for home as a psycho-spatial constitution in the fantasy. Through this, the paper calls for a deeper understanding of how the subject is inscribed actively and dynamically into their social and built environment.