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In this article, we introduce the “dwelling paradox” to explore how the state actively produces water insecurity for people experiencing homelessness in the Global North. We explain that the dwelling paradox is (1) produced by a modernist ideology of public service delivery that privileges water provision through private infrastructural connections in the home; (2) is reproduced by the welfare‐warfare state, which has increasingly weaponized public water facilities and criminalized body functions in public space; and (3) is actively contested by some houseless communities, who challenge hegemonic ideals of the “home”—and its water infrastructure—as a private, atomized space. In advancing a relational and spatial understanding of water insecurity, we use the dwelling paradox to illustrate how unhoused people are caught in a space of institutional entrapment that is forged by state power and amplified by anti‐homeless legislation. Such spaces of entrapment make it extremely difficult for unhoused people to achieve a safe, healthy, and thriving life—the basis of the human rights to water and sanitation.

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Human Water > Water Governance

Water scholarship has advanced considerably in recent decades. Despite this remarkable progress, water challenges may be growing more quickly than our capacity to solve them. While much progress has been made toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 — water and sanitation for all — new stressors have emerged to threaten this progress. Far from being a problem of the Global South, recent research shows that water insecurity is very much a global phenomenon — and one that has been, until recently, seriously neglected in the Global North. This indicates a strong need for innovative measurement of who experiences water insecurity, new approaches for monitoring the efficacy of water interventions, and more effective management of complex, mobile, and multiple water infrastructures to achieve water security. In this paper, we introduce the Household Water Insecurity approach to addressing these concerns. First, we suggest ways to improve the measurement of water insecurity — pinpointing problems at the household and individual levels — in ways that can inform policymaking with improved precision. Second, we discuss ways that new information and communication technology can improve monitoring and indicate where water infrastructure repairs and investments are most needed. Third, we highlight the need for new approaches to managing complex water infrastructures in more inclusive and democratic ways.