Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>A few years after the US subprime mortgage crisis, housing hardships aggravated in Germany as well. Tenants are facing insecure, inadequate or pauperizing housing conditions. While there is some research dedicated to home- and rooflessness, studies about this “grey zone” of precarious housing are missing. Especially there is a lack of research examining the subjective experiences and viewpoints of people affected. Based on semi-structured interviews, the paper seeks to reconstruct an ideological type of coping strategy illustrated by one interview. The empirical data was interpreted with a method called depth hermeneutics which is based on psychoanalytic social psychology. It is demonstrated that the interviewee coped with experiences of housing precarity by means of psychic defense. He draws stereotypical clichés of homelessness by splitting, for example, between the “classic tramp” and “people from the East.” He identifies with the first and draws projective pictures of the latter, which helps him purify his self-perception from morally impermissible attributes related to homelessness by society.</jats:p>