Criminal Minds Gentrification Episode

 This week we had to read an article that came out in 2004 called, Beyond Gentrification: Mobilizing Communities and Claiming Space, written by James C. Fraser. The article is about the gentrification in cities like Washington D.C. and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Within those cities the article wrote about the violence that occured because of gentrification.  While reading this article, I would keep on getting reminded of an episode of Criminal Minds. Criminal Minds is about the Behavior Analyst Unit team of the FBI and they go to mostly different places in the United States saving crimes. The episode that it kept reminding me of is in the fifth season and episode four called Hopeless. The episode starts with some vandalism in a neighborhood in Washington D.C. area then it escalates to two couples being brutally murdered. It then shows the killers afterwards and they are watching the video that one of them took during the kill. The killers are a group of three guys that live and work together. Where the killers work is as construction workers so not only are they getting slowly forced out with gentrification but they are building the homes that are replacing their neighborhood. Their next murder is after one of them was scolded at work for not having more of the house build. After being scolded, that night the group went out and murdered a random waitress and her boyfriend. The next murder is bartender and a customer at the bar. The customer's hands were nailed to the bar by a nail gun. The team also finds their first killing at this time since one of the members of the team thought about the vandalism that was occured and remembered a new townhouse being vandalised but one room. Once some of the team got there, they were able to open one of the walls and find their first killing. Knowing that the killers work in construction they were able to build a profile and catch the killers. I believe that this episode is a perfect example of the violence that gentrification causes. Not everyone is going to brutally murder people but shows how angry the residents are.

Article: https://learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet02-xythos.content.blackboardcdn.com/5c1270dbb5a74/8277643?X-Blackboard-Expiration=1635271200000&X-Blackboard-Signature=610jh8GM9ENSccLSx7F5kw%2BG066yaxNdEaxe%2FRzJdj8%3D&X-Blackboard-Client-Id=100342&response-cache-control=private%2C%20max-age%3D21600&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27beyond%2520gentrification.pdf&response-content-type=application%2Fpdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20211026T120000Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=21600&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAZH6WM4PL5SJBSTP6%2F20211026%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=244ffab12ee037c9f3e90e8355b9de85adc4f7e947d31b062a22e34e78cb68f6

Summary of episode: https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/Turner%27s_Group

How Cars Changed America

 

The Cross Bronx Expressway, 2021. Image Source:  Eyewitness ABC 7 NY, WABC-TV. 

The automobile is a wonderful invention--it really is. It grants the user a level of freedom unprecedented in human history, and, incidentally, equally unprecedented opportunity. With a car, you can travel a thousand miles in 24 hours without adhering to any set plan or schedule. Car ownership allows an individual to live wherever he or she wants irrespective of commute distance or access to public transportation. It is little wonder that much of American planning during the Inter-War and Cold War decades centered on maximizing the automobile's strengths and minimizing its shortcomings. Its strengths, speed and independence, are maximized through the proliferation of faster roadways and more of them. Its shortcomings, large size and fuel cost, are minimized through the proliferation of parking lots and gasoline subsidies. Consequently, the automobile is King in America, as is the motorist, and it is that fact that has devastated American society.

    If the motorist is King, what then is the pedestrian, cyclist and passenger? Peasants, really. My father once said to me, as we in the car passed a pedestrian walking in the ditch alongside Columbus Road, "If you want to look poor in America, walk anywhere." In this country, the streets are for cars and trucks, while pedestrians--or heaven forbid cyclists--are imposers. And if everyone drives a car, why bother making a special effort to ensure the roads are accessible to bicyclists and pedestrians? After all, they still have the right to walk/bike along the side of the road (if they are comfortable with being about a yard away from 24 to 1,100 thousand kg*m/s of momentum flying by*) (unless it is a freeway, where pedestrians and cyclists are forbidden). And why bother with public transit? Kids have school buses, and do kids really need to be able to go anywhere besides school and home? And heaven forbid anyone one be a "Jay Walker"; it is only natural that a child's life depend on careful adherence to rules he does not understand, and it is only natural that people be forced to walk hundreds of yards out of their way to a crosswalk in order to get across a 50 foot stretch of pavement (or at least, such thinking has been natural, in America, since the 1920s, when motor companies ran a smear campaign against Jay Walkers). 

    The fact is, we live in a country where a car is not a luxury but a necessity. Driving does not open up opportunities here--rather, not driving is what closes them. We Americans live in a world where those who cannot drive--the very old, the very young, the very poor and the disabled--are socially disenfranchised by the American fetish for personally owned vehicles (POVs).

    On the other hand, the vast majority of Americans are motorists, so does that count for nothing? Since 80% of America's labor force drives to work, and another 10% hitches a ride in a friend's POV, can it not be said that "car-first" policies are good for America as a whole? If we are talking about something that is meant to benefit 90% of America, could the Devil's advocate not say that it may be worth it, if only in an insensitive, Machiavellian way?

    No. Putting cars first helps nobody, not even car owners. By encouraging (often to the point of outright forcing) more and more people to drive, which is what these policies end up doing, government authorities have made transport easier for no one. The fact is, people take a mile when you give them an inch. That explains why parking and freeway lanes are far more abundant in America than, say, Germany, and yet there is no significant difference in ease of parking or traffic congestion. In fact, cars often end up being slower than the alternatives, at least statistically. For example, 80% of Ohioans drive to work, for an average commute time of 25 minutes. In Athens, only 50% of people drive to work/class, for an average commute time of 14 minutes. And what are the respective social experiences? The pedestrian sees other people, hears other conversations, interacts amicably (and sometimes belligerently) with others in person, and the same could be said for transit passengers and, to a lesser degree, cyclists. Meanwhile the motorist is at best isolated and at worst frustrated and enraged. And usually stuck in traffic and/or fretting over where to find a parking spot.

    All of this is to say nothing of the storm water, water pollution, air pollution, noise pollution and CO2 emissions a country of cars produces. Since these are not directly social issues, I will not go into them. I apologize for going on so long; I hope it wasn't a boring read.

Afterword: I should clarify that I myself am a motorist. Also, I lived in Germany for one year, during which time I used public transit almost exclusively (but still was exposed to automobiles). I know I can come off as sounding anti-car or worse anti-American, but this is not really true. On that note, I focus pretty much exclusively on the US, but much of what I am saying is also true with respect to Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, S. Korea, etc. I just would rather not talk too much about places with which I am less familiar.

*Calculations based on a compact car going 40 MPH vs an 18-wheeler going 70 MPH.

I direct the readers to the following resources:

https://proxy.library.ohio.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat00572a&AN=alice.b5509644&site=eds-live&scope=site

This should (hopefully) take you to ALICE's listing for Citizen Jane, a documentary that details Jane Jacobs' fight against, among other things, the automobile. If you have limited time, I recommend you watch at least 43:00 to 44:00 and 1:07:45 to 1:16:00. I also recommend 59:00 to 1:07:45, but that part doesn't really have anything to do with roads. Basically, I just recommend watching the whole thing, if you have time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_3c3wqPsJo

This is a YouTube video explaining the origins of "Jay Walking" as a social construct. It's quite fun and interesting to watch.

https://data.census.gov/cedsci/

This is where my statistics came from. It's just the US Census Bureau.

A Selective Memorialization of the Past in Post-Genocide Cambodia

    In high school and college, I had the study tours to S21 and Cheung Ek, also known as Toul Sleng and the Killing Fields respectively, once or twice every 3 or 6 months. Sometimes, they would bring us to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, where they tried former members of the Khmer Rouge. To a naïve kid like me, the most exciting part about the tours those days was when I got to skip classes and hang out with my friends on the bus to the museums and during the tour, where we would chitchat and scare each other.

   Having lost close family members to the genocide myself, I understand firsthand why memorialization is important to the reconciliation of Cambodian people with the genocide. When people ask about Cambodia, I would begin with the geographical location of Cambodia using Southeast Asia as a reference, then proceed to the population size just to show we are a small country, and when all of that do not make sense, I would resort to the topic of Khmer Rouge. To make it more relevant, however exaggerated, I would call it the “Cambodian Holocaust.” I feel as if saying that would make them suddenly interested in learning more about Cambodia, or at least sympathize with where I come from. I feel as if that was the only highlight about Cambodia. I think this Khmer Rouge narrative I always bring up is also socially constructed, and it is influenced by how Cambodia, as a country, is perceived by other people and (re)framed in the media, pop culture. 

    

    Compared to ESMA, the most known detention center used to empower the civil-military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983), I believe that S21 and the Killing Fields in Cambodia could have done better than just overly portraying the physical horror, show-cased skulls and human remains, which the reading conceptualizes as commodifying the victimhood (Tyner et al., 2012). The same reading posits that the principle aim of the memorials is to educate future generations and to shape a sense of shared experience, while at other memorials, the purpose is to free people from guilt and reconcile with the past. 

    

    How does memorialization of physical horror and violence contribute to the healing of Cambodian people over the pains of being tortured and of losing their family members, and more so, how does it contribute to the reconciliation process and absolving guilt? Sirik (2020) explains that only a version of the past that aligns with political agenda of those in power gets represented in the memorialization, and if that is the case, it only perpetuates fears and trauma among survivors and future generations. 

    For instance, in 1997 when the civil war broke out, that same morning, I could see fatigue and extreme fear in my parents’ faces as the scene of the genocide apparently struck them again. I was too young to remember anything – naïve and ignorant. I enjoyed seeing the flames and pitch-black smoke coming from the nearby gas station. All I heard was “hurry, pack your stuff, and we leave the city.” The memory was fresh and vivid as it was just 20 years apart from the genocide. Not surprisingly, the occurrence of the social unrest or political turmoil sets to motion the possibility of another genocide like that in the mid-1970s. In this case, what does this memorialization produce? Fear or peace? Aspect of the past is chosen carefully and crafted clandestinely for the memorialization, so it could serve a mind control machine.

    Dwyer and Alderman (2008) suggest three approaches to studying memorial landscape and how politically contestable nature of place shapes the collective memory. In terms of text, the story of the victims is told and displayed graphically with a lack of context of the Khmer Rouge history. Additionally, the post-Khmer Rouge regime was justified through the homogenous narrative that they had saved millions of Cambodian people from the mass killing. In terms of arena, the contentious nature of the memorials (both S21 and the Killing Fields) lies in the debate of the commodities of victimhood and human remains (Disney-fied). Moreover, the same memorials could be perceived differently at different scale from individual to family and country scale, and whose story is told – the former regime members or the victims (Dwyer & Alderman, 2008). In addition, how the memorials are perceived is also a reflection of who we are, and it differs potentially in terms of life stage, age gap and level of education. In terms of performance, the memorials serve as the profit-making venture for international tourists. At the site, the regime survivors give firsthand testimony of the genocide, and there are books about Khmer Rouge history for sale (Dwyer & Alderman, 2008).  

    S21 and the Killing Fields museums have many memories, and the questions in which memories are promoted and neglected is a political question (Cresswell, 2004). While the memorial is geared towards international tourists and economic profits, the portrayal of show-cased skulls, instruments of torture and physical horror promotes the political messages and goals (Tyner et al., 2012). The authors emphasize that the lack of education on Khmer Rouge history, coupled with the prevalent exposure to the atrocious aspect of the past, has made many Cambodian youth live in fear, disbelief, and denial, and they are constantly torn by the question “why did Khmer kill Khmer” (Tyner et al., 2012). That is true. Every time I visit those memorials, I am struck by this heavy denial as to “why Khmer killed Khmer?” Was it classism? Geopolitical and ideological warfare? My grandpa, who was a medical doctor, was one of those who got tortured to death by the regime. According to my mom, my grandpa was tied to a banana tree, and knowing that he does not smoke cigarettes, they made him smoke a bunch, apparently a whole pack of cigarettes in one go, that he suffocated to death after a few hits. Why him? Why an innocent medical doctor who saves lives?    

    In the attempt to address the gap in Tyner et al.’s literatures (2012), a group of scholars from the Department of Media and Communication in Cambodia have come together to create a project called “Mapping Memories Cambodia” (hereafter MMC) to memorialize the unremarked, non-active sites during the Khmer Rouge. MMC is a mobile app and website that tells place-based stories and historical events told by survivors, experts, and historians in multimedia format. The goal of the project, in relation to Tyner et al.’s article (2012), is to transform the many unremarked sites into remarked and active memorials like S21 and the Killing Fields, which is fascinating.  

Khmer Rouge related movies you should check out if interested 

Sources cited: 

Cresswell, T. (2004). Defining place. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: 

     Blackwell Ltd, 12.

Dwyer, O. J., & Alderman, D. H. (2008). Memorial landscapes: Analytic questions and

     metaphors. GeoJournal, 73(3), 165–178.

Sirik, S. (2020). Memory construction of former Khmer Rouge cadres: Resistance to 

     dominant discourses of genocide in Cambodia. Journal of Political Power, 13(2), 

     233–251. 

Tyner, J. A., Alvarez, G. B., & Colucci, A. R. (2012). Memory and the everyday 

     landscape of violence in post-genocide Cambodia. Social & Cultural Geography, 

     13(8), 853–871.

http://mappingmemoriescambodia.com/fbclid=IwAR2c7K9u1HMwBD_

     rYyJkrIETxqxoZX9o03gXwwGUBWgIxmDPl_xGuANAdUI

https://tpocambodia.org/khmer-rouge-survivors/

Home as a process in 'Nomadland'

 

    During our discussions of homelessness and especially people who are unseen as homeless I thought about a film I had watched recently called Nomadland. A trend that has been coming to light in the past few years is people living out of their renovated vans as they decide to travel cross country with plans to go see things like the national parks. These people often leave their 'normal' lives which allows them to travel to places they wouldn't be able to otherwise. In our discussion we explained the difference between people who are living out of their vans as a choice versus those who have no choice but to live in their cars for shelter and to find work. This lifestyle is highlighted in Nomadland as the main character, Fern, lost her home as well as her job and is living out of her van across the country finding work.

    This movie is a great depiction of what it means that home is a process and just because you are unhoused doesn't mean that you cannot find home in community. Throughout the movie, Fern makes friends with people who are living the same way that she is. The people she meets throughout the movie stay with her throughout her journey and she finds new community that she never experienced in her home in her neighborhood before she lived in her van. Although this movie shows the benefits of community through a way of life that we are unfamiliar with and shows positives about the process of home for the main character but it also shows the hardships that exist when people in Fern's position are working odd jobs to support themselves and are living without a permanent home as their whole lives are in their vans.

    This movie depicts homelessness in a way that humanizes the homeless rather than other depictions that show homeless individuals as lesser. It is a great film that shows how homelessness doesn't necessarily mean these people are not part of community and that they can create hime. I will link the trailer to the movie and you can also watch it on Hulu! 

Nomadland Trailer

Home as a Place of Resistance

While external physical spaces can impact the individuals of a home in many ways, inside the home is where many families experience the social conditioning that transcends outside of the home and beyond. It's no surprise that parents instill certain attitudes and ideologies into their children by mode of practices and other teachings that take place within the home. On a wider scale, so much of the social conditioning that takes place within the home is curated to align with larger societal norms as a whole. This blog post will explore what it looks like when the home is used as a place of resistance to some of the dominant norms in greater society. What does that look like? 

 In The Home Is an Essential Place for a Woman, Morales states that "There is a power in the role of motherhood, and the home in lives of the family. It can be a place feminists acts can occur, in the sense that some women would like to change the narrative of feminism towards the home as an oppressive place, in that women should be able to choose to stay at home if that is what they truly want. But it can also be a place of solidarity, renewal, resistance, and safety". This holds true for many homes today, including my own. When it comes to the balance of the sexes in my home, my mom is outnumbered as the only woman amongst my dad, brother, and myself. In greater patriarchal society and media, you would think my mom spends a lot of time cleaning up after us boys. In reality, not the truth at all. My mom started my brother and I off with chores and other housekeeping responsibilities at the age of seven. We were always taught that our mess was our responsibility to clean up, not our mother's or any other woman. This is one of the few ways that the home is used as a place of resistance to patriarchal norms.

Another way that the home may be used as a place of resistance is through the practice of sustainability. Due to the institutionalized marginalization and disenfranchisement of people of color, practices of sustainability is heavily implemented into many ethnic households. For example, in many black American homes, there is a certain compartment in the home for the storage of plastic shopping bags from grocery stores. The plastic bags are kept after groceries are taken out and stored to be re-used for bedroom and bathroom trash bags amongst many other uses. Whether the practice is a direct effect of pure ingenuity or side effect of poverty, sustainability is taking place which resists the harmful effects of waste. These are a few ways of how the home is used as a place of resistance to some of the dominant norms in greater society.

https://medium.com/applied-intersectionality/the-home-is-an-essential-place-for-a-woman-95bd4adad16

LGBTQ Homelessness

In our discussions in class, we learned that a dichotomisation of the private and public sector constructs our perception of the home; Dr. Whitson writes that this separation between public and private affects not only homes' spatial organisation, but also influences our ideals of the home and our expectations of who lives in the home (p. 53). Indeed, the "ideal" home has foundations in cis-heteronormativity. Dr. Whitson further elaborates in her article that for queer youth, the consequences of this normative ideal of home results in a lack of freedom to "perform their identities" or in "estrangement, fear, and homelessness" (p. 55). 

The statistics of homelessness for queer youth echoes this statement, with 40% of youth "served by homeless shelters" in the United States identifying as LGBTQ, and seven out of ten of these youths being homeless as a result of conflict after coming out in their prior living situation (Whitson, p.55). 

As we read in May et al.'s article, "Alternative Cartographies of Homelessness", street life for the homeless often precludes violence, be it physical or sexual assault, and substance abuse. This is the same for queer youths; homeless LGBTQ youth are at a higher risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases and infections, and shelter-less youth living on the streets are at a higher risk of substance abuse (Abramovich, p. 34). Furthermore, in addition to violence simply from living on the streets, LGBTQ youth must also face homophobia and transphobia in their daily lives on top of being homeless.

For transgender individuals, the violence incurred from living on the streets is often more devastating compared to their cisgender, even queer cisgender, counterparts. Other intersections of identity also attribute to more battles fought whilst homeless, such as being Black or Brown. Black trans women are at the forefront of violence in America, being killed at high disproportionate rates (Forestiere). The Humans Right Campaign argues that this is due to the coalescing of "racism, transphobia, sexism, biphobia and homophobia." 

Now I know this isn't an article (although I've found plenty of those if you'd like to read), but I know of an amazing Black, trans-led non-profit that collects donations to provide rent money, funds for gender-affirming surgeries, smaller co-pays for doctors visits, and travel assistance for other Black trans people. For awhile, they were also doing consultations to find housing for homeless Black trans people. After all we've read, I felt like it was a good time to bring it up. If you have some extra funds that you could donate to help house or affirm a Black trans individual, this is a great organisation to give to. Here's the link: https://www.forthegworls.party/home

Another great organisation that accepts donations is the Kaleidoscope Youth Center (KYC) in Columbus, Ohio. They are a local non-profit focused on empowering and affirming queer youth, they also offer housing consultations and are in the process of building a cohousing opportunity. Here's the link: https://www.kycohio.org/who-we-are.html 

And here's an article published about them in 2019: https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/kaleidoscope-youth-center-pursuing-housing-for-lgbtq-homeless-youth/

Thanks for reading!

References:

Albramovich, Ilona Alex. 2012. “No Safe Place to Go.” University of Alberta 4 (1): 29–51.

Forestiere, Annamarie. n.d. “America’s War on Black Trans Women | Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.” Accessed October 8, 2021. https://harvardcrcl.org/americas-war-on-black-trans-women/.

May, Jon, Paul Cloke and Sarah Johnsen. 2007. “Alternative Cartographies of Homelessness: Rendering Visible British Women’s Experiences of ‘Visible’ Homelessness.” Gender, Place, and Culture 14(2):121-140.

“Report Details the Experiences of Being Black & Trans in the U.S.” n.d. HRC. Accessed October 8, 2021. https://www.hrc.org/news/new-report-details-the-experiences-of-being-black-and-transgender-in-the-u.

Whitson, 2017. “Spaces of Culture and Identity Production: Home, Consumption, and the Media.” Pp. 48-75 in Feminist Spaces: Gender and Geography in a Global Context by Ann M. Oberhauser, Jennifer L. Fluri, Risa Whitson and Sharlene Mollett. New York: Routledge. Read only pp. 52-58.

What I Consider “Home”

    Over the last couple years of my life my concept of home has changed in ways that I never thought would happen to me. My family consists of me and my mom (and our dogs). And while we had moved a couple times I knew that it was always just going to be the two of us so my home was just wherever my mom was. But during my senior year of high school due to unforeseen circumstances we had to move out of where I had spent most of my childhood. And at the time I didn't think anything of it because again, my home, my memories, those were with my mom. So I easily left that house behind without a second thought. We ended up staying with my cousin for a couple weeks. Which turned into a couple months. That situation (the first time) didn't work out and luckily me and mom found another place to live. But we moved in knowing that it was more than what we could afford. But it was always in the back of our heads that we would be leaving soon, so we never even really unpacked. It was around then that I remember feeling like that wasn't a home because I knew it wasn't set in stone. 

    When we eventually left,my  mom moved back in with my cousin and I randomly moved to Virginia to live with family, but I never felt at home there because I “interrupted” their lives. That situation expectedly ended up taking a toll on my mental health but I had nowhere to go. But then I was accepted here at Ohio University and left Virginia two weeks before school started. I never thought that I would feel like a college campus is my home. Especially since I live in different dorms every year and my roommates change. But at least in the dorms I knew how long I would be there and that I would have somewhere to go the next year. I had reliable food,water, company and a job.And eventually I met my people and others that shared the same beliefs and morals as me, and knew that they would always be here in Athens. But I was away from my mom, so I felt guilty about finally feeling at home somewhere she wasn’t. But after time I realized that home is not just material things. It’s where I put together my social identity,felt connected to something bigger than myself, realized my full potential and felt comfortable being myself. I knew I was always going to be welcome here and able to do relatively whatever I wanted, whereas at my cousin's house, I slept on the couch and wasn't allowed to leave traces of myself without being punished and feeling unwanted. Which is why I think of Ohio University as home. Which sounds cool and all but I graduate this year. Where will my home be then? During class we discussed what homelessnes means. And we of course went over not having shelter at all, living on the street. But we also said not having a steady safe place to sleep and not having a place in society. And thinking about it like that, wouldn't I be homeless? But I hate saying that because it feels as if I’m devaluing the things people without any kind of home go through. So it’s a very strange topic for me to think about.

“ Definitions of homelessness are shaped by what is culturally and politically accepted as appropriate housing and it is not possible to study homelessness without seeing it as part of a continuum from extreme rooflessness to unacceptable forms of housing” (Watson & Austerberry, 1986). 

    My experiences with government housing and seeing the conditions they consider adequate for low income communities truly makes me sad and raises a lot of questions about not only myself but about society in general. Do people think we don't deserve good conditions in safe neighborhoods? Or do they just not care about us enough? When someone hears that I’m looking into government housing do they judge me or think of me as less than? How did it become okay for inadequate housing to be the standard? Below I linked an article I LOVE. It talks about why the low income housing we see today puts those at a disadvantage to others in the world, and also all the policies that have been made the world this way if you would like to know more. Thank you for reading. 

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/vol--44--no-2--housing/adequate-housing-is-a-human-right/

Homelessness in Asheville

For me, home is and always will be Asheville, North Carolina. Growing up in Asheville, one of the hallmarks of downtown was the very For me, home is and always will be Asheville, North Carolina. Growing up in Asheville, one of the hallmarks of downtown was the very visible population of people living without homes. There was no “bad side of town”; people with and without homes coexisted on the sidewalk. 

Granted, my understanding of this coexistence came from a place of privilege—I was a person with a home and I have never experienced the realities of living without a home in Asheville. Even so, when I compare the Asheville I grew up in to the Asheville I have seen develop over the last decade, there is a clear shift. Asheville has become a major tourist destination over the past 10 years, which has changed the culture of the city significantly, especially as it pertains to how housed people in Asheville treat people without homes. 

https://www.ashevillenc.gov/news/homelessness-how-our-whole-community-wins-when-we-invest-in-ending-homelessness/

This article, published on the Asheville City government website, gives an overview of the City’s plan to “end homelessness.” Basically, the plan is to purchase a Ramada Inn and convert it into an emergency shelter, because “The City firmly embraces the idea that the solution to homelessness is housing” (para. 2). If the solution to homelessness was housing, no one would be without a home. The Asheville City government defines homelessness in a way that validates the taxpayer and dehumanizes the vagabond, so the Ramada Inn plan is nothing more than a “push to reconstruct the city as a cohesive place according to middle class/elite values” (Cresswell, 2004, p. 113). If the dirty, disruptive homeless people are in the Ramada Inn, they’re out of the way—out of sight, out of mind. 

I’m not saying that people living without homes is a “good” thing, nor that people should keep living without homes just so I can hold onto the version of Asheville from my childhood; what I am saying is that I don’t subscribe to the idea that homelessness is inherently bad, immoral, unclean, disruptive, etc. What bothers me the most about this article is that it portrays people living without homes as burdens to those who exist within the confines of what society deems good, moral, clean, acceptable, etc. (i.e., people living with homes, i.e., taxpayers). Even the title of the article creates boundaries around who has agency in this “community” effort: “How our (the people with access to this article) whole community wins when we (the people with the resources) invest in ending homelessness.” Cresswell (2004) hit the nail on the head when he explained that homelessness is seen as “a human form of litter—rather than as a symptom of the urban politics and economics” of the places where homelessness occurs (p. 113). 

This emergency shelter is part of a larger plan to create sustainable frameworks for people experiencing homelessness—which, on the surface, is something I can get behind. However, this plan was introduced after people protested the City’s sudden and violent dissolution of homeless camps throughout the city in 2020 (even as the CDC recommended that homeless camps not be disrupted due to the potential to spread COVID-19). That timing, combined with the focus on middle class values in this article, points to the tendency of programs like this to produce and reproduce constructions of homelessness. 

Home and Gender Roles from an Elderly Perspective

 

    After listening to our discussions in class this week, I recalled an instance at my place of work that I think falls in line with the topic of home and the presumed unwritten female and male roles. I have worked at the same retirement home since high school, and with that I have heard discussions about various topics from an elder’s perspective. I was kind of surprised at the response I heard from a group of ladies between the ages of 85 and 95 about the new hire for the director of housekeeping position. The current housekeeping staff and former director are all female. However, with the departure of the director this past summer, the company had to hire someone else for the position. The new housekeeping director happens to be a male. I had overheard a group of ladies conversing about their shock that management would even consider hiring a male for the position. This group of ladies had the opinion that housekeeping is deemed “women’s’ work” and basically assumed that the new director would not know anything about housekeeping. The company has various retirement and assisted living facilities throughout the state and promotes inclusivity and is very progressive with the changing times. While the company doesn’t stereotype or discriminate towards anyone for any position, the residents within the communities still see distinct roles for females and males within a household setting. I’m curious if the residents will become accustomed to and accept shifting female and male roles in the household and work setting. I found an article that includes a discussion about gender roles and the article mentions how a traditional perspective on gender roles is declining, however, older people continue to hold traditional beliefs on gender roles.

https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39248/bsa35_gender.pdf