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.
I would like to start with Cresswell’s quote, homelessness is produced by "a push of the homogenous view to reconstruct the society as a cohesive place according to the elite and the middle-class values." The main inquiry here is who consumes the gentrified space and who not, and also gentrification as the cause of homelessness is defined as "the reinvestment of capital at the urban center that is designed to produce space for the wealthy class of people than those currently occupying that space." That said, gentrification creates spatial injustice for the have nots and favors the haves who are the middle, upper class. In addition, John Kain added that gentrification also leads to geographical gap between jobs and people who have been pushed away by the gentrification process because of the lack of mobility. Therefore, it leads to a lack of economic opportunities in extreme poverty area while the inner city continues to gentrify and develop.
ReplyDeleteAnother aspect that upsets me is the housing discrimination where the homeless are seen as a burden to the housed (homed people). I have read some articles about how unwelcoming affordable housing is to wealthy neighborhood and the fight for spatial justice and inclusion. It has become a classist issue where the poor are considered a threat to the property value and so on. Something needs to be done to counter this negative stereotype about the affordable housing and the homeless. There is also a study about how construction/arrangement of space constitutes crime and unsafe space. Affordable housing is built in blocks, multi-story, and a long hallway with multiple units on the sideway. Also, I am not sure if property developers were aware of this issue, but they chose to build it the way it is to fit the perceived standard of the 'affordable' lower-class housing people. If that is the case, it is extremely ignorant for them to continuing to do so.
Lastly, I also want to talk about the idea of corporatocracy associated with the homeless and mobility issues due to state's regulatory weaknesses. In Seattle where Amazon headquarter is located, Amazon has gained so much control to steer the city politics on affordable housing and homelessness program. Amazon was outright against the policy to tax large corporations (including them), so tax revenue could be used to assist the affordable housing and homeless program, and as a result Amazon threatened to halt its expansion in Seattle if the government adopted the policy. In a way, the presence of large corporations, most not all, in this case, leads to rent hike, increase in property value and gentrification (spatial injustice), and push the poor/lower-class away.
Also, as I talked about Amazon's controversial stance on affordable housing taxes, I also want to mention about the amazon bidding in North Carolina since you're from N. Carolina. Not surprisingly, state governments are willing to do anything to appease corporate demands. In the bidding proposal, N. Carolina planned to pass the legislation to increase income taxes that can be "rebated" to amazon, that could potentially widen a gap between what amazon pay in taxes and what average businesses and individuals pay. That said, I could not find a better example for this - “paying tax to your boss.” Speaking about the sense of home and belonging, I think my first year in Athens as an international student was quite confined to only a few places I had been to and experiences I had with them, and my perspective of Athens was narrow I would not call this place home. I think it is also more of the social connectedness through the recreational and social activities that help broaden my sense of place. Logically and not surprisingly, as my social tie grows here along with the connectedness and the longer I have been here, my spatial confinement and sense of place also get better. That said, your perceived spatial confinement is also a social construct.
Hi Caroline!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this, your connection to it, and your feelings about it. I especially appreciate your transparency in refusal to equate homelessness with dirtiness or weakness. The first thing you see upon clicking the article is "END HOMELESSNESS" as it is a disease or illness.
Endings have quite the negative connotation and the article might as well have said "end homeless people." Institutions adopt a negative connotation of homelessness, as homeless people are the issue. Listening to the stories of those living on Skid Row in Los Angeles and their treatment due to their status as homeless individuals demonstrates political and societal retaliation against them. The article you shared highlights homeless people of Asheville as members of the community, a title could have been changed to "no community member left unhoused," or included language without negative connotation.
It seems spatial justice for all is in the best interest of the city as they admit homeless individuals experience harm due to their status. Changing language towards and perception of homeless individuals occupying PUBLIC spaces is the first step in the right direction.
Hi Caroline,
ReplyDeleteI thought your post was informative and I enjoyed reading it. I like how you included your personal experience regarding homelessness in your hometown of Asheville, NC. It’s interesting how the shift from homeowners and homeless coexisting has changed in ten years, which really isn’t that long. The socially constructed view of homeless people definitely portrays the idea of homelessness as being like a disease that needs a cure. The disease like concept does not accurately portray the reality of homelessness and is not an effective step in creating solutions for alleviating problems related to homelessness, other than lacking a physical home. Providing emergency shelter acts as a band-aid for trying to alleviate homelessness, and as you mentioned about the Ramada Inn, providing housing is the city’s mentality for addressing and solving issues related to homelessness. Homelessness is much more than a housing issue and like you mentioned, if a lack of housing was the problem, then providing housing would solve homelessness. Society creates homeless people as being like a burden to the rest of society and portraying all homeless as being unclean, bad, etc. Homeless people are very much a part of society and should not be portrayed as equivalent to litter. I agree that politics and economics contribute to the portrayal of homelessness and in order to change that, the general perspective on homelessness needs to change.