During class discussions on the geographies of
homelessness I began to reflect on my own memories of experiences with the
homeless while living in Maine. The city of Portland Maine has a very visual
homeless population that lives within different areas of the city. While
growing up I remember hearing negative comments about the homeless and people and
learning about what stereotypes people believed about them. As I grew older and
learned more about the issues causing the increase in the number of homeless
people, such as rapidly increasing home prices caused by homes being bought up
from new residents from places such as New York and Massachusetts as well as insufficient
homes being built to meet the demand in the housing market. This problem can be
seen throughout the nation but is a particular problem within Maine, with Maine
Public Radio claiming that as of this May home prices in Maine sold for median
record high price of $419,300.
It is very clear to see the reasons for a population
of homeless people living within Portland in camps but what is very concerning
is seeing the growing pushback to the homeless community. Throughout the
country we have seen a growing number of homeless camp sweeps in which many
people lose what little belongings they have and are given no alternative for a
place to go. What’s more unsettling about this is that when homeless camps are
removed, so are the connections made in the camp and a sense of stability that
can be found, displacement can also be extremely detrimental for those with substance
use issues and mental health issues. Those who have been going through
displacement in Portland this year have had some similar thoughts and
experiences of those in the article Alternative Cartographies of
Homelessness: Rendering visible British women’s experiences of ‘visible’ homelessness
by Jon May, Paul Cloke and Sarah Johnsen in which interviews are conducted
with homeless women in England to inquire about their experiences. One quote
that sticks out to me is about a woman’s feeling of discomfort with homeless
shelters in which she says “things happened . . . at the night shelter. It’s
alright if it’s a pair of you . . . If you don’t look scared
then nobody is going to hurt you or anything, but . . . I get scared really
easy so I didn’t want to go
there. . . “ (Julie, 9 April 2002). This relates to
the feeling of discomfort felt from one woman interviewed at a homeless camp
sweep in Portland who said "I will never go to a shelter here in Portland
again. It was disgusting," she said. "The conditions were horrible.
There were freaking cockroaches and bed bugs. My kid was getting eaten alive
every night, and we ended up running away because of it. And that's why he got
taken back by DHHS, cause I had no place to go with him." (Ordway, 2024). It
can be seen that there can be distrust with homeless shelters from homeless
people even though it can sometimes be the only option left, which can be a cause
for homeless people to leave from one location that was swept to go to another
area to set up another camp, effectively making homeless encampment sweeps
ineffective of stopping new camps from popping up while causing lots of harm to
one of the most vulnerable populations in the city.
A major problem that seems to arise with creating more
permanent homes for the homeless is the high costs to build housing for people
and the bureaucratic process to apply for funds. One article from Maine public
broadcast radio states an example on the cost for creating low income housing by
saying “Phoenix Flats, a 45-unit apartment building on the corner of Franklin
and Middle streets, took about $16 million, roughly a dozen funding sources and
four years to complete, opening last June.” (Ogrysko, 2024). For $16 million
dollars only 45 units of housing could be built which does not even put a dent
into the amount of housing needed, this raises the question on why homeless
camps must be removed when there is no effective solution for housing currently.
Hopefully in the future we see more effective solutions to creating housing and
more acceptance of more alternative styles of living, such as what we see in
homeless camps.
References:
“Maine Needs 84,000 New Homes by 2030. This Housing Project Shows Why That Will Be Difficult.” Maine Public, 12 Feb. 2024, www.mainepublic.org/business-and-economy/2024-02-12/maine-needs-84-000-new-homes-by-2030-this-affordable-housing-project-shows-why-that-will-be-difficult.
Horsley, Scott. “Home Prices Just Hit a Record High. Here Are 4 Things to Know about Housing.” Maine Public, WMEH, 22 June 2024, www.mainepublic.org/npr-news/2024-06-22/home-prices-just-hit-a-record-high-here-are-4-things-to-know-about-housing. Accessed 23 Nov. 2024.
Ogrysko, Nicole. “Portland Clears Largest Homeless Encampment after Protesters Attempt to Stop It.” Maine Public, WMEH, 2 Jan. 2024, www.mainepublic.org/business-and-economy/2024-01-02/portland-clears-largest-homeless-encampment-after-protesters-attempt-to-stop-it.
“Last Major Homeless Encampment Cleared despite Protest in Maine’s Largest City.” AP News, 2 Jan. 2024, apnews.com/article/portland-maine-homeless-encampments-934776f9ce3ff7c8a6eb7f066bad65f2. Accessed 23 Nov. 2024.
May, Jon, et al. “Alternative Cartographies of Homelessness: Rendering Visible British Women’s Experiences of “Visible” Homelessness.” Gender, Place & Culture, vol. 14, no. 2, Apr. 2007, pp. 121–140, https://doi.org/10.1080/09663690701213677.
Hello Corbin,
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting issue that you’ve posted about! While there is not an urgent housing crisis in my hometown like Portland, there is a large and publicly visible unhoused population in Parkersburg, WV as well. Many local people make a direct connection between the city’s substance abuse issues and its unhoused populate.
Moreover, this issue is exacerbated because the City of Parkersburg has pursued a course not of rehabilitation and support but one of stereotype proliferation and reinforcing the city’s legal abilities to destroy public encampments. Instead of bolstering the resources of homelessness programs, the Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce has publicly discussed the “restricted” abilities of the city to curb homelessness while he asserts that is a federal responsibility to provide “interventional” resources for the homeless population on Metro News. Additionally, when discussing the more than 800 public structures that the city has torn down over the past 8 years, he conjects that such encampments are sites for the unhoused population to “shoot up.” This contributes to the notion that the unhoused population are ”people–out–of–place– as a human form of litter– rather than a symptom of the urban politics and economics” of the city (Cresswell 113). Dialogue such as this does nothing to facilitate the re–entry of the unhoused community into the normative society. As explained by Speer, “many people living in…. encampments considered their tents and shanties the best housing option available and saw the threat of government eviction as the primary barrier preventing their access to domestic space” (531). Governments must re–evaluate their approach to handling public encampments, as it is evident that their current approach is only causing the unhoused population to relocate instead of recovering or rehabilitating.
Corbin, I think your post does a very good job at contrasting the public disgust that the unhoused tend to be treated with by the media and the public as a whole with their actual experience. As someone who didn’t grow up in proximity to a visible homeless population, my first major exposure to a large homeless population was the visit to Chicago I took after my senior year of high school. It was a very sobering experience—I think what struck me the most was the way that homeless people are taken out of the public despite being a part of it. The psychological impact that being ignored and dehumanized has is something I myself can’t imagine, but based on the experiences of homeless people that we’ve learned about in class, seems excruciating.
ReplyDeleteYour points about the conditions of homeless shelters are also very salient—thinking about Athens as a point of reference (especially given the state of the housing market here), the presentation earlier in the semester by HAPCAP really illustrated how important it is to give people who are unhoused the resources and opportunity to live their lives, and how difficult it is to actually do that. The cost of housing—temporary and permanent—is such a prominent contemporary issue, but the concern shown to rising costs doesn’t always seem to extend to those who become unhoused because of them.