- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
- 2-3 annotations.
Last week, I looked into understanding how issues like homelessness and housing insecurity arise as a product of neoliberal thinking. This week, I was interested in understanding the ways in which people, once in poverty and succumbed to homelessness, continue to be homeless as a result of certain structural factors at play, as well as the conflation of homelessness as acts of deviance. More specifically, this is understood in relation to the laws criminalizing homeless populations that include prohibiting camping or sleeping in public spaces and vehicles, or laws prohibiting begging, loitering, loafing, and vagrancy according to a report published by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Such forms of criminalization are increasing, which have serious implications to the homeless populations. Any criminal record, including arrests, incarceration, fines, and convictions, could create new barriers in obtaining employment and stable housing. More specifically, one is likely to lose his or her job after being arrested, and the criminal record of the arrest itself could prevent him or her from obtaining a new job as most perform background checks. Moreover, a criminal record may make them ineligible for federal housing subsidies as many Public Housing Authorities are especially exclusive in determining applicant eligibility, and there is a potential for an individual with even a minor criminal record to not be considered. Likewise, the lack of financial resources and a permanent address makes them more prone to having barriers for justice with excessively high fines and/or unaffordable bail, potentially contributing to additional incarceration. Consequently, these laws do the exact opposite of mitigating homelessness as they perpetuate it even more, and essentially fail to address the root causes of homelessness.
Thus, in relation to my previous research, it can be seen that the prevalence of homelessness or housing insecurity from a neoliberal thinking places people in precarious situations by which individuals are at risk for becoming evicted. In these precarious situations, individuals may live under conditions that are conducive to certain physical and health problems and very unstable living conditions, in general. Once evicted and/or homeless, certain criminalization laws, as outlined above, may further make it difficult to come out of homelessness as a result of barriers to access to employment, housing, criminal justice, and healthcare. This issue, as a whole, is due to the conflation of homelessness as acts of deviance. This is indicative of neoliberal thinking in which the responsibility is placed on the individuals to somehow lift themselves up from homelessness in the midst of stigma and many barriers preventing access to fundamental rights.
This research was extremely insightful, and my initial impressions were based on the way in which homelessness becomes framed and perceived in society as deviant that requires these laws in place to criminalize these individuals. This research has made me think of homelessness from a more holistic perspective by first defining from the eyes of the general public and the way in which it is being framed to them. It has also made me think about the intersectionality of those individuals being affected, as well as certain crucial factors that prevent them from accessing basic needs and from coming out of being homeless. While I did not have any challenges collecting this research, I intend to further narrow the scope of this project by next week in understanding how the conflation of homelessness with deviance is observed in Portland, ME and its consequences to individuals in terms of access of resources. Through this perspective, I will understand how social services and public housing authorities address these issues, especially in the form of providing housing or healthcare to those who could have potentially been criminalized beforehand.
No Safe Place: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. 2014. http://nlchp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/No_Safe_Place.pdf
Siegel, Deborah H. The Criminalization of Homelessness. Social Work Today. https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/exc_0518.shtml
Lopez’s Comments:
Swapnika, I wont add too much because we spoke in person regarding your project. I think this is a great shift in your research topic, and the fact that you turned directions, shows that you’ve given alot of thought to your work.
The piece that I mentioned in class last week is in Don Mitchell’s book, the Right to the City. Chapter 6 may be helpful to you.
https://www.guilford.com/books/The-Right-to-the-City/Don-Mitchell/9781572308473/contents