HOMELESSNESS IN SACRAMENTO: SEARCHING FOR SAFE GROUND
Stephen William Watters B.A., California State University, Sacramento, 1978
THESIS
Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
ANTHROPOLOGY
at
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
Spring 2012
© 2012
Stephen William Watters
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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HOMELESSNESS IN SACRAMENTO: SEARCHING FOR SAFE GROUND
A Thesis
by
Stephen William Watters
Approved by:
______, Committee Chair Joyce M. Bishop, Ph.D.
______, Second Reader Raghuraman Trichur, Ph.D.
______Date
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Student: Stephen William Watters
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for the thesis.
______, Graduate Coordinator ______Michael Delacorte, Ph.D. Date
Department of Anthropology
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Abstract
of
HOMELESSNESS IN SACRAMENTO, SEARCHING FOR SAFE GROUND
by
Stephen William Watters
The homeless in Sacramento suffer a loss of basic rights, human and civil, and this loss of rights exacerbates the factors that contribute to, and are experienced, as a result of homelessness. Moreover, the emotional, medical, legal and economic problems of the homeless leads to their stigmatization by the general public, as well as by the social service providers and governmental agencies empowered to support them. Once branded as deviant or pathological members of society, the homeless find themselves being treated as second-class citizens. In response to this change of status and in an attempt to gain agency with which to defend themselves, homeless citizens form imagined communities such as my target subject group. Two years of fieldwork with Safe Ground
Sacramento have demonstrated that the members of Safe Ground do, in fact, suffer a loss of basic rights and are treated as though they are broken individuals. This treatment often leads to the development of a low sense of self-worth, resulting in self-blame on the part of these individuals. Indeed, there are cases of mental illness, substance abuse and disability, but I argue that there are also systemic causes for homelessness within our political economy. Moreover, my research has led me to inquire into why the homeless
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are misunderstood and treated in the above manner, an inquiry which has led me to an investigation of American worldview. Americans, with a strong emphasis on individualism, appear to lack the compassion to consider solutions for those citizens most in need, the homeless.
The societal changes required to change American worldview towards a more collective position on the individual-collective continuum can appear daunting as do changes in our political economy, the most robust in the world. These changes require that we relook our current dominant theory of justice based on a contractual social justice model which stresses the struggle for perfect societal institutions and, look instead at comparative models that ask what could be if we remove particular injustices from society. In so doing, we must restate the meanings of key concepts such as freedom, equality and opportunity in a way that will move us towards a more collectively-minded political economy, theory of social justice and definition of ourselves as individuals.
______, Committee Chair Joyce M. Bishop, Ph.D.
______Date
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Familiarity breeds affection when it does not breed contempt. We are well aware of how a person can become deeply attached to old slippers that look rather mouldy to an outsider. There are various reasons for this attachment. A man’s belongings are an extension of his personality; to be deprived of them is to diminish, in his own estimation, his worth as a human being. Clothing is the most personal of one’s belongings. It is a rare adult whose sense of self does not suffer in nakedness, or who does not feel a threat to his identity when he has to wear someone else’s clothes. Beyond clothing, a person in the process of time invests bits of his emotional life in his home, and beyond the home in his neighborhood. To be forcibly evicted from one’s home and neighborhood is to be stripped of a sheathing, which in it familiarity protects the human being from the bewilderments of the outside world. - Yi-Fu Tuan, Topophilia (1974:99)
PREFACE
As I drove through hectic morning rush hour traffic and across the 12th Street
Bridge coming into downtown Sacramento that June morning in 2009, I noticed several people walking across the bridge towards downtown carrying bundles and backpacks. It reminded me that a migration occurred every morning from the homeless camps along the American River to Loaves & Fishes and other homeless services all bundled in close proximity, where hot coffee, showers and friends awaited those who made the daily pilgrimage. My renewed awareness of the daily homeless migration caused me to reflect back to a film project I conducted many years ago as an undergraduate student in the
1970s. During 1977, while attending California State University at Sacramento, another student and I had produced a film, Bum Rap, which consisted of unstructured interviews
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with homeless people living along the American River in Sacramento. At that time, we found distinct subcultures of homeless people living in the dense brush and forests along the American River, under bridges and in open fields just east of the 1930’s Jibboom
Street Hooverville area toward what is now the Interstate 80 Bridge. As we young students learned about the nation’s forgotten people, those without an accepted identity or voice, we shamefully realized that more and more men and women, veterans, and even entire families were living under conditions of extreme poverty in the capital of the nation’s largest state. For me, being especially fond of this location along the American
River, this experience had led to a long-term interest in the lives of the homeless. For years I had watched newspaper articles and media coverage of the issues and struggles of the Sacramento homeless community and now I was again entering their space, this time as a researcher and volunteer offering my services.
Turning left off 12th at North B Street, I saw groups of homeless individuals exiting the Salvation Army shelter and moving along the same streets I was following to my destination. At Ahern and North C Street I found a parking lot for volunteers. A
Loaves and Fishes “green-hat”1 approached me and I asked where the dining room was.
As I walked nervously towards the dining room I realized that except for brief encounters on the streets in Sacramento and other metropolitan cities I had visited over the years -
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Washington DC, San Francisco and many others - across the country I had not spoken in depth with homeless individuals. Now I was in the midst of hundreds, substantially more people than I had encountered years ago.
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I entered and asked for the volunteer coordinator, whom I soon found, and was assigned to the serving line. As the lunch hour approached I could see a long line of anxious people waiting for the door to open and the serving to begin.
My job that first day was scooping spaghetti sauce on each guest’s pasta and offering each a couple pieces of French bread. That made it necessary to ask each person a few questions, so I was instantly talking with many coming through the line. The service line is at the edge of the kitchen, where it gets very warm from the stoves and is crowded with volunteers. Things move fast and there is little time to do much more than offer eye contact and a smile while saying a few words to each guest, but it was a start on my graduate fieldwork experience among the homeless. If I was nervous when I walked in, my nervousness was gone almost immediately as I interacted with many smiling faces of the homeless guests. I was remembering many of the people I had met so long ago; the faces this day seemed familiar.
Later, walking back to my car, I again realized that my experience that first day brought back many strong memories of the undergraduate project. I had forgotten the friendly smiles to be found on so many vulnerable faces and that a few words could start a dialog that might be continued each time that I saw them. Moreover, it was no longer an all-male crowd. I estimated that first day that at least 20% of the guests in line at
Loaves & Fishes were women. A few children came through accompanied by an adult and it appeared that most knew each other well since there was a lot of talking and laughing. There were some people I might have identified as homeless by the soiled,
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tattered clothes and unshaven faces, but there were others who looked as if they had just stepped away from work for lunch and had decided to stop here. I wondered about their stories and felt overwhelmed by all I had to learn about the new realities of homelessness.
A few of the homeless guests seemed unsettled. Some did not want to make any eye contact or exchange any words, but the majority smiled, glad to be there for a hot lunch and some friendly banter. I watched as group after group came through the line, the entire dining area population turning over four or five times as new waves of guests arrived. Within 90 minutes we had served lunch to over 600 hungry people, many of whom I would come to know well in the next few months as my volunteer work as a server turned into an internship with a new grassroots social justice group, SafeGround.
That group was focused on resistance to the Sacramento anti-camping ordinance that caused so many here to be harassed daily about where they could be. I ended that first day feeling slightly overwhelmed by the immensity of the homeless problem - 600 lunches served - but excited about having taken the first step into the field. I had many new questions for which I needed to find answers.
Introduction to the Study
This research, based on two years of ethnographic study of the homeless group
SafeGround2 and informed by the relationship between a review of academic theory on poverty, homelessness and the hegemonic political-economic system in the neoliberal globalized world of 2011, explores the effects of what I perceive as a loss of basic human
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rights by the homeless and the change this loss brings about in their sense of self and place within society. I further ask if our understanding of the effects of this loss of rights and altered sense of self provides any insight into the perpetuation of homelessness in the
United States.
I argue that the experiences shared by members of a homeless group like
SafeGround create an imagined community by way of a social and political process very similar to that proposed by Benedict Anderson’s “imagined community” (Anderson
1983). I go on to investigate whether the sense of community experienced within
SafeGround empowers the homeless members either individually or as members of a group. As in Anderson’s imagined communities, SafeGround is perceived a community because “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation [read “homeless group”] is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship”
(Anderson 1983:6). This study investigates the sense of a horizontal comradeship among the members of Safe Ground and asks whether the greater society denies this comradeship to the homeless and, if so, why such comradeship is denied and what effect that has on the individuals to which it is denied.
It is the thesis of my research that the homeless do, in fact, suffer a loss of basic human rights, a loss that leads to an exacerbation of the issues contributing to or experienced during their condition of homelessness. The underlying public perception of associated emotional, medical, legal, and economic issues leads to the stigmatization of the homeless by the general public and by the social service providers and governmental
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agencies empowered to support them. Once the homeless are stigmatized as deviant or pathological members of society, they are subjected to a status of what might be called second class citizenship.
In other words, the process of stigmatizing the homeless contributes to their being further ostracized by the greater community and severely limits their access to the social, economic and political institutions that citizens are entitled to. I argue that what homeless individuals experience as a loss of human rights, including the ability to act as normal agents of social change, strips them of the very social and political agency that could be utilized to remedy their homeless condition. My research path departs from the standard discussions of the causal factors of individual blame based on deviancy and pathology and investigates structural or systemic factors by looking at programmatic and institutional actions affecting homelessness. Digging deeper in search of a root cause of homelessness, I look for causal factors in the political-economy, specifically examining the neoliberal agenda within the contemporary globalized political-economy.
My ethnographic research further focuses on what happens to the homeless individual’s sense of self when a loss of basic rights is experienced. In the United States individualism is often symbolized by the “rugged individual,” a view which reflects a strong belief by many in personal liberty, self-reliance and free competition. Yet such freedom is an exclusive club where not all citizens are welcome without certain qualifying or admission credentials. I discuss the impacts of what can happen to people who do not qualify for membership and what efforts they can make to address their
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situation as individuals or as a group to become a social force within society.
Participant Observation at SafeGround Sacramento
As described above, starting in June of 2009 I volunteered at Loaves and Fishes serving meals and came to know staff, clients, and eventually the leadership. Serving lunch to 400-1000 people, depending on the time of the month, can be a rigorous task.
However, I found a camaraderie that facilitates new relationships with co-workers through mutual hard work. Moreover, the ongoing effort to communicate with homeless
“guests” builds a capability to understand the informal rules of engagement with the homeless. After about thirty days on the serving line I spoke with Sister Libby
Fernandez, the Executive Director of Loaves & Fishes, about my research. She recommended I get involved with a new homeless advocacy effort, Safe Ground
Sacramento, just starting after the demise of Sacramento’s Tent City. Several days later I began volunteering with Safe Ground and in August 2009 I went to the first official steering committee meeting. Within a few weeks I was accepted as a student intern and assigned to take and publish notes in both the steering committee and Board of Directors meetings. Through these experiences I became acquainted with many of the leaders of the social service organizations that serve the homeless in downtown Sacramento, including the executive directors of Sacramento Housing Alliance (SHA), Volunteers of
America, Francis House, Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee (SHOC),
Women’s Empowerment, Clean and Sober, and others. Additionally, I became
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acquainted with all the Safe Ground Sacramento board members and volunteers, including homeless leaders, several homeless advocates, a civil rights attorney, affordable housing professionals, architects, environmental planners, faith-based community leaders, and leaders of the homeless community. During this time I purchased and started using a tape recorder at all meetings as a way of capturing the information for the minutes. I was soon recognized as the guy from both Safe Ground and CSUS and was accepted, tape recorder and all, into meetings of various groups. During the next four months of the internship, I was able to establish a relationship of mutual trust both in the
Safe Ground homeless community and within the social service and professional leadership ranks of Safe Ground and other organizations.
I began to understand the various agendas that drove participants in both the
SafeGround homeless community and the Safe Ground Sacramento leadership, and I was able to have meaningful conversations during internship hours with members of both communities. After the internship term expired, I continued on as a volunteer and was asked to accept the volunteer officer position of Secretary when Safe Ground incorporated as a 501(c)(3) California non-profit corporation in January of 2010. My volunteer work now also included providing direct support to the Executive Director of
Safe Ground and I was accepted as not only a note-taker but as an active contributor to the meetings. As a result of these volunteer opportunities as an informal participant observer, my knowledge of Safe Ground as a non-profit, a social justice movement, and as a homeless community became extensive.
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Camping with SafeGround – Summer 2010
During the summer of 2010 I was invited to stay at the SafeGround homeless camp in the woods along the American River. For a period of several months I camped with the group several nights a week and became known as a Safe Ground leader and
CSUS researcher and was accepted into the SafeGround community. I was asked by the
Safe Ground camp liaison to provide support for the campers by assuming the role of leader when I was present. This role did not override camp self-governance, but I was accepted as a mentor and trusted member of the housed community, what the homeless in
SafeGround called a normie. During this time I was able to have informal conversations with many of the homeless community members and soon was able to understand how to best approach homeless individuals about various topics. I found the people in most cases not only willing, but anxious, to discuss homelessness. As I observed the community over time, I came to view the membership as transient, as longer term members moved on to jobs, housing and repaired family relationships, and new members continually joined the community to take the place of those leaving. When the elected elders of the community left, often the strongest members, new elections brought new leadership and the focus of the community continually evolved.
One of the activities most beneficial to my research was when I was able to discuss some of the theory I was reading with people in the field. For instance, I have had conversations with leaders about the idea that social service providers - which meant them - and city officials tend to blame the homeless for their situation by looking at them
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as deviant and pathological. This opportunity to discuss openly these issues has been a great benefit for my research and has led to better interviews during the final phase of formal unstructured interviews.
In October of 2010 I organized a Sacramento Community Homeless Forum at
CSUS. Kevin Johnson, the Mayor of Sacramento and Robert Fong, a member of the
Sacramento City Council, provided keynote addresses. I formed two discussion panels consisting of homeless leaders and policy makers. The first panel consisted of Sister
Libby Fernandez and five homeless individuals who told their personal stories and helped provide the audience with a human face to homelessness. The second panel consisted of leaders from the social service providers both public and private, from law enforcement, and from the downtown business district and homeless community. They discussed policy issues both from a local and broader perspective. The audience consisted of leadership from the community, CSUS students and faculty, and interested parties from the Sacramento. Although the forum was not an official part of the research, my increased participant observation and the advocacy efforts to educate the general public and those involved from the social services community contributed to my understanding.
Unstructured Interviews and Continued Research
Following the one and a half years of informal participant observation in late
December of 2010 the CSUS Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved my research plan to record unstructured interviews with homeless subjects. Once I gained approval, I
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started the final phase of my research, scheduling interviews with homeless leaders and homeless members of the Safe Ground camp. My interviews focused on gathering individual background information (oral histories), identification of any perceived loss of human rights and the resultant personal effects, the role of an individual affiliation with
Safe Ground on the development of homeless community, and the growth of individual and group agency as a response to loss of rights and through affiliation with Safe Ground.
I have integrated portions of these interviews into this document as appropriate.
In December of 2010 the executive director of Safe Ground Sacramento, whom I had been assisting for months, announced she was leaving to take another position. I was approached by the board of directors and asked if I would consider accepting the position. My first reaction was concern that my involvement in that position might have a negative influence on my ability to complete unbiased research or that my relationships with the homeless individuals that I observed and interviewed might change. After careful consideration and some soul searching, I agreed to a half-time position which I held through the first half of 2011 until I requested a leave to complete this effort. My decision was influenced by the activist ethnography of Anthropologist Vincent Lyon-
Callo (2003) and the earlier work of Mary Ellen Hombs (1983). I now believe that being in a position of authority with Safe Ground did imply a bias when I met with local politicians and social service leaders; however, it also opened many doors to my research that I might not have had access to without the title. My relationship with the homeless was also somewhat altered by the position but not to the extent that I felt harmed the
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quality of our interactions. I am still able to go and spend time at the camp and feel that I am spoken with openly in that environment. Had I chosen to stay in the camp as a resident researcher for an extended period of time, without being part of the Safe Ground structure, there might have been some who would have been more likely to open up in front of me. Nevertheless, I have also to consider that I have gained their respect and support for my work and that has given me additional credentials. In retrospect, it is my belief that the decision to be both a Safe Ground employee and a SafeGround ethnographic researcher greatly improved the ethnographic quality of my research and did not severely alter the focus of this research.
Preface Endnote
1Green-hats are the outdoor security and leaders who patrol the Loaves & Fishes campus area and provide direction, help and security to the area. They come from the homeless community so speak the language and understand the concerns of the homeless they support. 2 Safe Ground (two words) will be used when referring to the California 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation whose full name is Safe Ground Sacramento, Inc. SafeGround (one word) will be used to refer to the illegal camp and/or future planned model transitional housing community.
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DEDICATION
For my parents,
Marion Virginia Hodgson Watters
and
William Alexander Watters
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Numerous friends, professors and mentors contributed to this thesis and to my personal growth during my research, fieldwork, and writing. I identify a few here knowing that any attempt at acknowledging all these gifts of compassion, wisdom, kindness and time will be incomplete.
I would like to extend special thanks to my committee chair, Dr. Joyce M. Bishop who has made enormous and innumerable contributions to the directions, perspectives and quality of my research that are reflected in this thesis. I would also like to thank Dr.
Raghuraman Trichur for his support on my committee and for his contributions to the directions of my research. To both of these committee members I owe a special appreciation for their unwavering academic leadership, personal support and friendship.
Numerous mentors have helped me as I moved along my personal path to completing this thesis. I wish to thank Dr. Jay Crain and Dr. Alan Darrah for awakening me to the value and richness of ethnographic research. I wish to extend a special thank you to the late Dr. George Rich for the support, mentoring, and personal friendship he extended to me during my first days in the CSUS Anthropology Department. I also wish to acknowledge my honor at receiving the first George Rich Graduate Scholarship in
2011. It was both inspiring and supportive in helping me complete my work.
I want to thank many new friends made in the field while doing research. Among the many Sister Libby Fernandez and Joan Burke, of Loaves & Fishes, along with
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David Moss, Tina Reynolds and John Kraintz, all who helped me get started, provided excellent advice and consult, and introduced me to the Safe Ground Sacramento team. I also want to thank the late Greg Bunker of Francis House in memorial for his friendship and direction working with Safe Ground and the greater homeless community. Greg is deeply missed by so many. To all the other Safe Ground board members, volunteers and members that shared their extensive knowledge and friendship I am also grateful.
Additionally, and very importantly, I am deeply grateful to the many homeless individuals I worked with for accepting me into their lives and community and for providing insight into their lives and perspectives. I sincerely hope I am able to repay my debt to all of you and your community.
I would like to thank my mother, Marion Watters, for her lifelong support of my academic pursuits and my dad, Bill Watters, for instilling in a young son a lifelong desire to learn, better understand the world and the need for moral solutions to our human problems. Finally, yet importantly, I wish to thank my wife, Theresa, for providing me the love and support, freedom and time to complete this research and academic program.
I do not know how to thank her enough.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page
Preface ..…………………………………………………………………………..… vii
Dedication …………...... ……….………………….… xix
Acknowledgments ……………………………………………….……….………… xx
List of Tables ……………………………………………………………….…… xxvii
List of Figures ...... xxviii
Los Nadies ...... xxx
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION: The Homeless Puzzle ...... 1
The Contemporary Scope of Homelessness ...... 4
Contemporary Demographics of Homelessness ...... 10
Chapter One Endnotes ...... 16
2. A LOOK BACK ...... 18
Attitudes About Homelessness: Our Cultural Roots in English Vagrancy
Laws …..……………………………………………………………………..20
British Colonial America to Civil War Antebellum, Vagrants and Tramps….23
The Post-Civil War, Gilded Age and Hobohemia, Tramps and Hobos……. ..28
Depression Era: Transients ...... 43
Postwar America’s Golden Age: Bums ...... 60
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The New Homeless (Post-1970) ...... 70
Chapter Two Endnotes ...... 79
3. SIN, SICKNESS, AND THE SYSTEM: BARING THE FACE OF THE ......
HOMELESS ...... 82
The Elusive Face of the Homeless ...... 82
Approaches to the Homeless Debate ...... 85
Framing the Debate: “Sin, Sickness and the System” ...... 88
The Last Forty Years ...... 89
The Criminalization of Homelessness, Case Studies of the Homeless
Experiences ...... 102
Neoliberal Globalization and Homelessness ...... 105
Programs that Combat Poverty and Homelessness: Redistribution and
Recognition ...... 108
What the Homeless Face: Contemplating the Bare Life ...... 111
The Homeless Vortex: A Social Metaphor ...... 115
Chapter Three Endnotes ...... 118
4. SAFEGROUND NOW! ...... 119
What do we want? Safe Ground! When do we want it? Now! ...... 120
SafeGround Abides: The Early Days ...... 132
The Safe Ground Imagined Community Evolves ...... 141
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Codifying Reality, Imagined Communities and Imagination as a
Social Force ...... 147
Imagination as a Social Fact ...... 150
SafeGround in Summary...... 166
Chapter Four Endnotes ...... 168
5. STORIES FROM SAFEGROUND ...... 171
Jimi’s Story ...... 173
Rose’s Story ...... 192
James’ Story ...... 202
Jeff’s Story ...... 214
Homeless Themes, Behavior Patterns ...... 236
6. THE “EMPTY TENTS” OF FREEDOM ...... 241
Home of the Free or Homeless and Unfree? ...... 242
Citizenship and Human Rights ...... 247
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)...... 251
“Empty Tents” of Freedom ...... 254
The UN Meets SafeGround ...... 262
The UN Returns: The Human Right of Access to Water and Sanitation...... 269
Recognizing Invisible Faces………………………………….…………...... 278
Chapter Six Endnotes ……………………………………………….….…..282
7. NEOLIBERALISM AND AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM .….……….…….283
20th Century Capitalism, Imperialism and Neoliberalism ……………..…...285 xxiv
The Great Financial Crisis (2007-2009) or Great Neoliberal
Miscalculations ...... 301
The Place of the Self: The Individual in Culture ...... 315
American Individualism ………………………………………….………...318
American Individualism Meets Capitalism ………………………………...326
Chapter Seven Endnotes ...... 333
8. BEYOND BLAME, BEYOND SAFE GROUND: PROGRAMS THAT
CAN HEAL ...... 334
Previous Chapters: A Brief Review ...... 335
Indignez Vous! Time for Outrage! ...... 339
Theories of Justice ...... 342
Social Justice Paradigms: Redistribution, Recognition or Both? ...... 348
Myths of Neoliberal (Washington Consensus) Development ...... 353
Programs That Can Heal ...... 356
Final Thoughts on Healing...... 370
Chapter Eight Endnotes ...... 373
Appendix A. Unites States Code, Title 42, Chapter 119, Subchapter 1, ɠ11302 ....376
Appendix B. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration....…….380
Appendix C. Data Tables From Solenberger (1911)………………………………382
Appendix D. S.E.R.A. 1935: Social Service Division..……………………………384
Appendix E. Review of Activities of the SERA of California, 1933-1935…...... 391
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Appendix F. A Transient’s Diary...... 392
Appendix G. White’s Principles of Self-Governance ...... 395
Appendix H. River District Redevelopment Area and Business District ...... 397
References Cited ...... 401
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LIST OF TABLES Tables Page
1. Homeless Counts in Sacramento, California (2007-2011) ...... 8
2. Familial Composition of Homeless Persons in the U.S. (2009) ...... 11
3. Ethnic Composition of the Homeless Population in the U.S. (2009) ...... 12
4. Characteristics of the Homeless in Sacramento, California (2011) ...... 16
5. Poverty Level Threshold Income for a Family of Four………………………306
6. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2011 Poverty Guidelines…307
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LIST OF FIGURES Figures Page
1. Sutter's Fort c. 1840s ...... 26
2. Bird's Eye View of Sacramento ...... 27
3. Black September (1873) ...... 30
4. The Great Labor Strike of 1877 ...... 36
5. Central Pacific Railroad Employees (1876) ...... 41
6. Special Freight Ttrain for Transporting California Fruit East (June 24, 1886). ... 41
7. Sacramento's New Southern Pacific Station (1925) ...... 42
8. Work Pays America! Prosperity ...... 47
9. “Migrant Mother,” Dorothea Lange (1936) ...... 48
10. “Tengle Children, Hale County, Alabama,” Walker Evans (1936) ...... 49
11. Sacramento Depression Settlements ...... 53
12. Sacramento Hooverville (c. 1933-35) ...... 55
13. Sacramento Hooverville Young Citizens (c. 1935) ...... 56
14. A Few Hooverville Roofs (c. 1935) ...... 57
15. One of Hooverville’s Better Residences (c. 1935-36) ...... 58
16. Seepage in Hooverville, Sacramento, California (1935) ...... 60
17. Port of Sacramento, Sacramento Deep Water Ship Channel ...... 66
18. Resurrection City Shanties, Washington, DC (1968) ...... 70
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19. A Homeless Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, CA (1987) ...... 73
20. Unemployment Rate Sacramento County (1995-2009) ...... 311
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LOS NADIES
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: the one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the New Year with a change of brooms.
The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who are not, but could be. Who don’t speak languages, but dialects. Who don’t have religions, but superstitions. Who don’t create art, but handicrafts. Who don’t have culture, but folklore. Who are not human beings, but human resources. Who do not have faces, but arms. Who do not have names, but numbers. Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper. The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.- - Eduardo Galeano, The Nobodies
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1
People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling up time, is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain. That is why it is nonsense to pretend that those who have “come down in the world” are to be pitied above all others. The man who really merits pity is the man who has been down from the start, and faces poverty with a blank, resourceless mind. - George Orwell, Down and Out In Paris and London (1933:180)
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION: THE HOMELESS PUZZLE
The homeless in the United States are easily spotted in most major American cities and, just as often, in the suburban and rural areas. They often appear in old, tattered or soiled clothing, may lack suitable grooming and may appear unfriendly or scary to many “normal” Americans. Since the 1970s Americans have grown familiar with seeing homeless people sleeping in dark storefront doorways or on ventilation grates in our cities, in community parks or in the subways. Who are these homeless Americans?
Why did they become homeless and what can or is being done to help them and stem the growth of homelessness in one of the richest countries in the world? Many Americans ask these questions when they see homeless persons, but they receive few answers from their elected politicians, law enforcement, religious leaders, or business community leaders. Did these people choose to be homeless and, if so, why? Are they all alcoholics,
2 drug addicts, mentally ill or dangerous and how did they become homeless? How many homeless persons are there in the United States? Why do allow this problem to continue?
These are reasonable concerns that deserve to be and must be addressed if we are to turn the tide of increasing numbers of homeless and effectively combat or end homelessness.
My research into what had been previously written regarding homelessness during the last 40 years pointed to the fact that many researchers--from varied disciplines--were looking at causal factors that pointed the blame at the homeless individuals themselves and, as a result, these influential studies led to unsuccessful policies aimed at dealing with deviant and pathological individuals (e.g., Bahr 1973; Bahr and Caplow 1974; Bridgeman
2006; Jencks 1994; Rossi 1989a; Snow and Anderson 1993). Such stigmatization hides the rights and privileges of those misidentified and results in policies which contribute to the reproduction of conditions causing homelessness. Certainly many of the sociological, psychological and economic studies provided extensive quantitative analysis, but they failed to identify causal factors of homelessness that anthropological inquiry might recognize. Additionally, these studies did not provide my research with an appropriate theoretical basis which would allow me to understand my ethnographic fieldwork data.
As I focused on more recent anthropological investigations, I began to see a move away from the blame game and toward the emergence of some important questions regarding
American policy making and ethos.
Ida Susser (1996), for example, raised the level of anthropological dialogue when she looked at urban poverty and homelessness, observing that these groups, the poor and homeless, have become invisible and marginalized, reflecting the growing inequality in
3 society (Susser 1996). Susser further notes that only those homeless who can avoid interaction with institutions are considered deserving, as opposed to those who become stigmatized because they need mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, or other forms of social and economic support (Susser 1996). Vincent Lyon-Callo (2004) directly criticized the actions of the shelter industry service providers as a
“medicalization” of homelessness, achieved by labeling and then treating the homeless as pathological. He called for action that bypasses the common sense understandings of homeless people, which are often stigmas, and urged instead a focus on the nature and causes of inequality in our society. The idea of investigating the causal factors of an expanding inequality was also suggested by anthropologists Jeff Maskovsky and Ida
Susser (2009), who ask, “What is the price paid at home?,” for the new U.S. imperialism abroad which has been credited with spreading neoliberal policies globally. Phillippe
Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg (2009) state this concisely: “Specific public policies and structural economic shifts in the local and global economy produce homelessness”
(Bourgois and Schonberg 2009:309). Where do we go from here? How can we re- envision the homeless in a way that is more productive? Can we accomplish a shift in our identification of the homeless to new ways of focusing our policies on the rights and privileges of homeless citizens and, would this shift, in turn, open doors for fruitful investigations and powerful solutions that lead us to new ways of treating a contemporary problem?
In this thesis I explore the possibility of moving away from defining the homeless community as people who lack permanent shelter and view them as citizens “who happen
4 to be homeless.” In so doing, I attempt to assert the rights and privileges of homeless individuals as citizens above and beyond their identification as merely homeless. And I ask, could there be strategies nestled in the rights and privileges of these individuals as citizens which could be articulated in order to address inequalities of homeless members?
By recognizing the homeless as citizens who have the same rights and privileges as all others, this thesis is an attempt to chart a novel approach to addressing homelessness
The Contemporary Scope of Homelessness
The exact number of homeless persons in the Unites States has always been an elusive figure. Numerous homeless advocacy organizations and governmental agencies, using differing methods and with varying success, have provided estimates which can be compared and together can provide a reasonable understanding of the scope of homelessness. If we look at the larger picture, the worldwide census, it is of notable interest that in 2005 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing,
Miloon Kothari, informed the 61st United Nations Session on Human Rights that “over one billion people on the planet lack adequate housing, while around 100 million have no housing whatsoever” (Capdevila n .d.). Kothari’s estimate of 100 million homeless is his estimate of the number of homeless at a single point in time. One of the difficulties in achieving a homeless census is that the homeless population is fluid in nature.
Individuals often move in and out of homelessness as their personal fortunes change.
This phenomenon is often referred to as episodic homelessness. If Kothari were to look
5 at the number of people on the entire planet that move in and out of homelessness within a calendar year, for example, the number would be much higher.
When we look at the United States, we find that the number of homeless has been increasing over the last forty years. In the late 1970s activist Mitch Snyder estimated that there were a million homeless individuals in the U.S., an estimate he raised to 2-3 million in 1982 (Jencks 1994). In 1984 the Reagan Administration directed the Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to perform the first official U.S. government sponsored count of the homeless population in the U.S., in part to counter what the government thought were high estimates provided by homeless activists such as Snyder
(Jencks 1994). HUD’s 1984 effort arrived at a population range between 250,000 and
350,000 homeless. This discrepancy between NGOs and government agency counts, as well as the lack of specificity in how the count is defined, has continued to create confusion for those attempting to understand the magnitude of the problem. Even after
HUD implemented biennial point-in-time counts in 2005, which aimed to provide a consistent methodology with which to gather counts that could be used to analyze issues of homelessness, locally and nationally, and to administer various homeless support legislation, advocacy groups and HUD continue to disagree on the validity of the count results.
The federal definition of who qualifies as homeless detailed in U.S. Code (see
Appendix A) includes individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence; individuals who have a primary nighttime residence that is operated as a public or private shelter, i.e. an institution that provides temporary residence for individuals
6 intended to be institutionalized; or a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings. Based on this definition, the HUD point-in-time counts include those on the streets, those in shelters and others in halfway houses, etc. The issue of who to include becomes difficult when considering the
“couch surfers” who go from house to house, staying with friends and relatives as they look for employment or resolve other issues that keep them from permanent housing.
Moreover, there is the tendency for those living in extreme poverty to “double-up” and share housing. Should this be considered adequate housing and should any of these individuals be considered homeless?
The HUD national homeless count has risen from the 250,000-350,000 range in
1984 to the 2005 HUD point-in-time estimate of 754,147 (HUD 2007). In a 2008 report released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 83% of the U.S. cities surveyed reported an average increase of 12% in homeless populations since 2007; 95% reported an increase in the demand for food assistance; and 59% reported increased requests from first time homeless persons and families (U.S. Conference of Mayors Report 2008). On their website, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) quotes a study by the National Law
Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP) in which they estimate that each year in the United States between 2.3 and 3.5 million people experience homelessness (PBS
2009). In NLCHP studies of 50 major U.S. cities conducted prior to the 2008 recession, it was routinely found that the number of homeless far outreached the available shelter capacity. The 2008 recession brought about an increase in the unemployment figure to double-digit numbers and a decrease in funding for affordable housing programs and
7 social services as budget revenues dwindled across the nation. In spite of programs to provide temporary housing, it seems impossible to assume that the figures pertaining to the number of homeless are not continuing to rise, especially in California where unemployment recovery efforts lag behind national efforts as of June 2011.
The Contemporary Scope of Homelessness in Sacramento
In Sacramento, California, where my fieldwork is based point-in-time homeless street counts conducted by the Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance
(DHA) Homeless Program have shown trends similar to those seen in the NLCHP studies above. Between 2007 and 2009 there was an overall 14% increase in the number of total homeless in Sacramento County, even though a 34% decrease was obtained in efforts targeted at those defined as chronically homeless using HUD guidelines (Briem 2009:1).1
Most recently, between 2009 and 2011, the count shows a substantial reduction in the number of homeless in Sacramento County. The reported reduction in chronic homelessness as defined by HUD2 may be best attributed to the positive effects of the
Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) component of the Obama
Administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which included
$1.5 billion for a Homelessness Prevention Fund. The Sacramento Housing and
Redevelopment Agency (SHRA) reports that between October 2009 and October 2010,
581 homeless households were housed and another 966 households needing preventive assistance were assisted through the HPRP program. However, social service professionals working with the homeless in Sacramento County believe the overall count is suspect for a number of reasons.3 First, it was taken during an evening (after 9:00pm)
8 when heavy valley fog brought visibility down to several feet in Sacramento, a condition which made finding people outside at night, in doorways, alleys, forested parkland along the rivers, an effort of questionable validity at best. Second, as of May 2011, the unemployment rate of 12.9% in Sacramento County lagged in recovery behind
California’s 11% rate and the national rate of 9.1%. The unemployment rate and other economic drivers of homelessness will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Seven.
The total number of homeless in Sacramento County between 2007 and 2011, as calculated by point-in-time counts, is assembled in Table 1 below.
Table 1: Homeless Counts in Sacramento, California (2007-2011) (Chronically Homeless/Other Homeless/Total)
Homeless Emergency Transitional Unsheltered Totals Street Shelters Shelters or “On the Counts Streets” 2007 215/494/709 0/738/738 503/502/1005 718/1734/2452 2008 238/492/730 0/682/682 442/824/1266 680/1998/2678 2009 191/520/711 0/895/895 277/917/1194 468/2332/2800 2010 n/a n/a n/a n/a 2011 111/473/584 0/819/819 242/713/955 353/2005/2358 Source: Sacramento Steps Forward (2008a, 2009b, 2011).
As mentioned above, it is important when analyzing these figures to understand that they represent the “snapshot in time” of homeless persons accounted for when the street count is taken. Over the course of the year the total number of persons experiencing homelessness is different from that snapshot number, which also reflects that homelessness is often temporary with many people moving in and out of homelessness.
For example, several members of my target group, SafeGround, became recipients of
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HPRP housing. However, HPRP housing, which was a “housing first” 4 program, required that within a given amount of time the recipient be employed and able to assume responsibility for a portion of the rent. In the poor job market of 2010, the SafeGround members were unable to find employment and, therefore, after ninety days some lost the housing and returned to the streets. According to the 2009 DHA report (Briem 2009) which utilized an estimation process developed by the Urban Institute and the
Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), over the course of 2009, 4,910 persons experienced homelessness in Sacramento and 43% of those or 2,111 were unsheltered
(Briem 2009). This represents an 18.8% increase in unsheltered homeless in Sacramento
County between 2007 and 2009. These unsheltered represent an underserved group of homeless persons who fall into a gap between homeless support programs. Structurally, these gaps are experienced as insufficient shelter capacity, insufficient transitional housing capacity, insufficient affordable housing for people living in poverty and, primarily, insufficient funding for these programs.
In July of 2011 the Sacramento Bee published a story (Hubert 2011d) exposing the fact that the Sacramento County homeless street counts, which have been widely publicized and quoted by local press and politicians, were performed using a methodology that did not include homeless children attending county schools. The report, based on data from the Sacramento County Office of Education, showed a 50% increase in homeless school children in Sacramento County who don’t have stable housing on a night-to-night basis (Hubert 2011d:A1, A18). This startling and overlooked demographic revised the 2009 street count from 2800 to over 10,000, a major oversight
10 or flaw in methodology. I have no doubt that there will be an argument over the methodology of the count or the definition of homeless, but it is evident that many more people are without a permanent place to call home than was previously being publicized.
While these numbers continue to be inconclusive as to the exact number of homeless individuals or families, they do tell us that there is a major problem in the
United States and that it is a growing problem. There are no current studies with reliable numbers that document the numbers of individuals and families that have slid into poverty, much less into homelessness, due to unemployment and hardships caused by the recession that started in 2008, and, although the recession is technically over, the actual recovery in terms of employment and housing lags far behind. Additionally, cities across the country are again reporting increased family and youth homelessness. Moreover, while a great deal has been written about the risk factors related to homelessness, it is apparent that we do not yet have a good idea of the way to identify and contend with the root causes of homelessness in American society. Otherwise, we would have expected to see programs specifically targeted at these identified factors, and experienced a related decline in the number of homeless individuals and families.
Contemporary Demographics of Homelessness
Current projections of the number of persons homeless in the United States vary as noted in the previous section, but who are the homeless? A joint research report published in 2011 by the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) and the
Homelessness Research Institute (HRI) notes that a majority of the states, 31 out of 50,
11 reported an increase in their homeless counts between 2005 and 2007 (Sermons and
Witte 2011). Additionally, the report notes that the largest increase was in the number of family households, which showed a 4% increase (Sermons and Witte 2011), and this was prior to the 2008 recession, the resultant high unemployment rates, housing market crash and foreclosures. While some of these statistics can be attributed to natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the numbers still demonstrate the inability in the
United States to provide temporary, subsidized or affordable housing in sufficient quantity to those families in urgent need of shelter. Moreover, the same NAEH report goes on to detail that after decreases in chronic homelessness between 2005 and 2007 the
United States experienced a stagnant population of those labeled as chronic homeless between 2008 and 2009, despite an 11% increase in the number of permanent housing units (Sermon and Witte 2011). While we know that this includes single men and women and, increasingly, families, there are other important subcategories of the homeless population which can serve to support our discussion of risk factors and economic drivers in future chapters of this research.
Table 2: Familial Composition of Homeless Persons in the U.S. (2009)
Familial Category Percent Families with children 40% Single males 41% Single females 14% Unaccompanied youths 5% Source: National Coalition for the Homeless (2009).
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In a 2009 report titled Who is Homeless? The National Coalition for the
Homeless (NCH) assembled some stunning statistics that demonstrate the demographic scope of homelessness in the U.S. in the early 21st Century. Table 2 is a compilation of the data assembled by the NCH regarding family composition.
Table 3 depicts the ethnic background of the homeless population and is also taken from NCH data assembled in the 2009 report. As we can see from the NCH data,
African Americans are highly over-represented in the homeless population compared to their percentage of the general population, and Hispanics and Native Americans are slightly over-represented, while Caucasians are highly under-represented and Asian
Americans slightly under-represented.
The stereotypes and stigmas that the homeless struggle with may stem from the general public’s perceptions of characteristics or risk factors that are found in some interesting, albeit misunderstood, statistics. The National Resource and Training Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness, an organization within the Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), created by Congress in 1992, reports on the health problems reported by the homeless population of the United States (see
Table 3: Ethnic Composition of the Homeless Population in the U.S. (2009) Ethnicity of Percent of Percent of Subgroup Homeless General Population African American 49% 11% Caucasian 35% 75% Hispanic 13% 11% Native American 2% 1% Asian American 1% 4% Source: National Coalition for the Homeless (2009).
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Appendix B, Table 1). The SAMHSA data show, a majority (66%) of the homeless population report substance abuse or mental health problems, as well as acute or chronic health problems (75%). The National Resource and Training Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness also reports that 71% of homeless persons are in central cities, 21% in suburban areas and 9% in rural areas of the U.S. (SAMHSA 2009). There is little doubt that these health conditions are often interpreted as the cause of homelessness. However, it must be noted as the data on Table 1, Appendix B demonstrates, that many of the homeless who are afflicted with these diagnoses are without health care insurance and have a difficult time obtaining the medical support required to prevent or treat these illnesses.
It is also important to consider where the homeless population comes from, what were they doing prior to becoming homeless. In other words, what were their experiences with the military, employment, victims of crimes, and education? Again, using SAMHSA data (see Appendix B, Table 2) we gain statistical insight into the background, education and employment of the homeless in the United States.
An image of who the homeless are begins to emerge as the statistics in the
SAMSHA tables are reviewed. Often these individuals come from difficult and/or institutional backgrounds such as the foster care system, childhoods damaged by abuse and/or eventual incarceration in the penal system. They all too often grew up in impoverished households, struggle with below average educations and skill sets, and are likely to be suffering from a disease with which they have little economic or environmental capability of effectively dealing.
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Dale Maharidge, Pulitzer Prize winning author of several books on homelessness and hobos in America (Maharidge 1985, 1993, 2004 [original 1989], 2011), and who has written in the Sacramento Bee (Maharidge 2011) on poverty and homelessness, writes of the continuation, generation to generation, in the United States of lives lived in poverty and homelessness. According to Maharidge, those deprived of normal childhoods, educational opportunities and sufficient economic advantages to deal with hunger, medical afflictions, and behavioral problems are unable to provide a path out of these conditions for their children. In his 1989 book, And Their Children After Them,
Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson chronicle the lives of surviving members and decedents of those sharecropper families portrayed in the famous 1939 book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee and photographer Walker Evans.
These men spent four weeks during the Depression living with poor sharecropper families in the Deep South. As with many of those in both books, many of the homeless in the U.S. unwittingly pass their lifestyle on to their decendants. The following dialog is from an interview with “Bobby,” a Caucasian male and member of my target homeless group, SafeGround, Sacramento, California in mid-2010.
Stephen W. Watters: Were you born in Sacramento?
Bobby: I was born in Lexington, Kentucky and then my parents moved to Redding, California.
SWW: Are you the only child?
Bobby: No. No, actually on my Dad’s side, he has, like, 22 kids. Now on my Mom’s side she’s got only four, so, yeah. Yeah, there was 14 of us living in the house at one time… Man, it was insane.
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SWW: Do you keep in touch with everybody or are they spread out now?
Bobby: Well, my Mom and Dad are dead now, so it’s like, you know – my sisters – we’re so spread out, I only know where a couple of them- where they’re at, and they don’t have telephones or anything, so…You know, I have – I’ve looked at myself five years down the road, didn’t imagine I’d be here. You know? And, you know, I had a good house, you know? I had four – I got four kids. Man, it was just – it’s…
SWW: Are you divorced now?
Bobby: No, no. We just separated. And everything just kind of happened – yeah. Yeah. And she moved on, you know? I spent two and a half years in prison.
SWW: Do you get to see your kids? Bobby: Yeah, yeah, I get to see the kids. I mean – I’m not supposed to but… (From interview conducted by author, July 8, 2010)
At the time of this interview Bobby was 26 and living in the SafeGround illegal encampment, with his parole officer’s blessing, along the American River close to downtown Sacramento. He was an elected elder in the camp, worked a part-time job and was on parole wearing an ankle bracelet as a sex offender for what he claims was consensual sex with his future wife and mother of his four children when he was 18 and she was not. In late 2010 Bobby was sent back to prison for a year on a parole violation for an illegal visit with his children. His wife and children are waiting for him to come back to SafeGround so they can see him again.
Contemporary Demographics of the Homeless in Sacramento
The demographics in Sacramento, California are similar to those across the country. Recently compiled by Sacramento Steps Forward (SSF), acting on behalf of
Sacramento County to complete the HUD required biennial point-in-time count; the
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Table 4: Characteristics of the Homeless in Sacramento, California (2011)
Characteristic Number % of Total Chronically homeless individuals 343 14.6% Chronically homeless families 0 0.0% Veterans 297 12.6% Severally mentally ill 619 26.3% Chronic substance abusers 967 41% Persons with HIV/AIDS 50 2.1% Victims of domestic violence 516 21.9% Unaccompanied children 27 1.1% Source: Sacramento Steps Forward (2011).
Sacramento Countywide Homeless Street Count 2011 (SSF 2011) provides a partial breakdown of the characteristics of the local homeless population (see Table 4). One interesting note in the breakdown is the addition of the victims of domestic violence subgroup. In my fieldwork I have personally met many women of all ages who were staying in the SafeGround camp in order to avoid abusive ex-partners and who were afraid of being found. These women represent a previously ignored and important category of the homeless population.
Chapter 1 Endnotes
1 HUD guidelines define chronic homeless as an unaccompanied homeless individual with a documented disabling condition who has been either continuously on the street or in an emergency shelter for a year or more, or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years. 2 HUD adopted the Federal definition which defines a chronically homeless person as “either (1) an unaccompanied homeless individual with a disabling condition who has been continuously homeless for a year or more, OR (2) an unaccompanied individual with a disabling condition who has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.” This definition is adopted by HUD from a federal
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standard that was arrived upon through collective decision making by a team of federal agencies including HUD, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. In its definition of a chronically homeless person, HUD defines the term “homeless” as “a person sleeping in a place not meant for human habitation (e.g. living on the streets, for example) or living in a homeless emergency shelter.” 3 During the 6/2009 to 12/2011 timeframe, I worked with SafeGround, a homeless advocacy organization working for a solution to the dilemmas posed by the City of Sacramento anti-camping ordinance and whose Board membership consists of equal numbers of representatives of the homeless population and leaders of various social support organizations (Loaves and Fishes, Francis House, Sacramento Housing Alliance, SHOC) in Sacramento. We have discussed the problems of an accurate count of the homeless and various methods for acquiring a count. While no solution has been determined it was agreed that the average nightly count in Sacramento city is 2400 plus of which approximately 1200 are sheltered. The number is rising and includes more first time homeless and families than in previous years. 4 “Housing first” or “rapid-rehousing” is a governmental and social policy or service program philosophy that directs homeless individuals to housing as a first step and operates under the assumption that housing is the most critical need and that services such as job training, mental health or substance abuse support, or other counseling can be secondary and come at a later time. This is supported by the McKinney-Vento legislation which created the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing (HPRP) program.
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If the United States, like the countries of the Old World, are also to grow vast crops of poor, desperate, dissatisfied, nomadic, miserably-waged populations, such as we see looming upon us of late years…then our republican experiment, notwithstanding all its surface- successes, is at heart an unhealthy failure. - Walt Whitman, The Tramp and the Strike Question in Prose Works 2000 [original 1892]
Chapter Two
A LOOK BACK
Previous studies of homelessness in America have often started with an historic reference to the fact that people have been homeless for hundreds or even thousands of years. While this is a true statement, homelessness being tied to the plight of refugees, wars, natural disasters, as well as political and economic strife throughout history, it is not the purpose in this chapter to review all these historic agents of homelessness. This chapter will focus instead on a history of homelessness in America that can shed some light on the current condition of homelessness in 21st century United States. I will start with a brief look at the English vagrancy laws created starting in the 14th century, the late
Middle Ages, and their influence on American cultural identity, and move on to the history of homelessness in America. It is my objective in this review to understand the cultural perceptions of homelessness and the historical drivers of homelessness in
America, as well as how these effects have been experienced over time in Sacramento,
California, home of my current day subject homeless group, Safe Ground Sacramento.
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This thesis is not a historic research project; however, during my research I reviewed many significant histories of extreme poverty and homelessness in America that helped provide critical understandings of the earlier cultural response to poverty and homelessness in America and, therefore, deserve special mention and future review. How the Other Half Lives (1890)1 by Jacob Riis, a Danish American immigrant, social reformer, journalist and photographer, chronicles and photographs the life of the poor in the New York slums of the late 1800s. Nels Anderson’s The Hobo (1923)2 is a study of homelessness by an early modern sociologist and ex-hobo of that period. James Agee’s
Depression Era story of three sharecropper families’ struggles with poverty in America,
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (2000) [original 1939]3 and Dale Maharidge’ s Pulitzer
Prize winning follow-up study completed almost fifty years later, And Their Children
After Them(1989)4, provide ethnographies of several generations of the same sharecropper families. These are two of the most important historical records available for anyone wishing to gain an understanding of the lives of those living in extreme poverty in America and how it can affect lives of multiple generations. Two additional histories, specifically on homelessness in America, stand out. Down & Out, on the Road,
The Homeless in American History (2002),5 by Kenneth Kusmer, and Citizen Hobo, How
A Century of Homelessness Shaped America (2003),6 by Todd Depastino, both provide an in-depth understanding of homelessness throughout American history and should not be overlooked for a complete understanding of the political-economic forces and cultural trends that have shaped the American phenomenon of homelessness and our cultural response to homeless people in the United States.
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Attitudes About Homelessness: Our Cultural Roots in English Vagrancy Laws
The anti-homeless laws designed to support the war on homelessness being fought across the United States today have their roots in the vagrancy laws of 14th through 19th century England and the cultural ethos derived of the English response to vagrancy. The English vagrancy laws were designed to fight the idleness of vagrants, who, in the eyes of many English aristocracy, contributed little labor or productivity to the emerging economy. The goal of these laws, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was the confinement of vagrants where they could be “taught the virtues of labor, in contrast to the medieval charity provided in monasteries and almshouses” (Beier 2004:31).
The vagrancy laws of England first appeared under the rule of Edward III in 1349 when a statute was enacted that took aim at those not engaged in productive labor. This first statute called, the Statute of Laborers, was “ordained to enforce the necessary labor required, because a great part of the people and especially of workmen and servauntes late died in pestilence” (Stoker 1909:606). This is a reference to the Black Death or
Great Pestilence that spread through Europe between 1348 and 1350 and is believed to have killed as much as 30-60% of Europe’s population, greatly reducing the available workforce and affecting the willingness of others to accept work (Austin-Alchon
2003:21). England’s catastrophic Black Death experience, the loss of lives and the fears of those still alive, had major impacts on the social structure of the English society. In reaction to the Black Death, many people were moved to live for the moment (Boccaccio
1353) rather than go to work where others had perished. Minority populations including
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Jews, foreigners, beggars and lepers were persecuted as suspect in the spread of the pestilence. This attitude of great concern was a reaction to fears of the plague by laborers and the desperate need of feudal aristocracy to rebuild a workforce depleted by death.
Below is the Statute of Laborers enacted in 1349 which was implemented to ensure a sufficient labor force.
Item because that many valiaunt beggars, as longe as thei maie live of begging, do refuse to labor, gevinge them selfe to idleness and vice, and sometime to thefte and other abominations: None upon the side peine of imprisonment shall, under the colour of pitee or almes give any things to such, which maie labour, or presume to favor them towards their desyres, so that therby thei maie be compelled to lbour for their necessary lyvinge. (Stoker 1909:606).
In the XXV and XXXIV sessions of Parliament, following enactment of the above statute and still under the reign of Edward III, the statute was re-enacted several times providing greater powers to punish through arrest, imprisonment and the flogging or branding of unwilling workers. By the reign of Richard II (1377-1399) laws identified beggars as vacaboundes and provided for reform. However, punishment was eventually reduced to three days in the stocks with only bread and water for sustenance.
By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries English vagrancy laws had enacted statutes aimed at securing and stabilizing the workforce to supply the labor requirements of England in the early modern era. Both A.L. Bier and Michel Foucault view these vagrancy laws of the 16th and 17th century as also representing a “particular version of humanism as a source of the condemnation of idleness and of the confinement of vagrants in institutions dedicated to self-improvement through labor” (Feldman 2004:31).
These institutions in the 16th century included bridewells or prisons where vagrants were
22 trained for professions, and later, by the 17th century, workhouses in which the poor and vagrants were given forced work. “Humanists generally viewed worldly activity as a good thing and saw no value in idleness…Thus, contrary to the Franciscan ideal of poverty, so powerful in the High Middle Ages,…the humanists saw dangers in material deprivation” (Beier 1983:6,18). This view of idleness along with the growing need for a reliable labor force together merged into an English social policy and statutes that condemned vagrancy and imposed corporal punishments such as flogging, branding and imprisonment in a house of correction. This was often done to eliminate “that loathsome monster idleness, the mother and breeder of vagabonds” (Hitchcock 1580)7. English vagrants of this era were confined to houses of correction and taught the virtues of labor as opposed to the medieval charity provided in monasteries and almshouses (Beier 2004;
Wallace 1965). In addition to prevention of idleness, the prevention of future criminality was a common justification for vagrancy statutes and prosecutions (Feldman 2004).
As the shift from the mercantile systems of commerce that had dominated Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia for centuries, to an industrially based production economy spread across the globe, readily available and inexpensive labor assumed a critical role in its success. For example, in England during the 15th century the shift was made from raising sheep to the production of woolens (Wolf 1997:121). It was critical to those in powerful positions during this early stage of an industrial production-based economy that public mores and statues support this need for labor. “By purchasing labor power, capital took control of social labor and applied it to the transformation of nature on its own terms. People had worked for wages before the installation of the capitalist
23 mode; but now wage labor became the pivotal form of labor recruitment, and the existence of a class of laborers, necessarily dependent on wages, became the dominant factor governing the mobilization and deployment of social labor” (Wolf 1997:267). The rejection of idleness on moral grounds and the placement of labor as an honorable worldly endeavor were values that future Americans settlers brought to North America from these economic, moral and legal roots in England. Similar reactions to vagrancy were occurring in other parts of Europe at the same time as in England in a response to the changing economic pressures and the needs of the new capital class for labor.
British Colonial America to Civil War Antebellum, Vagrants and Tramps
“Vagrant persons” were first recorded as social outcasts in the English colonies as early as 1640, reflecting a public response very closely related to that of the English
Middle Ages. Information mainly reliant on court records of vagrancy convictions in the early colonies during the 18th century suggest that the initial growth of the homeless in the British colonies was relatively insignificant prior to 1730 and would later be increased substantially by the late-18th century. Most of this increase was in the new, small but growing colonial cities, although wandering beggars were also noted to a lesser extent in rural areas of the colonies. “While it is safe to assume that there is some correlation between the numbers of people charged with vagrancy and the size of the entire homeless population, vagrancy convictions may also be influenced by the size and function of the police force, as well as by the attitude of authorities toward the homeless”
(Kusmer 2002:5).
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A major factor in early colonial homelessness was the influence of war on people’s homes and livelihoods. In 1675-76 King Phillip’s War, an Indian uprising in
Massachusetts and Rhode Island, forced settlers in rural areas and from farms into the cities increasing the number of unemployed and uprooted homeless. At that time
Bostonians were heard to complain about the “sins of idleness” providing another strong indication of the English influence on mores regarding the value of labor and the virtues of living materially productive lives. Soon thereafter, in Massachusetts an act was passed requiring those who lived an “idle and riotous life” to be bound out as servants (Kusmer
2002: 14).
War continued to play a role in uprooting people from their homes and driving them to homelessness in frontier areas of New England and New York where conflicts between settlers and Indian tribes during the early-18th century repeatedly contributed to the vagrant or homeless problem. By the mid-18th century the French and Indian Wars of
1756-63 contributed to homelessness and almost a century after King Philip’s War, there was an increase of homeless reported immediately prior to and after the American
Revolution (Kusmer 2002). By the 1820s accelerating economic changes, transforming the young America from an agrarian, pre-industrial society to a society dominated by mills, factories and growing urban populations was underway and starting to influence the size of the homeless population, forcing many without means into the unemployed ranks of vagrants and beggars (Kusmer 2002).
By the 1850s city officials had started to record the number of homeless persons who lodged overnight in special police station rooms designated for the homeless,
25 providing a more reliable figure. These figures demonstrated that as much as 20% of the families in the cities had family members who spent time in the “tramp rooms” of the police departments (Kusmer 2002). Also by 1850 the second phase of the industrial revolution had reached North America and the new economy was transforming American society. Factories changed the available labor opportunities; transportation connecting the eastern United States with the expanding western frontier via railroads facilitated the expansion of the American dream westward across the North American continent. The new economy was not without its own particular struggles. Economic recessions or downturns were experienced in 1817-23, 1837-43 and again in 1857 when a major depression hit the economy. Each of these economic downturns caused increased unemployment and homelessness in the new American economy that tended to be dealt with locally. In 1857 New York City organized soup kitchens and by 1866 had established the first shelter for the homeless (Wallace 1965). It was sign of things to come for a new nation not adverse to war and with the new and burgeoning industrialized capitalist economy.
Early Sacramento (1840-1860)
During this period, across the North American frontier to the west in Alta
California, a Mexican territory until 1850, Johan Augustus Sutter arrived in the
Sacramento Valley with a land bequest from Juan Bautista Alvarado, Mexican governor of Alta California in 1840, and soon established his namesake base of operations, Sutter’s
Fort (see Figure 1), for his New Helvetia settlement. Several land grants greatly expanded the New Helvetia territory. Through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago, which
26 ended the Mexican-American War (1846), New Helvetia soon fell under American control.
Figure 1: Sutter's Fort c. 1840s
Source: F. Gleason. Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion. F. Gleason, publisher and proprietor, (c. 1840s). {{PD-US-1923}}.
In 1847, James W. Marshall was sent by Sutter to nearby Coloma to construct a sawmill, for Sutter’s expanding enterprise. Marshall found a gold flake on the ground at the site of Sutter’s Mill, a discovery which led to the Gold Rush of 1849, which was soon in full force. The influx of hopeful prospectors decimated Sutter’s New Helvetia settlement, its’ economic integrity and well established agreements with local Indians.
Sutter soon placed his son in charge and retired. Sutter’s plans for the city of Sutterville soon fell by the wayside and Sacramento City developed around the Embarcadero wharf at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers. Sacramento City was officially founded in 1848 by Sutter’s son, John Augustus Sutter, Jr., and Samuel
27
Brannan just two years prior to California’s 1850 annexation into the Union as a free state.
Figure 2: Bird's Eye View of Sacramento
Source: George Holbrook Baker (1827-1906) American Artist, Britton & Rey (active 1851-1902) Lithographer. {{PD-US-1923}}.
The new city (see Figure 2) experienced several immediate disasters that threatened its success. An economic struggle and later a trade war erupted between John
Sutter, Sr., who had come out of retirement, and others involved in the economic development at the Embarcadero over the lease of the site. Major floods in 1850 also devastated the new city, carrying away merchandise stored at the Embarcadero and forcing the construction of the first wave of levees and dams that would become part of
28 the new city’s future. In October of 1850 a riverboat arrived with news of California’s statehood but also arrived bringing an outbreak of cholera that killed 1000 people in a matter of three weeks. Two years later, by 1852, Sutter’s New Helvetia had collapsed and Sutter’s Fort sat abandoned (Severson 1973). Several fires threatened to slow progress, also during the 1850s Sacramento’s economy diversified and established itself as a thriving community beyond its New Helvetia and Gold Rush boomtown start.
The Post-Civil War, Gilded Age and Hobohemia, Tramps and Hobos
When the Civil War ended in 1865, officials soon discovered that the numbers of individuals that were “tramping” throughout the expanding nation was increasing and causing growing civic concerns. The devastating experiences of the war had many effects upon the soldiers, many of whom had been exposed to appalling and stressful conditions of a bitterly fought, bloody war. Many had spent the war years in various camps, ill-equipped and foraging for survival, a condition that by the later part of the war had led to occasional desperate and illegal theft of war bounty. According to Kusmer quoting Union soldier John Billings, “as the conflict wore on…the line between legitimate expropriation of essentials and the theft of valuables gradually disappeared.
Conscientious scruples stepped to the rear, and the soldier who had them at the end of the war was a curiosity indeed” (Kusmer 2002:36). The same was true of the behavior of the
Confederate Army. During the war many soldiers were transported in boxcars and cattle cars, often riding on railroads for the first time. After the war ex-soldiers, often homeless, demonstrated activity with a strong resemblance to the behaviors of the
29 military camp life, foraging for survival and availing themselves of the benefits of rail travel. Historians have concluded that there are too many similarities not to come to the determination that the war experience provided a strong model for these new “tramping” lifestyles (Depastino 2003; Kusmer 2002; Wallace 1965). Additionally, the Civil War uprooted orphaned, impoverished and widowed soldiers and entire families in great numbers. Many returning soldiers had no home or family to come home to; many were dealing with physical or mental disabilities as a result of battle wounds, and took to the tramping lifestyle as a means of survival. Moreover, the origin of the words “tramp” and
“bum,” as applied to the homeless, can be traced to the Civil War era. Kusmer tells of additional narrative from Union soldier John Billings, who spoke of groups or small bands of soldiers going “on a tramp” of their own. By the mid-1870s the term “tramp” was being used not only for wandering vagrants but specifically to refer to the railroad- riding vagrants. Similarly, the word “bum” was derived from the term “bummer” which was used to in a mocking way against foraging soldiers and later was shortened to “bum” and used to label vagrants (Kusmer 2002:37).8 “In 1868 the New York Times used
“bummers” as a synonym for vagrants for the first time, identifying them as “men who hate the discipline of life, detest marching in the ranks of workers, and hold industry in abomination” (Kusmer 2002:37). As is reflected in this behavior, the mood of the day was to label tramps as “lazy” or “shiftless” and not to place blame or responsibility on the economy for the rising numbers of unemployed tramps (Depastino 2003). The charity that had been implemented in the 1850s and 1860s was questioned and judgmental labels
30 such as “deserving” and “undeserving” were applied in discussing the vagrants, tramps, or bums (Depastino 2002, Kusmer 2003).
Black September and the Gilded Age
In 1873 the nation and the world would experience an economic depression different from those in the past, due in great part to a number of domestic and international failures of the financial system. Known as Black September or the Great
Panic of 1873, it started internationally with the failure of the Vienna stock exchange, a fall in the value of silver and continued in the United States with bank failures due to over speculation of the expansion of the railroad system by banks during the postwar
Figure 3: Black September (1873)
Source: Harper’s Weekly. October 18, 1873 cover of Harper’s Weekly. President Grant saves Wall St. {{PD-US-1923}}.
31 period and devastating losses due to major fires in several major cities (Boston and
Chicago). The resultant economic panic and downturn of the United States industrialized-capitalist economy, which had by now evolved to a place of economic dominance never before experienced, was severe. As mercantile failures spread in late
1873, unemployment rose and affected an estimated 30-40% of the working population
(Wallace 1965). President Grant’s response to the economic failure included the liquidation of outstanding bonds allowing the banks to issue short-term clearing house certificates to be used as cash. This was in effect, an injection of millions of capital dollars into the economy that lead to an elimination of panic by Wall Street and its financial recovery but was highly criticized for doing little to alleviate the depressed economy over the next five years (see Figure 3). Unemployment continued to be high, and soup kitchens, bread lines, shelters and other forms of emergency relief seen in previous decades were again called into action.
Wallace identifies the 1873 depression, Black September or the Panic of 1873, as the time frame in which the American skid row was officially born. Previous to the 1873 depression, the homeless, especially in the emerging urban areas, had slept outdoors or found refuge in the slums. Wallace writes of this issue,
In 1865 the section of one Midwestern city which was later to become a skid row contained 21 groceries, 4 banks, 28 retailers and 4 physicians’ and surgeons’ offices. There were no employment agencies, only 13 saloons and bars, and of the 19 lodging houses and hotels many were distinctly fashionable – by no means the composition of a skid row. A short 15 years later, the number of groceries in this rapidly expanding city had dwindled to half, the number of lodging houses and hotels had risen by half, and there were more than three times as many saloons and bars. Eight pawn shops had put in their appearance (Caplow, et.al 1958:17).
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A review of the historical literature on the emergence of skid rows shows that, along with the effects of Black September, other factors such as the harsh impact of the Civil War on returning soldiers described above, continued population pressures due to large and ongoing European immigration with the associated need for inexpensive lodging, and a reduction in the amount of unskilled labor as the industrial economy expanded, all contributing to the widespread emergence of urban skid row districts. Additionally, as skilled industrial labor increased it was unionized and entire groups of workers were elevated through collective upward mobility (Bahr 1973). Skid row had arrived in
America on the shirt tails of the first major international capitalist depression. American opinion and policy makers responded with new and harsh criticisms of the “laziness” of the unemployed, the “indiscriminate charity” being provided and claims that this charity discouraged able-bodied workers from becoming gainfully employed. Additionally, cries for mass arrests, workhouses and chain gangs to take care of the tramp problem were widespread (Depastino 2003). These cultural perceptions and reactions to unemployment, poverty and homelessness had arrived along with an industrial capitalism that periodically suffered from recessions, stagnation and depressions that decimated the labor force, as well as giving rise to the creation of appalling skid row urban areas across the United States where those most affected by these economic hardships could be warehoused.
Black September occurred toward the end of the Civil War reconstruction (1863-
1877), at a time considered the beginning of what was to become known as the Gilded
Age, an era of massive U.S. economic capitalist expansion combined with rapid
33 population growth, due in great part to ongoing European immigration. This era was coined the Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in the book The
Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873-4), a satirical tale of political corruption and an expanding culture of materialism in post-Civil War America of the later-19th century.
The Gilded Age, perhaps best symbolized in the United States by the extravagance of
Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exhibition, signaled the birth of the modern industrial economy. This new Gilded Age economy grew as industrial advances including infrastructure expansion of transportation and communication systems lead to not only huge increases in agricultural and economic production, but also to the growth of real wages and an astounding accumulation of wealth by an emerging capitalist class in the
United States. Names like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould came into prominence as they built massive industries and accumulated great wealth and power, signaling a new class of mega-capitalists. However, there were other members of the new American capitalist system, including labors’ hourly wage earners and the unemployed that not only did not fare as well as the new mega-capitalists, but who referred to these powerful capitalists as the “robber barons.” As a result of this unprecedented economic expansion, by 1900 the United States rose to the pinnacle position of a core nation (Wallerstein 1974).
Trouble in Paradise, The Dark Side of the Gilded Age
The armies of tramps that had emerged after the Civil War, traveling the country by rail and often seeking temporary hourly-wage employment in agriculture, mining, timber and railroad construction industries, did not vanish with the rise of the Gilded
34
Age. Indeed, it could be postulated that it was this army of tramps and hourly laborers who often provided the needed workforce muscle for new industrial prosperity.
However, there was another factor, another cause for concern for many in the new material culture and industrialized economy. This army of tramps represented the poor, the unemployed and the sometimes temporarily employed, often those displaced by the burgeoning capitalist economy’s periodic fluctuations and changing labor demands.
These men traveled in search of new opportunities tied to rumored economic expansion somewhere else. New steel factories, agricultural opportunities, railroad expansion or mining and timber production out west lured desperate men to the road. However, the growing and comfortably employed middle-class that was beginning to thrive as a result of the economic expansion during the Gilded Age was not so forgiving of the plight of these armies of tramps. As in earlier days, the presence of the armies of tramps caused concern among the wealthy and middle classes which resulted in “struggles between propertied and unpropertied over the use of public space; fears about the growth of a propertyless proletariat, and anxieties about the loss of traditional social controls in
American cities” (Depastino 2003:8). Their mobility was unprecedented and caused grave concerns about who was responsible since many of the homeless men were often from somewhere else. The result was a new wave of vagrancy laws and increased activity by philanthropic group officials wishing to abolish the “outdoor relief “9 and
“indiscriminate charity” that was felt by charity administrators “to encourage vagrancy.”
This effort to limit reckless charity was also an effort to increase the workers dependence on wage labor (Depastino 2003).10
35
The concern was expanded with the growing fear that the army of tramps would organize and become a political power within their own right. Some of this fear was due to the actual militancy demonstrated by labor against the employers as the Gilded Age’s economic success was met with periodic labor uprisings and working-class protests.
Corporations, a new economic force, and state governments responded with newly formed armed forces, which were received with equal intensity by organized labor militias. When a massive national labor strike crippled the country in 1877, the tramps were given the blame and attacks from the defenders of the status quo of the day (see
Figure 4).
The strike began with a seemingly isolated job action among workers on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the small town of Martinsburg, West Virginia. Even as President Rutherford B. Hayes dispatched troops to regain control of the B & O, the strike spread rapidly across the land, encompassing not only the nation’s railroad workers but also farmers, coal miners, steelworkers, the unemployed, and myriad other groups…towns and cities stretching from Philadelphia to San Francisco became engulfed in a bloody labor conflict. One hundred thousand workers across the nation walked off their jobs. The entire cities of St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Chicago shut down. In the fighting that ensued between workers and various armed forces sent to quell the insurrection, millions of dollars’ worth of property went up in flames. By August over 100 people lay dead and thousands more injured (Depastino 2003:23-24).
There was also an opposite force to those who would blame the tramps and a new vision of the tramps as care-free hobos that ride the rails, unencumbered by grip of the industrial world’s wage labor and workday tentacles. The quote by Walt Whitman from
The Tramp and the Strike Question (2000) [original 1894] at the beginning of this chapter is an example of this response to the emerging lifestyle of the new middle class and the wealthy capitalists. While the press struggled with distinctions between “common
36 tramps” and “honest workingmen,”11 there was also a developing sense of romanticism in some descriptions of the life of the rail riding hobos. Writers and poets took to the rails and gained insight and experiences that would influence their work and the public’s perception of the hobo’s lifestyle. For example, Jack London, who had started riding
Figure 4: The Great Labor Strike of 1877
Source: "Sixth Regiment Fighting its way through Baltimore," an engraving on front cover of Harper's Weekly, Journal of Civilization. XXL(1076). New York, Saturday, August 11, 1877. {{PD-US-1923}}.
trains as a teenager and would later become America’s first proletarian writer, quit his job and in 1894, hopped a train, and chased the labor movement’s Industrial Armies’ march on Washington to petition for unemployment relief.12 In 1897, future poet Carl Sandberg
37 took to the rails and developed a close relationship of mutual support with another hobo.
This type of companionship for safety, frugality and company bred a community ethic of cooperation and mutualism within the hobo “jungles” and contributed to the growing sense of there being an optional lifestyle to that of property owners and the growing materialism in society. It was the hobos’ patterns of nonaccumulation and of minimizing wage dependency, insulating themselves against exploitation at the hands of the employers that were nurtured and enforced by the hobo subculture (Depastino 2003).
Hobohemia
This hobo subculture was often called Hobohemia, in a large part due to Nels
Anderson’s classic study done in 1907 of Chicago’s West Madison Street district, The
Hobo, The Sociology of the Homeless Man (1923), where he describes the district as
Hobohemia. Anderson viewed Hobohemia as a clearinghouse where men meet jobs and jobs meet men. “Districts like West Madison Street functioned less as a source of work for hobos than as an infrastructure for housing, marketing, and transporting their labor to the hinterlands” (Depastino 2003:73). Chicago’s status as the largest railroad hub in the nation provided often free transportation to job sites across the wageworkers frontier.
Labor, including the hobo workers in Hobohemia, continued to organize during this period much as the Industrial Armies of 1894 had done. In 1908, a group named the
Overall Brigade journeyed across America, headed to Chicago to oppose the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW), known as the “Wobblies,” at their fourth annual convention. The Overall Brigade challenged the IWW faction that supported the ballot box as a path to socialism. The more radical Overall Brigade embraced an action agenda
38 including strikes, sabotage and other on-the-job protests as the best way to oppose and destroy capitalism. The Overall Brigade triumphed and the hobos now had a strong political presence through the IWW.13
In 1900 a Chicago woman, Mrs. Solenberger, was appointed to a leadership position in the Central District of the Chicago Bureau of Charities. For several years
Mrs. Solenberger kept statistical records on homeless men that passed through the bureau. These figures taken at the beginning of the 20th century provide some statistical insight into not only the demographics of the homeless population at that point in time but also into the questions that were being asked by those working with the homeless or hobos of the day provides some of the data Solenberger gathered from the 1000 men she tracked (Solenberger 1911) (See Appendix C, Table 1). It is noteworthy that the categories of men were most likely designed to help determine the percentage of homeless men that could be expected to respond to particular charity support and the percent of those that most likely would always require charity support due to inability to become gainfully employed. Solenberger conducted this research and compiled these statistics because she had become convinced that the services provided by the Bureau of
Charities were inadequate and that more individualized information was needed. She later proposed one-to-one care or in today’s terminology “individualized care” for every person as the necessary strategy for success in helping homeless individuals.
Another effort of note contained in the Solenberger study were statistics compiled on the “defects and diseases” among the homeless men tracked. Not all of the 1000 men tracked suffered from a disease or defect so this is a breakdown of the 627 men that did.
39
It is noteworthy that the total number of those men labeled as crippled or maimed, 168, accounts for 26.8% of those in the homeless population considered diseased or 16.8% of the total homeless population surveyed (see Appendix C, Table 2). It had been approximately 35 years since the end of the Civil War, during which time there had been several Indian Wars and most recently the Spanish-American War (1898) and Philippine-
American War (1899-1902). However, only one of the crippled men reported a war injury although several other accidents listed could have occurred during a wartime effort. Solenberger’s data suggests that 86 of these men were crippled by diseases including those listed in the chart, 22 from railroad accidents as hobos and passengers, 18 from falls, 44 due to other accidents, and 33 from undetermined causes. Another 55 claimed industrial accident injuries on-the-job including hands, arms, feet, legs or multiple losses. Solenberger was only able to verify the industrial accident reported in 28 of the 55 cases and often found that an injury reported as on-the-job had actually been due to carelessness while intoxicated (Solenberger 1911:46, 50). Solenberger also noted that twenty to twenty-five years previous to her study there had been few of what she defines as the cheap lodging houses in Chicago, noting that during the 1880s and 1890s they started to appear as a response to the increasing numbers of homeless men
(Solenberger 1911:314). This corresponds to the birth of skid row districts after the Civil
War (Wallace 1965) and the growing numbers of tramps and hobos.
As the early years of the 20th century came to a close in the United States the wageworkers’ western frontier was beginning to fade, the romantic dreams of the IWW and allure of Hobohemia were giving way to a new middle class that had stepped forward
40 from the Gilded Age and into post-World War I nation with new dreams of suburban homes, well-paying jobs and increased affluence.
Sacramento’s Gilded Age
The Sacramento economy thrived during the Gilded Age. While the eastern states were building industrial factories, Sacramento was using technological advances to promote agricultural progress and the expansion of the transportation system to transport agricultural products to new markets in the East. The 1880s saw the arrival of many of these technological advances in Sacramento. In 1880 the first telephone and electric service was implemented in Sacramento and the Southern Pacific Company was started and soon leased the Southern Pacific Railroad, followed by the Central Pacific Railroad
(see Figure 5). In June of 1886 the first shipment of fruit by railroad from Sacramento to the East Coast was completed (see Figure 6). By 1894, 75% of all fruit grown in
California and shipped to the East Coast was grown in the Sacramento Valley.
The next twenty years contained a series of important firsts for the growing
Sacramento economy. In 1895 Sacramento received the first electric power shipped from the Folsom powerhouse to the City of Sacramento. By 1906, several months after the great San Francisco earthquake, Southern Pacific built the first steel passenger car in
Sacramento. A year later in 1907 Pacific Fruit Express, jointly formed by the Southern
Pacific (SP) and Union Pacific Railroads, commenced operation with 6,600 refrigerator cars. During the Gilded Age Sacramento had become a major agricultural producing and distribution center for the country with railroads connecting Sacramento to markets in the
41
Figure 5: Central Pacific Railroad Employees (1876)
Source: California State Railroad Museum Library: CSRM Negative 27416. Used by permission.
Figure 6: Special Freight Train for Transporting California Fruit East (June 24, 1886).
Source: California State Railroad Museum Library: CSRM Negative 21611. Used by permission.
42 eastern population centers. SP had also become the major employer and by 1910 was 6
In 1918, toward the end of World War I, Mather Field was built in the
Sacramento area and would later become a major Air Force base and substantial government employer in Sacramento. During this period of economic expansion many
Figure 7: Sacramento's New Southern Pacific Station (1925)
Source: Sacramento Railroad Museum Library: CSRM Negative 39850. Used by permission.
investments were made in the community itself, both public and private, including the start of the Sacramento Northern railroad service connecting Oakland and Sacramento
(1913), the University Farm School in Davis and construction of Sacramento City Hall
(1909), the construction of the Yolo causeway connecting Sacramento and the Bay area the Sacramento area (1916), the city’s purchase of land for William Land Park (1923), the construction of the new Southern Pacific passenger station (see Figure 7), and the opening of Memorial Auditorium and Cultural Center (1925). In 1926 the American Can
43
Company broke ground for a canning facility at 32nd and C Streets which expanded and continued the growth of a significant canning industry legacy in Sacramento.
Sacramento was prospering along with the rest of the nation during this period of rapid economic growth between the 1877 depression and the stock market crash of 1929.
Opportunities for employment spurred a burgeoning population growth by attracting people from the East, including members of the Army of Tramps and hobos that rode the rails to get to Sacramento.
Depression Era: Transients
Fifteen years ago my public duty called me to an active part in a great national emergency, the World War…In my calm judgment, the Nation faces today a more grave emergency than in 1917…These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid…It is high time to admit with courage that we are in the midst of an emergency at least equal to that of war. Let us mobilize to meet it. - Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt, The Forgotten Man Speech, Albany, New York, April 7, 1932 (Depastino 2002:195).
After the end of World War I the nation was moving forward with economic confidence, and an exuberant populace felt as though anything was possible. The future looked bright. Throughout the era of the 1920’s this exuberance continued to be reflected in the spirit of the times. Technological advances again brought numerous new opportunities to the middle class, automobile ownership flourished, new home appliances were readily available, and housing availability was good. Unemployment, after a temporary spike during the depression of 1920-21 to 9%, stayed in the 4-6% range
44 through the rest of the 1920s (Smiley: n.d.). This was a time of great optimism where the
American people felt that the stock market could help everyone become wealthy and individuals as well as the banks invested heavily in the markets.
Toward the end of the decade there were signs that something might be about to change. In early 1929 people were still jumping eagerly into the market. Banks continued to make investments with customer’s uninsured deposits without the customers’ knowledge. An attitude of, “what could go wrong?” prevailed. On March 25,
1929, there was a small panic and sell off of stocks. However, an announcement that banks were continuing to lend stopped the market’s plunge and stock prices turned around. Other signals appeared as steel production dipped, car sales fell off and housing starts sunk. These were later viewed as unheeded signals that something was wrong within the economic system. That summer saw stock prices soar to their highest levels to date, hitting the pinnacle on September 3, 1929. Several days later they started to drop.
In October events became serious quickly. On October 24, 1929, the day known as “Black Thursday,” prices plummeted and a sell-off began. A great deal of stocks had been sold on margins that were quickly called in. On Black Thursday alone 12.9 million shares were sold, double the previous record. Four days later, on October 28, 1929,
“Black Monday,” panicked speculators continued to sell stocks fearing, and perhaps aiding, the worst. The next day it came. On October 29, 1929, “Black Tuesday,” panic levels were high, sales volume was high, and few were buying, so the market prices experienced a disastrous collapse, resulting in 16.4 million shares being sold at low prices. Recognized by many as the start of the Great Depression, Black Tuesday was at
45 least the most visible signal that the economic system was failing. Capitalism was in serious trouble. Unemployment quickly rose from a 3% level in 1929 to 8.7% in 1930, to
23.6% in 1932, and to a depression era peak of over 24% in 1933. Soon, the remaining hobos of the earlier period were joined by growing numbers in the skid row districts where the unemployed looked for cheap lodging, food and employment. At the same time the “Dust Bowl”14 problem had displaced substantial numbers of agricultural workers and families, many of whom took to the road, traveling west to the perceived promise of a new life and new opportunity in California.
There were many other factors that contributed in varying degrees to the Great
Depression including the failure of over 9000 banks in the United States that had uninsured deposits, a mass reduction in spending across all classes partly as a result of fear after the bank failures and stock market crash, and the Hoover Administration’s passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, enacted in 1930, which created high taxes on imports and squashed trade with European partners.
Although the stock market crash of October 29, 1929 is most often quoted as the reason for the Great Depression there is little doubt that these other factors helped the problem snowball into a vicious cycle of panic and failure. Economists have debated for the last 70 years as to what the political-economic structural causes in the economic system that failed were.15 One thing that can be acknowledged without debate is that by the early 1930’s there were millions of Americans that were unemployed and homeless.
Some were on the road, others on the streets, all often hungry and in need of relief.
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The New Deal
The reaction by the administration of President Herbert Hoover to the 1929 stock market crash and the nation’s plunge into the depths of economic depression was ineffectual. Hoover was a strong supporter of what he perceived as the American values of individuality and personal self-reliance, ideals that were evident in his refusal to have the federal government supply relief payments for those suffering the effects of the depression. With unemployment at 23.6% and climbing during the 1932 presidential election, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) won a landslide victory with 57% of the popular vote and was sworn into office as the 32nd President of the United States on
March 4, 1933. In his first inaugural address FDR called for the application of social values. He stated, “The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit” (Roosevelt N.d.). FDR had run on a New Deal platform of three main components to combat the economic situation, relief, recovery and reform and the New
Deal programs that the FDR Administration enacted targeted these three components. In what has become known as the “First New Deal” many bills were passed aimed at relief during the administration’s first 100 days.16
By 1935 there had been some economic and social successes. National unemployment rates had started a decline, the Dow Jones, farm prices and GDP had all gained some stability and were on an upward trend. The mid-term elections of 1935 gave
FDR a majority victory in both houses of congress and the opportunity for more
47 legislative victories. In what has become known as the “Second New Deal,” FDR’s
Administration created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) which setup a federal level relief agency employing over two million heads of households as well as the Social
Security Act aimed at economic security for the elderly, impoverished and disabled. A large scale WPA public relations effort resulted in a series of art and posters as seen in
Figure 8.
During the Great Depression single women, who had an even higher level of the
“Okies,” traveling west to new opportunities, included many large farm families, unemployment than men, had become a more visible part of the homeless communities.
Figure 8: Work Pays America! Prosperity
Source: WPA Federal Art Project, Works Progress Administration poster (c. 1935). {{PD—US}}.
48
However, the public perception of women hobos was often harsh and judgmental.
Women hobos were seen by many as “invaders in the province of men and lacking of any hobo tradition or lore” (Reckless 1934:175-180). Dust Bowl families, often referred to as women and children and who, along with other depression era poor and homeless, were forever captured in photographic essays such as those made famous by Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans (see Figures 9 and 10) both photographers worked for the Farm
Service Administration (FSA) during this era.
Figure 9 “Migrant Mother,” Dorothea Lange (1936)
Source: Black and White Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945, Library of Congress. Negative (LC-USF34- 009058-C) Public Domain. Note: Migrant Mother Series,” Photographed by Dorothea Lange, Destitute Pea Pickers in California. Mother of Seven Children. Age thirty-two, Nipomo, CA.” (February, 1936)
49
Sacramento During the Great Depression: State Emergency Relief Administration
Sacramento in some ways was an ideal location for settlements of shack colonies during the depression. The mild climate and geographical location provided and excellent place for people of limited economic means to settle temporarily. Large enough in 1930 to offer opportunities for occasional employment in nearby agricultural fields and canneries, the city itself covered a small area and distance between services, stores, and employment and the shack colonies did not present an insurmountable problem (State Emergency Relief Administration 1935d:3).
In July of 1933 Federal Funds provided to California through the efforts of FERA, allowed for the creation of the State Emergency Relief Administration of California
Figure 10: “Tengle Children, Hale County, Alabama,” Walker Evans (1936)
Source: Photographed by Walker Evans. Library of Congress, original negative number: 31290-25. LC-USF33-031290-M1, Digital recreation LC-DIG-fsa-8a44441DLC. Public Domain.
(SERA), which would later be renamed State Relief Administration (SRA) by 1936. The purpose of SERA was to distribute federal and state funds for emergency depression era
50 relief including unemployment relief. In preparation for the 1936 transition, when the
Federal Transient Service efforts through FERA were being terminated and responsibility transferred to the states, SERA conducted a survey (SERA 1935d) with the objective of establishing a better understanding of the effects of the ever-changing federal, state and local relief systems for those in need. The studies further objective was to determine the status of the large number of unemployed and homeless residents of California and of transients who had come to California seeking opportunity and who were now seeking local relief. Data was collected from 124 public and private agencies and 69,731 transients were included in the survey (See Appendix D for SERA Table 1, original pages
31-31e) from the 1935 SERA Survey of Transient Service Men’s Camps which were passing from federal to state control). In summary, the survey determined that 78.4% of the respondents across the state were new applicants for relief, 21.6 returning applicants.
Applicant age varied, but across the state it was reasonably evenly spread in the 20-60 range; the Northern Region showed a slightly older average age than the Southern
Region. Statewide figures showed the following racial breakdown (SERA 1935a):
White 83.1% Foreign born white 7.6% Negro (African-American) 6.5% Mexican 1.5% Other 1.3%
Additionally, the survey found that statewide 75.4% of the applicants were single,
16.6% represented families and 19.4% should be returned to another area. Interestingly, in the Northern Region (which included Sacramento) the number that should be returned to another area was 53.5%, six times higher than in the Southern Region. Statewide
51 veterans accounted for 15.5% and 90.3% were U.S. citizens. In terms of employability, assuming there were jobs, statewide 46% were certified as W.P.A. employable, 53% in the Northern Region and 73% reported no heath problem, 82.4% in the Northern Region.
Finally, as it relates to the amount of time that transients had been in California statewide the respondents reported the following (SERA 1935a):
1 to 3 months 27.3% 3 to 6 months 18.3% 6 to 12 months 17.1% 1 year plus 12.1% Unknown 4.2%
In a later SRA report, Transients In California (1936a), based in part on the survey, an effort is made to distinguish between legal residents, local homeless, county non- residents, state homeless, state (intrastate) transients and federal (interstate) transients.
The findings were illuminating. Statistics that showed a reduction in the transients between the federal program (38,815) and the state program (6,618), when further investigated showed that what had been reduced was the amount of care provided and not the number of transients in need (SERA 1936a:19). The State of California and many counties and local municipalities had found themselves without sufficient funds to support the transient program needs, many transient camps and service offices were closed, when the federal program was discontinued. Still, a survey of over 19,000 transients applying for relief between December 16, 1935 and January 26, 1936, found over 10,600 were legal California residents. Thousands of others were helped through state travel assistance programs to return to their states of legal residency and to their families. California was simply unable to provide relief for all those that had come west
52 in hope of finding new opportunities, as neither the jobs nor the relief dollars were sufficiently available. Sacramento had been a major terminus of this transient migration to California because of the rail connections and the proximity of potential agricultural work in the Sacramento Valley.
Sacramento’s Transient Camps and Hooverville Shanties
The population of the City of Sacramento in 1930 was estimated at 93,750 (SERA
1936a:143). The 1936 SRA survey report found that “for many years Sacramento had been known as one of the main centers for homeless men and migratory workers in the
United States…Surrounding Sacramento, large numbers of men were found camping out in jungles all through the winter” (SERA 1936a:143). Figure 11 shows the location of depression settlements near the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers.
As described in the quote from the SERA 1935 Survey at the beginning of the previous section, the site along the rivers by the confluence of the Sacramento and American
Rivers at what is today Discovery Park was ideal for transients and homeless wishing to access both employment opportunities and relief services. It was a natural setting from which they could access available opportunities to improve their situation. In a novel method of investigation for a government agency, SERA sent agents into the field to investigate the transient communities, the shelters, camps, Hoovervilles and the services being provided to gain better insight into the full reality of the situation. The result was that the agents experienced all the hunger, poverty, poor health and frustrations of the transients and homeless and out of this experience produced a document titled, Journal of a Transient (1935).17 In this are found stunning details of what the agents
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Figure 11: Sacramento Depression Settlements
Source: State Emergency Relief Administration. State Archives Sacramento, California. File F3448:95. Used by permission.
found along the rivers in the camps and settlements. The following sample gives a brief view into life along the rivers during the worst years of the depression.
I spent an afternoon on a walk through the outskirts of the city to see the other camping grounds for transient families. All along the north edge of town, just outside city limits, families were camped beside the roads, along the railroad tracks and on vacant lots...There were also dozens of cheap tourist camps in this district where cabins could be rented for $1.00 to $5.00 a week and where a place to camp on the grounds costs as little as $1.00 per month. All these camp grounds were full. There were probably more than 500 families in free camp grounds in the north edge of the city (Henley 1993:23).
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Hooverville settlements were found across the nation during the depression era, including shanties in New York City’s Central Park. In Sacramento they were found along the river near downtown in the Jibboom Street area shown on the previous map. At the eastern end of that area, close to what is shown as the Rattlesnake and Rotten Egg districts, originally hobo jungles but by 1935 reportedly populated by criminals, minorities, migrant workers and transients, were the areas populated with Hooverville shack or shanties.
Those living in shacks in the Jibboom Street area either salvaged most of their furnishings including beds, mattresses and other pieces from dumps or made their own furniture. Often, out of necessity, they housed six to twelve people in one or two room shacks with cardboard, straw or bare-earth floors. “As bad as these conditions were, the people living in the Jibboom Street area still called the shacks home” (SERA 1935a:35).
Figures 12 – 1.16 are included to provide a striking visual representation of the extent of the Hooverville settlements in Sacramento during the Great Depression.
Occasionally, the areas along the rivers where the Hooverville shacks and campsites were located flooded, as they still do today, forcing hundreds of homeless people to move, then and now. In July of 1935 both the Sacramento and American
Rivers reached flood levels that forced residents to vacate their homes and move to higher ground. Those who remained in the settlements were subjected to dangerous health conditions, including typhoid and diphtheria, when stagnant water filled up with human excrement and garbage (SERA 1935).18 Public health concerns were raised and local officials began efforts to clear the entire area of shacks and camps. The residents
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Figure 12: Sacramento Hooverville (c. 1933-35)
Source: Sacramento Hooverville (c. 1933-35), Migrant Labor Camp Photographs from the Harry Everett Drobish Papers, 1935-1936, BANC PIC 1954.013 –PIC, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Notes: Ambitious but destitute families have formed this community of home- made homes.
of the Jibboom Street Hooverville, many who had been there for five years, protested with a petition to the Sacramento officials, as recorded in the Sacramento Bee newspaper on May 17, 1935.
That every bonafide resident of Sacramento county now living in the Hoovervilles be thus [sic], or as adequately provided for before being evicted, and condemn as an outrageous violation of human rights the summary and autocratic action of the City of Sacramento. We further insist that if the present cabins of the tenants and squatters in the Hoovervilles are to be destroyed, their owners be fully compensated for them (Sacramento Bee 1935:17).
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By early June wrecking crews were directed to the most visible areas, evicting women, children, even a pregnant woman and an old man barely able to walk out of the area (SERA 1935a). The residents were rushed out with little time to collect their belongings, until the wrecking crews were temporarily stopped by a representative of the
Community Chest. Many felt the initial destruction of the most visible shacks was a direct indication that the real issue on the officials’ minds was to rid the area of the unsightly shacks and “undesirable” people (SERA 1935a). This was not the last effort the city officials would make to eliminate the Hooverville settlements.
Figure 13: Sacramento Hooverville Young Citizens (c. 1935)
Source: Sacramento Hooverville Young Citizens, c. 1935. Migrant Labor Camp Photographs from the Harry Everett Drobish Papers, 1935-1936. BANC PIC 1954.013:53 - -PIC. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Notes: Some of Hooverville’s Younger Citizens.
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As late as 1938 the City was still bringing in wrecking crews and destroying Hooverville shacks without effectively providing alternative housing options for the residents. On
February 26, 1938 The Sacramento Union newspaper reported that sheriff’s deputies had gone into a “shack colony” named the “Old Globe Mills Jungles” and destroyed the shacks on the order of the Capital National Bank which owned the property (Sacramento
Union 1939:20-21).
Another Hooverville community was located near 28th Street and the Southern
Pacific tracks, where residents paid a monthly rental fee as low as $1.00 for the rental of
Figure 14: A Few Hooverville Roofs (c. 1935)
Source: A Few Hooverville roofs (c. 1935). Migrant Labor Camp Photographs from the Harry Everett Drobish Papers, 1935-1936. BANC PIC 1954.013:48 –PIC. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
58 the land that their shacks were built on. That was close to the actual Sutter’s Landing site where Capitan Johan A. Sutter had first stopped in 1839. The Sacramento Union reported these shacks as still in existence in 1939, some residents having lived there for
10-12 years (Sacramento Union 1938:2-3).
During this period in Sacramento there were also a number of shelters, both public and privately controlled, that helped transients with food, temporary lodging, various social services and travel issues. Additionally, the complex system of federal, state and local relief systems, forever changing due to changes in legislation which effected funding, maintained a number of offices designed to support the unemployed,
Figure 15: One of Hooverville’s Better Residences (c. 1935-36)
Source: One of Hooverville’s Better Residences (c. 1935-36). Migrant Labor Camp Photographs from the Harry Everett Drobish Papers, 1935-1936. BANC PIC 1954.013:52 –PIC. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
59 homeless and transient populations. In a review of its activities between 1933 and 1935
SRA noted six phases of relief in California in response to the high unemployment and transient population during the great Depression (see Appendix E). These constant program changes to both the federal and state agencies caused uncertainty in the field regarding responsibilities, a situation which produced general confusion to those simply looking for relief. The following shortened version of a quote from SERA’s Journal of a
Transient (see appendix F for more detail) seems to sum up the experience of the unemployed and/or transient looking for food, shelter, relief and employment. After a full day of being redirected from site to site, including the WPA office, vacant lots, and reporting to the journal takes up the second day with the following results:
At 9 o’clock I went to the SRA Intake Office on 8th Street, where a janitor told me that the office had been moved to the Community Chest Building at 1428 H Street. When I reached this address there was a long line ahead of me waiting in the back yard for the office to open…Seventy-three men of all ages had gathered in the line before the office opened at 10:35…The first five men who went into the office came out with yellow TR-10 cards filled out. These, they said, would get them into the shelter…The sixth man that came out of the office said the shelter had filled up and that “they” had just registered him and told him and told him to come back at 1:00pm…I was the 10th man in line (SERA 1935a:35).
The ongoing shuffle of the constantly changing relief programs, office locations, shelter procedures and the tedious and frustrating process required to get shelter and a meal would have taken the full energy of anyone transient and in need of relief. It is little wonder that many chose to camp or build shacks in vacant land along the rivers where they could at least find community and a chance to relax. This experience of the homeless, transient, and unemployed
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Figure 16: Seepage in Hooverville, Sacramento, California (1935)
Source: Seepage in Hooverville, Sacramento, California, 1935. Migrant Labor Camp Photographs from the Harry Everett Drobish Papers, 1935-1936. BANC PIC 1954.013:56 –PIC. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
during the Depression-Era was by no means unique to Sacramento, but rather could be found across the nation in one form or another as the states and local authorities scrambled to try to manage an over whelming problem of tremendous scope and urgency.
Postwar America’s Golden Age: Bums
In spite of the federal, state and local government programs, as well as charitable organizations working to provide relief to unemployed, transient and homeless individuals, unemployment remained high until the outbreak of World War II. Within
61 two years of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entry into the war, with hundreds of thousands of men being deployed in the armed services, unemployment had dropped to 4.7% and by 1944 reached an all-time low of 1.2% (U.S. Department of Labor
N.d.). The same war effort that reduced unemployment also took all the able-bodied homeless men into the armed services. The homeless population was substantially reduced, leaving few besides those with physical, mental and emotional disabilities in the homeless ranks. In spite of New Deal social programs, it is often argued that what finally ended the unemployment levels of the Great Depression Era was the entrance by the
United States into World War II and the related massive industrial buildup.
When the war had ended with the United States and its Allies victorious, a new era of economic prosperity never before experienced was about to begin. This Golden
Age of American capitalism, world economic leadership, and dominance as the victorious superpower would last for at least the next half century. As the American middle class expanded during the economic prosperity after World War II, the skid row districts continued to shrink and were thought to be dying out, although they still maintained a highly-visible presence in urban areas across the nation (Wallace 1965,
Rossi 1989a, Kusmer 2002, Depastino 2003 and others). Meanwhile, the earlier public perception of the homeless, as the down and out victims of poverty and romantic hobos, of rail-hopping tramps and free-wheeling working-class American men gave way to a new view of the homeless as skid row alcoholics and “bums” (Depastino 2002:228).
They became anomalous outcasts, further separated and further shut-off from the post- war prosperity.
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In the 1950s and 1960s skid row areas had been transformed from those of the late-19th and early-20th centuries and consisted primarily of distinctive neighborhoods of single room occupancy (SRO) buildings. SRO buildings were commonly old hotels that had been converted to permanent housing. Often dilapidated and questionably habitable,
SROs and “cage hotels” dominated the post-World War II skid rows (Kusmer 2002).19
During the 1950s, as the middle-class fled the inner city for the suburbs, urban renewal drove numerous gentrification efforts across the nation. These efforts were commonly implemented through local redevelopment agency programs financed, in part, by federal funding. Gentrification efforts reduced the number of SROs in the inner cities as more profitable businesses moved in. The postwar reduction in some of the skid row areas was dramatic. For example, the burgeoning and prosperous Chicago downtown business area was now pressing up against the West Madison Street skid row discussed earlier in the review of the Solenberger (1911) study. The West Madison Street population had risen during the 1930s to a population of approximately 30,000, declined to 21,000 by 1950 and 13,000 by 1958 (Rossi 1989a, Kusmer 2002) but the business district was running out of space for additional growth and needed the adjacent space the
West Madison skid row occupied. Similarly, urban renewal played a major role in the elimination of the skid row districts across the nation during the postwar period of the
1950s and 1960s. While gentrification efforts sound like successful programs, and they may have been from the perspective of removing dilapidated buildings and replacing them with new higher value structures, urban renewal failed to address an important social question, “Where and how do you relocate the skid row homeless population?”
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These programs routinely failed to answer this critical social and humanitarian question.
In most cases it was addressed in the plan as a reference to the need to provide affordable housing, however, this social aspect of the plan - needs of the skid row residents being displaced by urban renewal - was seldom successful relocating the displaced, who often ended up on the streets. Again, in Chicago the redevelopment plan called for “relocation of the residents of the area [which] will involve a carefully thought out program of residence change and social coordination,” but nothing was done for men who had sometimes lived for years in the West Madison skid row and knew little of other city neighborhoods (Kusmer 2002:236). These citizens, who lacked the power or political influence to address the situation, were simply left to cope with relocation on their own.
Moreover, this was the normal pattern in the vast majority of urban renewal projects across the nation and the focus of several well-known sociological studies of the period
(Bogue 1963, Bloomberg and Schmandt 1970, Bahr and Caplow 1974).20
Although President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society agenda of the mid-1960’s targeted poverty, it contained programs supporting urban renewal as a component of the
“war on poverty,” a component that would become a systemic problem by eliminating and failing to replace affordable housing options in coming decades. It should be noted that after World War II most of the homeless population was receiving some type of aid, public assistance, veterans pay, social security or unemployment insurance. Still, the average monthly income from these sources was usually far less than an average pension and was insufficient to secure affordable housing. Skid row options were fading, and new cries of welfare fraud were becoming common (Barak 1991:129).
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The skid row homeless often had a great deal in common with the working class, both in the amount of acquired education and working skill sets and in the aspirations they held for their retraining and future employment (Kusmer 2002). Yet, at this time, the public perception and prevalent stereotypes of the homeless, fueled by negative articles in the press, was becoming reminiscent that of the late-19th century public stereotype, that of undeserving or unworthy tramps and criminals (Kusmer 2002:229).21
Articles in the popular postwar American press started to change the focus of coverage of homelessness to a criticism of the psychological problems of individuals, referring to them as maladjusted deviants. This sounded reminiscent to the perceptions of local
Sacramentans uncovered in an informal survey discussed in Chapter Three. This trend towards blaming the homeless, along with the ultimate failure of the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill during the next few decades, would eventually lead to a
“medicalization” of the homeless as pathological deviants, a trend that will be discussed more in Chapter Three.
The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill started in the 1950’s but was accelerated with the Congressional passage of the 1963 Community Mental Health Act, mandating the appointment of a commission to make recommendations for combating mental illness in the United States. The plan that was established by the commission called for the movement of mentally ill patients out of confinement in state mental institutions and the replacement of state institutions by local, community-based mental health services. The problems would arise when the closing of the institutions failed to
65 be accompanied with the provision of sufficient community facilities and services (Rossi
1989a, Barak 1991, and others).
Urban renewal activity coupled with a worsening perception of the homeless in the postwar 1950s and 1960s translated into a postwar period of tremendous economic growth and prosperity for the wealthy and middle-classes and the mistaken assumption that undeserving homeless were supported by the Great Society’s safety net, which was, in fact, insufficient to solve the problems of the homeless.
Sacramento’s Postwar Golden Age
In the postwar years Sacramento County would see its population grow from a
1930 level of 141,999 to 502,778 by 1950; 631,498 by 1970; 1,041,219 by 1990; and
1,418,788 by 2010. In 2010 the metropolitan statistical area (MSA) of Sacramento had emerged as the 18th most populous in the U.S and sixth in California with 1,930,857 people. In 1963 the Sacramento River Deep Water Ship Channel (SDWSC) was completed, opening the Port of Sacramento to ocean going vessels via the San Francisco
Bay. Primarily an agricultural port, the Port of Sacramento was able to do what the rails had done domestically decades earlier, but it now opened the region’s agricultural products to international markets. At the time of this writing, environmental studies are underway on the proposal to deepen the SDWSC to thirty-five feet, allowing additional and more efficient access by today’s ocean-going vessels.
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Figure 17: Port of Sacramento, Sacramento Deep Water Ship Channel
Source: SDWSC Project Presentation March 21, 2011. www.sacramento shipchannel.org, Accessed July 01, 2011. Used by permission.
Old Sacramento, Out of the West End
In 1961 the National Park Service published a report titled “the Ways and Means of Historical Preservation of Old Sacramento,” in which it recommended that a master plan be created to include an inventory of historical buildings, the physical condition and restoration costs, and a land use plan for cooperative undertaking by the city, county and state. In September of 1963 the Sacramento Redevelopment Agency and the City of
Sacramento contracted for a study to be done and a master plan produced
(Redevelopment Agency of the City of Sacramento 1964:2). The master plan contained no section with provisions for relocating the residents of the SROs in Old Sacramento to affordable or supportive housing options. Soon thereafter the Sacramento City Council
67 requested that the Community Welfare Council prepare a report on this homeless population and in 1964 the first report, titled “Single Man In The West End,” was published. An earlier (1957-1958) investigation by the Sacramento Redevelopment
Agency found that 5,500 men lived in the West End and reported that over 50% of the men were over 55 years of age with an average income reported at $1,762 per year. It further found that 2,460 of these men reported monthly contact with police, county welfare, hospitals and private relief agencies. Of those 2,460 men, 839 visits were for alcoholism, 678 for financial assistance, 213 for treatment for tuberculosis or TB contacts, and 450 for other medical condition (Redevelopment Agency of the City of
Sacramento 1964:7). By 1963, prior to the start of urban renewal in the West End, the
Agency was reporting a decline in population to 1,400 but was unable to account for the
4,000 men who had moved from the West End. However, based on partial records, the
Agency believed 55% had moved to housing elsewhere within or adjacent to the redevelopment area. Of the remaining 1400, the agency found that 795 had lived in the same place over 30 days and stated they were the agency’s responsibility to relocate as
West End (Old Sacramento) redevelopment proceeded. At the same time the agency reported that little was known about the needs of the other 600 men living in the West
End skid row or about the existence of a third group of undetermined number that lived in the area but not in an SRO. It was estimated from records of people providing food for these men that at least 350 lived outdoors. The report also expressed concern about the possibility and vulnerability of adjacent areas becoming new skid rows. The Capital City
Rescue Mission, Salvation Army, Union Gospel Mission, and Victorious Life Mission all
68 needed to be relocated to help take care of these men. These agencies were considering other downtown Sacramento locations within walking distance of the West End. The report suggested that first steps include a humane solution to the “single man problem” but offered no concrete solutions. Practical solutions recommended included:
Men’s Service Center: Creation of a service center to help men “who wish to work” and improve their condition. Staffed by city, county and state agencies. City Park: A vacant lot devoted to an area for men to congregate and where City Parks could place benches for men who “now congregate on sidewalks.” Deteriorated Alcoholics: It was felt that men in this category could not be dealt with by local means and that the state would need to assume responsibility for support. Recommended a regional facility. Resident, Unemployed Single Men: County unemployment policy should be broadened to include these men (Redevelopment Agency of the City of Sacramento 1964:2).
The 1964 plan stated that these recommendations were designed in a way that was intended to encourage the maximum “self-reliance” possible. It also recommended that a second report be completed that would contain recommendations for skid row alcoholics that are a police problem, as well as a problem to feed and house. No finalized, published second report could be found in my research. The redevelopment of the West End skid row into the commercial, tourist and recreational oriented Old Sacramento proceeded during the 1960s and 1970s. A significant problem was encountered as a portion of the population of single men, the alcoholics who never managed a move, spilled over into the downtown business district. It should be noted that this plan addressed help for those who already were the ones best positioned to be able to navigate a move and ignored, in terms of a concrete plan, those who most needed help and support.
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The following year in 1965 a report was published by the Sacramento Area
Economic Opportunity Council addressing the local plan for a “war on poverty” as part of the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty and the Economic Opportunity Act of
1964. The report, stated that 25,000 families in Sacramento County lived in poverty and that it would be a formidable task to alleviate it (Sacramento Area Economic Opportunity
Council 1965:1-3). It further stated, “Community action should incorporate local, state and federal programs into a concentrated drive at the source of economic deprivation.
The administrators of the program are charged with the fusion of existing programs that attack poverty at its source with new programs that are designed toward the same end”
The major goal recommended was “helping individuals help themselves” and it stated that “community action is not social welfare or a giveaway of federal funds” (Sacramento
Area Economic Opportunity Council 1965:5). This report failed to specifically address dealing with homelessness in Sacramento County as part of the “war on poverty” being launched.
During this period of California history, an article in a Sacramento newspaper reported that then Governor Ronald Reagan was seeking more control of poverty programs, specifically control of the funds associated with federal anti-poverty programs administered in California (Sacramento Bee 1968:A1). The Sacramento Bee reported that Reverend Ralph Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) lead a march and demonstration on the Mall in Washington, DC in the spirit of Martin
Luther King’s 1963 Poor People’s March on Washington, with the aim of constructing
Resurrection City shanties to house 3000 permanent demonstrators (see Photograph 12).
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A month later on June 24, 1968 Resurrection City was demolished and Abernathy was jailed for three weeks for failure to comply with police orders to disband. Sacramento and the nation were involved in a “war on poverty” initiated by the Great Society legislation of the Johnson Administration but fought outside the boundaries of homelessness. The targeted actions of the “war on poverty” were missing those most vulnerable and living under the most extreme conditions of poverty.
Figure 18: Resurrection City Shanties, Washington, DC (1968)
Source: Photographed by Bill Wingell. Washington, DC (1968). Public Domain.
The New Homeless (Post-1970)
In a number of different ways the 1970s were a transitional decade in America.
The glory days of postwar America’s capitalist bonanza of the 1950s and 1960s were fading. Economists disagree about the causes and meaning of deindustrialization. Some argue that deindustrialization is not a result of the fast growth of labor-intensive
71 manufacturing industries in the developing world displacing workers in the advanced economies, but rather a feature of successful economic development.22 However, what is evident is that during the 1970s and 1980s the American Manufacturing Belt, which stretched across the Northeastern, Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest, was becoming the Rust Belt as it experienced a devastating loss of manufacturing jobs. Industry was relocating to both to the American Sun Belt in the South and Southwestern United States, and to other regions of the globe where cheap labor was abundant. During this same period the population of the United States was continuing to expand at alarming rates.
From a postwar 1950 population of 151 million, the United States grew to 179 million in
1960; 203 million in 1970; 226 million in 1980; 248 million in 1990; 282 million in
2000; and now sits at 308 million as of the 2010 U.S. Census.
If the 1970s were a decade of transition, the 1980s became a decade of realization of the extent of the homeless problem. The decade of the 1980s also saw a reduction in the national unemployment rate, yet the homeless population continued to grow. Quoting a study by the National Coalition for the Homeless in 1989, Rossi (1989a) noted that estimates of the 1989 homeless population ranged from 300,000 to 3 million. As discussed in the introduction, counting the homeless is a difficult task; however, it had become obvious by the end of the 1970s and early 1980s to the various support organizations and government agencies attempting to track homelessness that the numbers were drastically increasing. A NCH 1989 Study concluded and most experts now agreed, that:
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homelessness is a growing problem across the nation, inflicting small rural communities to big urban cities; the shortage of affordable housing is always identified as a factor in the expanding rates; among the fastest growing sector of the homeless population are families with children (75% of which are single-parent); minorities – African-Americans and Hispanics in particular – are highly overrepresented among the homeless; special-needs populations – the most significantly being the mentally ill, the substance abuser, and the AIDS sufferer – are among the homeless who require supportive services in addition to affordable housing (National Coalition for the Homeless 1989:iii).
While the vagrancy of the 1880s was “typically a product of depressed, industrial economy struggling with underproduction and experiencing a labor surplus,” the 1980s version a hundred years later was “a product of the transition from an industrial-based economy to a postindustrial capitalist service economy within the context of internationally developing global relations” (Rossi 1989a:6). Additionally, the American people had discovered that homelessness was not a result of just individual circumstances but rather of institutionally and structural arrangements. Another study (Barak 2002) reported that 27-54% of Americans believed people became homeless for reasons beyond personal control, and an astounding 80% said “homelessness dramatically symbolizes some of the tragic inequities in American society” (Barak 2002:3). In January of 1984
Newsweek magazine ran a cover story, Homeless In America (see Photograph 13), in which it noted the growing ranks of the homeless in all regions of the nation, unable to draw unemployment because they have no address and are forced to split up in order to seek work. Reminiscent of the late-19th and early-20th century hobos riding the rails looking for work, families left behind, now traveled the nation’s highways. Citing the
73 low-income housing crisis as a major cause of homelessness and citing government housing policy failure partly responsible, the article calls on government to do something about housing, welfare and mental illness policies that have made conditions worse for the poor, and not better as promised.
Figure 19: A Homeless Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, CA (1987)
Source: Photographed by Mary Ellen Mark (1987). Used by permission. Note: The Damm Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, California. From Fadiman (1987) article in Life magazine.
The following is from a homeless man interviewed in the article:
In the missions you sleep on a folding chair and wake up in the middle of the night with some guy talking weird and drooling all over you,” says Collins, a 23-year old ex-machine lathe operator who left his family and lit out for Florida and the California. He did not find work – or adventure; instead he ended up eating scraps out of the Dumpsters behind McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken. The old guys riding the rails
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will be ready to share what they’ve got, says Collins. But people like me will just beat them up and rip them off (Alter, et.al 1984:20-25).
Shamefully America realized that more and more men, women and families were living under conditions of extreme poverty in the world’s richest nation. These new homeless were often mobile, traveling from region to region, following what was perceived to be the next boom area for employment, but they had no homes, often slept in cars or on the streets, and carried what few possessions they owned with them. It is paradoxical that in spite of the public’s new perception that the causes of homelessness were not due to individual circumstances, the stereotypical perception of the homeless as somehow responsible for their condition, to blame for their own situation, still remained strong.
Across the nation, as awareness of extreme poverty, hunger and homelessness increased, organizations were formed to help combat the problems. In 1981 after a lawsuit defending a homeless man in New York was settled out of court and people experiencing homelessness won the right to shelter in New York City, the N.Y. Coalition for the Homeless was formed. As other local and statewide homeless coalitions developed, the New York coalition grew into the National Coalition for the Homeless
(NCH), formed in 1982 and incorporated in 1984. At about the same time (1983), a group of citizens concerned with the growing problem of homelessness formed a group known as the National Citizens Committee for Food and Shelter, which was expanded and renamed the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) in 1987. Both these organizations have risen to prominence in the fight to end homelessness, both sponsor and publish vital studies aiding government, and are today (2011) actively involved with
75 federal, state and local governments efforts across the nation in programs to end homelessness.
Sacramento (Post-1970)
Sacramento began the 1970s with publication of a report produced by the
University of California, Davis, Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences In-Culture
Research Team, at the request of the Sacramento Singlemen Selfhelp Group, Inc.
(SSSG). The team conducted research at a housing project for employable single men located at 2700 Front Street in Sacramento. Their report was titled, Housing
Sacramento’s Invisible Men, Farm Workers, Hustlers, and Misfits (Ragster 1970). The center was operated between October 1, 1969 and April 15, 1970 by the Sacramento
City-County Housing Authority and involved “in-culture research” which is based on the concept that “the people participating in a culture or sub-culture are a valuable source of information that is important and relevant to their needs and life styles” (Durant and
Ragster 1970:1). The team set out to learn from the men their needs and desires much as anthropologists might do in an ethnographic study. The In-Culture Team lived with the men in the center and compiled interviews, observations and statistics on the men and their activities. They then published the report with the following five recommendations:
A permanent housing center for single employable men should be provided and the men themselves should participate in the housing more fully including, a) with the provision of tools and materials they should work more around the center, and b) they should attend grounds-keeper and small engine repair school provided by the center. Stay open the center all year, run it like a home not a mission, and expect the men to pay [for housing] during working season for farm laborers (farm tramps).
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If the current center becomes permanent the fences should be covered with shrubbery and have the barbed wire removed, lessening the institutional feel of the center today. Implement a better screening process to keep those just passing through in separate programs. If not open all year it should open around November 1st and close around April 15th (Durant and Ragster 1970:33).
The study found three distinct sub-cultures of homeless men within the center, the farm workers or tramps, the hustlers and the misfits. The farm workers were looking for some permanence; somewhere they could call home, and expressed a real need for every individual to be able to take pride in their work. The following is a quote from an interview in the study with a farm worker (tramp):
As we have nothing that we can claim as ours to be proud of, we pick things that happen around us and make them important and this makes you feel good. Now, you get a guy who can cook and you got a guy who knows words and how to get stuff. When you are jungling, these guys are important. The guys that are staying in the jungle picks the guys with the best words, best clothes, and the best know-how to get stuff, and he is the Runner. He gots to have all these things so he won’t get bothered by the police. Then this runner goes up town and bums some money, and gets food and a little Mickey for the boys and he brings this stuff back to camp. The Pot Man cooks all this stuff in a pot and everybody feels good and we have a little taste, you know what I mean? (Durant and Ragster 1970:21- 22).
Conflict occurred during the study between the groups called misfits and hustlers, and the farm workers. It was determined that the reason for the conflict was the groups each possessed different expectations for the center.23
As mentioned in the preface, we made a film during the late-1970s, Bum Rap
(1977) interviewing homeless individuals living along the American River near downtown Sacramento that provided an ethnographic record of the same homeless sub-
77 cultures found seven years earlier by Durant and Ragster (1970). Among those we spoke with, there was an elderly man, retired on Social Security who lived in a three-room cardboard home he had constructed, owned a row boat moored on the river, and had a dog as his companion. I met several mentally disabled Viet Nam veterans, who I believe were suffering from undiagnosed and untreated PTSD, as well as several men who rode the rails and identified themselves as “fruit tramps.” I also found a number of alcoholics and a man hiding from something in his past, who agreed to speak with us only if his face was not on camera. Additionally, we encountered a number of individuals and families during the making of our film who were unwilling to be filmed or to tell us their stories.
Some appeared to be afraid to talk and ran off into the cover of the bushes or forest. My
1977 ethnographic experience producing Bum Rap wasn’t too different from what was experienced by the In-Culture team (1970) at the single men’s center. We both found several distinct homeless groups with subcultures. Moreover, the variety of groups living homeless in Sacramento represented 1970s contemporary America - an America with young veterans coming home, often misunderstood and underappreciated, from Viet
Nam, a long and terrible war; an America with men struggling to survive as they searched for work; agricultural workers and farm (fruit) tramps following the harvests and yearning for a place to call home; and an America with mentally ill and disabled left to fend for themselves as institutions and the public turned a blind eye. As young students we came to the shameful realization that a shockingly large number of men, women and families were living under conditions of extreme poverty in the capital of the nation’s largest state.
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At the time of the UC Davis report, Sacramento had already been labeled by a congressional panel as the sixth neediest city in the nation, with 10.5% of its families living below the poverty line (Avella 2008:253). Just as organizations like NCH and
NAEH had sprung up nationally in the 1980s, local organizations were formed in
Sacramento as a response to homelessness as well. In 1983, Chris and Dan Delany, a
Catholic activist couple, established Loaves & Fishes as a homeless drop-in center in an old beer hall on North 12th Street.24 Located in an area close to where the homeless had been camping since the early-20th century (see Figure 11) and where several key services
(Salvation Army, Union Gospel Mission) had been relocated after the demolishing of the
West End to make way for Old Sacramento redevelopment, Loaves & Fishes would eventually become the symbol for compassion for the homeless in Sacramento. To this day it serves up to a 1000 hot lunches per day, offers showers and fresh clothes to
Sacramento’s most vulnerable citizens and has spawned numerous important spin-off non-profits including Women’s Empowerment, Maryhouse, the Mustard Seed School,
Genesis Mental Health, Quinn Cottages, Self-Help Housing, and Clean and Sober.
Additionally, Volunteers of America, which has been in Sacramento since 1911, and has greatly expanded its homeless services since the 1980s, today playing a major role in
Sacramento’s efforts to combat and eventually end homelessness. The Salvation Army and the Union Gospel Mission continue to run services including several shelters in the
12th Street area near Loaves & Fishes as well. However, it is Loaves & Fishes that continues to lead efforts in Sacramento to help unsheltered homeless adults, a group that
79 is often forgotten, as efforts to help women and children receive priority. It was also at
Loaves & Fishes that I began my ethnographic journey into the homeless community.
Chapter Two Endnotes
1 Riis (2000) [1890]. Riis provides a detailed look the tenements of 1880s New York City, written at the height of the Gilded Age, as well as a look at the status of extreme poverty of the times. His use of photographs accompanying his study provides a unique insight to 1880s New York tenements. 2 Anderson (1923). Anderson was a former hobo who left the hobo life for an academic life as a sociologist in Chicago, and went on to write for many years about the sociology of the hobo life and culture in post- World War I America. 3Agee (2000) [1939]. Agee provides illuminating insight into the plight of several tenant family’s daily life as sharecroppers in the depression era south. Agee was accompanied by the famous Depression Era photographer Walker Evans, who lends a photographic record of the three sharecropper families they studied. The extreme poverty of these people is captured by both Agee’s text and Evans photographs in a way that provides a valuable insight into the sharecropper existence. 4 Maharidge (1989). Maharidge revisits the decendants of the original tenement farmers written about by Agee (1939) fifty years earlier. Their stories shed clear light on the cycle of extreme poverty and the difficulty in breaking that circle. His textual coverage is accompanied by the stunning photographs of the decendants by photographer Michael Williams as Agee’s were with Walker Evans photographs. Maharidge and Williams were young employees of the Sacramento Bee at the time of publication and had previously collaborated on The Saga Of The New Underclass, Journey To Nowhere (1985). 5 Kusmer (2002). Kusmer’s review of homelessness from colonial times to present day in America includes the provision of an understanding of the cultural perceptions of homelessness and homeless people throughout American history. 6 Depastino (2003). Depastino looks at homelessness in America from the end of the Civil War forward to present day 2003. He details the economic and political forces, as well as the cultural shifts that framed the evolution of the American homeless from tramps to hobos and the forgotten men of the later 20th century. 7 Hitchcock, Robert (1580) A Politic Plat for the Honour of the Prince, the Great Profit of the Public State, Relief of the Poor, Preservation of the Rich, Reformation of Rogues and Idle Persons, and the Wealth of Thousands That Know Not How to Live. Quoted in A. L. Beier (1985:150). 8 Kusmer (2002:37) Kusmer provides a detailed discussion of the origin of these terms in the years following the Civil War as the nation tried to make sense of the growing problem of vagrancy and the economic crisis of the 1870s. Kusmer tells of additional narrative from Union soldier John Billings, who spoke of groups or small bands of soldiers going “on a tramp” of their own. By the mid-1870s the term “tramp” was being used not only for wandering vagrants but specifically to refer to the railroad-riding vagrants. Similarly, the word “bum” was derived from the term “bummer” which was used to in a mocking way against foraging soldiers and later was shortened to “bum” and used to label vagrants. 9 Depastino (2002:22). Depastino refers to “outdoor relief” as a term used to describe the government provision of money, coal, food and other supplies to the poor. 10 Depastino (2002:23-29). Depastino provides an interesting and detailed explanation of the struggle between the industrial working class, to whom the charity was thought of as a right for a democratic citizen
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and community member, and the charity administrators who were “protecting the moral and economic health” of the Republic. 11 Depastino (2002:34). Depastino discusses the practice of the press as being consistent with the 19th century republican practice of splitting the public not on lines of class but rather as belonging to either the category of producers or non-producers. 12 The Industrial Army of 1894, a 1500 member organization that was organized by “General” Charles T. Kelley and crossed the nation by rail to demonstrate and petition the government for unemployment relief. 13 The IWW built a folklore of the hobo as the western man, the strong, tough and often white seasonal worker who was a “mans’ man” unlike the industrial wage earners of the eastern industrial America who they portrayed as church going, wage-earning, weakened men. The folklore was unsuccessful in the long run because it became both exclusionary and racist in application. However, some of the hobo myth remained, providing the public with an alternative to the harsh perception of all hobos as lazy, worthless tramps, or worse yet, band of criminals. 14 The events of the Dust Bowl and the tragedy of the farmers who lost their land and started west toward California to seek new lives and opportunity, is the subject of the famous John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939). 15 Two main schools of economic theory arise on the issue, the classical economics monetarist theory and the structural theories including Keynesian theory. Monetarist theory or neoclassical economic theory holds that central banking decisions affecting the supply of money and causing either bubbles or deflation and the gold standard, in effect at the beginning of the Great Depression and later abandoned, impacted both production and consumption negatively. Keynesian theory on the other hand holds that under consumption and overinvestment, malfeasance by the bankers and industrialists, and incompetence by government officials effecting economic decisions, combined to destabilize the market and investor confidence. 16 Significant to this study were the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the renaming of Hoover’s Emergency Relief Administration as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA). The CCC alone created over 250,000 new jobs working on local projects in rural areas. FERA provided emergency loans to the states that were intended for projects that would create government jobs. Additionally, expansion of the existing Reconstruction Finance Corporation expanded government funding to industry including the railroads. In order to address agriculture, which had suffered the horrendous effects of the Dust Bowl drought and forced foreclosure of thousands of family farms, FDR created the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). In 1934, further addressing economic reform, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) was formed with the objective of regulating Wall Street. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933 created the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA). NIRA was planned as a two-year program scheduled to run from 1933-1935 and provide both industrial recovery and regulation and inject billions into the economy while providing jobs that benefitted the infrastructure via the NRA and PWA respectively. In May of 1935 the U.S. Supreme Court found Title 1 of NIRA, which supported union organizing, unconstitutional. Later, after election of a new congress controlled by FDR’s Democratic Party, and addressing the Supreme Court’s decision against Title I of NIRA, congress passed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 giving the desired renewed strength to labor unions. 17 Henley (1993:23). This quote was originally published by SERA as Journal of a Transient (1935). This edition of Golden Notes contains two informative essays on Sacramento during the Depression Era. The first, Hoovervilles, Depression Settlements of Sacramento, 1931-1935 by Milton Reis provides good detail on life in the Sacramento Hoovervilles. The second, Homeless in History, An Inside look at Sacramento’s Depression-Era Transient-Population by James Henley provides a present day historians’ look back at SERA and the Transient Journal circa. 1935. Golden Notes is published by the Sacramento County Historical Society.
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18 This same condition affects homeless camps in contemporary Sacramento. When this research was underway during 2010 and 2011 spring floods caused the same unsafe conditions as reported here in 1935. In 2011 a United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Access to Safe Water and Appropriate Sanitation interviewed approximately twenty homeless adults living along the American River and discovered violations of human rights in these areas. Subsequently a report was filed with the United Nations Human rights Council see de Albuquerque (2011d). 19 Encyclopedia of Chicago (N.d.) The cage hotel. Cage hotels are a unique type of SRO with small rooms created in a large space using partial wall partitions and cage wire to create a semi-private space. These were lofts or other large, open buildings that were subdivided into tiny cubicles using boards or sheets of corrugated iron. Since these walls were always one to three feet short of the floor or ceiling, the open space was sealed off with chicken wire, hence the name “cage hotels.” Heat, lighting, ventilation, and sanitary conditions were abysmal and owners could pack as many as 200 men on a floor. 20 The first of these by Bogue (1963) referencing Chicago’s skid row suggested that a) the SROs be demolished and urban renewal precede using eminent domain, b) this should include expansion of the central business district (CBD), c) building subsidized housing to relocate SRO tenants, and d) provide social services to alcoholics and the disabled. The Chicago urban renewal efforts never completed the last two items to the extent to be termed successful. 21 Kusmer (2002), p. 229. Kusmer provides several examples from the press including a 1946 Time magazine article “Juke,” a 1949 Chicago Daily News twelve-part exposé on skid row’s ‘living dead’ and a 1952 Saturday Evening Post article about Detroit’s skid row that identified all skid row homeless as alcoholic bums. 22 See for example, Deindustrialization – Its Causes and Implications by Robert Rowthorn and Ramana Ramaswamy. Economic Issues. Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund (1997). They argue that deindustrialization is not a result of the fast growth of labor-intensive manufacturing industries in the developing world displacing workers in the advanced economies but rather a feature of successful economic development. 23 The misfits and hustlers only wanted to get by and make things work OK at the center, the farm workers trying to make it more of a home. This discrepancy in sub-cultures of the homeless population is an important key attribute of the homeless population and one that still exists in the homeless population today. 24 See Sacramento and the Catholic Church (2008) by Historian Steven M. Avella for a good historical overview of the establishment and expanding successes of Loaves & Fishes in Sacramento.
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You can't help those who simply will not be helped. One problem that we've had, even in the best of times, is people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice. - President Ronald Reagan, January 01, 1984, Good Morning America
Chapter Three
SIN, SICKNESS, AND THE SYSTEM: BARING THE FACE OF THE HOMELESS
The Elusive Face of the Homeless
The following quote was the beginning of a conversation with a dedicated social service professional who currently provides services and counseling to at- risk women.
In the library they all smell so bad, I don’t mean just body odor, I mean really bad, like they haven’t bathed in weeks...And now they are coming into the bookstore and, again, they smell horrible. It makes you not want to be there. I don’t mean to pick on them, but isn’t there someplace else for them to go? Why do they need to be there? - Gayle, a county social service provider.
Gayle is best described as liberal on social issues and sincere in her desire to help people who suffer the effects of abject poverty, disabilities, or the lack of an adequate education.
Gayle is a compassionate, educated professional who has worked for years to help the poor and needy in society but she is obviously irritated by the presence of homeless persons in public spaces. Gayle’s reaction to the homeless individuals in her local library is not uncommon; rather I found that it is often the norm.
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Early in my research phase, in an effort to determine what the average housed person’s perception was of the homeless, I asked people in and around Sacramento for their perceptions, reviewed media coverage, spoke with business owners, and listened to city officials in meetings at city hall. This was an informal survey, not a scientific data gathering exercise, but one that I have repeated several times with similar results. The following are the most common perceptions the survey revealed. The people questioned, all Sacramento area adult residents, in resounding majorities felt that the homeless are:
mentally ill and should be institutionalized; substance abusers, drug addicts and alcoholics and should be in rehab; people with a filthy appearance, often dressed in shabby clothes; shameless, often taking care of bodily functions (urination, defecation) in public; often seen sleeping in public places such as malls, parks, storefront doorways, along the river parkway and in cars; lazy people who don’t want to work, pay taxes or contribute to society; often illegal immigrants from Mexico or Latin America; or career criminals, parolees and sex offenders who will end up back in jail.
All these descriptions, besides depicting derogative stereotypes, have this in common. They describe the homeless individuals as defective, pathological or criminal.
They label the homeless through implications as undeserving people, not as victims.
These images, often repeated in public, further negatively influence the perceptions of homelessness held by the citizenry, business leaders, local government officials, police and even some social service providers. The homeless become the “other,” outcasts from society and undeserving of society’s help.
When my survey participants were questioned closely and upon further thought, these negative stereotypes of homeless individuals as undeserving often led to the
84 determination by these same people that homelessness is a result of problems in society’s institutions. For example, when I offered resistance to individualized explanations of homelessness, the respondents often moved to structural explanations for the homeless situation, such as society’s lack of sufficient mental health facilities, low cost housing, shelter facilities, health care, job training and education for the poor and homeless.
Additional economic issues were suggested by survey respondents, including unemployment, employment providing insufficient wages, and strained welfare budgets, all explanations that suggest structural issues in the economic system. The perception of structural causes elevates the blame from the individual to systemic causes in institutions, courts or legislatures; but the perception of the homeless individuals as morally corrupt or pathological individuals doesn’t change when these structural issues emerge as causal factors. The idea that the homeless should not need these government programs, but rather should be more self-reliant was widespread. Thus the very poor and homeless live with what social scientist Talmadge Wright terms “spoiled identities” (Wright 1997:39).
Even when structural causation is discussed, the homeless are still commonly perceived, stereotyped, and stigmatized as deviant pathological individuals, helpless victims at best, and as people who “should be somewhere else.”
This informal survey served as my introduction to one homeless debate that has been going on throughout American history and that frames our contemporary constructs of homelessness in America. In essence it is a causation debate about who or what to blame for the existence of poverty, inequality, and homelessness. Are the homeless individuals themselves to blame or must we turn our critical eye towards society’s
85 systems, our social, political and economic institutions? This is not to be confused with the debate of cultural determinism or the “culture-of-poverty” debate and the concept that poverty is self-reproducing. This debate will take us to a discussion of individual rights, individual and group agency versus exclusion, the nature of the social contract, the political economy and, eventually a discussion of individualism in the American ethos.
First, in this chapter I will look at what social scientists have written specifically about this homeless debate as a means of “baring the face of the homeless.”
Approaches to the Homeless Debate
Anthropologists have employed a number of research approaches, methodologies and perspectives to the investigation of homelessness and the homeless debate.
Ethnographic research introduces the socio-cultural anthropologist into the realm of the insider, allowing access to the emic view of the homeless individuals, communities and subculture. When working with the homeless, many anthropologists engage in participant observation, investing extended periods of research, spending long periods with homeless individuals and in homeless communities as observer, researcher and often as a trusted and, therefore, accepted member of the community with whom open dialogue becomes the norm. Anthropologists have long gone into the streets, the alleys, homeless communities, legal and illegal encampments, and shelters and performed extensive emic- centered participant observation and ethnographic research. Ethnographies have been written about a growing number of homeless encampments and movements in communities across the United States including Seattle, Washington (Spradley 1970);
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New York City (Baxter and Hopper 1981; Toth 1993) Los Angeles, California,
(Underwood 1993); Chicago, Illinois and San Jose, California, (Wright 1997);
Northampton, Massachusetts (Lyon-Callo 2003); Tempe, Arizona, (Amster 2008); San
Francisco, California (Gowan 2010); and numerous others. In all of these studies the anthropologist, as participant observer in one or more homeless communities, has presented the insiders perspective on the community and the issues of homelessness. In the field anthropologists become “interested sojourners” (Geertz 1973:20) who “enter the communities of the homeless, and learn about the knowledge that the homeless have acquired and how this knowledge relates to their survival” (Glasser and Bridgman
1999:7). Anthropologists do more than just record behaviors of the homeless; anthropologists work to provide interpretation of the behaviors, belief systems and motivations of members of their study populations (Geertz 1973, Glasser and Bridgman
1999). Since no aspect of the homeless condition is out-of-bounds for ethnographic research, anthropologic studies are well suited to the application of a holistic approach to the study of homelessness. Anthropological inquiry looks at all aspects of influential behavior and all factors that affect homelessness including individual, institutional, economic, political, social, and psychological.
Changes in the composition of the homeless population often inspire investigations as to why a group starts to increase or decline in population. For example, in the 1980s more families and families with children started to show up in the homeless population. Prior to that time, through the postwar 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, the homeless population in the United States was primarily a male dominated skid row
87 population. Although the homeless population had been dominantly male (vagrants, tramps and hobos) through the 19th and early-20th centuries (Kusmer 2002, Depastino
2003), America experienced increased numbers of women and families (transients) during the Great Depression Era.
I suggest that the media is often slow to take notice of these fluctuations in homeless populations, and thus, the general public’s informed perception of the homeless population, the ability to clearly ‘see’ the face of the homeless, is often out-of-sync with the contemporary homeless situation. For example, as the shifts in the postindustrial economy led to increased unemployment in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There were numerous scholarly studies warning of the shift (Bahr and Garrett 1976; Baxter and
Hopper 1981; Hombs and Snyder 1983; and others) but the public’s perception of the homeless was still of skid row “bums” until the popular media awoke to the severity of the crisis and publicized the shift in demographics in the mid-1980s. Although the press had covered homeless issues in the early 1980s1, it was the previously mentioned January
1984 Newsweek cover story, Homeless In America, that awoke America to the fact that
“homelessness is on the rise, and public efforts to solve the problem have proven sorely inadequate” (Alter, et.al. 1984:20). This issue of a public perception that is out-of-sync with the actual homelessness condition continues to present day and it has been suggested that the public’s perception of homelessness and homeless individuals is often manipulated by the neoliberal agendas of those with power to control the media
(Middleton 2011).
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Framing the Debate: “Sin, Sickness and the System”
The homeless body in the public imagination represents the body of decay, the degenerate body, a body that is constantly rejected by the public as “sick” “scary,” “dirty,” and “smelly,” and a host of other pejoratives used to create social distance between housed and unhoused persons. - Sociologist Talmadge Wright (1997:69)
There are a number of causal constructions that anthropologists and other social scientists have developed in the study of homelessness. This research into the causes of homelessness is an investigation into the reasons why individuals became homeless, often focused on concepts of individual blame such as individual deviant behavior or pathology. As I recorded in the informal survey mentioned above, the shift of causal focus from individual to structural causality by the general public and popular press is often not accompanied by the perceptual shift removing blame from the individuals.
The perceived causal constructions of homelessness in America throughout our
400 year history from our days as a British Colony, as a new republic nation to the present (see Chapter Two), have always shifted between three alternating causal explanations of homelessness eloquently presented in a 2010 ethnographic study of homelessness in San Francisco, California by sociologist Teresa Gowan. Gowan states in part, “three primary constructions of homelessness have historically dominated American understandings of homelessness: homelessness as a moral offense, homelessness as pathology, and homelessness as the product of systemic injustice or instability” (Gowan
2010:xxi).2 Gowan’s discursive analysis labels these logics as “sin-talk, sick-talk, and system-talk…a structure of meaning and intention, a magnetic force that lends coherence,
89 authority and legitimacy to everyday speech and practices within the field of homelessness” (Gowan 2010:xxi). Each of these constructions of homelessness demands a different strategy to deal with the problem of homelessness and, therefore, we have seen shifting emphasis between charitable solutions, social safety net programs, medical treatment programs, job creation efforts, affordable and supportive housing programs and economic development. Regardless of what has been attempted to combat or end homelessness, it is these three constructs that have alternated in prominence as the social, political and economic pressures varied throughout American history. Stating with the
New World settlement’s inherited English conceptualization of vagrants as lazy and in need of rehabilitation or punishment, to the post-Civil War wandering hobos, bums and tramps who were seen as shiftless and requiring discipline, to the Depression-Era transients seen as victims of a failed economy and to the Great Society’s welfare rolls seen as “takers on the dole,” the perception of the homeless has remained within these three primary constructs, what Gown aptly calls “sin, sickness and the system” (Gowan
2010).
The Last Forty Years
By the early post-industrial era, as homelessness started to grow in magnitude, a new type of ethnography was emerging. Anthropologist James Spradley’s landmark ethnography of “urban nomads,” You Owe Yourself a Drunk (1970), focused on Seattle’s alcoholic skid row residents, an alcohol treatment center, and on a criminal court where a majority of cases involved public drunkenness. Spradley next investigated the problem
90 with surveys of 100 men previously jailed for drunkenness, and, finally, conducted extensive in-depth ethnographic study with a smaller number of informants. Searching for the knowledge these men had acquired and used to organize their behavior in response to their environment, Spradley’s study was more an exposé of Seattle institutions that intended to help these men, such as rehabilitation centers, law enforcement, courts, and jails, than of their individual afflictions as alcoholics.
Identified by the Seattle courts as “common drunkards,” these men were also often classified by local authorities as “bums” and “homeless” men and isolated in jails rather than provided access to those who could most help them. Spradley concludes that “this has not been a complete ethnography but, instead, we have studied the relationship between tramps and institutions of law enforcement. In describing the domains of this culture from the insider’s point of view we have seen how the institutions which seek to control and punish these men for living as urban nomads actually draw them into this world and keep them there” (Spradley 1970:66). Since Spradley’s ethnography, other studies have focused similar ethnographic research on other groups characterized by individual deviancy or pathology, striving to understand and define the structural causation of the group’s homelessness rather than placing individual blame. Just four years after Spradley’s study, sociologists Howard Bahr3 and Theodore Caplow published
Old Men Drunk and Sober (1974) which reported on the results of the first six years of the Bowery Project, a study of homeless men in New York City, which labeled homeless men as “poor, anomic, inert, and irresponsible…they command no resources, enjoy no esteem, and assume no burden of reciprocal obligations” (Bahr and Caplow 1974:6).
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Bahr and Caplow go on to argue that broken affiliations are a major cause of homelessness and provide data to demonstrate that under-socialization and institutional habituation can lead to disaffiliation, chronic alcoholism and homelessness.
As discussed in Chapter Two, the 1980s saw an explosive growth in the homeless population of the United States and a corresponding public awareness and concern about the growing problem of homelessness, culminating in the passage of the McKinney
Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, which has remained the defining centerpiece of federal legislation on homelessness. Nevertheless, these studies, the new federal law, and the shift in public opinion did not indicate a permanent shift towards acceptance of systemic causation. During the 1980s as the changing landscape of postindustrial America was expanding the ranks of the homeless, there were ongoing debates regarding social policies in the United States. Some still felt the lower estimates of the number of homeless were correct, suggesting that the higher estimates only served to alarm. As discussed previously (see Chapter One, pages 4 -7), there has always been a problem of how to count the homeless population since it is impossible to send a census taker to their door and since we don’t always agree on who is homeless or how homelessness is defined. Who does one include in the census count? It was often the primary opinion of the liberal-progressive community, those who generally accepted the higher estimates, that social reform should be enacted to deal with homelessness as an expanding social issue. Barak noted, “This liberal reformist position of entitlements moves beyond the exclusive rights of private property to include inclusive economic rights to a living wage and affordable housing” (Barak 1991:12). The more conservative response, based on
92 acceptance of lower estimates, was that it was less of a problem than reported and that entitlements were not a good replacement for personal responsibility. A second, peripheral, debate centered on who was responsible for the able-bodied homeless, society, community or themselves as able-bodied and free individuals (Barak 1991).
Those who believed in the social reality of victimization and the free will of the homeless also believed that there were two distinct homeless segments; victims who wished to be helped and those exercising free will, who chose to be homeless as a way of life (Barak
1991). It was another distinction, this time citing perceived voluntary versus involuntary homelessness, intended to segregate the deserving (involuntary) homeless from the undeserving (voluntary) homeless as a way of determining society’s responsibility.
Reflecting the rapidly increasing homeless population and resultant public concern during the 1980s a number of studies pursued both the individual constructs of homelessness and the systemic or structural constructs. Peter Rossi published Down and
Out In America: The Origins Of Homelessness (1989) and concluded that lack of low cost housing and a housing market that saw no benefit in providing more affordable housing were major contributors to the problem. Rossi felt that “as long as there is a poverty population whose incomes put them at the economic edge, there will always be people who fall over that edge into homelessness” (Rossi 1989a:194). Rossi also looked at the characteristics of homeless individuals that make them vulnerable and suggested a disability category of homeless that extended beyond mental and physical illness to include other characteristics that kept people from successfully living independently and earning a living. Rossi saw this not as “blaming the individuals” but rather as his attempt
93 to “explain who become the victims of perverse macrolevel social forces” (Rossi
1989a:195). Rossi felt that if there is blame to be placed it should be placed at the hands of the public policy decisions guiding the housing market, labor market and welfare system which “forces some people – the most vulnerable to become victims by undermining their ability to get along by themselves and weakening the ability of family, kin, and friends to help them” (Rossi 1989a:195). Rossi’s concluding recommendations were aimed at the overhaul of the economic, social and political institutions (the labor market, the housing market and public welfare programs) that impact homelessness.
Rossi’s study was important and timely; important because it clearly addressed the issues that led many to conclude that “sin and sickness” are to blame for homelessness and found no basis for fault, going on to target the “system” by demonstrating the need for institutional overhauls to restructure institutional responses to homelessness, and timely because the number of homeless were continuing to grow even as the economy grew in the late 1980s.
By the 1990s investigators were finding that public opinion had made a major shift. Barak (1991), reporting on the results of an AP poll taken in 1989 states, “while public attitudes regarding the homeless are still divided, more and more people – or 54 percent to 27 percent - believed people become homeless for circumstances beyond control than said homelessness is due to a person’s own negligence or irresponsible behavior” (Barak 1991:3). Furthermore the survey reported that “80 percent of the respondents felt that homelessness dramatically symbolizes some of the tragic inequalities in American society” (Montgomery Advisor 1989:5a). I argue that although
94 public opinion started to shift in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the political climate in the United States even to present day, has not demonstrated the political will to determine what steps are necessary to combat extreme poverty and homelessness and take the necessary action to do so. I further argue that public opinion, driven by American concepts of self, is currently again expressing a form of the earlier position, blaming the individual and demanding that homeless victims exercise personal responsibility for their homeless condition (see Chapter Seven). Barak acknowledged this to some extent in the
1990s when he stated that even as public opinion shifted, there were still social
Darwinian fears alive, fears that welfare would encourage begging, vagrancy and homelessness (Barak 1991). I will argue that these fears have been played upon by special interests motivated to drive public opinion to return to placing individual blame through the sin and sickness causation theme. Sociologists David Snow and Leon
Anderson (1993) similarly found structural roots to homelessness in residential dislocation which they defined as deinstitutionalization and lack of sufficient affordable housing, and economic dislocation which they defined as deindustrialization and unemployment.
By the late 1980s and early 1990s investigations of structural causes were outnumbered by social welfare literature focused on deviancy and pathology (Gowan
2010). In the early 1990s a study published by sociologist and longtime anti-poverty program professional Richard W. White, Jr., called for a self-governance approach that would enable individuals and family’s to take action to deal with problem individuals.
White called for a change away from the welfare state policies and directed at self-
95 accountability through his self-governance principles that clearly demonstrated the neoliberal point of view, a view which has guided the dominant economic policy in post- industrial years and which I will argue in Chapter Seven a major causal factor in increased inequality, poverty, and homelessness. In the first of his principles (see
Appendix G for a complete list of White’s principles) he states,
Government policy should be aimed at restoring the social, educational, and cultural functions and resources of daily life to the institutions of family and place – neighborhood, work site, voluntary grouping, informal association, friendship group, religious assembly, and other spontaneous and natural communities (White 1992:267).
White was clearly advocating for changes to society along the lines of the neoliberal agenda, policy that would avoid what he saw as the pitfalls of social welfare programs that, from his perspective, required little personal responsibility of recipients.
Continuing along the lines of individual causation, a year after publication of
White’s study, sociologists Alice Baum and Donald Burnes published A Nation in
Denial: The Truth about Homelessness (1993). This book focused on individual pathological causation and came out with a definition of the homeless as being primarily cases of mental and physical illness in need of appropriate treatment. They further stated that America was in denial about the true state of the homeless.4 The Baum and Burnes study built a case for a totally therapeutic approach to treating the homeless and took aim at discrediting the work of advocacy organizations like the National Coalition for the
Homeless (NCH) whose work had stressed systemic problems including lack of affordable housing and poverty (Gowan 2010).
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Building Ecological Models
During the 1990’s ecological models were developed for analysis and understanding of the causes of homelessness. Psychologist and public health expert Gary
Morse’s model (1992) is based on his position that homelessness can be looked at as a problem existing within an ecological system and that by taking the focus of investigations off the individual we might avoid placing blame on the individual or victim of homelessness (Morse 1992:5). Morse looks at causal factors on a series of analytical levels including cultural, institutional, community, and organizational. He concludes that numerous diverse and interacting causal factors of homelessness are woven into these levels of ecological analysis and notes discrepancies in the actions taken at the various levels to address the integrated causes (Morse 1992:14). On the cultural level Morse singles out public apathy as a factor that contributes to the maintenance of homelessness.
Psychologist Paul Toro together with other researchers developed a second ecological model that emphasizes the context in which homeless people live and the complex interactions between personal, social, economic, and service system resources that affect their well-being (Toro et.al. 1991). The four main concepts of the Toro model are adaption, including sociocultural influences, local influences, person-environment fit and niches; cycling of resources, including an assessment of resources both individual and contextual and the creation of resources; interdependence principle, how alterations in social systems can affect each other, for example, unintended consequences of changes in the system; and the succession principle, or the time dimension of the ecosystem
97 promoting a historical or contextual approach to homelessness. The Toro model suggests a diversified approach to the study of homelessness, an expanded range of research methods to accommodate questions related to the nature of the social context and person-environment transactions. These types of ecological models allow research that brings together issues of homeless individual’s vulnerability with broad social and cultural landscapes (Glasser and Bridgman 1999).
Getting Involved: Activist Anthropology
Contemporary anthropologists and other social scientists have been drawn to advocacy in their studies of homelessness. In the early 1980s, Mary Ellen Hombs, who would later head the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, joined with homelessness activist Mitch Snyder and together with the Community for Creative Non-
Violence published a seminal study, Homeless in America: A Forced March to Nowhere
(1983), which contained a forward by activist-priest Daniel Berrigan, S. J. Invoking the hundredth monkey phenomenon widely publicized at the time by author Ken Keyes, Jr. book, The Hundredth Monkey (1981). Hombs warned of the perils of blaming the victims saying, “Our ultimate enemy is evil born of ignorance, itself a product of distance from suffering’s reality and source” (Hombs and Snyder 1983:viii). Calling for an examination of the problem that looked beyond what finally pushed individuals into homelessness and instead examined the policies and indifference that sustain such cruelty
Hombs stated, “we offer first the basis for our own belief that the pain and misery of those on the street is more than the product of personal circumstance: both the roots and
98 the branches tightly grip all that can be described as American Life” (Hombs and Snyder
1983:ix).
In the last thirty years this call for engaged ethnography has been increasing in the anthropological studies of subcultures like the homeless within industrialized – or postindustrial – states such as the United States. In the early 1980s, just as homelessness in the United States was starting to grow in both in magnitude and public awareness, several important anthropological studies made a lasting impact on key areas of efforts to combat homelessness. Early in this period, Baxter and Hopper (1981) demonstrated the ability of those homeless living on the streets and considered mentally disabled to make rational decisions about where to sleep at night based on concerns about their own safety.
The Baxter and Hopper study ultimately lead to a court decision improving shelter health and safety conditions for the homeless in NYC.
In the 1990s, anthropologist Anna Lou Dehavenon (1995), while studying poverty conditions in NYC and finding increased homelessness tied to problems with affordable housing, low welfare payments and slow moving bureaucracies, documented how the practices of the city’s emergency assistance units often had negative impacts on the health of the city’s homeless individuals. Dehavenon presented her research and recommendations in a unique way through press conferences, press releases and letters to politicians that informed the public of issues and required action in response from public officials (Glasser and Bridgman 1999:13). Other ethnographic studies have followed this model, providing needed data to aid and motivate public officials and advocacy groups to
99 action. Such activist ethnography approach is no longer thought of as biased research but rather as responsible and engaged research.
For example, Vincent Lyon-Callo’s ethnography of a homeless shelter in
Northampton, Massachusetts, Inequity, Poverty, and Neoliberal Governance (2003), is written from the perspective of someone who is more than just a participant observer and ethnographic interviewer. Lyon-Callo became a shelter employee and an advocate for reform within the shelter industry for a period of six years. After careful analysis of the practices deployed within the shelter that appeared to point towards negative results for the homeless, he asked himself, “Is it enough for anthropologists to gather their data and do their analysis for the sake of simply producing new knowledge for others utilize?”
(Lyon-Callo 2003:21). His answer leads him to actively pursue a politically engaged ethnographic style and explicitly engaged activist methodology as part of his ongoing ethnographic research and shelter employment.
As an activist anthropologist working in a homeless shelter, Lyon-Callo details the ways that social service policy, shelter rules, and other homeless and social policies are shaped by the political-economy. He views the practices of social service caregivers and shelters such as those in which he worked as “medicalizing” or reducing the homeless problem to an individualized pathological construct by maintaining that the homeless are pathological, i.e. mentally ill, substance abusers, in some manner disabled, or demonstrating deviant behavior. This focus on individual pathology has influenced many shelter programs as well as designs and qualification requirements for many government programs (Rowe, 1999, Lyon-Callo 2000, Feldman 2004, and others).
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Encounters at the Border: Homeless Shelters, Caregivers, and Social Policy
During the last twenty-five years anthropologists and other social scientists have also focused investigations on homeless communities, policies, and institutions including shelters, encampments with or without structures (Wright, T. 1994, Jencks 1994,
Erenreich 2009, MacCannell 2010, Bilek and Dunner 2011), the behavior of social service caregivers (Rowe 1999, Lyon-Callo 2003), and programs (NLCHP 1997,
Zaretzky and Flatau 2008) to understand where causal factors fall in the homeless debate and if these facilities and service providers function as part of the solution or part of the problem. In Tranquility City and Shelters: Homeless Placemaking, Protest, and
Collective Gains Within a Chicago Homeless Encampment (1994), Talmadge Wright looked at a Chicago encampment of approximately fifty homeless individuals that contained squatters’ shacks and existed on Chicago’s Near West Side, from November of
1991 to June of 1992 when the City of Chicago determined it must be dismantled.
Tranquility City residents were activists who mobilized community support and eventually were provided housing in Chicago Public Housing projects which would normally have taken years to acquire (Wright 1994:2). Wright dealt with the often asked questions of what is gained by the homeless when choosing to live in self-organized encampments instead of homeless shelters, and why do some homeless individuals not accept shelter space over encampments or the streets? In his own brief summary he states:
What squatters gain from the self-organization of encampments and why encampments are chosen as opposed to shelters are questions that speak to the desire for community, autonomy and privacy…While all squatters
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mentioned their gain as material they also mentioned a gain in forms of collective empowerment related to a belief in organizing as a way to achieve change (Wright 1994:33).
In Chapter Four I discuss this issue of choosing encampments vs. shelters as it relates to my fieldwork subject homeless group, Safe Ground Sacramento, and the City and County of Sacramento. Based on my experience in the field, I support Wright’s position that building a sense of community is one of the primary conditions for the selection of encampments over shelter by some of the homeless. This becomes a key point in discussing what is and is not successful in shelters, whether run by public, private, or faith-based organizations. Research and my own fieldwork, have repeatedly shown that there are legitimate reasons why some homeless individuals choose encampments over shelters, yet authorities across the country become anchored to insistence that encampments are not worthy of support even as supplemental to insufficient shelter space. This is a problem because it is a way of avoiding the reexamination of the philosophy of homeless shelters as a solution to homelessness.
Wright returned to discussion of Tranquility City and an in-depth look at social-physical space and identities in Out Of Place, Homeless Mobilizations, Subcities, and Contested
Landscapes (1997).
In Crossing the Border, Encounters Between Homeless People and Outreach
Workers (1999) medical anthropologist Michael Rowe provides us with the image of society dispatching outreach workers to the margins of society to help the homeless. He terms “encounters” interactions that take place at the border between society and the homeless. He states,
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These encounters are composed of mutual perceptions, negotiated understandings about behavior and identity, and the transfer of goods…Homeless encounters take place at a border that divides one world from another. The border is physical, in the sense that it is staked out by emergency shelters, soup kitchens, and the streets, and it is social and psychological, in the sense that it is staked out by experiences and perceptions. For each party, the act of crossing the border is physical, social, and psychological, a movement of identity as well as of place (Rowe 1999:1).
Rowe hits on a number of immensely important points in his analysis. In straight forward terms he explores the world of extreme poverty, of homelessness and of loss of self- worth and concludes it is not only a lonely and frightening place but it is a separate reality from that of the housed, employed and “normal” world. In my fieldwork observations I have seen that the longer an individual lives in Rowe’s homeless reality, the harder it is for them to return to the world of “normal” society.
The Criminalization of Homelessness, Case Studies of the Homeless Experiences
The criminalization of homelessness in recent decades is well documented in cities across the United States. Underwood (1993), Jencks (1994), Wright (1997), Lyon-
Callo (2000, 2003), Bridgeman (2006), Amster (2008), Gowan (2010), and others have written extensively about the criminalization of the homeless in different municipalities.
Research anthropologist Jackson Underwood (1993) conducted ethnographic fieldwork starting in 1987 with homeless people living in the Los Angeles area. His work started as a position with the Adaptation of the Homeless Mentally Ill Project (AHMI) and later expanded into a fieldwork project for his dissertation. His ethnography details his interactions with numerous homeless individuals, most of whom he states suffer from
103 schizophrenia (Underwood 1993:ix). After 200 days in the field between late 1987 and
December 1990 he offers his suggestions regarding the causes and potential remedies for homelessness. Acknowledging that many of the mentally ill homeless he encountered displayed other, self-destructive habits, he believes that this is not the cause of their homelessness. Underwood believes that “homelessness is a housing problem and a poverty problem, and it can only be solved by providing housing and decent jobs at a living wage for all Americans, even those with handicaps, self-destructive habits, and/or limited capabilities” (Underwood 1993:314). Underwood’s causal statement is not technically incorrect, but I argue that it is an incomplete solution; it doesn’t dig down through enough causal layers to get to the root causes of homelessness. He goes beyond the individual issues and settles on the structural issues of housing and poverty through unemployment, however, it is my argument, that housing alone is not a total solution, especially for the mentally and emotionally ill. Currently, many government and social service programs driven by Washington are now promoting the “housing first” approach to ending homelessness that places homeless people indoors but disregards the immediate needs for rehabilitative services to help people regain self-worth and stay indoors.
Talmadge Wright (1997) performed field research in homeless communities in both San Jose, California and Chicago, Illinois. Wright focuses his discussion on the authoritative strategies employed by cities and others in positions of power, to restrict the use of public and private space and to contain homeless actions. Wright views decision- making as a dynamic process subject to pressure and counter pressures from the public at critical junctions in the process. Decision makers, those with the power, use authoritative
104 strategies to ensure that specific space such as shopping districts, malls, middle class and upscale neighborhoods are kept in what he terms “proper place.” “A proper place is where social events occur that are understandable to authoritative decision makers”
(Wright 1997:181). In other words, if the use of public space by homeless individuals doesn’t fit the reality or moral vision of the decision makers, they use authoritative strategies to remove the homeless from the space. Additionally, powerful political- economic forces within society can drive anti-homeless behavior in the general public.
Opposition to authoritative strategies by the homeless has often begun with small, often individual or grassroots, actions. These oppositional actions may take the form of defying the mainstream’s stereotypes of the homeless or of total rejection of mainstream society. In later chapters I’ll look at this phenomenon in Sacramento, California where an anti-camping ordinance is used to control homeless populations with absolutely no benefit to the homeless.
Randall Amster (2008) investigates the case of Mill Avenue in Tempe, Arizona, where the City of Tempe, in an effort to control the homeless on a busy commercial thoroughfare, leased the sidewalks to a business district to be run as a private space.
This privatization effort, particularly aimed at controlling the “slackers,” those believed to have chosen to be homeless, raised strong community resistance. Amster, as an activist ethnographer, and an expert in justice studies, has been involved in the Tempe political debate for a decade. Through privatization of the public sidewalks the city effectively transferred to private interests the responsibility and authority to decide who can use the formerly public space, the application of usage rules, and criminalized the
105 actions of those that had nowhere else to sit, stand or congregate. Amster states, “this all begins to demarcate the boundaries not only of spatial control but social control as well, indicating the efficacy of an ecological perspective that explores the relationship between the environment (both in its built and natural forms) and human culture (including social, political, and economic spheres, among others)” (Amster 2008:65-66). Public space ordinances, sometimes also referred to as quality-of-life laws, do little to help with any aspect of the homelessness problem and are, in effect, simply a tool for law enforcement to keep the homeless and “undesirable types” away from businesses and the general public who want the homeless excluded because they make them feel uncomfortable.
Neoliberal Globalization and Homelessness
The effects of globalization on the U.S. economy have been extensively written about, especially in light of the recent 2007-9 major recession. In the post-industrial economy that has evolved since World War II, we have experienced major decreases in the number of domestic industrial manufacturing jobs, as capital and manufacturing moves to low cost labor markets around the world. Currently China and India are experiencing explosive growth in manufacturing and information technology respectively and their ability to supply low cost labor is a major factor contributing to capital flows inward. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is becoming service-, information-, and research- based. One of the problems for displaced workers in the United States is that the growth in the service sector has provided low wage jobs in comparison to the wage-level of the lost manufacturing jobs. At the same time some of the information industry’s technical
106 jobs that do provide wages that can sustain a good standard of living are also under pressure and are moving to more beneficial labor markets in emerging areas such as India or China, to name but two. The result is a shortage of jobs and an even worse, a shortage of well-paying or livable-wage jobs. This move of manufacturing jobs to poorer economies is seen by some as not only a capitalist search for cheap labor but also a reduction in the importance of labor to capitalism (Susser 2001:230).
As capitalism spreads to other parts of the world, we witness expanded patterns of inequity both in the new markets overseas and in the United States. In the United States higher unemployment and increasing numbers of poverty level wages are driving the numbers of Americans living in poverty to new heights. The current recession, which started “officially” in 2007, has seen nationwide unemployment rates top 10% and, while the crisis is currently slowly declining, forecasts continue to be for a slow recovery.
Furthermore, as it relates to my study group, California’s rate of recovery is lagging behind the rest of the nation; California unemployment was reported by the US. Labor
Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics in November of 2010 at 12.4% (U.S.
Department of Labor N.d.). At the same time the Sacramento Labor Market and
Regional Economy 2010 Mid-Year Update reported that the unemployment rate in
Sacramento was >13% and that underemployment registered at 19% (Leu and Sun
2010:5). These numbers taken together mean that in 2010 over 30% of the Sacramento population was living with poverty-level incomes or unemployment checks.
Two opposing concepts of the poor in post-industrial society have emerged
(Susser 2001). The first concept presents the poor as irrelevant to the global economy.
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According to this concept, the need for labor to support capitalism is declining and the poor in a country such as the United States are not only invisible but their labor is no longer seen as important. This dwindling need for labor, along with a lack of support for social programs, education, and health care services to help the poor, amounts to an abandonment of the poor population in the United States. A second, and alternate, concept, views labor as still a critical component of global capitalism and describes an attack on the working class citizen via the exportation of labor, outsourcing, and the development of an informational, service oriented economy (Susser 2001). Both of these concepts convey a perspective about the postindustrial revolution in an aggressive capitalist system which produces negative impacts for the poor in outsourcing countries.
In this view, lost jobs are just one factor, but an important factor, of the many that can lead to homelessness.
These concepts of the poor in post-industrial economies are often seen as the result of growth of neoliberal political and economic power in the United States starting as early as the late 1960’s and attaining a dominant position after the neoliberal revolution attributed to the Reagan and Thatcher administrations beginning in 1979-80.
Anthropologist David Harvey (2005) defines neoliberalism as “in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurship, freedoms, and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade” (Harvey 2005:2). The state, in this scenario, has the role of creating and preserving an appropriate framework to maintain these institutions. I will argue in
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Chapter Seven that the neoliberal agenda in the United States and globally is one of the major factors contributing to the increase in income inequality, extreme poverty and homelessness.
Programs that Combat Poverty and Homelessness: Redistribution and Recognition
Using Italian political philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s notion of “common sense” and traditional concepts, proponents of the neoliberal agenda have promoted cultural or traditional values such as God and country (read Christian and patriotism) to justify positions or steer public support in the desired direction. This includes support for cuts to the social services safety net (welfare state) through promotion of individual responsibility that the neoliberal agenda ties to patriotism, religious strength and a free market. Other words and concepts have been manipulated by appealing to “common sense” for similar reasons as the neoliberal agenda pushes for a small government presence that promotes only their ideals. For example, the technical term redistribution, as in “redistribution of wealth and power,” has taken on a new meaning in neoliberal politics and the media and is being used to suggest that efforts to help the poor, the homeless, and recently those without health insurance, are an attempt to overthrow the free market and democracy by installing a socialist system.
A similar problem has taken the concept of “recognition of differences,” where a tool with great promise for gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and multiculturalism is now placed at the forefront of many of the world’s major social and multicultural battles.
“The movements that not long ago boldly demanded an equitable share of resources and
109 wealth have not, to be sure, wholly disappeared. But thanks to the sustained neoliberal rhetorical assault on egalitarianism, to the absence of any credible model of feasible socialism and to widespread doubts about the viability of state-Keynesian social democracy in the face of globalization, their role has been greatly reduced” (Fraser
2000:108). Political theorist Nancy Fraser describes a dynamic where there is a move from redistribution to recognition programs driven by “an acceleration of economic globalization, at a time when aggressively expanding capitalism is radically exacerbating economic inequity” (Fraser 2000:108). This phenomenon, aptly labeled the “problem of displacement,” inspires Fraser to suggest that the concept of recognition is failing to strengthen redistribution struggles but rather tends to marginalize and displace them.
Additionally, there is the second problem identified by Fraser as “the problem of reification,” where recognition struggles are occurring at a “moment of hugely increasing interaction and communication, when accelerated migration and global media flows are hybridizing and pluralizing cultural forms” (Fraser 2000:108). Rather than reifying identities, these recognition efforts are leading to intolerance, patriarchalism and separatism or, in the extreme, even genocide. We have only to think of the recent Arab
Spring Muslim struggles in the Middle East and Africa to understand Fraser’s point about the problem of reification. Is this same problem of reification, driven by globalization, occurring with the homeless population in the United States?
Fraser argues for a new model that treats recognition of differences as a question of social status. “From this perspective what requires recognition is not group-specific identity but the status of individual group members as full partners in social interaction”
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(Fraser 2000:113). Looking back at the historical problems of misrecognition of the homeless, as discussed previously, they are alternately thought of as mentally ill, dirty, lazy, criminal; or as free spirits that roam the open roads and sleep under the stars.
However, it becomes clear after reviewing the treatment of the homeless, that they are being misunderstood by the mainstream public and, by political leaders, a fact which leads to their being treated as second-class citizens and excluded from social and political institutions within society.
According to Leonard Feldman (2004), who identifies misrecognition of the homeless as a political and economic problem, misrecognition can take on many forms in the United States. Complete misrecognition turns the homeless into “non-persons,” invisible to housed citizens and institutions alike. This may include citizens who can’t bear to look at the homeless in public places, especially in close proximity, or institutions or courts that refuse to acknowledge their right to be somewhere. The second type of misrecognition turns the homeless into “disruptive subjects” choosing to be homeless and leading an outlaw existence. The third form of misrecognition turns the homeless into
“helpless victims,” an often compassionate misrecognition by well-meaning social service providers who see the homeless as broken, helpless and pitiful. Finally, the fourth type is that of the homeless as “clients with pathologies,” often labeled as such by health care providers who believe they should be classified and treated for reentry into society (Feldman 2004:92). Here again we see the constructs of “sin, sickness and the system,” as explanations for misrecognition which, in turn, continues to exacerbate homelessness.
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What the Homeless Face: Contemplating the Bare Life
Borrowing from an obscure Roman law that banned an individual convicted of a particular crime from society and stripped him of his citizenship rights, Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben has likened the homeless existence to what he calls “bare life” and sees “the most basic opposition in the Western political tradition as the one between bare life and political existence” (Agamben 1998:2). Under this ancient law the person banned from society could be killed by anyone, yet his life was considered sacred, homo sacer, and he could not be sacrificed in a religious ceremony. Homo sacer was, therefore, excluded from the law but also included in the law. Agamben defines bare life as “necessity, mere physical existence…what humans have in the household, as opposed to their lives as speaking citizens in the polis” (Agamben 1998:7). The use of this term,
“bare life,” for those excluded from political life and stripped of rights, is one that my ethnographic research within the SafeGround community verifies as entirely appropriate and definitive.
A successful day for the homeless residents of the SafeGround encampment is one in which once all the basic needs are secured, one which, therefore, allows them to redirect their efforts to take care of secondary support activities, such as finding employment, support services, indoor shelter or a permanent home. These secondary activities include taking care of health issues, including mental and/or medical, clinic visits when available (dental care is rarely available); dealing with legal issues such as court dates, governmental documentation issues or clearing criminal records; securing job
112 counseling such as resume writing, unemployment counseling or skill testing; and, if it is an exceptional day, a job interview.
Time for the homeless is defined by these activities. What the housed citizenry and local business and political leaders see as idleness or wasting time is clearly seen by the homeless as necessary for daily survival. Susser writes about the difference in the concept of time,
Researchers have addressed this issue in terms of poverty and homelessness, arguing that time created by and for homeless people takes on different meanings than time for the rest of the population. Poor people must keep institutional time requirements, but when they arrive must wait, in a daily restatement of an unequal power relationship between the poor and the service providers. The bureaucracy can be late but the person dependent on it is required to come on time and be patient (Susser 2001:234).5
The homeless are thus placed in a hierarchically subordinate, diminished relationship with the providers of social services who are there to help them. Often that can lead to resentment and against the service providers, governmental agencies and others.
These daily survival and secondary support activities are often complicated by common practices of U.S. cities efforts to end homelessness. The four most common municipal strategies listed by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty
(NLCHP) are; (1) police actions, including mass arrests and confiscation of homeless persons’ property; (2) selective enforcement of older statutes not originally targeting the homeless; (3) the passage of new laws restricting certain forms of panhandling; and (4) the passage of new laws restricting sleeping and sitting in public places (Failer
2000:251).6
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Deserving vs. Undeserving Homeless: Another View of Bare Life
Indeed, all of these actions can be viewed as punitive and exclusionary acts that establish boundaries of exclusion for the homeless. The purpose of these actions can be seen as protecting domiciled citizens and public spaces from the “undeserving” homeless, whom they wish to exclude. Cultural researcher Samira Kawash (1998) states it this way,
“the aim of vengeful homeless policies of the last decade is not limited to the immediate goal of solving the problem of homelessness by eliminating the homeless. This war on homelessness must also be seen as a mechanism for constituting and securing a public, establishing the boundaries of inclusion, and producing an abject body against which the proper public body of the citizen can stand” (Kawash 1998:325). It is not difficult to comprehend how these vengeful strategies and hegemonic actions can be interpreted by both the homeless and the domiciled citizens as creating an “us vs. them” scenario which influences perceptions of the homeless situation. This “us vs. them” scenario is actualized in Agamben’s concept of the “good life vs. the bare life.” These exclusionary actions do little to help the homeless, and, in fact, acts of debarment from public spaces and denial of normal human functions such as sitting, sleeping or relieving themselves restricts their rights and adversely alters their sense of self.
The social services provided as a safety net to support the homeless can present other issues if they are not designed and implemented adequately. For example, a
Community Coupons program in the North Beach district of San Francisco, California, was designed to provide coupons that poor, destitute or homeless could use for goods and services. However, to receive the coupons the homeless had to enroll in a special
114 program for rehabilitation run by the North Beach Citizens Step Program. When enrolling, participants were asked first if they were poor but home dwelling or homeless and, second, if homeless, were they from the neighborhood or transient (Feldman 2004).
It is difficult not to view these questions as an attempt to determine if the candidates for the program are deserving or undeserving. The process continued with the program participant starting at Step 1, where after enrollment he or she received coupons for a blanket, clothing and meals. Step 1 enrollment placed the homeless individual in a database as a registered citizen of North Beach. I argue it could be interpreted that the program created a subordinate role for the homeless before services are applied or
“citizenship” is granted. Step 2 continued with counseling, meetings, bus tokens and laundry services. The transition from Step 1 to Step 2 is described on the North Beach
Citizens website and quoted in Feldman (2004) as follows, “As pride, trust, and receptiveness to change develop, citizens are inspired to make the progression to the next level of services” (Feldman 2006:47). Based on my fieldwork observations with
SafeGround, I concur with Feldman that what the North Beach Citizens organization saw as “receptiveness to change” was actually the forced acceptance of a subordinate relationship in a hierarchically structured program to normalize the stigmatized homeless individuals. Programs like that of North Beach are undoubtedly well intended, however, they establish or perpetuate subordinate or hierarchical relationships with their homelessness clients.
I spoke with a formerly homeless woman I’ll call “Marie,” who had spent a year living in her car in Sacramento with her teenage son before succeeding as a graduate of
115 the Women’s Empowerment program in Sacramento, becoming housed and eventually employed. I asked Marie why she felt that the homeless are treated as less than equal in the relationships with local officials and why officials seem unable to care about people, citizens, first on the priority list. Marie shared the following:
And I think it’s just the way the structure – the ways of the world been going. I mean, people lost they morals, you know? They lost, you know, they beliefs, you know? They – the glimmer of hope is just so gone now. And I guess they feel that they – if they come down to our level, they’re going to be associated – pointed at as the poor people lovers, you know? But you have to have a heart, you know? You have – when you making decisions in life and you’re in that position, your heart has to play some part in there (Marie in recorded interview July 17, 2011).7
The Homeless Vortex: A Social Metaphor
As we have discussed, the spectrum of images of the homeless can vary from a romantic vision associated with early-20th century carefree hobos, riding the rails across the United States, to deviant criminals who should be subdued and controlled by police actions to protect the proper citizens of the community. Alternatively seen as spiritually free individuals who choose their path or totally constrained, helpless victims of misfortune the homeless are undoubtedly frequently misrecognized to use Feldman’s term. Feldman refers to this as “representational variation” and creates a pair of axes upon which to plot the variation.
The first dimension of the representational variation I call the sacred/profane axis. Along this axis, representations range from an identification of homelessness with the spiritually superior to an identification of homelessness with dirt, the abject, and criminality. The second dimension of representational variation I call the free/unfree axis. Along this axis, representations range from the notion of homelessness as a lifestyle choice to and a situation marked by a kind of natural liberty to
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the idea that homelessness is involuntarily acquired and a condition defined by social constraint and the compulsions of bodily need. Thus, as sacred or profane, free or unfree, a set of polarities marks the representation of homelessness as much as it marks the responses (Feldman 2004:6).8
I argue that to understand what the homeless face we should conceptualize
Feldman’s two axes of representational variations as metaphorically representing the stereotypes and stigmatic actions perpetrated against the homeless as twisting into a circular, “homeless vortex” of swirling, out-of-control social, economic and political activity directed at the homeless and posing double bind situations that the homeless are often unable to navigate. The homeless enter, or are pulled into, this swirling cycle of abject poverty and homelessness, the homeless vortex, from many varied and often multiple entry points including institutional abuse (foster care, incarceration), legal problems (bankruptcy, parole, warrants), economic problems (unemployment, lack of financial resources), health (physical, emotional, mental issues including substance abuse), lack of educational resources (employable skill sets, critical thinking) and social concerns (dysfunctional families, estranged from family members). Once caught in this homeless vortex they often face double bind situations that are emotionally frustrating and hard to navigate. For example, because they have no income, they have no money for a place to live, clean clothes, a shower, a haircut or other basic requirements to present themselves to a prospective employer. To get these things they need a job.
When they try to apply for a job they find themselves lacking presentability, without an address to put on an application and, thus are forced to identify themselves in ways that reproduce the negative homeless perceptions discussed previously. In a tight job market
117 they seldom get the job. This lack of social, political, economic, and institutional affiliation is our first indication that they are being treated as second class citizens. Their right to work is severely hampered by factors including their homeless situation and the perceptions of the homeless as undeserving by prospective employers. Their right to mental and medical treatment is withheld because they often have no health insurance.
Their right to political agency is denied because they suffer misrecognition in the political arena based on lack of resources, no money, no property and thus, no standing in the political economy. They are seen as sinful or sick and the system denies them individual agency or standing. This is what the homeless face. Men, women, children, families, estranged or unaccompanied youth, they are seen by many as the undeserving of our society and forced to live the bare life, estranged from the polis with nowhere to go.
They are caught in the homeless vortex.
What the homeless face can be understood by many through the music of contemporary rock musician and sometimes folk-balladeer Bruce Spingsteen, when looking back at the injustice faced by Tom Joad, the fictional Depression-Era common man of Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, Grapes of Wrath:
Hot soup on a campfire under a bridge Shelter line stretchin’ ‘round the corner Welcome to the new world order Families sleepin’ in their cars in the Southwest No home no job no peace no rest - The Ghost of Tom Joad, Bruce Springsteen (1995)
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Chapter Three Endnotes
1 See Hopper (1983), in Hombs and Snyder (1983:61) for a partial mention of early 1980s media coverage. 2 Gowan notes that a similar breakdown was suggested by Rob Rosenthal (2000) in the article “Imaging Homelessness and Homeless People: Visions and Strategies within the Movement(s).” I have found that these homelessness constructions run throughout the social science literature. As I discussed in Chapter One, these same causal constructions have permeated the public and academic conceptions of homelessness and the homeless for the last 150 years. 3 Barr (1970) had also previously published an important study on homelessness and affiliation, Disaffiliated Man. 4 Baum (1993:3). Baum credits Freeing Someone You Love from Alcohol and Other Drugs (1992) by Ronald L. Rodgers and Chandler Scott McMillian for his working definition of denial as “the inability to recognize a problem in the face of compelling evidence.” Baum uses this as a tool to determine that what the homeless need most is not housing but treatment for substance abuse and mental disabilities. 5 Susser credits Urciuoli 1992; and Susser 1982. I found this to be a common theme with the homeless I spoke with and suspect it is ultimately a concept they could be credited with bringing to the attention of most researchers. 6 See also Feldman (2004:i) and Foscarinis (1996:26). 7 Marie (pseudonym) is a SafeGround supporter, Women’s Empowerment Graduate and currently housed. This quote was extracted from the transcription of an unstructured recorded interview conducted July 17, 2011. 8 Feldman credits Linda K. Fuller in “From Tramps to Truth-Seekers: Images of the Homeless in Motion Pictures,” in Min, Reading the Homeless, esp. 169 with this concept of representational variation.
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Community is the spirit, the guiding light of the tribe, whereby people come together in order to fulfill a specific purpose, to help others fulfill their purpose, and to take care of one another. The goal of the community is to make sure that each member of the community is heard and is properly giving the gift he has brought to this world. Without this giving the community dies. And without the community, the individual is left without a place where he can contribute… When you don’t have community, you are not listened to; you don’t have a place you can go and feel that you really belong. You don’t have people to affirm who you are and to support you in bringing forward your gifts… And so Community is the spirit, the guiding light of the tribe; whereby people come together in order to fulfill a specific purpose, top help others fulfill their purpose, and to take care of one another. - Midwest Academy 2010.
Chapter Four
SAFEGROUND NOW!
It is an indisputable fact that there have been homeless people living along the banks of the American and Sacramento Rivers in Sacramento, California for decades. As noted in Chapter Two, the number grew dramatically during the Great Depression Era when Hooverville communities and other encampments sprouted up in substantial numbers during the decade prior to the Second World War. The Hooverville shacks and shanties of this period were eventually demolished by city officials at the urging of powerful landowners expressing their perception of the encampments as unhealthy and unsightly. These locations on floodplains (see Figure 11, map page 53) have been unattractive to development, as noted by Sacramento historians of homelessness (see Reis
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1993 and Henley 1993), and attractive to the homeless due to their proximity to services, transportation, potential jobs, and downtown businesses. In the postwar decades up to and including the present time, there has consistently been a homeless population living and camping on the floodplains next to the river. In other words, a homeless population in Sacramento is not a new phenomenon, but rather one that has experienced cyclical shifts in demographics as social factors and the political economy caused the composite demographics of those living in extreme poverty to change and evolve. Sacramento’s ongoing community struggle over the public space near the rivers has presented the community with a raging socio-political battle for decades.
What do we want? Safe Ground! When do we want it? Now!
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has. - Quote often attributed to a comment by anthropologist Margaret Mead, - Source and date remain undocumented.1
According to the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics website
(n.d.a), as the recession of 2008 hit California, the unemployment rate in in the
Sacramento metropolitan statistical area (MSA) known as the Arden-Arcade-Roseville
MSA skyrocketed from its January 2008 level of 6.4% to 10.0% in January 2009, and hit a high of 13.0% in January 2010. Since that time, with the exception of a reported one month drop to 11.7%, it has stayed above 12% through the most recently reported 12.3% in June 2011.
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On Tuesday April 21, 2009, a newly formed volunteer organization named
SafeGround held a rally on the south lawn of the State Capitol2. The group and its supporters marched to the capitol building where they presented a program of speakers including homeless advocates, advocates from the faith-based community, and labor unions drawing media attention to the closing of the Sacramento Tent City discussed below and their demands for a safe and legal place to be. Bishop Jaime Soto opened with a prayer and Shamus Roller, Director of the Sacramento Housing Alliance (SHA), read a letter written for the rally by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty
(NLCHP). This was my first day spent in the field gathering ethnographic information photographing participants, as well as advocates and homeless leaders whom I would soon come to know by name and consider friends. Joan Burke, Loaves & Fishes
Advocacy Director, closed the rally with a strong call for Safe Ground, a safe and legal place for everyone until there is enough affordable housing for all. After the official speeches, the leaders of SafeGround, ready and willing to be arrested, took sleeping bags and lined up blocking the south entrance of the State Capitol.
Resounding chants of, “What do we want? Safe Ground! When do we want it?
Now!” echoed from the crowd of supporters, as the state police watched and waited for direction on how to handle the act of civil disobedience. Safe Ground advocates spoke to the crowd and some lay down on their sleeping bags refusing to leave without safe ground. Just when it appeared the police were about to move in and start arrests, Darrel
Steinberg, President pro Tem of the California State Senate came out of the capitol building and was asked by Burke to lend support. Steinberg gave an impromptu address
122 to the crowd which appeared to also signal the state police that there was no need for arrests, and the day eventually ended without incident or arrest, and, thus ended my first day in the field.
The Wastelands circa 4Q2008 -1Q2009
Concurrently, in late-2008 and early-2009, many of the residents of tent encampments along the American River Parkway, as well as other homeless with nowhere to go, were searching for higher elevation locations to pitch camp and thus avoid the winter flooding. People started to gather on a plot of land located on the south side of the river, on an elevated spot roughly behind the Blue Diamond Almond factory.
The spot, often referred to as the “Wastelands” by the homeless residents, is not easily observable from the nearby freeways or city streets, so, although authorities were aware of the encampment, it was not drawing the attention of the concerned public, local media, law enforcement or local policy makers. That lack of attention would soon change in a dramatic fashion. On February 25, 2009, reporter Lisa Ling, a Sacramento native and special investigative reporter for a widely-viewed national television program, The Oprah
Winfrey Show, aired a segment filmed in the Wastelands. The segment suggested that
Sacramento’s “Tent City” was housing 1200 people who were mostly victims of the recession, lost jobs and foreclosures, what soon would be referred to as the “new homeless” (Fry 2009). The segment quickly drew national and international media attention to the Wastelands, bringing reporters from as far away as Europe and Japan to the site to report on “real evidence” of the effects of the recession. The attention proved a
123 source of amusement to the Wasteland residents and an embarrassment to the local authorities, as reflected in the following quotes:
The other day, I heard a German reporter ask if this is happening because of the recent economic collapse…This has been happening for 30 years, but the powers that be have been able to pretend that doesn’t exist. Why aren’t reporters asking about flat wages, jobs being shipped overseas and the lack of affordable housing? (Agulair n.d.).
“We think that we need to have tough love,” Mayor Kevin Johnson told KCRA 3 early Tuesday during a visit to the camp, which is home to as many as 200 people. Some camp residents are victims of the current recession, while others are chronically homeless. Johnson said he is working to treat camp residents with compassion, but added that public safety is a major concern. The camp lacks running water and sewer service. The mayor said 40 to 80 units of permanent housing would be available for camp residents” (KCRA 2009).
“In the end Sacramento dealt with its Tent City with more compassion than can usually be expected. “If they had a great big rug they could sweep it under somewhere, they would”…The broom fortunately came in the form of temporary fixes, not arrests. The city scrambled to raise the money for forty additional units of subsidized housing (few of which were ready before Tent City was cleared) and fifty additional shelter beds, which quickly filled. Local advocates for the homeless had vowed civil disobedience if any arrests were made, so to avoid an embarrassing confrontation, the city came up with motel vouchers for the last few dozen holdouts. “The bulk of the people,” though, said Loaves & Fishes’ Joan Burke, “just dispersed to more hidden camps.” By April 20, everyone was gone” (Ehrenreich 2009: para.20)
This undesired attention lasted a minimum of several months and appeared to raise the ire of at least some of the local officials, policy makers, media and concerned public. Up to this point the city had left the tent encampment alone in part due to the
“threats” of local homeless advocates and future Safe Ground leaders, including Sister
Libby Fernandez and Joan Burke of Loaves & Fishes, who threatened to stand-up and be arrested, as well as a lawsuit was brought against the city and county on behalf of the
124 homeless by a local civil rights attorney Mark Merin (Breton 2009b:B1).3 However, the city’s willingness to simply look the other way changed when the February 25th Oprah segment drew public attention and focused the media’s political spotlight momentarily on
Sacramento. It was not long before members of the press started to uncover errors in
Ling’s reporting. One month after the story broke, the New York Times reported the number of Wasteland residents had been much lower and was, “currently 125, down from a high of 200.” The New York Times’ article further noted that California Governor,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sacramento Mayor, Kevin Johnson, had decided to move encampment residents to the shelter at the state fairgrounds until at least July (McKinley
2009a). By the second week of April many of the residents had moved away because of the city’s threats to ticket those who stayed in violation of the city’s anti-camping ordinance. Many Wasteland residents reportedly refused the shelter offer, calling the local shelters “institutional” and citing rules that made staying there difficult or impossible (McKinley 2009b).
A City Responds: Public Officials, Business and the Media React
In preparation for the closing of the Wastelands in April of 2009, Volunteers of
America (VOA), supported by the city, opened an annex at the state fairgrounds, Cal
Expo, which would accommodate up to 50 people (26 single adults and 12 couples). The addition of space that would accommodate couples was a new approach and concession to complaints from the homeless community that couples were not allowed to be together in many shelters. The Cal Expo annex was planned to stay open until June 30, 2009, and also to provide services including HIV testing and housing referrals. It was announced
125 by the city that there were additional plans to accommodate the balance of the tent city homeless by offering beds in shelters and, later, subsidized housing (Hubert 2009a:B3).
During that same mid-April timeframe the January 2009 Sacramento street count figures were announced, depicting progress in housing Sacramento’s chronic homeless.
However, the street count also depicted an overall 14% growth in the homeless population in Sacramento County. The success reducing the chronic homeless on the streets was attributed to a new “housing first” program called Homeless Prevention and
Rapid Rehousing (HPRP) which was part of the ARRA $1.5B in government funding targeted at economic recovery.4 The HPRP program focused on both preventing homelessness and housing the chronic homeless (per the HUD definition). Locally in
Sacramento, the street count figures included a rising population of “new faces,” families and recently unemployed homeless people (Hubert 2009a:A1).
On April 17, 2009 it was reported in the Sacramento Bee (Hubert 2009c:B1) that the last of the homeless had left the Wasteland area near the Blue Diamond Almond plant and the following day the city officials came in force, removing the “trash” left behind including tents, sleeping bags, and other personal belongings. As soon as the city completed the clean-up, the site was fenced off by the owners, the Sacramento Municipal
Utility District (SMUD), so that they could proceed with a construction project.5 The
Sacramento Bee reported,
As homeless men and women scrambled to find new places to live and sleep, more than 150 workers used heavy equipment , shovels, rakes and their hands to clean up discarded trash, tents, clothing and other remnants of the campground north of downtown. By early afternoon Sacramento Municipal Utility District workers were preparing to fence off the property
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near the Blue Diamond almond processing plant for a construction project (Hubert 2009d:B1).
The Cal Expo extended winter shelter and annex reported being at capacity almost immediately after the closing of Tent City. Cal Expo was housing up to 200 individuals a night, including families with children. Both Cal Expo and other Sacramento shelters, already at capacity when the tent city closed, reported turning people away. Mayor
Kevin Johnson announced his support for a legal campground and the Safe Ground program for the homeless in Sacramento as a piece of the overall “integrated solution,” a support he reiterated at the Sacramento Community Homeless Forum (SCHF) held at
CSUS on October 12, 2010. In his address to the SCHF the Mayor publically set a target date of November 2011 for the Safe Ground site to be operational.
Sacramento Bee columnist Cynthia Hubert, who routinely covers homeless issues, had written eight columns in less than three weeks (see Hubert 2009b -2009i) during the last days of the Sacramento’s Wastelands Tent City. Hubert, who normally is compassionate regarding the homeless, questioned in columns why so few had taken advantage of the Cal Expo annex even though Cal Expo and The Bee were reporting the space as full and that people were being turned away. My investigation and observations over a two-plus year period between July 2009 and August 2011, found that the press and critics routinely committed an oversight by accepting incorrect information on shelters. It appears that the purposeful attacks by critics, aimed at marginalizing the homeless, are sometimes accepted in the press as fact without thorough investigation and, thus, become the vernacular wisdom about the homeless. If the press speaks to one homeless person
127 who says they don’t want to go to a shelter it is as though this person has spoken for all homeless individuals who are then bundled into an “undeserving” status. The errors of the media were not missed by Valerie Feldman of Legal Services of Northern California
(LSNC) who wrote to the editor of the Sacramento Bee shortly after Hubert’s columns in
April. In part Feldman asked,
Please explain to your readers how 40 to 50 additional beds at Cal Expo will meet the needs of 150 people now displaced from tent city. Over the last week …not once did The Bee do the math: 40 to 50 additional beds and 150 people don’t add up, not including the 1200 unsheltered people in Sacramento on any given night…Moreover the city has no plan for any of the people currently staying at Cal Expo when the shelter closes in June. The city responded to the national coverage of tent city quickly… Unfortunately, as soon as the cameras were gone, the discussion of long- term solutions ended too (Feldman 2009:A16).
Feldman’s letter and questions went unanswered by the Sacramento Bee columnists who had written so profusely about the homeless problem in the two weeks preceding her letter. Since the release of a 2009 study commissioned by the Sacramento County
Children’s Commission (performed through the County Board of Education and Project
TEACH) (Hubert 2011d:A1) it is apparent that many more people in Sacramento County were experiencing homelessness. The additional 7254 did not include either an additional estimated 1,549 homeless children under school age (infants, toddlers, and preschoolers) or the families of these children. As discussed in the introduction, counting the homeless is a difficult task due both to varying definitions of who to count and differing methodologies of how to count. However, the number of homeless in
Sacramento at the time of the closing of Tent City can be conservatively estimated at
10,000-plus, raising a larger issue about the correct interpretation of the population
128 demographics of Sacramento’s Tent City. The demographics of the population of Tent
City was first reported as members of the “new homeless” by Lisa Ling, but later found to contain many chronic homeless, which lead the press and public officials to conclude that the encampment should be termed illegal and dismantled (Hubert 2011d:A1).
However, with the benefit of hindsight, and in light of the demographic data on homelessness in Sacramento County uncovered in Project TEACH, the conclusions that led to the dismantling of Tent City should be reevaluated. The shelters in Sacramento at this time were regularly reported at full capacity (all funded beds full) and reporting that they were dealing with many more families and children. From my research observations, I have no reason to doubt the validity of the Project TEACH survey and can find no other viable or reasonable explanation for the large number of homeless families with children, four times the number or more, gathered and published by the street count methodology, except to believe that the Project TEACH survey methodology logically included many children whose families were suffering the economic effects of the recent recession. This means these homeless children’s families were most likely experiencing the effects of lost jobs and lost homes. The chronic and episodic homeless were outside, some adverse to shelters, but the new homeless were helping fill the shelters that accepted families and overflowing to Tent City, friends couches and vehicles. The alternative explanation is that the number of homeless in Sacramento County had been this high (10,000-plus) long before Tent City and that those officials responsible for resolving the problem, as well as the media, were unaware of the magnitude of the problem. Either represents a grave oversight in recognizing the magnitude of the
129 problem and another reason why a better, more comprehensive methodology and definition should be developed to drive funding rather than methodology driven by funding requirements.
Local Sacramento journalist and publisher Cecily Hastings wrote in her June 2009 issue of Inside the City that the national media had once again misreported the Tent City story and mislead the public. Hastings questioned why no one from the “homeless industry” had stepped forward to retract the false information and went so far as to suggest that they covered it up because it was a better story. The article appears to imply that since, according to Hastings, these people had been homeless in spite of the recession, it wasn’t a major story even though this many vulnerable people were without shelter (Hastings 2009).
Local business leaders including Steve Ayres, CEO of Armour Steel, River
District board member, and member of the Mayor’s Policy Board on Homelessness, decried the burden of the problem on River District businesses.6 In a written “business owner’s view” provided to the Sacramento Bee, Ayres stated “…it is important to recognize the fact that this is a regional issue that needs a regional solution. Continuing to saturate the city of Sacramento and more practically its central city and River District provides an inequitable approach” (Ayres 2009:E2) (see Appendix H maps). Ayres was responding to the call soon after the closure of Tent City for a legal encampment site to be called “Eden” by the new advocacy group Safe Ground, its’ advocates and supporters.
The proposed site for Eden was a parcel of land off Bannon Street, nestled in-between the water treatment plant just north of downtown and several existing homeless shelters.
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Local city officials declared it to be off-limits due to a Homeland Security restriction on development next to a water treatment plant, a restriction later denied by Homeland
Security, and a proposed water treatment plant expansion plan that is realistically ten or more years out due to budget constraints. There are several isolated private residences on
Bannon Street, a low budget motel within a half mile of the site, and recently a city police station and a Greyhound bus terminal have located on Bannon Street close to the proposed site, which has sat vacant for decades and cannot be described as a prime development parcel. However, the parcel was located within the boundaries of the River
District (see Appendix H maps), a business improvement district (BID) within walking distance of both downtown Sacramento and the area where homeless social services have been concentrated for many years. Ayres, and later assistant city manager Cassandra
Jennings, called for a regional approach to the homeless issue citing the concentrated homeless population and social services in the downtown area and claiming, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, that the high concentration of services was an enabler of homelessness and a “magnet” for the homeless looking for easy support.7 This regional approach to the homeless problem was referred to by city officials and others on the Mayor’s homeless policy board as a “hub-and-spoke” approach with services scattered across the region, anticipating moving the homeless into multiple locations scattered across the regional landscape and, thus in the supporter’s opinion, providing an equitable approach to sharing the “burden” of dealing with homelessness.
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The Marginalization of Sacramento’s Tent City Homeless
As often observed there are many ways of marginalizing the poor and homeless segments of the population (Middleton 2011; Wright 1997; and others). In the previous section I noted that as Sacramento’s Tent City was dismantled, the local and national media sparred over how to determine if the homeless were “deserving” or “undeserving,” the implication, never directly stated, being that if they refused shelter they were undeserving, but if they were families homeless due to the effects of a poor economy
(lost jobs, mortgage defaults, etc.) they were deserving. “The undeserving” would be criminalized, pathologized, and marginalized to a point where treatment as second class citizens would be acceptable. The overall question of why there were so many homeless persons in Sacramento or elsewhere across the country was missed as they argued over the fate of the 200-300 at Tent City. In the rush to implicate the Sacramento Tent City homeless as “undeserving” (Breton 2009a, Hastings 2009, and others) the press completely missed the issue of the additional 7254 homeless children (plus their families and under school age siblings which could be another 15,000- plus) in Sacramento
County during 2009 who were placing increased pressure on shelter facilities, social services and illegal camping.
I spoke with Hilary Krough, Coordinator of Sacramento’s Project TEACH and she noted that the “methodology differences (the street count is a point-in-time count and the Project TEACH is annual count) are often driven by the HUD programs that fund programs specifically for targeted groups such as the chronic homeless, which is defined by HUD8 and sought out by the street count methodology” (Krough 2011). I would argue
132 that the very act of distinguishing through definition of homeless between those that sleep outdoors and those that ‘couch surf’ with friends and family or sleep in vehicles and vacant buildings, is a methodology of applying “deserving” and “undeserving” designations to the homeless individuals and, thereby marginalizing certain segments of the homeless population.
SafeGround Abides: The Early Days
You can’t arrest yourself out of homelessness…. - John Kraintz, a SafeGround Co-Founder and Homeless Leader
By August of 2009 SafeGround had evolved into a formal alliance of homeless leaders, homeless advocates, volunteers, and leaders from the social service community.
After conducting a strategy session, Safe Ground documented its initial mission as obtaining a SafeGround, a legal, self-governing campground with access to water, trash removal, sanitation and eventually basic social services, the decriminalization of homelessness, and the final goal of permanent and supportive housing. Safe Ground aligned itself with the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee (SHOC) and started weekly steering committee and advisory committee meetings. The self-governing camp elected elders and camp resident responsibilities were defined. The following is from a document produced by the Safe Ground and SHOC leaders in August 2009:
…our basic responsibility is to take care of each other. We live in the camp in the spirit of co-operation and unity. Everyone needs to be trained to do troubleshooting, and to handle emergencies. Our goal is to meet together, work to raise consciousness, build the community and the movement. ..We foresee that this campaign may involve the risk of arrest. Some of us will not risk arrest. All will help support those who are
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arrested…we will discuss the ramifications of standing our ground. When we are on the move we need to stay together and keep organized Safe Ground (Safe Ground Sacramento 2009).
During the late summer of 2009 approximately 35 SafeGround members were invited by civil rights attorney and SafeGround board member, Mark Merin, to occupy an empty parcel of land he owned in the historic downtown Alkali Flats neighborhood.
New, matching tents were set up in neat rows, trash removal and sanitation was established and security was implemented. However, it was in direct violation of the anti-camping ordinance and, therefore, illegal. The Alkali Flats encampment, known as the ‘C’ Street SafeGround, re-ignited a political battle over what the city should to do about these “lawless” campers and their supporters. SafeGround had openly launched a political protest in support of their objectives of obtaining a repeal of the anti-camping ordinance and supporting the rights of the homeless.
Responding to the Alkali Flats illegal encampment and reinforcing the public’s images of deviancy and pathology, the local press jumped into the political fray quickly.
Conservative Sacramento Bee columnist Marcos Breton came forward with some of the strongest anti-homeless rhetoric. On September 20, 2009, Breton wrote,
The smell of urine may be coming to a corner near you. Sacramento seems on its way to becoming a city where homeless charity is an entrenched institution. The pieces are in place. Homeless advocates have legal backing. They are ruthless and motivated. They are poised to take advantage of a leadership vacuum at City Hall. And high-profile members of Sacramento’s faith community are disengaged or supportive of a legalized tent city downtown. On Tuesday a judge will hear arguments on a temporary restraining order to stop the homeless from illegally camping on 13th and C streets. ..Their ultimate goal is to strike down Sacramento’s anti-camping ordinance. And if that happens, it will be open season (Breton 2009e:B1).
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Sacramento police officers Mark Zoulas and Mike Cooper, fondly known for a decade to the homeless community as “Batman” and “Robin,” wrote an uncharacteristic letter to the editor of the Sacramento Bee in which they both complimented SafeGround as a temporary step toward a “real” solution and condemned Loaves & Fishes as enabling homelessness. They wrote, “a safe ground that provides free land without rules and expectations to address the problems that created their homelessness would only continue to enable an unhealthy lifestyle (Zoulas and Cooper 2009:E2).
A Subordinate Lifestyle: Urban Nomads
After the ‘C’ Street SafeGround encampment in Alkali Flats was shut down by the Sacramento Police, the SafeGround camp residents found themselves out on the
American River Parkway, setting up and tearing down daily in a mobile camp, thus returning to the “urban nomad” lifestyle they had prior to Tent City and working with a process unofficially suggested by law enforcement. They would meet daily at approximately 3:00pm and issue tents and sleeping bags from a supply shed located on the Loaves & Fishes campus. People would start out to the nightly campsite announced by the elders. Usually by 5:00 or 6:00 pm all had arrived and camp was setup in one of a number of known sites including “Sherwood Forest,” “Camp Hope,” “ Norwood 8” a.k.a. “Gay Beach,” “Camp Pollack, ” or “LaFamilia.” Dinner was either brought in, often by church affiliated supporters, or prepared at camp and the early evening was spent in conversation and planning of what to do next. Lights-out was controlled by the sunset and the campers were up between 5:00 and 6:00am, rolling up sleeping bags, folding and packing tents and setting off to the supply shed to store them for a day. The
135 camp was cleared and the area patrolled by volunteers for trash removal, a jointly held responsibility, by 7:00am. Morning coffee was available at 8:00am in Friendship Park on the Loaves & Fishes campus and showers and clean clothes were available on certain days of the week. Lunch was also available between the hours of 11:30 am and 1:00 pm if you stood in line for a lunch ticket in Friendship Park that morning.
On a daily basis this mobile lifestyle proved a strenuous task for many campers, who generally ranged in age from 18 -75 years of age, and, furthermore, left little time for appointments with other social services. As John Kraintz, Safe Ground co-founder and formerly homeless advocate later explain during a 2010 rally, “Sleeping out every night takes all your time, all your energy, and makes it very difficult for you to deal with the deeper issues that brought you into homelessness.”9 In private conversations with the
County Park Rangers patrolling the American River Parkway and Discovery Park and city police assigned to the area that the city owned, the campers were often told “off the record,” that this was the process that the law enforcement authorities felt was the most appropriate for unofficially tolerating the homeless in river camps. In private conversations I had with law enforcement officials I was told exactly the same and even unofficially discussed where might be a good spot to advise the camp to move to. These were always areas that were out of the line of sight of bicycle riders on the parkway bicycle trails and from nearby access points or roads. The goal of the unofficial strategy was to roust the homeless out of sight by the time the working population drove into downtown and not to have the camps setup before the time that law enforcement’s dayshift ended.
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The Park Rangers I spoke with privately during my fieldwork expressed frustration that this was the policy that had to be enforced. In conversations with the chief ranger, since retired, and others, they repeatedly expressed the opinion that any increased tolerance of the camps would result in immediate and intense pressure from higher county officials who would require them to break up the SafeGround and other camps. When I traced the source of this potential pressure, I found that it went back up the chain of command to the Park Director, the Parks Commission and eventually to the
County Board of Supervisors. In my first meeting with a new but influential county supervisor, it was openly revealed that he was under intense pressure from powerful community constituents who demanded the homeless be removed from the American
River Parkway but provided no alternative locations. That was the main concern he expressed to me, “how do I get rid of the pressure?” Over the ensuing months, as the ebb and tide of this political pressure vacillated, the campers were at times ignored, tucked away in camps well hidden in the forests and allowed to stay in one place for a number of days and even weeks until “discovered” by constituents or until the rangers felt that it was time to move to “protect the ecological integrity” of the site. According to my personal contacts with the Park Rangers, the installation of porta-potties and dumpsters at the entrance to the American River Parkway met resistance from authorities, officials and powerful constituents as being indicative of providing an infrastructure for the homeless and encouraging them to be homeless even when Safe Ground offered to pay for the facilities.
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In personal conversations with Safe Ground members and previous Tent City residents, it was related to me that it was the Sacramento Police that had originally directed people to the Tent City location as a good place to camp and remain unseen.
This report fits the pattern of behavior that I have observed from the Sacramento City
Police and Park Rangers when dealing with SafeGround and other homeless campers.
Law enforcement assigned to patrol the homeless camps and areas the homeless frequent in Sacramento appear to understand that there is nowhere else for the homeless campers to go and that when they conduct a “sweep” along the rivers and roust them from their campsites, they are only forcing them to pack up their belongings and move to another camp site close by. The triggering event for a sweep seems to be political pressure applied from above. I have observed exceptions to this behavior when particular officers or rangers appear to be upset with or angry at the campers as a group and demand they move and threaten that if they don’t leave the river area they will face confiscation of their belongings and possible arrest. Usually these threats of citation, arrest, or confiscation of belongings, are not followed up on by law enforcement, and all that is accomplished is a disruption to the homeless individuals and their camps. These homeless individuals, who are already living under stressful conditions, are further stressed by the continual harassment. I argue that this behavior by law enforcement amounts to the creation and maintenance of a subordinate role for the homeless and a mandated lifestyle of unsettled urban nomads.
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Marginalization of SafeGround and Other Homeless
The conservation-minded defenders of the American River Parkway who want all the homeless removed but offer no alternative locations for the homeless to “be,” want the Parkway to be what Wright referred to as “pleasure space” as opposed to the “refuse space” that is often associated with homelessness (Wright 1997). Additionally, the River
District business community interests call for a regional solution somewhere outside their district (see Appendix H maps). This struggle over “proper” use of land creates what has been referred to as “polarized topographies” (Wright 1997), a political debate over the appropriate land use.
Prolonged debate over the use of land that some see as pleasure space, others as refuse space, and still others as functional space, is at the heart of the contention regarding homelessness in Sacramento. There is and has long been a high concentration of homeless located in the vicinity of Sacramento’s 2008-2009 Wastelands Tent City, along with a correspondingly high concentration of social services in the vicinity of
Loaves & Fishes and the light commercial and industrial businesses, now represented by the River District, a business improvement district. Close by in downtown Sacramento is the former refuse space of the West End skid row, now converted into a pleasure space referred to as “Historic Old Sacramento” and the ongoing efforts to turn the K Street Mall into an economically vibrant downtown retail center and pleasure space. Moreover, there is a multi-sided struggle for some of the same space. Neither the homeless community at large, Safe Ground, nor other social service or advocacy groups claim the obvious pleasure space of American River Parkway or Discovery Park as a solution. They are
139 only used by the homeless to illegally camp due to a lack of any viable alternatives.
Homeless use of the K Street Mall, primarily an outdoor shopping area a few city blocks from the State Capitol, involves mainly those homeless who are afraid to go into the woods along the river or suffer from afflictions (alcoholism, mental illness, etc.) which keep them out of shelters for behavioral reasons. The Downtown Business Partnership, the River District’s counterpart, has established several programs to help the homeless on the mall locate services and shelter and, on the whole, appears to be taking a compassionate approach to protecting the business interests of the partnership, while dealing with the issues of homelessness in the district.
Even while illegal camping on the American River Parkway and Discovery Park receives all the public attention due to frustration with a lack of alternatives, there is a contentious debate over land use in the River District (see maps in Appendix H). The
River District is populated by primarily by businesses classified as light commercial with some industrial. There are minimal residential units and sixteen long standing social services in the district.10 As we discovered in Chapter Two, the homeless and the social services that support efforts to help them have been in the area since the early part of the
20th century.
The River District, driven by a capitalist market philosophy, plans to develop the entire area into an up-scale, business based community including commercial pleasure space (restaurants and other public attractions), commercial functional space
(transportation hubs, parking, etc.) and mixed residential space. According to a map from their website, it is the River District’s desire to reinvent the identity of the entire area (see
140 future vision map in Appendix H). Additionally, according to public statements from
River District officials observed in SHRA, city council and meetings with city officials, the task is complicated by the homeless who “roam” the streets and degrade the areas’ identity. 11 As a result, we see quotes from prominent business leaders, such as Ayres
(2009) above, in the local media which are instrumental in reinforcing the stigmatization of the homeless and lead to suggestions for a “regional” approach to solving the problem
– somewhere else.
These repeated cycles of stigmatizing the homeless and discounting the efforts of
SafeGround, Loaves & Fishes and other homeless service providers serves to further marginalize the homeless as an undeserving underclass that can be treated in in ways that marginalize their rights as human beings and citizens. During my research, I met with and spoke with some of the most adamant members of the business community. In meetings I have had with local political leaders I uncovered a very mixed set of opinions.
There are several strong supporters of homeless rights and services on the city council.12
However, several of the very prominent and powerful local politicians in Sacramento are closely tied to the business interests in the River District, and refuse to entertain a discussion outside the parameters of business development logic. These individuals often publically proclaim their caring for the homeless but, privately, in meetings will not support solutions that might anger business interests. They openly back policies that marginalize the homeless and reinforce their positions in support of business interests.
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The Safe Ground Imagined Community Evolves
As the events around the closing of the Wastelands (Tent City) and the Alkali
Flats encampment receded into history, SafeGround continued to operate as a tightly knit group of urban nomads. Elders were elected each month and the camp population rose and fell with the arrival of new members and the loss of those moving on. When harassment by the authorities, in the form of enforcing daily mobility accelerated, it routinely caused the camp population to reduce as factions broke off and established their own camps. At one time in 2010, Safe Ground was supporting three separate camps,
Hope, Serenity and LaFamilia. At that time I noted in my fieldnotes that the “sense of community is strong in all camps, but it differs some in each. In Hope it is based on creating safety, peacefulness, and elimination of stress, which effects all members’ interaction and behavior. Hope has new members mixed with some chronic homeless participants. The camp structure currently controlled by a homeless leader called ‘West’ seems to help many of the more vulnerable members who suffer from mental impairments such as PTSD, depression, etc. Some of these cases are the result of domestic abuse, violence, or a life-long struggle with a disease. Regardless of the problem, the community offers a safe, stress-free, environment and a community in which members seek to heal each other.”13 At that time Hope was serving as both the intake community for new members and the ongoing community for established members, while the other two camps were spin-offs started by members who worked at least part-time or had enough income to be collectively launching efforts to move on toward housing. Later it was determined that the demands of supporting three camps
142 were beyond the current scope of Safe Ground and the board formally sanctioned one camp asking them all to merge.
Mama Q’s Feelings About The SafeGround Community
During 2010 my fieldwork advanced to the point that I knew most or all of the members of the SafeGround camps and many former members who were either housed, living in shelters, or in other homeless encampments along the river. I attended and participated in weekly meetings of both the Safe Ground steering committee made up of homeless leaders, advocates and volunteers and the camp elder council. It became a common event in some of these meetings and in personal conversations to hear from a
SafeGround member who was either experiencing a difficult personal challenge or was ready to move on to housing how much being part of SafeGround meant to her personally. Routinely, I heard testimony from campers referring to the camp as a
“community” and referring to each other as “family.” One camper, a woman in her sixties known affectionately to the other homeless campers as “Mama Q,” who spent about six months in the SafeGround camp before working her way to the top of a shelter waiting list and moving indoors, had this to say,
…I love SafeGround. SafeGround will be part of me forever. I love the camaraderie…having a sense of community, that really helps and it should be fostered among the elders a little bit more…These days America doesn’t have that sense [of community], and it’s fostered among the campers because they’re all depending on each other to get through. And there’s a sense of any camp – any campers that I see anywhere – you go to a campsite, and people have that sense of community, of helping each other. And that is fantastic. You look over – you kind of overlook all the differences…ideally it really works…look at all my brothers and sisters…And we’re from all over the world, almost. And we still have that [closeness] like family. I’ve felt more at home there than I felt in the five
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years I lived in Pioneer Tower (a local section 8 senior housing complex).14
Mama Q was not alone in her feelings of finding family and community in Safe
Ground. Another SafeGround elder, “Jeff,” who was in his early thirties and out of prison on parole, was living with his new girlfriend and planning for his future when off parole. Jeff told me he had a long history of getting in trouble but was determined not to follow his past patterns of behavior and end up back in prison. Jeff and several close camp friends, all who had some income either through part-time jobs or SSI, had broken apart from the main camp in a dispute over leadership style. Jeff and his friends had a relatively small camp, about 15 people, but were a closely knit group. Most days they were up and out of the camp between 5:00am and 6:00am to go to jobs or to Loaves &
Fishes. All tried to meet back at the LaFamilia campsite in the late afternoon around
4:30pm. Jeff and his girlfriend, “Suzie,” invited me to come to camp, to spend the night, and enjoy one of their special camp dinners. As it turned out on my first overnight visit to the LaFamilia camp, there were several guests including two other Safe Ground board members and two officials representing a local bank and prospective donor. Altogether there were about twenty people assembled for dinner that night.
The walk out to the LaFamilia camp had been tiring. It was a warm Sacramento summer day and I soon became over-heated as I trudged out to the camp with my equipment. The route took me first out across 12th Street Bridge over the American River and then followed a series of trails that snaked through the woods and meadows along the river. The entrance was through a “doorway” in the forest where you bent down under a
144 low hanging tree branch and followed the path into a small clearing under a canopy of trees. We were on the north side of the American River about a mile and a half from the
Loaves & Fishes campus. When I arrived I quickly set up my tarp and tent, and arranged my sleeping bag for easy access so that I wouldn’t have to struggle with it after dark. I then made my way over to the center of camp where people were sitting around on tree stumps, rocks and boxes in an area easily identifiable as the dining and commons area.
Sanitation was supplied by a chemical porta potty system with chemicals that
SafeGround was trialing.15
That evening we all had a chance to talk about SafeGround, the rangers, and daily events, but soon it was time to prepare dinner. The LaFamilia team was a virtual machine, springing into action with assigned responsibilities. Suzie peeled potatoes and chopped onions and tomatoes. Jeff was cleaning the butane burner; “Jack” was preparing other ingredients for making homemade tacos, LaFamilia style. Others got dishes ready and some relaxed now as they were the after dinner cleanup crew. The procedure appeared unstructured, but it worked like clockwork, and was performed well enough to have made restaurant managers envious. The taco and salad dinner was excellent and the cleanup efficient. The guests were impressed by the way the SafeGround campers all shared tasks and made sure everything was done.
Jeff’s Ideas of Community at LaFamilia
The LaFamilia camp leaders had prepared an informal presentation to the bank officials as both guests and potential donors. Several took turns explaining the
SafeGround objectives, the way the camp operated and they shared their personal stories,
145 explaining how they each had ended up homeless and what their plans for the future were. It was an impressive demonstration of their dedication to Safe Ground, its objectives and their community. Later I spoke alone with Jeff and asked him about what
SafeGround meant to him personally. In part Jeff said,
It is a community. It’s somewhere that – it’s hard to explain. You can go and live somewhere, have a house in your neighborhood, and I bet you don’t know five of the houses around there. I bet you’ve seen them, but don’t know their names. You never said ‘hi’ to them, they never say ‘hi’ to you. They look at you, wave and that’s about it. And SafeGround is a whole different thing. It’s people that need help. You’re all in the same situation, just like you would be in your neighborhood, in your house. If your neighbor needs their grass [cut], you know, the neighbor needs the grass mowed across the street. You’re not going to see a neighbor go over there and just mow it…You know what I mean…It’s nothing like SafeGround.16
Jeff went on to describe why it is called LaFamilia without my actually stating the question. He was very intent on making me understand the emotional ties he felt with his campmates and why it meant so much to each of them. We continued our discussion,
JEFF…You know what I mean. A community of all ethnicities, sexual orientations, parolees, gang bangers. We have the three major gangs in California; they’re all in our camp, and they all get along - - the Sureños, Norteños, and the Bulldogs.17 And take - - they all get along. You put them out on the streets, put them in Loaves and Fishes, they’ll sit there, fight, kill, stab each other, and call each other names. And they come to us and we tell them what we’re about, and you basically see it their eyes. It’s like, “I need help.” And when they tell us that, you sit in the Safe Ground office and listen to some of the stories that come in and tell me, it’s like, “I need help. I just got out on parole. I’m looking for a place.”
Stephen W. Watters: So a big part of the community is that it’s nonviolent.
JEFF: Yes, it’s nonviolence…We do get some people that don’t see ‘the dream.’ That’s what we call it, “the dream.” We get them, but they’re not there long. Like, our major rule that we do have, besides no alcohol, no
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drugs, no violence, is one thing: we’re here to help you help yourself. We’re going to loan you this tent and this sleeping bag and give you a safe place to sleep. If you want to sleep on the streets, like the five people that have died in the last three months - - three women and two guys who’ve gotten killed out on the streets by themselves, not in Safe Ground. And they go, “Well, is this place, like, legit?” And basically, we tell them, it’s respect. You’ve been in prison. Even if you’ve not been in prison, it’s called respect. Give respect to get respect, and it’s going to take you a long way. And they come out [of prison], they’re scared, they’re nervous. They’re seeing 20, 30 people lined up out here on the black pavement, waiting for us to pass out a tent and a sleeping bag. And the first night when you go out, you stay up because you’re scared, you’re still tripping. You don’t know what’s going on, and you hear everything. But at 10:00, you hear nothing. You hear crickets. You hear fish. You hear one or two giggles, laughter, and it’s like, that’s all. And the next morning, they’ll come back, and it’s like, “Hey, man, how’d you sleep?” “It was good, man. Can I come back?” And it’s like, “Well, you can come back anytime you want. Just bring back that tent and that sleeping bag.”
SWW:…When I go to Hope Camp, there are women there, and some of them, just like you say, they’ve been battered in domestic violence or had other bad experiences and they’re scared. And they crave that quiet, solitude, just a peaceful situation. But what you’re telling me is so do a lot of the guys that have come from bad situations.
JEFF: They’re scared.
SWW: They don’t want to go back to that, if they don’t have to.
JEFF: No, they don’t want to back…Right now, as I know of, we have 10 parolees [in SafeGround]. And basically, they can do what they want. Parole [officers] don’t care. They slap an ankle bracelet on you and say, “Man, get the hell out of my office. Come back next week. Show up here every Thursday.”18
The camaraderie that Mama Q spoke of and the respect and safety awarded camp residents that Jeff spoke of are the basic constructs of what I argue is the Safe Ground community. I believe SafeGround is an imagined homeless community that affords its
147 members all the benefits of a political and social community that would be expected anywhere.
Codifying Reality, Imagined Communities and Imagination as a Social Force
Anthropologist Dorothy Lee views culture as a symbolic system that transforms physical reality, both environmental and material, into experienced reality, thereby codifying that reality (Lee 1987a) [original 1959]. I want to work with Lee’s concept, but first, to understand how codification is realized, I borrow from cultural geographer
Yi-Fu Tuan, who identifies our perceptions as our senses interacting with the physical and material environmental stimuli, and I would add social stimuli, and assigning a selective filter that informs us which stimuli will be accepted, which set to the side and which should be blocked (Tuan 1974:4). Individually and collectively, our experience of a long succession of perceptions leads us to form attitudes or cultural stances regarding particular environmental stimuli. Our attitudes help construct our belief systems which in turn, imply experience and a certain firmness of interest and value (Tuan 1974:4). From these individual belief systems we formulate our collective world view, our conceptualized experience of the world.
In this process of creating cultural perspectives and world view we can think of ourselves as biological organisms that perceive our environment using our senses; as social beings and unique individuals that compile these perceptual experiences; and who, over time, create and share values that collectively shape our cultural framework. What is unique to humans is that the cultural framework that we “collectively” create as social
148 beings, including that achieved through mass media, returns to us as unique “individuals” to use as an environmental filter during subsequent experiences. As we continue to experience our environment, we are concurrently reinforcing and reproducing what Lee and others call the symbolic system. This concept can help us to understand why we interpret our own behavior differently from someone with a different cultural framework, an “Other,” would perceive it through his or her own cultural lens (Lee 1987a).
The concept of different perceptions of the same behavior, us and the Other, is important to our understanding of imagined homeless communities including
SafeGround. The homeless do not interpret or understand their own behavior as it is interpreted and understood by “others,” the general public, community and political leaders. These “others” then stigmatize the homeless based on their perceptions of the behavior. Additionally, it also works in exactly the opposite as the others do not see their behavior towards the homeless as the homeless see it. SafeGround members, especially newly homeless members, often do not understand the view that the public has of the homeless, and the treatment they receive, and may react with either confusion or resistance when confronted with the subordinate status demanded of them.
Imagined Communities
In presenting his concept of imagined communities, social and political theorist
Benedict Anderson (1983) stated that, when the modern European nations began to form as imagined communities in the late 18th century it was “a spontaneous distillation of a complex crossing of discrete historical forces; but, that once created, they became modular, capable of being transplanted, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, to a
149 great variety of social terrains, to merge and be merged with a correspondingly wide variety of political and ideological constellations” (Anderson 1983:4). In my fieldwork
(more than twenty-four months of participant observation) with SafeGround, it was my observation that, as in Anderson’s concept of imagined nation-states, there are a number of different forces that are at work in society that bring homeless individuals together in what we shall see becomes an “imagined homeless community.” For example, in
Chapter Three I suggested a social metaphor applying a variety of social, economic, and political forces that precede an individual’s entry into homelessness as a “homeless vortex,” one that draws people into the homeless condition from an array of entry points.
I want to be clear that I distinguish between these entry points and causation; they are better thought of as risk factors to the homeless condition. In my observations and discussions with SafeGround homeless members, I observed many individuals who had entered into homelessness from pasts filled with family problems, physical or mental disabilities, and often, as a result of political and/or economic forces at work. As an example, these included but were not limited to the foster care system, which releases eighteen year old unprepared “graduates,” the prison system early release programs paroling individuals without adequate resources to integrate themselves back into society, veterans who felt lost upon coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan, those who lacked educational opportunities, and the budget cuts to the mental health system that leaves many mentally ill patients without medication, therapy or the services they require to remain either hold onto jobs or remain housed. In other words, the “homeless vortex”
150 metaphor represents a whirling array of out-of-control events in an individual’s life, which eventually forces many vulnerable people into a homeless condition.19
In the sense of Anderson’s theory of imagined communities, SafeGround is a group of homeless individuals engaged in a struggle with an imposed urban nomadic lifestyle where they are constantly transplanted into new locations by law enforcement actions, and must reinvent itself frequently. SafeGround, thereby, experiences ongoing changes in demographics, as residents, including leaders find housing, jobs and repair damaged family relationships allowing reconciliations and, who come and go due to the very transient nature of temporary, episodic and chronic homelessness. However, it is
Anderson’s “collective imagination of community” that binds together the members of
SafeGround and other homeless groups and makes them communities. The SafeGround sense of a “community” was clearly demonstrated by Jeff’s statements about “the dream” at the LaFamilia camp that pulled members of opposing gangs together and by Mama Q speaking about a sense of dependence on each other for “safety and respect.”
Imagination as a Social Fact
As suggested by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1996), in recent decades the imagination, often driven by new technologies and forces of electronic mass media, has become recognized as a collective, social fact. Appadurai states, “In dreams… individuals even in the most simple societies have found the space to reconfigure their social lives, live out proscribed emotional states and sensations, and see things that have then spilled over into their sense of ordinary life” (Appadurai 1996:5). My observations
151 and the testimony of the SafeGround homeless themselves, confirms that this social fact, that of “imagination,” is strong within the SafeGround homeless population. It is their belief in the “dream” that Jeff shared, a faith that their lives can and will get better, and a belief in each other when others give up on them that acts as a collectively accepted social fact, to imagine a better life, a second chance, a way out of homelessness.
The “SafeGround imagined community” originated when the collective imagination of the homeless leadership and membership came together with a concept, an idea, a dream, of an imagined safe and legal place for those in their homeless condition to be. Homeless “pioneers”20 believed they could work together to accomplish change in their lives and, the lives of others, through the fight for a permanent SafeGround community. In the SafeGround imagined community collective rituals were born as homeless people worked together to perform the tasks necessary to hold their community and their dream together. This included daily rituals like helping each other when the local law enforcement required a daily relocation, or cooking of communal meals and dealing formally with internal community disputes. It included running the SafeGround intake office in Loaves & Fish’s Friendship Park21 where new aspiring, potential community residents come to learn what SafeGround is and to inquire if they can join the community. As their transient population shifted, new waves of elders established differing processes and rituals, often with regard to how these new members are informed of the tenets of the SafeGround community. What remains constant is the “passing of the dream,” the sharing of the imagined community and belief in its ability to help them change their lives. Elders and volunteers in the office inform prospective members of the
152 camp rules, the pledge of no drugs, no alcohol and no violence, and in so doing, pass the dream of a safe, clean, non-violent and someday legal place to be while they sort out the factors that lead them into homelessness.
Jake’s Daughter
One of the SafeGround campers I’ll call “Jake” had come to SafeGround because when he had been released from prison with only $200.00 in his pocket, he was placed on parole, and told he could not leave Sacramento. The money was insufficient to get a place to live in Sacramento so Jake was immediately homeless. He and several friends heard about SafeGround and eventually joined. Jake was estranged from his family who were in Oregon and he was not able to see his son. This was at the time that we had several camps and Jake was one of the leaders in one of them. He worked part-time and was looking for a better job, hoping to save money to be able to transfer his parole to
Oregon and see his wife and son. One day as several of us went into a local cafe for lunch we noticed a “help wanted” sign for a cook and since Jake was a camp cook and had previously worked as a cook we immediately thought of him. Jake was excited, got the job, and quickly became a valued employee for the owner. Jake helped the owner by bringing in several friends from SafeGround to fill later vacancies. Not all worked out but several stayed. One day in the crowded Safe Ground meeting Jake asked to share more of his personal story. Jake told us of his daughter whom he had lost when she was killed by a car while riding her bicycle. This day was close to her birthday and Jake was distraught; however, he tearfully and with transparent emotions told us all that if it was not for the SafeGround community and the dream they shared he would probably be on
153 drugs, a “gang banger” or back in prison. Safe Ground, he emotionally explained, had helped him to look at life differently and he realized he didn’t want drugs or violence in his life, and never wanted to go back to prison. SafeGround had given him a “place to be” where he could be with people that cared about each other and a reason to try to succeed. Jake lived in the camp that always spoke of the dream and he was finding his.
Although he did not reconcile with his wife in Oregon, he later moved indoors, still works at the cafe a year later and is doing well. Exactly what happened to Jake is hard to define but it is clear that he found in his imagined community, held together by a shared dream, something with the power to change his life. In my fieldnotes I had recorded this incident and a notation that Jake had gained personal agency through his affiliation with the SafeGround imagined community.
The SafeGround community membership frequently transforms itself, demonstrating an approximate 90% shift to a new population every six months. The old and new members seem to quickly bond together for mutual safety, support and friendship. Individuals in SafeGround demonstrate a strong degree of self-awareness, a pride in affiliation with SafeGround that is often demonstrated through interactions with other homeless camps, by frequently talking about themselves as a “community,” a
“family.” Under the guidance of camp liaison David Moss, the Safe Ground Pilgrimage
Program was created, a program so named because SafeGround members all walked or rode bicycles to the member churches in midtown for overnight respite stays. The program was supported by the SafeGround community and it became a group ritual to set off together to one of the church nights. At that time the camp was vacated as individuals
154 joined the pilgrimage. However, there were always several community volunteers who spontaneously stepped forward, anxious to do their share as camp security patrol, watching tents and other belongings including pets that were not allowed in many of the churches. When the SafeGround advocacy branch planned marches and rallies in support of homeless rights, members of other homeless communities in the immediate vicinity joined forces as the combined “greater homeless community” of Sacramento along with organized labor, members of the progressive political community, and other activists.
These multi-layered imagined communities function as a unit for such events.
Electronic and Social Media
Friendship Park serves as the location for a daily informational “swap meet” for hundreds of the greater downtown Sacramento homeless but communication goes beyond just talking at the park. In the way that print capitalism drove the formation of
Anderson’s imagined nation-states, I have observed the growth and solidification of imagined homeless communities fostered by mass communication albeit on a somewhat different scale and with differing agents. In Sacramento a local homeless newspaper,
Homeward, is published by SHOC. Homeward informs the greater community of the actions of the homeless, SHOC, SafeGround and homeless communities across the nation. Additionally, much of the homeless community in Sacramento, including
SafeGround, has gone digital. Cell phones and smartphones with texting capability are one of the primary possessions that the homeless strive to maintain with the minimal resources they have and in the hardest of times. Moreover, besides providing a “hotline” to family, friends and support groups, cell phone communication is used by SafeGround
155 members in the camp and office, and with supporters, providing a critical link in their ability to shape their environment. For example, the moment City Police or Park Rangers enter the SafeGround camp, there is a list of people who are notified immediately, an emergency alert tree, which is called or texted and put on alert in case there are any actions that suggest harsh treatment including sweeps, widespread warrant checks, ticketing, arrests or confiscation of belongings. If any of these actions occur, leadership, volunteer attorneys, advocates and other homeless organizations and camps know before the action is completed. In one recent case, alerts were sent out when city police officers with vehicles confronted homeless campers under a local bridge. There were as many police cars as campers, so it was an intimidating experience for the homeless. Calls and texts circulated and within ten minutes advocates and a SafeGround attorney were at the site, asking the officers what the problem was. The officers had told the homeless they were “there on the orders of the mayor to clear people out from under bridges.” The
Safe Ground attorney said “OK, let’s call the mayor and straighten this out,” pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. The police hesitated, asked the homeless to please leave, and left without incident.
Through the use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, homeless communities across the city, state and nation are in contact with each other. Normally, their social networking consists of the exchange of emails, newsletters and camp updates, but in times of crisis it can be a call to action for supporting demonstrations or other actions. Electronic media and the social media tools such a Facebook and Twitter spread the information as did the 18th and 19th century print, but add both immediacy and a two-
156 way component to the sharing of information and building of imagined communities. We can look at the recent 2010-2011 “Arab Spring” efforts to topple the repressive regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria and note the rebel forces use of social media, to understand how it can play a critical role in establishing and reinforcing the dream of building imagined democratic communities on many scales.
Collective Codification of the Homeless Environment
Through common experiences communicated by direct conversation, personal stories, electronic and mass communication and camaraderie, the homeless individuals I have observed in my fieldwork share experiences as outcasts, who have been stereotyped and stigmatized by the greater society, and forced into subordinate roles by hegemonic institutions. Their often harsh experiences create a common social bond and provide a base for the development of a collective codification of reality. This shared experience transformed their collective imagination and became the greater homeless community’s shared infrastructure, their cultural symbolic system, creating and supporting imagined homeless communities. Safe Ground, regardless of any inequality that does exist within, is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship as Anderson would have it, and as demonstrated in Jeff’s statements above and by numerous acts of mutual support that I have witnessed. As others have concluded, e.g. McCannell (2005), it is a strong characteristic in homeless communities that the homeless are very supportive of each other’s health and well-being and tend to care for each other as needed and within their capabilities. It is not uncommon in SafeGround to see those who disagree help each
157 other, for no matter what they disagree about they are part of the homeless community, and that has a high value to them.
Imagination Fueling Resistance
Imagination in SafeGround contributes to more than the homeless community, it also forges the dreams of those who want to escape homelessness, find employment and have a home and family. Imagination helps create the collective symbolic system and lays the groundwork for individual and collective affiliation that supports political agency. Affiliation with SafeGround provides the homeless individual with a sense of purpose and family that he or she may have lost or never had in their lives. This sense of belonging is empowering in that collectively the members can, for example, go to city hall and speak to the city council, have a presence in the media, and on a more personal basis, keep each other safe in their camp.
In the last few decades imagination has become a collective social force and is now the basis for a plurality of imagined worlds. Imagination has broken out of the world of art, ritual and myth and into the minds of ordinary people (Appadurai 1996).
Imagination has created social diasporas of hope, terror and despair. As was adequately demonstrated by the Al-Qaeda 911 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the corresponding terror attacks in European countries, not all imagination is positive. We have seen that imagination as a collective force can be the fuel for action and the creator of agency within a collective group. This is a critical point for understanding the place of imagined communities in the lives of homeless people like those in the SafeGround community. In SafeGround imagination provides the positive
158 affiliation with advocates that allows them to be “who they are” as they work to regain a stronger sense of self-worth and dignity.
Collectively Constructed Landscapes
Globalization has shrunk space in a similar way that global and digital communication shrunk time. David Harvey (2005) speaks of the break with modernity that this has caused a disjuncture that guides the globalized world to become postmodern, perhaps even post-national. Modernity, he argues, is now rewritten into a form of vernacular globalization and less into international policies. Applied to the micro-level we witness the creation of micro-narratives which often fuel oppositional movements, some violent, some peaceful. Nation states no longer have a monopoly over modernization and there is a new role for the imagination in social life as we witness diasporic public spheres being created. These diasporic public spheres move us beyond old ideas of mechanically reproduced images and even imagined communities and into the new concept of a “collectively constructed landscape of collective aspirations”
(Appadurai 1996:198), SafeGround is one such collective construction. The micro- narratives that flow from SafeGround represent the collective aspirations of its members and fuel an oppositional movement, a social justice movement aimed at the hegemonic forces that subordinate the homeless, using the stigmatized view of the homeless as sinful or sick, degenerate or pathological, deserving or undeserving, and demanding the acceptance by the homeless of second-class roles. Locally, during my fieldwork, I observed numerous instances of homeless individuals who were required to accept a diagnosis of mental illness to qualify for Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income
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(SSI) program awards, the only income they could qualify for, although they were capable of holding a job and maintaining a home given the same reasonable care and medication that an person with health insurance would receive. Many of these individuals are averse to making this declaration out of a healthy sense of pride and a last effort to maintain a degree of self-esteem. When they don’t accept this they are criticized for not wanting help when offered. When they do accept it they are added to the statistics that are used to reinforce the stigmas of homeless people as mentally ill, statistics suggest that mental illness is what ‘caused’ their homelessness. In Chapter Six, I will investigate one aspect of this dilemma, the loss of rights and the subordinate treatment that the homeless face. In Chapter Seven I will investigate another aspect, the hegemonic, globalized neoliberal political economy.
Other Homeless Communities on the American River Parkway
I have also observed, as mentioned previously, that there can be friction between
SafeGround and other homeless groups in the local area. For example, there is a community that has been on the river a long time and is often simple referred to as “the
Island.” The Island community resides, not surprisingly, on a small island near the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers. The island is capable of supporting up to 20 people comfortably and is populated by long time “river rats” or chronic homeless individuals. When the Wasteland (Tent City) was closed in early 2009, the
Island community absorbed a population increase on a negotiated basis up to about 50 people. According to an elder from the Island, this was agreed to with incoming residents as a temporary measure, shared confidentially with the Rangers, and brought
160 back down to the normal level as soon as the political conditions allowed people to spread out again. There is also a longtime homeless community I’ll call “Red Bones”
(pseudonym) that is a homeless community based on a drug culture including meth, heroin and other illegal drugs. I have been told by longtime chronic homeless who live on the river that Red Bones is a center for extensive drug use and commerce on the river and that the community has an understanding with the authorities that it will not be bothered as long as activity is kept on the river and out of the city. I have seen the community but not been invited in. How much of the Red Bones story is local urban folklore and how much is fact I am uncertain. I have seen enough to accept that it is a drug-based homeless community. The reputation is accepted as true by those who live in other homeless communities on the river, including the Island and SafeGround, and is considered a dangerous place with which one should avoid all unnecessary contact.
The SafeGround interface with these other imagined communities is one that must be considered as hierarchical and difficult for SafeGround to explain. SafeGround has achieved limited respect for the social justice stance it takes and even more for protecting some of the most vulnerable and inexperienced individuals on the river. However, when
SafeGround protests city or county actions or threatens to “take a stand” against the anti- camping ordinance or ongoing harassment by law enforcement, other homeless communities, believing they have negotiated an acceptable existence with law enforcement, will directly protest to SafeGround that it is “stirring the pot” and causing law enforcement to react in a manner that is detrimental to all homeless communities along the river. This can escalate to threats but has not yet resulted in violence between
161 other homeless communities and SafeGround. Safe Ground (the non-profit) feels it is advancing the cause through their actions, what the SafeGround encampment is often torn between the desire to want to coexist with their neighboring homeless communities and the desire to want to fight for homeless social justice. This contradiction can place
SafeGround in a delicate position, one that is not easily resolved. If SafeGround were to lose their sense of community, their camp existence could be threatened by others communities with differing sense of identity.
Adam on SafeGround: Perspective from Another Locality
On one particular occasion I sat down with a leader from one of the other imagined homeless communities along the river. I’ll call him “Adam” and we discussed, among other things, the relationship between SafeGround and the other communities.
Adam started by expressing some strong support for particular homeless leaders who had been instrumental in founding SafeGround but quickly moved to what he felt were failures by SafeGround.
ADAM: And I’m very proud of “Jack” and “Daisy” for that, but also, just like a child floundering in the pool…what my objective is, is to demonstrate to them a change in course is going to be necessary for their success. Their success does not in any way rely on funding. It relies on acceptance by the community that they have decided to be in. A lot of people on the river have been there for years, and those before me, and myself, have went to great pains to forge working relationships with the authorities that be.
STEPHEN W. WATTERS: Like the Rangers?
ADAM: The rangers, the police, neighborhood community groups, churches, outreach people, but mainly public servants. Park maintenance people, rangers, police. By demonstrating the fact that we’re willing to give back what we can, and that goes a long, long way for somebody to
162 give us the nod to be there, to where when the rangers or the police come through and observe crimes being committed - - illegal camping, illegal storage of personal property on public land, unauthorized removal of natural fallen ground cover, and encumbrance of a public right-of-way. Those are the four… That they go, “Have a nice day. Thanks for keeping the camp clean,” and go on. Those are things that don’t happen overnight. You have to have contact with this ranger to where when he sees you, he’s comfortable and knows that this guy doesn’t get arrested, this guy cleans up, I don’t need to keep my hand on my weapon, I can turn my back on this guy, I can leave garbage bags with him and they’ll be put to use. But then we get Safe Ground popping up in what we would consider our house, our backyard.
SWW: I understand that.
ADAM: I know that you do. And proceed to tell us that we’re going to do this and we’re going to do that, and then start a fight and then run away and leave us with the ramifications of their actions, i.e., drawing media attention to us, drawing law enforcement attention to us, putting your camp in a place where every family that has a 10-year-old boy with a new mountain bike rides by and is chased by dogs, and there’s 100 tents, and… Because now [they say] “and these homeless people,” so it’s all of us… And that road is just right off the bike trail where every kid with a new mountain bike is going to ride.
…And that’s just a flare for [getting] in your face. So instead of staying there and going down with the ship, they jumped like rats and ran over to Camp Pollock. But what that does is brought the rangers into that area, and every residual camp of people that had been there for a long period of time were now affected by that action and left to take the brunt of it.
SWW: So, I follow your concerns but tell me what you think. How can SafeGround we make this better? How do they accomplish fitting in better with your community and accomplishing their objectives? Can it be done?
ADAM: That particular scenario right there, rangers - - how to make that situation better - - rangers are primarily conservationists. They look at feces, hypodermic needles, new swaths of land that have been cleared, and trash removal, basically in that order.
SWW: Ecological types?
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ADAM: Ecological issues…the way to make that situation better is to find three camping areas and stick to those three areas in a rotating manner every time that you’re pressed, instead of finding a new spot and hacking it out. This is a Safe Ground spot. We won’t come there and camp. We’ll leave that for Safe Ground. This is a Safe Ground spot. We won’t come there and camp. We’ll leave that for Safe Ground. This - - you know. So when you move, you’re not getting blamed for trash over here, trash over there. This is your spot, this is your spot, this is your spot. When they get you here, you move to here. When they get you here, you move to there. Low profile. Don’t wave a flag, don’t sound the trumpets, don’t shoot off no flares at night. Do your thing and keep your head down. That way the rangers aren’t forced to come and patrol and beat the bushes, because just as sure as they come in there to Safe Ground, there’s somebody in there that goes, “Yeah, but there’s five people that live back here,” and it puts them out on Front Street. We got juice with this community, and I don’t really - - I want you to understand that there’s a lot of guerillas out there. I’m 180 pounds. Mostly they’ll do what I say. I’m like riding the bull when it lets me, but the bull likes me so it follows me around from time to time. I’m very unique to their community because I don’t do cop favors, I’m down for the sickness - - that just means nonjudgmental - - harm ye none, do what ye will. If what you’re doing isn’t bothering me and what I’m doing isn’t bothering you, it’s none of your business. But the first time you’re affected in an adverse manner, it is your business, and that’s the rules that we live by. Respect, protocol, and no BS (Adam, unstructured oral interview, July 21, 2011).22
Based on direct discussions with law enforcement, my understanding of Adam’s expressed concerns over the attention that SafeGround brings to the other homeless community’s along the river, is that his concerns are about what he perceives as a threat to his camp, as well as his comfort and security. In other words Adam believes that when
SafeGround speaks up for homeless rights and confronts the city or county, the law enforcement repercussions force all homeless residents to pack up and move on or receive tickets, fines or arrest, but this is only partially correct. Drawing attention to the homeless issue embarrasses politicians by alerting the press and public to unsolved
164 problems and the elected officials often react to get rid of the problem, but it does not end there. My observations suggest that when the population along the river increases, its numbers form larger and more visible communities and camps, and they all pay the consequence. This consequence appears to be exactly the intention of the local political powers demanding the law enforcement harassment actions regardless of the known fact that there is nowhere for these homeless to go. Shelters are full and affordable housing resources exhausted. If the whole homeless population appeared tomorrow requesting help from various social services including job training, medical care, counseling, or substance abuse programs, the system would not be able to handle the volume and many would be turned away and told that they don’t qualify.
The local situation in homeless communities is sometimes unintentionally stressed by the relationships that individual rangers and officers develop with individuals or groups of homeless residents, including Adam. Many, not all, of these law enforcement officers understand the “nowhere to go” dilemma and want to help those homeless who, regardless of their personal conditions, are trying to be “good citizens” by maintaining clean camps, following unofficial ecological rules, helping others and maintaining some degree of transparency with law enforcement. Unofficially, some law enforcement individuals will tell these “good citizens” where to go to be safe for a period of time or “look the other way” as they walk past their camps. However, this is done in a manner that establishes and maintains the hierarchy of power of officer on a subordinate homeless and implies a threat of punishment if these roles are violated. In other words, if the subordinate homeless move where the authorities don’t want them to move because
165 they will be seen and officers will experience pressure to do something, it will be taken out on them by either forcing them to move repeatedly, ticketing and fining them if they don’t move fast enough, confiscating their belongings or, in the worst case, arrest. As we saw above, Adam feels he has established a meaningful relationship that he has earned.
However, he fails to realize the depth of the subordinate relationship he is in partially because he is under the influence of drugs and partly because he is more comfortable when left alone for longer periods of time. I asked Adam if the fight for homeless rights should not be fought. Was it not an issue that needs to be addressed if change for the homeless is to occur? Here is his response,
That fight should not be fought in a - - see, if you don’t - - an operate - - you don’t know what you’re doing, first of all. Let me give you an example of how easy it is for the government. One of the number one battle rule tactics in desert warfare is you do not fortify in the desert, because you can get surrounded so easily. In Operation Desert Storm - - I do not agree with politics, but just as an example - - the Iraqi Republican Guard fortified in the desert. When the American in-theater battle commanders noticed this anomaly, instead of fighting bunker to bunker, they brought up a couple Abrams put some plows on the front of it, and just buried them in the sand. Safe Ground has stuck its head up out of a bunker, not realizing that the plow is coming to bury them in the sand instead of confronting them face to face. They stuck their head up in the middle of the Sacramento River District Business Development Initiative, which allows tax breaks, zoning variances, bond purchasing, and new infrastructure being placed at city expense to draw long term business and residents to this area where there’s a homeless plight. $770 million worth of contaminated dirt hauled away from the railroad yard. They’re not going to move $770 million worth of dirt and then just forget about it. It’s going to happen. How can we fit in? Watch football, do you? After a big pileup, somebody’s laying on the ground. Nobody bends down to help them up, because they might be hurt, they might be tired, they might just want to take a second. But as soon as they start to get up off the ground or they raise their hand, there’s four guys there to pick them up and help them. That’s the same thing. When Safe Ground
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goes to city-county council and throws itself on the carpet and flails its arms and legs and says, “I want a free bottle, and I’m not going to shut up until I get it,” that’s a big turnoff to the entire spectrum of the community. …You must realize that politics is part of the battle (Adam, unstructured oral interview, July 21, 2011).
Adam believes in the struggle for homeless rights, is not really be anxious to disrupt his current situation, and his belief is that SafeGround is not using the correct tactics. Adam, and others like him, seem to want to see the “people,” the homeless, work together to make it better but often are maneuvered into the subordinate positions because it offers the path of least resistance in an already extremely difficult situation.
SafeGround In Summary
SafeGround was born of the hopes and dreams of homeless leaders in
Sacramento’s 2008-2009 Wastelands Tent City. Through the collective desires of the
SafeGround residents for meaningful relationships, stability and family in their lives, the
SafeGround encampment developed into an imagined community in the tradition of
Benedict Anderson’s (1983) nation-states. The SafeGround imagined community provided individuals affiliation with a social justice cause targeted at “righting the wrongs” of homelessness and later became a non-profit with supporters and volunteers that together built the larger vision of a transitional housing community. As the population of the community was reborn over time, a dream was passed from old members to new members. It was a dream of being able to be left alone, of being able to get along and protect each other and it was above all, a dream of regaining dignity and a home. This dream, this collective imagination empowered through advocacy, social
167 media and digital communication, became a social force, fueling resistance to the misguided efforts of the local media and power structures to marginalize homeless individuals, the SafeGround community and the issue of homelessness.
Affiliation with the SafeGround community, the feeling of belonging, has reinvigorated their lives with meaning, purpose and family, and has provided the homeless residents of SafeGround a renewed sense of self-worth, dignity and purpose. In so doing they have defeated what Bahr and Caplow (1974) identified as causes of homelessness, or what I would argue are risk factors that can lead to homelessness; under-socialization and institutional habituation that lead to disaffiliation, chronic alcoholism and homelessness.
SafeGround’s collectively constructed landscape of shared aspirations, clearly an example of Anderson’s (1983) concept of imagined communities, provides a theater for the creation of sociality, agency and reproducibility, that are expressed in the context of a dynamic community of homeless individuals. Although the population and demographics are constantly changing, the community remains aligned on the collective dreams of the mobilized encampment, the individual and community resistance to the efforts at marginalization by local hegemonic powers, and the shared vision of the Safe
Ground Sacramento transitional community program. Never thought I’d see it, it couldn’t happen here
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Chapter Four Endnotes
1 Institute for Intercultural Studies (IIS). The IIS reports on its website that “…the Institute has received many inquiries about this famous admonition by Margaret Mead, we have been unable to locate when and where it was first cited, becoming a motto for many organizations and movements. We believe it probably came into circulation through a newspaper report of something said spontaneously and informally. We know, however, that it was firmly rooted in her professional work and that it reflected a conviction that she expressed often, in different contexts and phrasings.” Accessed at http://womenshistory.about.com/ gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=womenshistory&cdn=education&tm=10&gps=466_44_1366_599&f= 10&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.interculturalstudies.org/faq.html. 2 A fledgling homeless rights movement, conceived during the early existence of the Wastelands (Tent City), held a march to Caesar Chavez Park, across from Sacramento’s City Hall on December 23, 2008. The march was co-sponsored by Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee, Loaves & Fishes, Frances House, the Chicano Consortium, Sacramento Area Peace Action and the National Coalition for the Homeless. The march was held to demand a safe and legal campground for the growing homeless population in Sacramento. In a press release for that first march John Kraintz a cofounder of SafeGround was quoted as stating, “The time has come for safe ground. We can’t wait any longer. I’ve watched five of my friends die this year. It’s senseless.” In April of 2009 they marched again, this time to a rally at the state capitol. 3 Breton, Marcos. (2009d:B1). Sacramento Bee conservative columnist Marcos Breton accused the property owners, SMUD and Union Pacific, as well as city officials of being “cowed into inaction” by homeless advocates. Breton stated that these advocates and the services they provide create a magnate, drawing the homeless from other areas to Sacramento. Breton has written on the homeless situation in and around Sacramento the last few years often unfavorable to the plight of the homeless and critical of efforts to help them. 4 ARRA is the American Recovery and reinvestment Act passed by Congress at the urging of the Obama Administration. The HPRP program was one of the centerpieces of the $1.5B program and was designed on a “housing first” philosophy that placed homeless individuals indoors prior to services through the Continuum of Care programs that had been the driving governmental homeless philosophy since the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987. McKinley-Vento created the three Continuum of Care Programs (Supportive Housing Program, Shelter Plus Care Program, and Single Room Occupancy Program) and provides funding for entities that serve the homeless population. 5 No SMUD construction project has yet been started on this site as of February 01, 2012. 6 The River District is a business improvement district located between downtown Sacramento and the American and Sacramento Rivers. It is a primarily commercial area containing light industrial, warehouse, city and county facilities and the desolate rail yards that are targeted for future development. There are few residential areas within the River District and it is bordered on the east by Loaves & Fishes, the Salvation Army Shelter and other social services targeted at the homeless. The homeless have populated the River District area for many decades (see Chapter Two). It is the area where, before and during the Great Depression Era, the shanties, Hoovervilles and homeless encampments were located. 7 This magnet theory has not been verified with data regarding the downtown social services in Sacramento and a survey taken during the Tent City of 2008-2009 found the majority of residents were in Sacramento over five years, may ten plus. 8 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) (2007). HUD adopted the Federal definition which defines a chronically homeless person as “either (1) an unaccompanied homeless individual with a disabling condition who has been continuously homeless for a year or more, OR (2) an
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unaccompanied individual with a disabling condition who has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.” This definition is adopted by HUD from a federal standard that was arrived upon through collective decision making by a team of federal agencies including HUD, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. 9 Kraintz, John. Recorded comments of John Kraintz stating his feelings about the intensity and demands of the homeless routine described above talking to a crowd at the July 10, 2010 SafeGround Jubilee Rally in Sacramento’s downtown Caesar Chavez Park across from City Hall. 10 The social services in the River District include the Loaves & Fishes campus of services, Francis House, the Salvation Army shelter, Volunteers of America shelter, the Gospel Mission, Quinn Cottages, Legal Services of Northern California and other public social service offices that serve the homeless and others in need due to disabilities and poverty. 11 I have personally observed the River District’s executive director and board president in several of these meetings and noted their comments. 12 Mayor Kevin Johnson and Councilman Jay Schenirer have shown strong support and a deep understanding of the social issues surrounding homelessness and the need to balance these with the business interests. 13 Watters, Stephen. Fieldnotes, Book 1. Partial entry dated June 21, 2010. 14 Mama Q (pseudonym) a SafeGround camper and elder. This was extracted from a transcription of an unstructured recorded interview conducted May 06, 2011. 15 The chemicals were used to treat the waste before it was carted out and disposed in an appropriate fashion. It was a somewhat expensive solution but offered the residents a sense of pride in “doing the right thing” and “protecting the ecology” of the American River Parkway, a key concern of the Rangers and Parkway advocates. 16 Jeff (pseudonym) a SafeGround camper and elder. LaFamilia camp. This quote is additional dialog that was extracted from the transcription of an unstructured recorded interview conducted July 28, 2010. 17 These are the gangs that John was familiar with from his experience in California prisons, he had been in five. Other gangs exist in California, unfortunately there are several dozen, but at least two of these, the Sureños and Norteños have definite prison ties. The Sureños, also called the Mexican Mafia, has been credited to the efforts of two former inmates of Duel Vocational Institute in Tracy, California as a protective measure against victimization, abuse and racism, committed against them by White gangs. The Norteños or the Nuestra Family was organized in Folsom State Prison in Folsom, California in 1968 in part to protect members from the Mexican Mafia. The Bulldogs are a Fresno (F-14) street gang that took their name from the California State University at Fresno Bulldogs and later developed ties with some inmates in San Quentin Prison. 18 Jeff (pseudonym) a SafeGround camper and elder in LaFamilia camp. This was extracted from a transcription of an unstructured recorded interview conducted July 28, 2010. 19 These risk factors that can nudge vulnerable individuals into a homeless condition are all too often considered the ‘proof’ that the old standbys of sin, sickness or the system (see Chapter Three) are the causes of homelessness. 20 This was a term often used by the late Greg Bunker for the homeless. Greg was the executive director of Francis House for twenty-years and was a founding board member of Safe Ground Sacramento. Greg often referred to the homeless living in the SafeGround camp as the “pioneers.” It was a term that to Greg meant that they were forging the way in the fight for a safe and legal place to be and for homeless rights. 21 Loaves & Fishes has created an outdoor space called Friendship Park where people can gather and socialize during the hours of 8:00 am to 2:45 pm. Friendship Park has become a place where friends meet and news of the daily struggle is shared. It is a place where the collective imagination of the homeless
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community becomes a social fact as collective codifying of the homeless reality is transformed into attitudes and values. 22 Adam (pseudonym) is an elder in another established but less formal homeless community along the American River Parkway who has lived on the river five plus years. Adam left good employment a number of years ago and has some radical and fringe beliefs about the government, he is an admitted drug addict. This interaction was extracted from a transcription of an unstructured recorded interview conducted July 21, 2011.
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Never thought I’d see it, it couldn’t happen here When I was growing up, there was never a fear
In a land where men fought for freedom and died What would they say if they were still alive They died for a land founded under God Where you can’t lay down on a piece of sod Kinda makes you wonder what they all fought for No one fought to harass the poor
I never thought I’d see it in my own hometown But you got to stand up for your right to lie down I never thought I’d see it in my own hometown But you got to stand up for your right to lie down Quit pointin’ fingers, we’re all to blame
It a factual problem, it’s a national shame When they haul you to jail for being poor Then this isn’t the land of the free no more And the police say their hands are tied They got no choice and you just can’t hide
Wherever they go they throw you a curve They say they’re here to protect and serve If that’s the case, protect me too I’m a citizen just like you Using tax money to arrest the poor Is that what you pay taxes for? - G.P. Bailey, Gotta Stand Up! SafeGround Supporter and Songsmith (2010a)
Chapter Five
STORIES FROM SAFEGROUND
In the first two and a half years that a SafeGround camp has been in existence over 900 homeless individuals, men and women aged 18-75 have stayed in the camps.
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Some campers stay only a couple of nights, others become more involved in the community, and still others require a longer stay before they are ready to move on and may stay up to twelve or fifteen months. Many SafeGround campers have previously stayed in local shelters, which often impose a maximum stay of 30 or 60 days. Once out of the shelter they are likely to find others full to capacity and with a hefty waiting list.
Additionally, the shelters often require a daily “check-in” to stay on the waiting list, a requirement that is often difficult to adhere to. Still others are couples who wish to stay together so they choose camping rather than being separated by a shelter system as is true for people with pets or assistance dogs.
However, their pasts, while fitting into some patterns, do suggest that there are many roads into and out of homelessness. During my fieldwork with Safe Ground
Sacramento, the SafeGround camp and within the greater homeless community I gathered several dozen stories through friendships, unstructured conversations, and one-on-one interviews. I believe it is important to include several of those stories in a special chapter because of the richness and depth of the ethnographic data and, more importantly, because these stories provide the most accurate portrayal of homelessness in Sacramento,
California during the 2009-2011 period. SafeGround has been home to veterans from all branches of the military, graduates of the foster care system, beneficiaries of early release prison programs, victims of domestic violence, mentally and physically disabled individuals whose programs were cut or closed altogether, and economically depressed individuals, both unemployed and under-employed. While their stories reflect these and other varied pasts, they also provide insight into the consequences of dysfunctional
173 families, extreme poverty and failed or misguided social programs. These, often tragic, stories vary greatly, but one striking need that all SafeGround campers have in common is that they are searching for a safe place to “be.” They desire a place to rest, to close their eyes without fear of harassment by law enforcement or attack by predators, a place where they can live with a degree of dignity while they work to rebuild lives and damaged psyches. For those whose stories follow and many others, that place for a period of time is or was SafeGround.
Jimi’s Story
Jimi (pseudonym), a forty-five year old white man from Southern California’s desert region, came to SafeGround after spending the last few years on the road where he claimed to have hitch-hiked and walked a combined total of over 13,000 miles back and forth across America. Jimi describes his early life with some trepidation, raised by an abusive mother and several stepfathers, he joined the U.S. Army as soon as he was allowed to. However, that did not work out for him and he was soon back on the streets.
I asked Jimi about his childhood and where he had spent most of his early years.
Well, that’s kind of an interesting one in itself. I wasn’t in a military family, but you’d think that I was by the amount that we moved. If you want all honesty, I’ll give you all honesty. My mother and all of my stepfathers were highly abusive individuals. I was physically, sexually, and emotionally abused all of my life. And if I started school in this school in the third grade, before I ended that year, I was in another school in another
174 county finishing that grade. And before school started the next year, I was in another city and another county starting school. And before it ended, and that was my whole life.
It was just me. I was an only child. Well, I have a little sister, but my mother gave her up for adoption at birth. That was when I was 5 years old. And my mom was such a great person, she said, I threw that one away, so you better behave, because I can get rid of you, too...Yeah, something like that sets in your mind a little bit, but especially when this person beats you until you’re broken and wind up in hospitals and you’re sitting in school with bloody clothes. So, you know, it was not the greatest of childhoods.
But you know, it’s what goes on. And back when I was growing up, they didn’t look at the way they do now days and come down with an iron fist on it.
A lot of the teachers just turned their head. The only pleasant teacher I had was my sixth-grade teacher, and he never said it, but I think he went through something similar, because there was myself and Jake (pseudonym) was in my class that both were going through similar situations. And Mr. Evans (pseudonym) was aware of this. I mean, when you’ve got… when, you know, the kids have got belt whips that are bleeding, oozing blood, and you’re sitting in class for two hours and your shirt sticks to those welts, it’s miserable to have to get up and go out for recess. And Mr. Evans knew this, and he let me and Jake stay in the class almost every recess. Once a week he would insist that we went out just to make an appearance on the playground, but he’d let us stay in the class and play board games, card games, do our homework because he knew it was difficult. And that was the only time that I had any relief from that kind of thing through
175 school. But I’ve lived all over. Now, growing up, it was basically just Southern and
Central California, but I’ve lived everywhere.
I commented to Jimi that he seemed very balanced for all that he had been through and asked him how he maintained that positive balance while being homeless.
How was it possible to regain and maintain a positive attitude after his traumatic childhood?
It hasn’t been easy, I’ll tell you. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg with what
I’ve gone through. I’ve gone through alcohol abuse. My mom had me strung on non-codeines by the time I was 12. That and alcohol. I always joke with people and tell them that it wasn’t until I had kids of my own that I found out baby formula didn’t taste like vodka, because mine always did. And that’s just about the basics of it. From my earliest memories was doing shots of tequila with my mom, and I’m talking grade school.
There were times that she would have to make me screwdrivers with my Cheerios so I wasn’t too hung over to go to school in the morning because she’d beat me bloody the night before, and that’s the only way I could keep from going to the hospital. Real great stuff.
Immediately after I got out of the army, I was a kindergarten and first-grade teacher at a private school in Riverside. I was also involved with the community crisis and help line and the alternatives to domestic violence center in Riverside. Did all of that for about a year. And during the same time, I was also involved with hospice. But
176 during that time, because of everything that went on in my prior life – at least that’s what the doctors tell me – and then the trauma and this and that of the military, I did get into drugs, and for my first time. Growing up, I had never smoked a cigarette before I enlisted in the Army or during the Army and never tried marijuana, never tried any street drugs. After the Army, the first year after that, I got involved in all of that and basically threw all of that away. You can’t be a teacher to young children when you’re all spun out on methamphetamines. It’s not good. You know, it just doesn’t work. So…it took a lot of years. Actually two decades to get past that. I’ve been off of all paper for over seven years, not on probation, no search clauses, no parole. Nothing outstanding. No trouble with the law. At one point in Ridgecrest when I moved back there, I was still heavily into the methamphetamines. And in a town that small, once they get you the first time, you’re on all of their lists. And Ridgecrest has the city police, the county sheriffs, the highway patrol, and China Lake Naval Weapons military police all in this little town.
So you can’t turn a corner without running into two of them.
They [soon] got your number. So I spent a lot of time in the probably 12 and a half, 13 years I was back in Ridgecrest, I spent nine of it, probably, in the county jail. I got real lucky, thanks to a very good relationship with my probation officer and never took a state number, never went to prison. But I was put on Prop 36…Prop 36 is a drug proposition. The way it works is, like in Kern County, I have no – various counties have slight variations on it, but the process in Kern County is, if you got arrested for simple possession or under the influence, they take you to jail, okay? When you go before the judge, you have the option of either taking straight time for your term or going on
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Prop 36. Now, this is where the trap comes in, and they don’t tell you that your straight time will be 90 days and you’ll be out. They tell you that you’re looking at 16 months, all right, and with a state number. But in all actuality, you wind up looking at 90 days in the county jail, and in Kern County, you do one third time, so you’re out in 30 days. But everyone wants to get out today. And when you’re sitting in that courtroom and they offer you Prop 36, they tell you, if you accept Prop 36, when you go back to holding or go back to your jail, you will be released that day. So of course everybody says, I’ll take
Prop 36.
Prop 36 is a one-year – well, eight-month to one-year program is what the criteria calls for. During that program, you’ve got to call in every morning of the week.
You call an 800 number every morning of the week. You’re assigned like a case number and a sub number. And if your number comes up and your sub number comes up, you’ve got a two-hour window in Ridgecrest to be to the place where they do the urine testing.
You’ve got to pay $15 per urine test, okay?
If you fail the test because you weren’t in the area and you couldn’t get there during that two-hour window, it’s an automatic dirty. If you don’t have the $15, you can’t test, it’s an automatic dirty. If you get an automatic or an actual dirty, you are sent to a drug rehab, all right? The first time you go to drug rehab, they usually, if you do good in rehab, will let you out. If you go back to rehab with another violation, then you go to a sober-living environment for another 90 days after that, 45 days of rehab, all right. You’re only supposed to go twice, and then you go to prison. Well, I made it through three times, because every time I’d get into the rehab, I went to the same one, I
178 knew the program, I knew the steps. As soon as I got there, basically because I was bored and knew the program, I started tutoring and helping the new guys with their step program and helping out around the place, so I always had a good rapport with my counselors. So I kept getting to go back. And after five years on Prop 36 on the same case…And I will admit, at that time, I was still, you know, playing with the drugs. That’s part of the reason I kept going back, of course. But after five years – and to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t getting sick and tired of being sick and tired, as they say in NA. I was sick and tired of being under their thumb and being tortured by the statement, and I decided, you know, it’s been five years, dude. Wake up. The only way you’re going to get off of this is to do their program and get off of this. So I did their program, and six months later – not a year – six months later I was off of Prop 36. I had no search clause,
I was off of probation, and I was done with it. And I was looking around after six months, and now I’ve got my own place again. I haven’t got a job that I’m working every day.
My rent’s paid every month. I’m like, I’m really liking this. So I stuck with it, you know?
At this point in our discussion, Jimi opened up a bit about his other issues related to his struggles with mental health problems and other emotional fallout from his troubled youth.
I need to add in, at the age of 12, I was put on SSI, okay, for mental disorders.
Mental disabilities. And they had me heavily medicated for quite a few years on pharmaceutical drugs, psych drugs. And during all of this, from the age of, like, 12 to,
179 like, 30, I was on SSI. A couple of times because I didn’t fill out this paper or I didn’t turn in a change of address, I would get cancelled and go in and start it up again. But for the majority of the ages 12 to 30 – 32, I believe it was, I was on SSI. And then all of this stuff with the Prop 36 and everything, I actually got put in jail for a flat year. And I don’t know how familiar you are with the terminology. But if you – like, in Kern County, if they give you a year, you get third time, all right, so you’re only going to do four months.
You get a flat year, you’re doing 365 of 365.
I got thrown in for a flat year, and the arresting officer, when he arrested me in a drug raid, asked me what my job was and what I did for a living. I told him I was on SSI.
Well, during the searching of the house and everything else, before we even got to booking, he called in for Social Security’s number and informed them that I was going to be incarcerated for an extended period of time. So they put me on a temporary suspension.
I did my flat year. Instead of going in and getting it back, I was out for maybe 45 days and caught another case. Went back in for another nine months, back into the county jail. Well, when I got out that time, that’s when I first started deciding I’m going to fly straight. I went straight in, got my license renewed, then I went to Social Security, and that’s when they informed me that because of the amount of time that had elapsed, I was completely terminated, my case was. It was no longer temporary, and I had to start over again.
So I start from scratch. Do all my paperwork, do my doctors, get denied. Appeal.
Denied. Appeal. I’m all the way to the point where I’m going to the hearing with a
180 magistrate. I wind up back in rehab. Now, this is 18 months of fighting the system to get back on so I have my medical and my potential to go back to school, which I’ve always wanted to do, for computers. And so I’m really fighting for this. I wind up in rehab for 45 days. A week after I get there, I get my appointment date, which is 10 days later, and they won’t let me leave, and it was only 45 minutes away. They couldn’t even send a counselor with me. I told them what it was all about. They said, well, you’re here on the county Prop 36, we cannot let you leave. So 18 months of fighting was terminated and dropped. Over. Have to start all over again. And, like I said, it was shortly after that when I got out of rehab that I just finally said, forget all of this, and I cleared the program and got off Prop 36, went back to work doing what work I could, and I never bothered going back on disability.
Although it almost seemed obvious at this point in our discussion I asked Jimi when he first became homeless, what that experience was like the first time it occurred in his life and how he had started traveling back and forth across the country.
My first instance of being homeless was back in the ‘80s when – see, my mom, as
I’ve said, was never a real good mom. So I spent a lot of time in between years with my grandmother and my grandfather. There were times when I lived with them, and then times when I and my mother both lived with them, you know, pooling of our money.
Because, like I said, from 12 on, I had SSI. And my mom had it, and they had their retirement. So with all of us in one house, we lived pretty well. My grandfather had a
181 series of strokes. And we lost him. And during the time of all of that, my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer and while they thought that was going into remission and shrinking, it hit her bloodstream and went through her body, and we lost her. And then my aunt and my great-grandmother in between all of this died. So every member of my immediate family died left and right around me. And that was the first time I wound up homeless in my life. And I wound up living in a car in a rest area outside of Fontana for almost four months. And that’s the first time I became homeless. But yeah, doing the drug scene and dealing drugs and in and out of jail, I spent of lot of time homeless. A lot of time. And did a lot of traveling.
I’ve done a lot of traveling. I like to backpack. I like to hitchhike, even. That’s how I actually wound up here. But in certain areas, you’ll run across small [homeless] groups that band together. And if you happen to be lucky enough for them to get to know you and like your personality and are accepted into the smaller and very private groups, there is a real good sense of community. But the trouble is, these smaller groups that I found don’t last very long. Not because the community breaks down but because society breaks them down. I found one real great group in Florida. They were living in a forest.
And the thing about that area of Florida is, when they find you camping in a forest, they come in. They don’t come in like they do here with just a couple of rangers or a couple of cops and give you – they come in there with a wrecking crew. They’ve got the trash crew and the truck with them. They come in with machetes and bats, and they destroy your camp. They don’t take a tent down. They hack it into small enough pieces they can
182 load it in the dumpster. And they haul it and you off, and you go to jail for at least 13 days.
…I watched this happen several times in right outside of Tampa, a little town called Seffner, Florida... So they broke down what few small communities had any cohesiveness themselves. That’s been my experience. On the rare occasion you do find something like that, even if it doesn’t fall apart on its own, they tear it apart for you, yeah. But on the whole, there’s not very much of it [community]. I’ve been – in the last nine months, I’ve gone from Reno, Nevada, all the way up to Seattle, Washington, Seattle,
Washington, all the way down to Bakersfield, California, from Bakersfield, California –
I’m just using this as my highlights because I stayed there for a minute – all the way to
Orlando, Florida, and then zigzagged like this coming all the way back to California, and then started my trip up here, and I found nothing like this [SafeGround] anywhere that
I’ve been in the last nine months. And I’ve plotted it out, and I’ve gone over 13,000 miles in the last nine months going nice and slow, enjoying the view, and there’s been nothing like this anywhere, anywhere that I’ve been…If I can’t get a ride, and it’s in a place where I can walk, I will walk. I got stuck in Las Vegas, sat at Blue Diamond onramp for two entire days. Didn’t get a ride. And it wasn’t looking promising. And I was sitting there as the sun was going down, going, hell, man, it’s 43 miles, 43 miles to Stateline. I could have walked that in the time I sat here. So I strapped my backpack on, filled my one bottle of water up, and I started walking the Nevada desert. No, I walked it from
South Las Vegas all the way to Stateline, I walked the – in its entirety. And got to
Stateline just before dawn, and it was still – warm in the days but very cold at night, so I
183 had to kind of keep walking. Soon as the sun come up, I dropped my backpack, put my sign on it, lit a cigarette, and didn’t even finish that cigarette, and a Vietnam vet drove up and said, hey, boy, get in the car, I’m going that way. He drove me from the Stateline all the way to West Hollywood, and then he took me to lunch and then showed me around
Hollywood a little because he had lived there for years and just showing me the sights and the stars on the walk. And we wound up on Santa Monica Boulevard. And he said – it was just matter of fact. He says, yeah, see that bus right there? He said, for a buck and a quarter, you can get on that bus, and it’ll take you all the way to Pacific Palisades and right to the PCH. And I’m, like, really? So I gave them a buck and a quarter and went to Pacific Palisades and got off the bus, hung out there for a couple hours with my feet in the sand looking at the ocean and started talking to people and realized for the next hundred miles I could walk up the coast up the PCH. So I put my backpack on again and I walked that next, like, 98 miles.
And my whole thing this trip has been, slow down, you’re going to miss something. So every chance I get to walk, I don’t care if I only make 10 miles a day. But
I usually make 25. But if I only make 10 miles a day, where have I got to be right now?
And, you know, you don’t know what you’re going to miss. You don’t know what kind of people you’re not going to get to meet. So I walked the next almost hundred miles up the
California coast on my way up here, just enjoying things and meeting people and checking out little towns looking for work, looking for someplace I might like try to settle.
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Jimi’s 13,000 mile trip had led him to Sacramento and eventually to SafeGround where I met him. I was curious how he had come to stay at SafeGround and what about it appealed to him.
I’ve been around. I know all you got to do is find where the backpacks are, and then you talk to the backpacks, and they tell you where everything’s at. So, you know, that’s what I was doing. I didn’t know Sacramento. And by the end of the day I had a youngster – probably 20 at the best – telling me about Loaves & Fishes. Well, by the time I got here, everything was shut here, but on the little walkway along the side there…There’s people out there sleeping, so I decided, well, there’s a dozen people sleeping here. I’ll take my chance. I don’t know where else to go. So I went to throw down my bedroll, and this older gentleman, Mark, in a wheelchair was here. I haven’t seen him in quite some time, but he got stuck in a rut right there, and I came up and helped him get out of the rut. And we started talking, and he was telling me about Loaves
& Fishes, what they had to offer. And I’m like, okay, great. I need a shower. I need some clean clothes. I need something to eat. And then I’m back on the freeway, you know, heading north.
Well, being at late at night, of course, I had to wait till the next day and figure everything out. Well, the very next day I hear about Safe Ground. And I’m like, organized camping? Honestly? So I started talking to people. That’s when I met Tracy and I met Brenda. And I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding. To me, this is a dream come true, you know? I love being outdoors. I love camping. And even before I thought about
185 being of any service or helping anybody, I’m just thinking, you know, this would be a cool place, you know? Because I’ll be perfectly honest with you. Twelve, 13,000 miles on the road does take its toll on you no matter how well you do, you know? And I’m thinking, okay, I might stick this out for a week just to get some rest, to get to know the area, then move on.
Well, I stayed here for a week, and that week turned into two, and then I started helping out around the camp, and then I got to meet more people. Next thing I know, I’m one of the guys in the park, not even involved yet, and the park’s saying, oh, you guys are new, well, let me tell you about Safe Ground. And next thing I’m know, I’m getting appointed as elder, and I’m loving this. I mean, I love to help people. I love to be involved… when I first got here, Safe Ground was what nobody – to me, was what nobody in the organization wants to hear it is. It was a place where I could lay down and sleep and have access to services without any worries. It was a flop house. When I first got here, that’s exactly what it was. Because I didn’t understand anything about it…Then, the longer I was here and the more I…the more I talked to the people that were more involved, you know, not just the average camper, but, you know, talking to, like,
Victor and Daisy and Jack (pseudonyms) and – you know who I’m talking about… And the more I got to talking to them and finding out – and like I said, I’ve seen the homeless predicament from coast to coast, literally. And, I mean, it’s bad. And it’s everywhere.
It’s not just here or three. It’s from coast to coast in every city and every town you go to, and the numbers are growing so rapidly and dramatically that it’s scary. And when I started finding out what the whole purpose of Safe Ground was, I had no choice in my
186 own heart and mind but to stay, because this is a movement that concerns my life as well as many others. And, you know, that’s why I jumped into it with both feet. And, you know, I feel that it’s a fight worth fighting, not just for me, but for everybody else. I mean, I’m one of them at the camp that one weekend when they were saying they might come back. I was one of them holding my hand up when they said, will you stand and tell the rest? And I’m like yeah. I’m not going nowhere, you know? Like I say, I haven’t seen anything like this anywhere. It’s worth fighting for and working towards.
Absolutely.
Jimi continued talking about SafeGround as community, as family and about the necessity for rules in a community.
…and being the kind of person I am, I talk to almost everybody out there every single day, and a lot of them its’ the world. I’ve talked to people that came in there saying, we’re scared where we’re at. I won’t mention any names, but one particular couple came in their first day, and they said, we are afraid where we’re at. We almost got slashed with broken beer bottles because a couple of drunks got in a fight. We are afraid. They came to Safe Ground. I did their contacts. A week later, they’re nothing but smiles and glows and beaming eyes. And they’re like thank you guys so much. I mean, it’s – it turns into people’s whole world. It’s their support group it’s their family.
And all aspects of the sense, you know? And it’s their family, you know? Once they get in and become involved. And from what I’ve been seeing, you know, some of the more
187 standoffish people, it takes them a week or two to really get into the community and family thing. But a lot of them that are a little more open, I mean, by their second day, they’ve been there forever, you know? And it’s really a beautiful thing because people are comfortable there…Not just from the safety, but because of the way the camp works.
I mean….to be honest with you, there are some people that I don’t even blink an eye when I have to sanction them because they’re either jeopardizing the camp’s safety or well-being or balance and have blatant disregard for it and don’t care. There’s other people that I do feel bad that I have to sanction them because it’s not my point to call.
Maybe it was an honest mistake. Maybe it’s the line they’re using. But, you know, these are people that are trying, but you’ve got to keep the rules in order to keep the whole camp in line. It can be [a dilemma]. And, you know, I’ve been in a couple of situations where, wow, if I do what I’m supposed to do, this could jeopardize my personal relationship with these people or these people associated with them. But if I don’t do this, then it could easily lead to just chaos in the camp because you let one person get away with something, it sets the precedent, and everything just starts falling apart.
The rules are vital. And I’ve had a lot of people since I’ve been doing this say that, oh, this rule is stupid or that rule is stupid or, you know. And I mean, you know, I’ll sit right there and pleasantly argue the point with them because I don’t feel any one of those rules on that list should be removed because it keeps the camp running the way it’s running when they’re enforced… I remember when Victor was running the show. If you recycled, you didn’t bring empty beer bottles or beer cans into that camp, even in your recycling bag. Because if you did, he would throw you out because of that. And, you
188 know, now that the change has gone over, that’s kind of laxed a little, and that was – I need to get a notebook. That was something that I wanted to bring up in the meeting today to talk about, because, like I said, when Victor was here, we didn’t have that issue, or I don’t remember ever having that issue because they weren’t allowed in the camp even in a recycling bag.
I asked Jimi about the use of public space and if he had run into different restrictions during his travels. He shared a story of the “sit and lie” law in Seattle and his thoughts about public space, which led Jimi to share some of his thoughts about the criminalization of the homeless and the loss of rights experienced by many homeless individuals.
I ran into a sit and lie law in Seattle when I first went there, I don’t know, seven years ago. Six years ago. But in Seattle, they’ve got these – they call it – the people on the street call them bumblebees. They call themselves city ambassadors. They’re not affiliated with the police or law enforcement, but they ride around in black and yellow bicycle suits on 10-speeds. And they’ve got their little basket. They do have radios for emergencies, but they’re not police radios. And they’ve got their little baskets on the back with maps and resource information… But I was there, and it was middle of the day, and
I was exhausted, so I sat down on the sidewalk. Ambassador comes pedaling up, and he says, how you doing? And I’m like, all right. And he says, what’s your name? And I said, oh, great. He says, I’m not a cop. So I told him my name. And he said, you’re new
189 around here, huh? And I looked at him. He says, well, how can you tell? The backpack or what? He says, no, no, no. The fact that you’re sitting on the sidewalk. And I said, I don’t understand. And he says, well, the city of Seattle has a sit and lie ordinance. And I said, okay, can you explain that? And he says, I’d be happy to. Very pleasant gentleman.
And he said, between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., emphasizing those times, it is illegal to sit or lie on a public sidewalk or thoroughfare. And I’m like, okay, so you’re telling me I have to get up. He said, no, sir. Let me tell you again. Between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., and he repeats it. And I’m going, okay, there’s a point to these times. And I says, then what about from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.? And he got a big old smile, and he says, well, we’re not allowed to say this, but since you asked. And, I mean, he made it so painfully clear that I needed to ask. And I said, well, what about 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and he says, well, from 7p.m. to 7 a.m., any public sidewalk or door front is open domain, the police cannot mess with you. He said, you can pick one of these doorways when it’s raining and it’s unoccupied as long as the business is closed and roll out your bedroll, and you can go to sleep there, as long as you’re up before the business opens or by 7 a.m.
And he says, one of the things we do for the street people out here is, if we know where you’re going to sleep, we come by and give you a little nudge about 6, 6:30, so you can be up and out of there so the police don’t mess with you. I had my own personal wakeup service in the doorway for the couple months I was in downtown Seattle. But that’s the first time I came across a sit or lie ordinance. But the, you know, they – Seattle was the most homeless friendly town I’ve ever been in.
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At this point in my life, because of all of the different episodes of homelessness and the extent of some of my episodes, at this point, I honestly don’t even feel in my heart or mind that I am part of normal society anymore. I am completely separated and apart from normal society. I don’t feel that I belong.
Houses, jobs, people that vote and have…I mean, all of them – when they – and, I mean, nationwide. They see you with a backpack on, and automatically you’re profiled, you’re labeled. And, you know, at this point – and it’s not that I really care because I’m not the kind of person that cares what somebody thinks about me, but the way I feel and the way I feel I am perceived, I am so far below the level of being part of the mainstream society that I’m almost not even on the food chain anymore. That’s the way they make you feel, legally, everything…it’s a crime to be me. And that’s everywhere you go, you know? You can’t sleep here, you can’t lay here. No, we’re not going to give you a place to sleep, but you can’t sleep there, you know? Yeah, I’m completely separated from society the way they do things anymore…I’ve been there a long time, but I’ve gotten out of it many times. Like this time right now, the reason I’m where I’m at now, I mean, I had a very good job in Reno. I was bringing home 700 to 900 a week, and my rent and utilities were paid. I had a Jacuzzi in the living room of my one-bedroom apartment.
And I did this for three straight years. But the contractor that I worked for, the business, as you know, started petering out, and he started getting in arrears on his bills, and he took it upon himself to start buying and selling stolen motorcycles. And the guy that was supplying the motorcycles got caught and turned him in, rolled on him. And next thing I know, overnight, just that quick, all of the work trucks were seized, the property was
191 seized, and he was on his way to the state pen, now I’m out of a job. Three casinos in the immediate area had shut down that year. The smallest one put almost a thousand people out of work. That was the smallest one. And a very large one was getting ready to shut its doors this year. That’s when I decided, you know, Reno is a non-happening place.
There’s going to be nothing here for a long time. So I picked up and started traveling again…Sacramento, I can see myself being here and being able to be somewhere long enough – see, that’s my thing. If I can be somewhere long enough that I can meet people and, you know, do a little of this or a little of that for people, I never have a problem finding a job doing something, because when I get into something, I’m highly motivated, I do the best that I possibly can in the situation or the job, and, like I said, it doesn’t take me very long, if I can be somewhere, to start stepping back up the ladder. It doesn’t take me long at all. But being homeless and being chased by the law from one place to another, you don’t really get a chance to set those roots and make those contacts and build anything up to step forward. So, you know, that’s another reason I stayed here is because, you know, there’s a lot of good people here, and I mean, if I can stay here long enough to meet people and get to know the businesses, I mean, I really think I could wind up staying in Sacramento for a long time. I really do. I love the area… And I’m happy with where I am right now. And I’m only 44. I’ll be 45 next month… So I figure I’ve still got some time to do other things. But you know what? I’ve always felt that everything happens for a reason. And, you know, I wound up here, and I got involved with this, and maybe I can do something to help, so I’m cool with that until something else comes along. So eventually I would like to get back into school and, you know, get some
192 documentation and credentials in the things that I do enjoy. But right now, I’m really happy with where I’m at, you know? I’m surviving, and I’m helping people out, so.
After we spoke that last time Jimi stayed at the SafeGround camp for only another month. At that time he was involved in an ongoing dispute with another elder who was aggressive and dictatorial in his approach to leadership. Jimi left SafeGround to start a separate spinoff camp he called Camp Serenity. Unfortunately, the new camp drifted away from SafeGround and became involved in drug use. Methamphetamine and alcohol use was routinely observed at Camp Serenity. I’ve seen Jimi several times since and he is as articulate and easy-going as before but can’t be lured back into SafeGround. It appears that the trauma of Jimi’s past has again caught up with him and he is unable to become the person he, on occasion, yearns to be. I continue to look for Jimi when I am out on the river trails or in the park where he sometimes goes during the day.
Rose’s Story
Rose (pseudonym) was a self-described “service brat.” Born and raised in
Sacramento and a graduate of McClatchy High School, Rose later became an in-home
Certified Nursing Assistant (CAN) in the local area. This is the first time Rose, who is sixty years of age and divorced, has been homeless and she is partly here by choice as she works through issues in her life. Rose never cared to speak too much about her personal problems leading up to homelessness. Below are her thoughts when I asked her how she first became homeless.
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The family that I was taking care of the person for, I lived with the family. They had a two-story house, and I lived upstairs. And they lived downstairs. And so I lived – I was a live-in. Last I think it was August, we had a fire in the home. And we had to move out of the home. And they put us in Larkspur Hotel. And we stayed there for three months, I think. And then they put us in some apartments over on Hurley. And we stayed there, and they were rebuilding the house. And during that time span, a member of their extended family lost their job and couldn’t do anything, for whatever reason, couldn’t get unemployment, and several options. So they opted to give the job to the person of their extended family. So I lost the place I lived in and my job on the same day.
Rose had been homeless about three months when we had this conversation. I wanted to know how she had ended up in SafeGround and what her opinions were of the
SafeGround Camp and homeless advocacy movement.
I was sleeping on the docks of the warehouses down at the end of C Street, and I met a young girl there that was pregnant. And she was out here by herself. So we kind of teamed up. My mother instinct kicked in. And we were sleeping on the docks. And Ron from Safe Ground, and I think it was George – I can’t remember who else was with him – came up to us and said that they had heard about us and would we like to join Safe
Ground, and we said yes…I feel – and this – I talk to people all the time. And the people that are in Safe Ground feel secure, and they know that they’re camping with several people makes it easier to survive out there. Because one person doesn’t have food,
194 another person does, and they share it. And I see a lot of the people, when they make mistakes or when they’re wrong in a situation, they talk to the other people about it, and they tell the other people, I made a mistake, you know, and I don’t want to do this again.
Or, I was wrong in this situation. And it’s very – to me, it’s a very tight-knit community.
I asked Rose about the young woman who was with her when she was brought into Safe Ground and the other women whom she has found and befriended in the
SafeGround camp. At that time the ever-changing SafeGround population demographics, according to Rose, showed about 65% females ranging in age from the early 20s to early
70s in the camp population.
Her name is Memphis and she [recently] lost a baby. But not because she was living outside. Because of other health problems that she has… And then the females that come out there, a lot of females are victims of violence…Domestic abuse. Domestic violence. And so when they first come out, they’re a little bit shaky. And they’ll do things like stay in their tents for a few days. But a lot of times, when the females first come out,
I have them stay in my tent with me. You know, so I can talk to them and so they feel more secure. And they feel safe because they know that the men in the campground will protect them and look out after them no matter where they’re at, in the campground or on the street or wherever, so. The people feel secure. And just like any family or any community, problems arise here and there. But as we all say, we can work this out because we’re family and we’re friends…You know, I think the younger females, they use
195 their young-lady ways to survives, sometimes. But I think the older females, it’s a little bit harder for them because they’re not as young, and some of the ways the young women have, the older females don’t respond in situations the way the young females do. It’s not easy. You have to always be on guard. You know, you have to always be aware of what’s going on around you. You have to always look for traps. You know, and you really don’t know what to expect next. One of the young females we had in Safe Ground got sanctioned because she made too many mistakes in too short a time, so we sanctioned her for a short period of time. And she came to me after the first night, and she said, what do I have to do to come back? She said, I slept on the streets last night, and it was horrible. There’s a lot of programs [for women]. There’s WEAVE. There’s Nora’s
Place. I don’t know all of them, but I know there’s several domestic violence places, you know, regroup centers or whatever you want to term them as, that the women can go.
But I’ve heard a lot of complaints about those places because what I’ve noticed myself is a lot of women that come from domestic violence or domestic abuse need some sort of freedom because they’ve broke away from this controlled environment that turned out to be violent. And they like to know they have the freedom to come and go as they please.
And not have somebody telling them you have to be here by this time or this is going to happen to you, dah, dah, dah, you know?
…And so, you know, and a lot of them, you know, they’re looking for another relationship maybe. But they’re so on guard that they’re real hesitant to even talk to people sometimes. And that’s why I leave my door open anytime, day or night, if somebody wants to talk to me. In fact, just yesterday, one of the ladies said, can we go
196 for a walk and talk? And I said, yes, of course. So we went for a walk. We went over to the river. And we sat down and we talked for probably close to an hour. And she felt so much better afterwards. Her and I have never really gotten into a deep discussion, and she told me – it was very rewarding for me because she told me when we were done talking. She said, I’m so glad we got this opportunity to talk.
I asked Rose for a women’s perspective on the perceived loss of rights by homeless individuals. Did she think there was a loss of rights that most citizens take for granted?
Oh, yes. It’s a fight. You have to – it’s a fight to let people know that you have feelings, too, and that you’re a person, too, and that you need simple things, too, like a shower or a bed to lay on, you know. Or your own little boutique, you know, your own makeup, your own restroom, you know. And people, they read about it in the paper, they see it on TV, and they hear about it, you know, in their churches or whatever. But unless they actually sit down and talk to somebody that is homeless or has been homeless for a length of time and listen to them – not just hear them, but listen to them – they don’t understand. To come to Loaves & Fishes and eat a meal here, or to go out to the river and speak to somebody, just sit there under 12th Street Bridge and talk to people is a very strong and intense reality check on what is really going on in this world. And I’ve met people out here from all walks of life. All walks of life on the economical scale, you know? I’ve met people that used to be very rich and very well-known for whatever they
197 were doing. And I’ve met people from ghettos. But they all are striving for the same thing, and that’s safe ground.
I did put my name on the list at Salvation Army. And I checked in every day and whatnot. But then, as my number got smaller and they got closer to me going in, the intensity of what I’m doing and the – I can’t think of the proper word. What I’m doing out there is very rewarding to me. And it makes my life. So I went to Salvation Army and
I told them, not yet. Not yet.
I’ve always – when I first got out of high school and started going to college, I was, like, one semester away from graduating and being a social worker. And so the good Lord leads me out here, and I’m doing social work, basically, you know? Like today, I went to a food bank and I got food, and I take it out and to whoever I meet, you know? Are you hungry? Here. You know? I went to Sac City College at first. And then
I moved up to Humboldt County, and I went to College of the Redwoods. And when I was doing College of the Redwoods, I was in my 20s, and I got the mumps. And as we know…if you miss, what, three days, you’re out. And I just never went back. I got going here and there and doing this and that…I have a lot of compassion for people, yes.
I told Rose that what I hear from a lot of people is that when they go to Social
Security for SSI or the county for GA, when they go to any of these public agencies; they get treated in a way that makes them feel like second-class citizens. I asked her if she had personally experienced that or heard others talk about it and what might help.
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I haven’t personally experienced it because I haven’t – since I’ve been homeless, I haven’t even – I lived off my last check for the last three months. And I know I have to go apply for GA or Social Security or whatever, you know, or see what my unemployment’s doing. Something. I know I have to do that in the very near future. But I haven’t had the personal experience myself. But others that I know that have applied for all those different things or one of those things have had a lot of struggle. And a lot of it is behind not having the transportation, because Social Security is clear over here, GA’s clear over here, you know… bus passes is a very good option. I know GA gives bus passes. I don’t know if they still do…the way the light rail’s set up now, you can get to a lot of different points on light rail. I know that the Social Security office out on Folsom Boulevard is right near a light rail station. Mather Air Force Base is right near a light rail station.
They have to go there, I guess, for VA now. What else? The GA office is right near a light rail station, within a couple – I think it’s one block, not even one block, on 29th and the light rail…now, you would face the problem if they provided daily passes of people not really needing them and selling them on the street. But if there was some sort of ID pass, where it wasn’t an option to be able to sell it. You know, it’s like in keeping the honest - honest, you know. And I understand, you know, they sell the passes so they can get money for cigarettes or whatever, you know, and I understand that to a point. But, you know, you got to look at it from both sides. And why – okay, light rail passes, so many per person or whatever, if they’re just going to sell them? If they’re going to use them what they’re provided for, that’s a good thing. And so if it was me, I would say some sort of picture ID thing.
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Rose and I spoke of her knowledge of the law enforcement policy of asking people to move their camp sites, or to just go somewhere else and her opinion of the effect on the local homeless of the cuts in social services at all levels of government.
Why are you going to tell people they can’t camp? Where are they going to go?
That’s a reality check, you know? Where – I mean, tell me. Where in the hell are they going to go? You know? To another town? Well, it’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen because, you know, there’s people out there that are handicapped, that are crippled, you know, physically handicapped. And there’s mentally handicapped.
There’s emotionally handicapped. And the mentally and emotionally handicap is just as bad as being physically handicapped because they don’t have the facilities to go to somewhere where there might be work or where it’s easier to live or there’s a okay- camping ordinance.
And not only is it just that, but a good example is my mother. My mother is
92 years old. And she’s on a fixed income. My father left her very nice, you know, as far as she owns her own home and she has certain incomes, but they cut her. How are you going to cut somebody, you know? It’s ridiculous. We’re in a depression. I don’t care what anybody says. I remember the stories my father told me. He grew up in the depression…But so – you know, how are you going to say – and why, because the statistics don’t say that? Well, the only reasons statistics don’t say that is because the statistics doesn’t cover everybody. It’s like unemployment. They say, well, the unemployment, you know, every now and then in the paper, the unemployment rate
200 dropped. Well, yeah, because people ran out of their benefits, you know? That’s lie a little loophole. That’s like a loophole, you know? They’re saying that to make it look good, when they won’t actually say it’s because people are not – we don’t have the whole statistics because people can’t apply anymore, you know?
Rose then offered the following thoughts about others living on the river.
The people that aren’t with Safe Ground that live out there, to me, they’re just – they’re the same as the people in Safe Ground. You know, yes, some of them have bad drug habits, and there’s prostitution, and there’s thievery and different things. But there is in Land Park, you know? And I’m blessed because everybody I – I’ll go to a feeding under the 12th Street Bridge, and if it’s getting dark or anything, I don’t worry. I speak to everybody, you know? And I bless everybody, you know. And there’s been a couple times when people have gotten angry at me because they were in front of me in line or whatever. And I’ve simply spoke to them and treated them with respect. And whenever you – my experience in life throughout my whole life, no matter what lifestyle I lived, if you treat somebody with respect, you get respect back, you know? I’m blessed like that.
That doesn’t always happen. I understand that. But I don’t know. I just – maybe because I’m a Christian or maybe because God’s got my back. Whatever the reason, wherever I go, I treat everybody the same, and I get treated the way I treat people. And that’s the ultimate – isn’t that the ultimate American Dream? That’s the way I was taught in school and stuff, you know?
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Six months from now, I’m probably going to be doing the same type of thing I’m doing now, maybe a little bit more involved, because I’ve been offered a lot of different involvements on committees and whatnot. And, in fact, when I went and saw my mom this last weekend, I spent two and a half days with her, and we had a lot of talks. And I felt so good about it. She said, Rose, I think you found your calling…And that made me feel very good…and she said, you’ve always been like that, ever since I was little. I’d be three doors down when I was 3 years old, talking to whoever, you know? Just – I care about people.
What I’d like to see happen. My life – I let my life go wherever I’m supposed to.
I’ve been like that for a long time. Wherever I end up, I figure that’s where I’m supposed to be at that time, and I’m doing what I’m supposed to do. Because I give my life to the
Lord. And I let him lead me where I’m needed. And the only thing I hope for is I can help make a difference, you know? I don’t – if my name’s remembered, it’s remembered.
If it’s not, it doesn’t matter. What matters is to make a difference and to make people understand, to show people – you can’t make people understand something they don’t want to. But if you can show them what some things really, truly are, at least you’ve showed them that. If it makes a difference in their life, it does. If it doesn’t, it’s not your – it wouldn’t be my fault. It would be their fault for not opening their eyes.
Rose is still in the SafeGround camp as I write this chapter. She has risen to become the camp lead elder, is affectionately called the camp “Mom” by many, and thinks she will stay until at least the spring of 2012. Rose speaks publically on behalf of
202 the homeless and Safe Ground Sacramento and has appealed to the city council and others to urge them to support a safe, legal place for the homeless. She thinks about going back to in-home care as a licensed CAN but is currently dedicated to the people she is with in the camp, her new family. Even when warned about the coming inclement winter months and the personal and physical toll it can take, she says she is tough and will get through the winter with her friends at SafeGround.
James’ Story
James (pseudonym) is an African American man in his mid-forties who was raised primarily in Los Angeles and Phoenix. James has been homeless off and on for most of his adult life, and while no longer using drugs, his behavior demonstrates his ongoing struggle with emotional stability, often getting frustrated and angry over the dramas of his daily life. However, James believes in SafeGround, cares for his fellow community members, and wants to play a leadership role at SafeGround. Recently James stepped up to join the elder team at SafeGround and has been considering going indoors as soon as he can qualify for the appropriate housing program. James has been homeless in the Sacramento area for most of the last twenty years. He was hired as a dishwasher for Loaves & Fishes for a period of time and clings to that as his expertise, his calling for work and something he would like to return to. I asked James about his family life growing up and when he first came to Sacramento and he shared the following.
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…I came to Sacramento looking for my daughter, okay? Her mother – me and her mother were living in Fresno. And she decided that she wanted a better life for herself and her kids. So she came to me one day and said, I’m moving to Sacramento, okay? Didn’t give me an address, and no nothing. I’m just going, okay? So she came up here. She told me to give her a couple of months, let her try to find a place, try to find, you know, something stable, and then she would call me and let me know where she was at, and I could come up. Well, I never – two months went by, and I never heard anything.
And I was, like, I need to see my daughter. So I came up here. And I stayed for a while. I liked it. And then I came – I left and came back again. And I been here ever since. And I been on the streets off and on ever since then. That was back in 1986. I have…still living, I have one biological sister and one biological brother. Same mother, same father. Okay. And then I have five – wait. Five, six, seven, eleven – I have 20-something adopted brothers and sisters.
I urged James to continue and tell me how living in SafeGround compared to other personal experiences living homeless in Sacramento in the last twenty-five years.
Rough. It was real rough. Because, you know – I mean, you have your – you know, back over behind – okay, you know where the gas station is, right there on 12th?
Well, back there where the parole office is and behind the parole office, there used to be a field over there. They called it the field of dreams. I used to camp out there. And the police ran us out of there because all of a sudden there started, you know, a bunch of
204 killings over there. They were starting to find a lot of the homeless dead over there. And it got rough. It got real rough. I been to the point where I was sleeping in a car, you know?
They [the homeless] get treated differently than other people. Because not everybody, but a lot of people, who have jobs and homes and kids and the whole nine yards, they look at people who are homeless as low-lives. You know…I don’t know. You know, they say, oh, you’ll never amount to nothing, you don’t want nothing out of life, you know? Because if you did, you would try to get you a job. It’s hard. It’s real hard.
James seemed anxious to do better, to build on his new attitude of stepping up at
SafeGround and I asked him if he would like to go back to work.
Yes, I would. Yeah. You know, it’s like I was saying. There’s things I want to do, as far as for my son, that I can’t do because I’m not working. I think I’m going to get back into my dishwashing. I been a janitor. I’ve worked at a car wash. You know. I’ve done quite a few different things. But nothing seems to work but when I’m a dishwasher, that – That clicks. That – it works. So I try to find something in that field, you know, in that area. You know, because when I was – and when I was doing the dishwashing, I – the company I was working for, or the restaurant I was working for, I went to my manager one day, and I told them. I said, I want to better myself. He goes, what do you mean you want to better yourself? I don’t want to always be in a dish room washing dishes. I want to learn how to cook. I want to learn how to, you know, do different things.
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And so he started working with me. And started putting me in the kitchen. And that worked out for a while. But only job I’ve had since I’ve been here in Sacramento was the dishwashing job at Loaves. That was fun. It was fun. It’s a lot of work, but it was fun.
Recently James qualified for a supportive housing program and with the help of some of his SafeGround and Loaves & Fishes supporters was directed to a new housing opportunity. James made it through an extensive, several months long process, held his emotions in check and recently moved in.
It is hard to get by. Because I was looking at the other day, and I set up – like I said, I’m getting GA. And it’s hard for me now, with just getting GA, to maintain a place.
You know? Because I’m to the point where I don’t have money to – like, I need dishwashing liquid, I need toilet paper. I got toothpaste. I got all that kind of stuff. But I need, you know, dishwashing liquid, soap powder so I could wash clothes. And that’s stuff I don’t have…Well, last year, as a matter of fact. We were staying in an apartment.
And I maintained that pretty good. You know, I never had any extra money, but then we were both getting GA, so it worked out better. But now, since it’s just me, you know, it’s – like I said, it’s hard. It’s hard…And then everybody up there at Loaves is asking me, how’d you get into the program that you’re in? How’d you get in housing? All you do is go up to Loaves and talk to them at Loaves. I talked to – well, Joan Burke through it out there at the [Safe Ground] steering committee that they were accepting applications. Okay? If you were interested, talk to – and then Mark. I went and talked to
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Mark, and Mark submitted my name. You know, because I was thinking – I was at Safe
Ground. I was thinking, I’m going to throw my name in there and see if I qualify, okay?
If I qualify, we’ll see how far it goes. If I don’t, it’s nothing lost. At least I’m trying to do something, you know? To better myself. Well, I went and I talked to Mark in the wash house. Mark sent me over and told me to go talk to Mollie. So I talked to Mollie. And
Mollie submitted my name, and we went from there. I qualified. Okay. And the next thing I know, I get a phone call, you know, and they’re like, we want to talk to you, okay?
So I go in. Mollie went with me. I went in. And she goes – and that’s when I first met
Kyra. Okay, I go in, and I met Kyra, and she’s like…I got some news for you. And I said, what? She goes, you know why you’re here today, right? I said, no, why am I here?
She goes, we want you to pick out your unit. And I looked at her. And I go, I actually qualified? She goes, yeah. So there I am.
I mean, there for a while, it was looking kind of grim because they were telling me one thing, and then I did everything that they asked me to do. And they were telling me, it’s, well, you done did everything. You only have one more thing to do. And then you can move in. So I was waiting for that to get done. And I finally got that done. Oh, you can move in such-and-such a date, okay? And this is back in May, okay? That day came,
I didn’t move in. Well, we got to do some more paperwork, okay? We did the other paperwork. That wasn’t good enough. Okay? Then we got to the point where, when I called you and I said, I’m in, but this is what I need. I go and get that, and then the day I was supposed to actually move in, which was the 13th of last month – I was actually
207 supposed to move in – and come to find out I couldn’t move in on the 13th because my unit hadn’t been inspected.
James offered the following thoughts on the necessary efforts required to get
General Assistance (GA) from the county.
Some of the workers, they try to help you. You know. And then you get some of them that look at you like – you know, and then you get some of them that look at you like, you know, why are we helping him, or why are we helping her? They make you jump through hoops. Well, you can’t get this if you don’t do this. Or you’re not qualified to get this, you know? They just – because what they want to do is they want to make it so you leave. They don’t want to give you anything. You see what I’m saying? So they figure, if they make you sit there and wait, and you’ll get frustrated and leave. That way, they don’t have to worry about you. You know. And that’s just like people that ride by on the trains in the morning with Loaves & Fishes. Okay. Here it is. You got Loaves &
Fishes, here’s a bunch of homeless people. They’re looking at it, oh, they don’t want nothing out of life. Okay. But a lot of the people down there do, you know? And they try. But if they can’t get the help they need, it doesn’t work. [They need] More housing…I’d say about six years ago, there was a survey done. There was a survey done.
And it said that it would take four people on GA, okay, just to get a place and be able to afford.
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Our conversation soon drifted back to SafeGround.
I feel that if it wasn’t for SafeGround, who knows where I would be. You know?
Like I said, being out there on the streets is rough. You know, not having nowhere to be.
You know, and then to have – you know, when I first got to SafeGround, we had a permanent spot. Okay. That helped me out a lot because it made it to where I could do what I had to do. Okay? The moving on all the time that we were doing, that kind of got to me. And there were several times I wanted to give up, but I looked at it and said, look, this is something that could work for me. It could benefit me in a lot of ways. I can probably get housing out of this. And look what happened…Yeah. It’s – you know, when you’re in a camp like that, you feel more comfortable when you got a bunch of people around you, you know, that’s going to help you watch your back, you know, be there for you, if you need them, you know, to whereas, if you out there by yourself, you’re on your own. You know. If some danger comes to you, you never know where it might come from, okay? So it helps to have people that’s willing, you know, to be there with you. It is dangerous. It’s real dangerous…Take, for instance, back here, there was a couple guys that got killed right here by the tunnel right here. There was a couple guys got killed.
Because they got beat down with hammers. Okay. And there was some people that were just targeting homeless people. And they were going around slitting they throats, stabbing them while they were asleep. You know. That’s not good. [It’s] jealousy.
That’s just like – Frances the other day. Me and my son’s mom and – me and my son, his mother, and her two daughters were walking down the street from her house.
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One, we were walking to the light rail, going to catch the train. Right here on Folsom
Boulevard, somebody walk – drives by and throws a water balloon and almost hit the kids with it. You know. Why? What’d you get out of that?
Uh-huh. I’d use myself, and I’d look back at how everything went down for me.
And I’m proud to be where I’m at right now. I’m real proud to be where I’m at. Like I said, there’s certain people over there that I don’t like, but I know how to deal with them.
And that was one of the things I had to learn. And it helped me by me being at
SafeGround, and being on the streets that helped people. And that was how to get along.
Because I used to couldn’t be around people…It was just something about me. I just didn’t like being around people. Now I can tolerate it…I’d get real frustrated. I’m the type of person, I used to – when they first opened up Loaves – Dave will tell you. I used to walk down the street, and I’d see the police, and I’d get into an argument, and I’d tell the police, take your gun and your badge off, let’s get out in the middle of the street, and we can duke it out. And may the better man win….I’ve learned. That’s not the kind of attitude to have. You know? Because all that’s going to do is end you up in prison. You know. Because you do have several – there’s a lot of these cops that, you know, especially where the homeless is concerned, they don’t like homeless people… I’ve done jail time. I’ve had assaults on my record. I got assaults on my record. I have a drug case on my record. You know.
James explained that he had been clean and sober for three years now and that he was working on his anger problem and developing a better approach to life. I
210 congratulated James and asked how he managed to stay clean and sober after years of problems.
I have. Three years now. I attribute that to my niece. I have a niece. She seen me through all my addiction. She seen what it done to me. And she just finally came to me one day and told me. You know, I’d done something that I’m not proud of to her and her kids that I would never have done if I wasn’t doing drugs, you know? And that’s the way she looks at it. She just came to me one day, and she told me. She said, Uncle, you got to clean up. If you need my help, I’m here for you. Okay, now that I have cleaned up and I’m doing good, she constantly tells me, you go back to it, I’m cutting you off. And me and her are like this. We’re tight…There’s not a day I don’t go by – there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t talk to her. And for a couple of months, she didn’t talk to me. I would call her. Ignored. I’d leave her messages, please call me, you know, just let me know you and the kids are okay. She would call me back – she would text me back and say, why do you want to know how we are? That’s none of your business. And I got to thinking about that. And I got to realizing how I felt about her and how much I love her, you know, that – I mean, the urges to do the drugs do come back. They do come every now and then…Cocaine…They [the urges] do come back, you know. Just like on the first, and me and my son’s mom got into an argument. And I had money in my pocket.
But I chose not to use because I got to thinking about my niece. And every time I get to thinking about doing it, my niece’s face pops up…It always pops up. And she’s, like – and I told her about – I tell her this all the time, and I tell her, you know, every time that
211 urge hits me and I go start heading that way, your face pops up. And she laughed. And she just laughs. She goes, that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. And then she’ll tell me, think of it this way. If you go back to doing what you used to do, you lose a lot of stuff. Not only do you lose your place to stay, everything you worked for, but you lose your nephews, you lose me, and if I leave you and I cut you loose, there’s a whole bunch of other people in the family that’s cutting you loose, you know? So that’s what I look at.
I asked James to look ahead now that he had finally gone indoors, has his own place and was working on his continued sobriety. What would he want to be doing in six months? A year?
Six months from now, I want to be working. I’m already indoors, so I got that accomplished. I want to be working. And trying to better myself. I’m trying to get it to the point where I’m not so angry anymore. You know. And I’m having a hard time with that because they want me to go to Guest House just try to get my psych meds. And every time I go to Guest House, I never get in. Because they only take – you got to come in the
[early] morning, and they only take so many people. And they have people that camp out there at night. And I can’t do that. I can’t do that, you know? Well, I’m also – probably since she’s back – Sister Libby's back now. So since she’s back, I used to see Sister Libby when she was at Genesis. So I’m going to go talk to Sister Libby and see if Sister Libby might be able to pull some strings for me.
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I’m making sure my son has a place to stay. You know, like I explained – I’ve told his mother, you know, I’ve asked her several times since I’ve been indoors to just take one night, you know. Says, I can’t be out there. I can’t be out there at night with you and the kids. And that hurts. Okay. They can’t stop you from coming over to my house.
Okay? Just come by one day. Come spend the night one night. And let’s see how it works, okay? She text me last night. I mentioned that to her last night when we were arguing. And she said, hey, I know you have asked me to come stay the night with you, but there’s a problem with that. What’s the problem? I don’t want the kids sleeping on a hard floor, because there’s no carpeting, okay? I don’t want them on the floor. Okay?
And then I text her back, and I said, well, the girls can always sleep in my bed, okay? And then she text me back and said, well what about Alex? And then I kind of got – I was mad at her, so I kind of threw it in there, and I told her. I said, well, what about him? You know? You’re going around telling people he’s not my son, so what about him? You know? And then she text me, and she said, I’ve never told nobody that he’s not your son.
I’ve always told you from the day we found out, and we found out the time frame, there was a possibility you could be his dad. Okay? Now that he’s here, I don’t care who his father is, but I just wanted – I want to know who his real father is, and I want his father to be in his life. And so far, out of the three people there’s a possibility his dad, you’re the only one that’s been stepping up. You know? I’m trying. I told – that’s all I could tell her… That’s all I told here. I’m trying. You know? But – well, then the other day, me and her were talking. We were at the house, and we were talking. And she told me,
I’m trying to get into anger management, which my case manager is trying to help me
213 with that. And I’m also trying to get into parenting classes. You know, because her kids – her two daughters are out of control. They’re six and four. Okay, they are out of control. Okay, to the point where they’ll cuss they mama out, you know? And she’ll tell them to do something. They’ll look at her and go, no. Don’t want to. Or, why? Why you telling me to do this? Because I told you to. I’m your mother. And? Whatever. And then they go off and do whatever they want to do, you know? So like I… But she’s got that problem of no babysitter.
That’s a big problem. You know? And I told her – another thing she’s looking at, too, is the fact that she doesn’t have a car, you know? And I told her. I said, you know, we need a car. She goes, yeah, we do. Okay. And I told her, I’m working on that. She goes, okay, so am I. And then she was telling me about this car. She seen this car she wants to get. And it’s like $300. But she wants to have somebody look at it before she goes and buys it, you know? So I told her, I could find somebody to look at it for you.
And never – she never said anything else to me about it, so I don’t know what’s – you know.
James spoke briefly then of his childhood and his relationship with his father. He started talking about a particular incident that stood out in his memory, an incident with a teacher and being asked to leave school.
…And he went up to me and grabbed me by my arm. And when he grabbed me, I don’t know, I just went off. And I grabbed him. And I got kicked out. I went to another
214 school. The first couple of days I was there, I didn’t like it. So I said screw it, I’m not going to school no more. And I stopped going. I had a good family life. Yes, I really did.
I had a good family life. My mother was the type of person that – my real mother, she was the type of person that – she would go days without eating just to make sure her kids ate, you know?
I knew my father…He’s gone now. You know, I had my problems with my dad.
With my real father. I was closer to – I was more closer to my grandmother than I was my real dad. I was closer to his mom and his dad, his stepdad, than I was with my real mother. I mean my real father. I mean, my mother would do things that I didn’t like, but
I understood where she was coming from.
Today James takes pride in his ability to stay housed indoors maintaining his independence for approximately six months. He is not yet working but seems to have gained some focus on his life through his concern for his new son who lives with James girlfriend. The relationship as he portrays it appears one-sided and presents a concern with his history of anger issues. I still hear from James occasionally, usually to let me now he is still indoors but also to ask about his friends a SafeGround.
Jeff’s Story
Jeff (pseudonym) was a leader in the SafeGround camp in late 2009 and early
2010 and later formed a spin-off camp, LaFamilia, which remained loyal to and affiliated with Safe Ground, but was not directly sponsored by Safe Ground. Jeff, who was in his
215 mid-thirties, was on parole at the time and had a somewhat violent approach to problem solving. He seemed anxious to share his family’s story and his own experiences with me.
I was born Hanford, California. Raised in a small town about 25 miles out of that, country, all hillbillies, tractors, horses more than there is cars. Hanford is south of
Fresno about 45 minutes…Yeah, [near] Lemoore Naval Air Base. Right there. That’s
Riverdale’s back door. Where the jets come down is where our dairy’s at. And born and raised there [in] 1976… I moved around and did a little bit, but never left home. I’ve got a small family, mom, two - - an older sister. There’s five siblings altogether. I’ve got an older sister, an older brother, and then I’m a twin. I’ve got a twin sister and then a younger sister. Pretty much, dad ran out when I was - - I don’t know. I was too young to remember, probably like two years old. So it was just my mom. And pretty much, my mom’s Irish, my dad’s full-blooded Portuguese. And they both had different things. My dad owned a dairy farm and then fields, and then my mom’s, her brothers and siblings and all that owned construction. So if I wasn’t farming, milking, running tractors when I was kid during the summer, I was building houses and it just kind of went that way. My mom worked two jobs to keep the house and food in the fridge and cupboards. So basically, from the time we were born, it was either work or starve, so we had to help and, yeah, we did that. Get on it, put it in gear, and go. And then, swinging hammers, using saws growing up. Me and - - everybody was older, so me and my twin and then my little sister, the baby, she stayed with my aunt a lot, and then me and my twin, pretty much by the time we were in seventh grade, my brother was gone and married, my sister
216 was gone and married, and my mom was working two jobs. She worked 8:00 to 5:00 one job and then 6:00 to 11:00 the next job, and basically seven days a week. And so basically me and my twin had to learn to raise ourselves, but we did.
We went through school. We both graduated out of high school, both went to college. Did the whole works, going to school, going to college, working all at the same time. Got done with that…[I studied] Blueprints, landscaping, maintenance, heavy equipment, EPA certified. I got just about everything done. Everything that had to do with basic building. I had to learn how to read the blueprints. Draw blueprints. Did management, company management. Just all the - - Yeah. Just kept going, doing different things. Because when I was in high school, where I’m from, we had a community college called Westfield College. And as you’re in high school, you can also go to college. So I was going to college at night and then going to thing. And basically, it was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
By the time I was 15, 16 years old, I was tired of the farm and tractors and stuff, and by then, I had a heavy equipment license, got my Class A truck driver’s license. Just trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life. And so it was like, oh, I love to build. I love to tear stuff down. I love to blow stuff up. So I started - - I went and did my blueprints designs and all that, and then started at my uncles. By then, 16 years old, I was just with my uncles, framing and building houses, custom homes. There was three brothers and then me. They’re old. One died, and when he died, it was like, okay, it’s time to shut down, because they’d been out in the sun, building, framing. It was finally getting to them. So we shut that down and we were trying to figure out, well, what are we
217 going to keep doing? My uncles are like, we’re old, but we’ve got to keep working. So it was like, well, let’s just go buy a building and start a door shop. So we bought a - - we called it CBS doors. It’s in Armona, [near] Lemoore. And we started doing that. There was one that was getting ready to run down, and so we bought it off the guy. And we took that over and pretty much ran it. It was family-owned. Ran it and within the two years we had it, we made $2.1 million.
And then we did all that, and then pretty much I got tired of doing that, so I had to figure out what else I wanted to do, because I get bored very easily. I love to do stuff, but my job is like, you start doing something for so long, it’s like, okay, this ain’t no fun no more. I already know everything about it, so kind of moved on from there. And so I got a job at Home Depot for millworks right here in Sacramento on Florin Road and 99. This is like 2003. And that’s what brought me to Sacramento. They gave me good pay,
$19.00 an hour management job right here. And I moved up here, and I was by myself, didn’t know nobody in Sacramento. Just moved, loaded up my Chevy truck, drove up here. Slept in my truck for about three weeks until I found an apartment and then got an apartment and then started meeting people, and that just started booming. When you’re single - - I don’t know how you say it - - a bachelor, and you’ve got more money than what you know what to do with.
One thing about me, I love money but I hate money. I’ve learned that in my life. I could have a million dollars but I’d hate it. I had more money, so I traveled a lot. And, man, I don’t know if word got out or what, how I worked or whatever, but another door shop - - a major door shop here in Rancho Cordoba, Capital Doors, came in after I was
218 about a year over here. And he walks in. He played hella stupid to me, like he was just a customer, asking me questions with his wife about doors, windows. And he goes, “Well,
I’m building this house,” and he showed me these blueprints that wasn’t even his. He just took them out of his office and brought them over here. And I was like, “Yeah, I can help you do them all.” We went and sat down, and the way I talked to him or, I guess, whatever, he liked the way I did it and he goes, “Well, I need you to do me a favor.
Come check out this job.” And he gave me his business card and it said Capital Doors,
Rancho Cordoba. And I was like, “Well, I’ve already got a job,” and he’s all, “No, I think you might want to come see what I got.” And I said, “The only way I’m going to leave is if I get paid more money.” He goes, “What do you get paid here?” I lied and told him $28 an hour. He goes, “I could probably work with that.” So I went over there.
It was an interview. And then he sat down, told me what was going on, that he needed an office manager and someone to go out, talk to the construction people.
Measure doors, measure windows, trim, designs, do all that. And I pretty much was like, “Well, yeah, but the thing is I’ve got a good job now, making benefits.” And he goes, “Well, now you’ve got a better job. Here’s $30 an hour and benefits.” And I was like, okay, three or four dollars more, better benefits. Because I don’t know what kind of medical Home Depot had, but I went straight to Kaiser. He gave me Kaiser, full-blown
Kaiser, everything, company truck. And I was like, “Cool. Well, I’ll do this. Yeah, okay,
I’ve got to put two weeks’ notice in over here.” And then so I put two weeks’ notice in over there, and Home Depot was like, well, you can’t go yet because I’ve got to find someone to replace you, so it took me about two months to get out of Home Depot, but I
219 was also working for Capital Doors. I was doing the night shift at Home Depot, managing there, and then working here during the day.
And there came more money I didn’t need, because all it does is get you in trouble. But, yeah, ended up getting in trouble. Went and did 16 months in prison… I was at a party. We were at a party. We traveled a lot. I had a motor home. A friend and me and a bunch of people would always travel. Partying one night, drinking, and slept with a girl. She was 17-1/2 years old. And I didn’t even know she was 17-1/2, and she ended up pregnant, and when she ended up pregnant, I found out how old she really was. And it was like three months before even her birthday, and so she would have been
18. And, yeah, got slapped with that, with statutory. It’s not even a sex crime. I don’t have to register or nothing. It’s just called statutory, consensual sex with a minor. But they gave me 16 months...Her parents pressed it. Or actually her dad did, not even her mom. And then, yeah, they gave me 16 months for that. Got out, and then with the new laws in California, if you’re on parole, you can’t leave the county. And so they were slapping ankle bracelets on - - no, actually, they didn’t even slap ankle bracelets on when
I got out. This was like 2005. And I got out and I was like, well, I own a house over here in Squaw Valley, and I have 15 acres up there. And then I’ve got a job waiting for me, my uncle’s door shop, and so they let me go back there. They were like, cool, here.
Here’s your transfer. They let me go back to Fresno County. So basically I came out broke. My parents - - my mom, my sister, everybody came. Cleaned out my apartment, cleaned out my bank account, just stashed it to the side for me. And came back to Fresno and then living on parole. And they considered me a 5B, because back when I was 20
220 years old, I ran over a 51-year-old lady street racing in a hot rod, a 1976 Dodge
Springer, fast. Running it down the road, dark, and smacked her. She was walking down the road when we were racing.
So I was out for like a year and a half, working, and then had my house up there and taking care of grandma. And then one day I went to my mom’s house and got a violation for having a beer. There was a beer in my hand. They gave me six months back in prison for that, and they sent me back up here. And so up here and - - A beer. Six months for one beer. Yep. I walked out of the house and sat on the front porch. We were getting ready to go to a Reba McIntire concert. Limousine was showing up. We rented a limo. My mom, my brother, everybody was there, and we were going to go a Reba
McIntire concert. I was running late from work, so everybody was already dressed, so I went straight to my mom’s house, took a shower and then came out in a pair of shorts and sat down on the front porch, and my brother walks over, goes, “Hey, man, here you go,” handed me a beer. It was hot, middle of summer. I cracked that sucker open. Aw, took one big old swig, sat it between my legs, and my mom goes, “Hey, look over there,” and I looked over and there’s my parole officer. He was parked two houses down, walking over; just waiting to see what was going to happen. But yeah, I lost everything again just for one beer, and that brought me back to prison for six months. Got out, back here in Sacramento in 2006, and we got stuck here. And pretty much started up all over again.
This last time I got out March 10. From another six-month violation…Yeah… Got out 2006. Got married. Basically, couldn’t live with my wife or my kids because of the
221 ankle bracelets they were throwing on everybody. You can’t be around a minor. Even though my charge is nothing, they still do that. So basically I was paying for an apartment for my wife, and then - - I had two apartments; one here and then one right next door. So I was basically cheating parole, saying I’m living by myself, even though my wife’s right next door. So I was never in my apartment, I was always with my wife and my kids. But then, started working again and then, boom, hit major money again.
Let’s see, I started my own company up here with a guy named (deleted). Hell of a man.
He’s like half blind but he’s always been into pools and pool designs and that kind of stuff. I’ve known him here and there, so, he’s all, “Hey, I know you need work, and you’ve got a little bit of money. I say we go get our business license and start a pool company.” And it was like, “Cool, let’s do it.” And we did it. We went straight from scratch, went out, got a $30,000 loan. Went bought everything to start your own business, and it was booming. And it’s called Armona-Lemoore Pool, Spa & Landscape, right here in Sacramento. And I guess my ex-wife loved more money than I did, because
I was doing that plus still doing construction work and then also doing side jobs for Make
Your Move. It’s a moving company. I still work for them here and there. And she loved money. She’d just spend it, spend it, spend it, faster than I can get it. And then when the money was finally all gone, she was too. So basically, it left me out in the blue again, and all I had was my truck. And pretty much said, you know what, I’ve got a year left.
I’m going to spend it back in the prison. So I picked up a beer and walked into my parole office. Right into my parole office, drinking that beer. I said, “Hey, man, I’m ready to go back. I’m done with life. Just send me back to prison.” And he goes, “Okay,
222 no problem. Here’s another six months.” So he sent me back, and then that’s when I just got out right now. It was March 10 of this year.
Jeff was not the only parolee that I had met who had elected to go back to prison to finish out a parole period. Often I heard from Jeff and others that “three hots and a cot” were better than being dumped out on the streets in a town like Sacramento with little money more than pocket change, being told to get a job and stay in town or risk parole violation. Most stayed unemployed or underemployed but homeless and some found prison time a better alternative than living on the streets or in tents. I asked Jeff which prison he had been in.
Which time? I’ve been to five of them. I’ve been to Mule Creek, Avenal, CRC right here in Sacramento, DVI - - I already said Mule Creek - - Corcoran, and Hotel
California down in L.A… And, yeah, I’ve been to five of them, off and on. I get moved around a lot. Two of them are basically reception centers. You go there for so many months and then until they find a place to put you, and then they ship you to the other ones…Prison? Yeah, don’t go back…When I came out, I already knew I had to come back to Sacramento, and I had four and a half months left on parole - - no, actually, yeah, six months, about six months left on parole. And when I got out this time, I was going to do the same thing, because they couldn’t give me no more time. I can’t do no more parole. March 26 - - or July 26 was my last day. They can’t do nothing for me - - nothing to me.
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And so I came out on the street. I’ve been here at Loaves & Fishes before in the past. I’ve helped, just community work and stuff like that. I knew Sister Libby from way back in 2003 and 2004, but I didn’t know her like I do now. But I came out and then I went into a hotel when I got out March 10. Stayed in a hotel for two weeks, going, man, I ain’t going to do this again. I said, “I ain’t even going to start it just to lose it.” So I called my mom, told my mom, “Hey, I’m going to pretty much going to turn myself back in.” She said, “Well, I figured that.” And she’s, “Well, you’ve only got another six months and you’re off. You never have to worry about it again. So if you’re going to go do it, just go do it.” Because I had nowhere to go up here, and money was just - - well, it takes you, even if you’ve got money in the bank, to get into an apartment, whatever, you’re blowing $1,000, $2,000. And then with no job, you’re just eating up your bank account.
And it’s like; I ain’t even going to do it. I’ve got to have some money. This way, when I do get out, I have money to actually start my life. And so I spent two weeks in a hotel, pretty much drinking. Going, okay, come get me. And said, okay, forget it, I’m done. Checked out of the hotel after two weeks on Friday and then didn’t have nothing but that black backpack you always see me carrying around. That one black backpack
I’ve had for six months and I still can’t get rid of it. I love it, I keep it, everything goes in it. I had two sets of clothes and some paperwork and that was it, and came to Loaves &
Fishes. I was talking to all them [friends], telling them, “Yeah, I’m getting ready to go back,” blah, blah, blah. I told them, “Man, I’m done. I’m just going to go wait out my six months in county, in the state. They’re going to make me live on the streets, I’m going
224 to make them house me.” That’s my thing. You want housing? Go back to prison.
You’ve got room, board, three meals a day. You’re good.
And I was sitting there talking and they go, “Hey, man, you’ve got to hear about this new thing. It’s called Safe Ground.” And I was like, okay, well what’s this about?
And at that time I wasn’t caring. He goes, “Oh, hold on. Let me go find somebody.” He went and found redheaded Jackson. And Jackson comes up, introduced himself. And he goes, “What’s up man? You need a place to stay?” I was like, “Yeah, because I didn’t plan on staying on the streets,” because if I stay on the streets, a violent side comes out on me, and then I’m going to be back with a new charge. I don’t want to get a fight. You can walk in over here, just walking into Loaves & Fishes, and people look at you, say stuff stupid, even - - you know what I mean?
So, he goes, “Well, if you want a place to stay for a couple nights, come stay with
Safe Ground.” I was like, okay, how’s that going to work? And he pretty much explained the no drugs, no alcohol, no violence. He goes, “Man, it’s 20, 30 people. We give you a tent and a sleeping bag, and you’re good to sleep. You sleep all night, get up in the morning, roll your stuff up, turn it back in.” And so I did that for about three weeks and then Jake came around. And then when Jake came around, he was an elder, so was Jackson, and we pretty much clicked, because Jake’s definitely like me. He’s been through it all. He’s been to prison. He’s done everything. Talking and bullshitting with him, and he goes, “Oh, just give us a chance.” And I was like, “Cool, I’ll give you a chance.” And then I wasn’t even there four weeks and then I kind of knew everybody, the original Safe Ground. And they were like, I guess they like the way I talked, the way I
225 act, the way I treat them and stuff like that, and they were like, “Hey, become an elder.”
And I was like, okay, why not? So I became an elder.
While at SafeGround Jeff lived in a large tent with his girlfriend Suzie, a student at a local community college. Suzie took online courses and a few classroom units and could often be found in her tent studying. Jeff was industrious and he and a few campmates worked one or more part-time jobs while living in the SafeGround and
LaFamilia camps. I asked Jeff about his meeting up with Suzie, who was at least ten years younger and what their plans were.
…And then Suzie came along. Yeah, [at] Thanksgiving, or right before
Thanksgiving. And then she came and then pretty much, yeah, we gave them - - I gave them my idea what Safe Ground was about. Basically, give respect to get respect.
You’re safe here, and the whole works. And people were like, well, how safe is it? And then people started learning. We have idiots that still come into camp that still do violence or want to do violence, people that are not even with Safe Ground. And it’s like, you’ve either got to man up and do something or step down. And pretty much I kind of went the other way, and Jake, anybody could tell you, I kind of - - they call me the pit bull and it’s for a reason. I don’t take crap off nobody. People that think they’re smarter than me, they’re not. I’ve got IQ that’s off the charts, and plus everything else I’ve ever done in my life. But, yeah, I’ll sit there and listen to people and let them tell me a story, and it’s like, okay, it’s time for you to go. Get out of here; it’s time for you to go. And
226 then, of course, it’s straight violence. And I’ve never really hit nobody. Mostly everything I ever learned was self-defense. And, like I say, I can put down 300-pound people. Big, like Victor, put him on his ass without hurting me or him. And I had to fight twice with Safe Ground, and then after that everybody was like, “Whoa. Hey, we need you. We need you.” Pretty much you got - - to get respect you must give respect.
And I pretty much started doing that, and then Sister Libby came and pretty much goes, “Hey, what is up with you? All these people - - all the park’s talking about, the green hats are talking about you. Why is everybody talking about you?” I don’t know. I don’t blow it. I’m just me. And me and Sister Libby sat down. I told her my story, and she goes, “Well, how long are you planning on being on the streets?” I said, “Until I get off parole, and the day I get off parole, I’m leaving for Tennessee,” and gave her why I was going to Tennessee. I want to get up out of California. I’m tired of it. The laws are just off the charts. There’s no work here anymore…So I was planning on just the day after I got off parole of taking off, the 26th. But Suzie, she was in Safe Ground. She was lost. She was scared, just like half the people that do come to Safe Ground. They’re lost in life. They’re scared. They’ve either - - women have either been hit, beaten, raped.
Their parents have kicked them out of the house for some odd reasons. Eventually, everybody I’ve ever known in Safe Ground, when they first get there, they give me a story. And you can read if they’re telling the truth or not, and, I don’t know, I’m kind of good at reading them or not, and pretty much I let them give me their story. That’s when they’re willing to talk. We don’t discriminate no matter what, so.
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Usually in camp, after a while, they get comfortable and they start coming around, wanting to talk. They see us all laughing, bullshitting, like La Familia. So they’ll come up, “How’re you doing?” and say, “You got water?” “Yeah, you need water? Here. You need food? You hungry, man? Eat.” You know what I mean? If I got it, it’s yours. You need a shirt? Here, take it out of my bag. Here’s a shirt. And just like Suzie, she was lost, and me and Jake and West pretty much took her under the wing and it was like, I know you’re telling us a story, but it’s your story. We’ll let you stick to it. And it was that way for two months until Thanksgiving, and then on Thanksgiving night, it poured in Sacramento so bad. I’m talking we were above ankle deep in mud.
There was nothing dry we had.
We were like, I think we were 35, 40 people at Safe Ground, and everybody’s tired. It’s 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, and it’s just pouring down rain. Tarps ain’t working. There’s nothing. And it was like, well, the best decision we could tell anybody, just take your most expensive stuff, maybe your watch, whatever you have. Leave your clothes, leave everything, and we’re heading for shelter. We’re gone. And we were over at Camp Pollock at the time, and it’s like 3:00 in the morning, dark, stormy, lightning.
It’s just awful. Made it to underneath the 12th Street bridge, and it was like, we’re pouring down wet. It’s freezing. Dave Moss is on the phone trying to get some kind of help, trying to get a church, somebody, to open. How we were going to get there, get everybody there, get their equipment there. It was like; there was no way to do it 3:00,
4:00 in the morning. So it was like, well, there’s only one way to do this. If not, we’re all going to die of pneumonia or something. So it was like, okay. We had all the women. It
228 was like 20 of us underneath the bridge. The other people were like, “No, we’ll stay.
We’ll stay. We’ll watch the camp. We’ll make sure nothing gets stolen.” It was like,
“Cool, man, but we’re here. Come here; if you need us, call us.”
And we went underneath there and then it was like, okay, we’ve got to do something. So all the guys were like, “Hey, let’s go back to Camp Pollock. We’ll find whatever wood we can find, bring it back, and man, let’s light up this bridge. If we get arrested, we get arrested. Who cares? We’re not going to die and freeze to death.” So we made this big old bonfire and freakin’ - - we had kerosene, poured it on the wet wood.
Threw a match, and it lit up the night underneath that bridge…Yeah, we kind of lit up that night, and after that it was like, okay, cops are coming by and they see this huge bonfire and there’s flashlights, and we’re just standing around. It looks like a bunch of
Indians around the thing. We’re all turning, twitching, trying to get warm. And that’s when me and Suzie got together that night. And basically, we were all huddled, 20 people huddled in a ball in the dry dirt. We were wet, and laying underneath the bridge was dry dust, so, man, we were just covered, all black, just mud. And we’re all laughing, joking throughout the night. And we’re all huddled together, guy, girl, we didn’t care.
We were just huddled up, warmth. And me and Suzie got together then and pretty much been that way since…But yeah. Homeless, people got to understand. Rich people out here that are doctors, people that are going to college. You’ve got mentally ill. You’ve got elderly, physically disabled. And if it wasn’t for Safe Ground and Sister Libby and
Dave Moss and Jackson and Jake, I would have went back into prison. And I would have been there until the 26th and wouldn’t have known about all this. But pretty much,
229 growing up in my family, you’ve always got to help someone else. If somebody needs something…If somebody needs something, help them… People used to knock on my door, my mom’s door all the time, the neighbors and stuff. “Hey, you got some food or milk?”
And it’s like, mom, “Yeah, here.” Go grocery shopping with bums on the street, whatever. Mom would never give them money. She always said, “Never give a bum or someone asking for money, never give them money. If they’re hungry, feed them.” And that’s pretty much the way I was raised. And if they need help, house them. Put them in your house, put them in your backyard, stick them in your garage for a night or two.
The conversation drifted back to the ordeal of complying with parole requirements and Jeff’s concern for other parolees in camp.
Right now, as I know of, we have 10 parolees. And basically, they can do what they want. Parole don’t care. They slap an ankle bracelet on you and say, “Man, get the hell out of my office. Come back next week. Show up here every Thursday.” [The ankle bracelet]…It’s part of parole. No, no. It started out back in the day, in like 2005. They made it for - - what do you call it - - hard core sex offenders, child molesters - - rapists.
The real sex offenders. And they had that on them for like two or three years. But the prisons got so overwhelmed that, budget cuts. Right now, there’s probably two real parole officers and the rest are all part-time parole officers. Like, my parole officer, he was a Sacramento County Sheriff sergeant. He worked all day and then, his days off, at nights, he was a parole officer. And it’s just - - they basically throw an ankle bracelet on
230 you if you’re a gang member, anything, because of the budget cuts and all that. They can’t afford to pay parole officers and stuff like that, so throw an ankle bracelet on you.
One parole officer can sit there and watch all these little dots on a screen, moving around the city, and know where you’re at, when you’re at it, and, yeah, it’s just bad.
As a citizen, it’s not right. Basically, the state puts you out - - lets you out of prison, puts you on parole, and they’re violating your rights by telling you, “You have no place to stay. You can’t live here, you can’t live there. You can’t do this, you can’t do that.” And you’re coming out of prison basically with $200 gate money. That’s not going to get you anywhere, because you’re going to use some of that to get from whatever prison you’re at to where you’re at now, and then they’ll put you on the street.
Just like we go in camp, we pick up, we clean up, everything from where we find it. We don’t go and destroy the forest. There’s open spots already there. All we do is go, move in, set up. And if there’s stuff already there - - trash, whatever - - we pick it up, we clean it, and we haul it out. And they violate us. They’ll arrest us, they’ll steal our stuff. The cops will take our stuff. Well, we call it stealing, because we ain’t going to get it back, even though no matter what it is, “Oh yeah, get it back here.” Yeah, you’re never going to get it back. And they’ll ticket us, and it’s like, how can you ticket someone that’s being homeless that’s trying to make it? Like me, right now, I’m fighting Ranger Safford. Me and him have been going head to head for four months now. And he comes in and threatens me, threatens everybody in my camp. But, like me, they call me the pit bull. I get mad.
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And it’s like, who are you to fucking tell me where I got to live? I’m on parole.
You people - - you people put me out here on the streets. Why don’t you let me go home to Fresno, to my house, to my mom, to my sister? To a place to live where I won’t have to be on the streets. I worked two frickin' jobs. Basically my taxes were paying your wages, and you’re out here trying to ticket me. And it’s like, ticket me. Give me a ticket.
I ain’t going to pay for it. I’m going to have it signed off and do community service. I ain’t going to give you no money, so you’re wasting your time. And we’ve got people out here burning down the forest that they don’t care about. They’d rather come in and they see a camp of 10, 15 tents, they’ll harass us. They’ll tear us up. They’ll, “You’ve got to move. You’ve got to do this.” And it’s like, you know what? Go get your friends, come back and make us move.
I would have never stood up to a cop, a ranger, nothing like that until Safe
Ground and La Familia, my family. Pretty much, we came together and it was like, man, we’re done. We’re tired of running and hiding deeper and deeper in the bushes where it’s harder to get medical help. It’s a 45-minute trek just to get from there to a road, and then from that road, you’ve got to get to a yellow box on the bike trail for them to even find you, even though you’ve got a cell phone. You can’t say, “Yeah, I’m right here at this bridge,” because they can’t bring the stuff out there on the bridge. : And you’ve got to - - it’s - - basically it’s, I hate to say it, it’s racist, the way I see it. It’s all racist. I guess that’s what you’d call it… It was racism everywhere, any creed, every color. But basically, it’s racism...[It’s] because I’m homeless…They consider us dirt, trash, even though I work two jobs, my girlfriend goes to college, Jake works two jobs, Madison
232 works a job. Everybody in my camp has a job. And when we’re not working, we’re here at Loaves & Fishes volunteering and helping the homeless, telling them about
[SafeGround]. They consider us trash. We’re homeless…A separate race. Like the white man calling a black man a nigger. Black calling the whites honkies. You know what I mean? It’s segregation. That’s the better word to say. They want to segregate us and put us out of people’s lives. There’s so many people that call and go, “I heard about you. I read about you.” And, “How can I help? What can I do?” And they call the office all the time, and we’re answering these calls, talking to people, and we tell them a little bit more that they don’t even know. And we say, “Why don’t you come into Loaves and Fishes, and come in the office. I’ll give you some literature. You can sit down and meet some of us and hear our voice.” It’s like, “Well, um, I, um…” They just want to know how to help, but they don’t want to come here.
…You do have trash, what we call trash. You’ve got the bums that will sit there and beg you for money 24/7 just to go get alcohol. They’re dirty. They don’t clean.
They don’t shave. And basically then that makes society look at everybody, even people that do work. The only thing is we need one step. Just give us one step. One stepping stone to a house. And we don’t live the way most homeless people do. Like I said, we got
- - I got three black people, three women, two white guys, one Spaniard, Happy. He’s from Spain or whatever. Me, I’m from Portugal, my family is, and I got every different creed, color, race out there. And we come together every night, have dinner together, talk about what everybody’s problem is, what you might have to do that you need help with. And you’ll hear, “Okay, what do you need? Okay, let’s go get it done.” You know
233 what I mean? “Oh, you need money for what? Oh, that sounds good, here.” And we’re passing money around like its paper, like its metal, out there.
In closing I asked Jeff what he would like to be doing in the next few months and beyond.
Okay, me and Suzie. She’s still going to school. She’s got bigger cojones than most men out there. She gets up every morning, she does her school. She comes here, takes her shower, we eat. She goes in that office. She’s on that computer doing her college work. She goes to her school. My work - - We’re on the stepping stone - - actually, one more step of the stepping stone. [In a few months when] We’re in an apartment, and then, instead of living on the streets, I’m going to be basically working with me and Suzie. She’ll be going to school, and basically, you’re still going to see me around here. I’ll probably start up another business. I haven’t figured out what yet.
Pool business and landscaping in Sacramento is year round work, 24/7. That’s one thing, when the economy failed, ours never got touched. Pools always got to stay blue.
And yards and stuff always got to be mowed and landscaped. But yeah, that, and then
I’m thinking about starting my own moving company, because pretty much got this one all figured out. And it’s a good business with a lot of moving companies, but most people like Two Men and a Truck or stuff like that, just, I called them. Hey, give me - - I needed a bid on a three-bedroom, two-bath house, and they gave me their price. And it’s like, man, I can underbid them and take that job. I’m a money maker. The only problem is I
234 hate money. But no, I’m going to keep working. We’re going to get a two-bedroom apartment. There’s one guy, Happy, he’s still a little bit lost in life. He’s 26, he’s lost.
Dreads, long dreads. We shaved his head off - - his hair. Yeah. He’s lost. Even though he’s 26, he’s lost in life right now. He’s scared. He don’t know if he wants to go back home. And it’s like me and Suzie have already told him, “Well, you don’t have to go.
I’m getting a two-bedroom apartment. It’s for a reason. Move in with me until you decide what you’re going to do. Either go home, or I’m going to put my boot in your butt and send you home.” He comes from money. Yeah, his mom owns a really - - realtor company - - And then his dad owns some big landscaping, construction company. He comes from money. He got lost in life, and he’s been a manager of Foodco and all that.
He had money when he left. He straight packed a bag, $8,000 out of his bank account, and headed for California, thinking it was a dream here. And he found out it ain’t.
California is not like what most people say. People that are in California want out, and everybody that’s out want in. It’s like, man, they can have it; we’re getting out. But we got a year, about a year. Spring semester, Suzie’s got to do that, and then basically we’re going to get out of California. [Maybe to] Tennessee or Mississippi. Madison and
Veronica, they own 25 acres in Mississippi with four houses on it. And they’re old houses, old, antique houses, whatever. They need work, construction work, but the water and every - - it’s all legit. You can move it. It’s just you’re going to have to fix them up.
And we became a family and he’s like, “Man, come on. Come on. There’s work back there. There’s work back there.” And I’ve already had my resume sent back there in
Mississippi. Hit the computers back there. Got one call for an oil well. They need a
235 heavy equipment operator or crane operator, and I’m licensed to do that. And then, what else was there? Oh, the shrimp boat. Never been a shrimp boat captain boss. Kind of wouldn’t mind getting out on the boat, doing a little bit of shrimping…But it’s just something I ain’t never done, and there’s money in both. The oil wells, they start out anywhere from $28 to $30 an hour, and shrimp boats are about the same thing. And it’s money, and it’s a lot cheaper back there, and it’s a place I can go and just start my life over with Suzie, and she can actually go to Mississippi, the University of Mississippi, and all that…To be a college professor of European history, like social studies.
Jeff is a hard worker, industrious and tireless. Since leaving the camp he and
Suzie did rent that two bedroom apartment that they have shared with various previously homeless friends in an application of the “tough love” style Jeff presents. Jeff has opened a moving business and is looking at several other opportunities. Suzie, who lost a baby while living along the river, is still in school and working towards her AA degree. It has been several months since I spoke to them to see where they are in their plans to possibly leave the state and relocate in Tennessee or Mississippi. I did not learn why a young girl like Suzie was homeless but many others like her were either graduated from the foster care system, fleeing domestic violence, or had burned bridges with family members, including seemingly overwhelmed parents, and had taken to the streets in search of safety, friendship and direction. Although not the only college student in SafeGround or on the river, Suzie presented herself in a somewhat unique light. She was determined to attend school and make something of herself.
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Homeless Themes, Behavior Patterns
All of these stories of homeless individuals from SafeGround have some common themes that I heard over and over again in my fieldwork interviews. Many of the individuals I interviewed, including those whose stories are in this chapter, experienced a troubled childhood, often having faced abuse or neglect by parents or other family members. Raised in a dysfunctional family structure with one or both parents absent from the home for extended periods of their childhood, these individuals often felt they were left to fend for themselves since a young age. In interviews I was often presented a dual message when they spoke of their childhood and parents. Many expressed an understanding of the problems their parents faced, i.e. substance abuse, mental illness, incarceration, in a way that suggested they had a caring and loving relationship.
However, at the same time they expressed frustration over the hopeless situations that they found themselves in, and a realistic understanding of the impacts it had on their lives in a way that expressed anger and hurt.
These early childhood and young adult experiences appeared to have a direct impact on these individuals’ sense of self. Although they may have had expressed successes in their past, they were prone to personal failure, often due to the inability to handle social and emotional relationships in their life. The repeated failures to deal with other people had often led to problems with school officials, employers, law enforcement, legal and penal systems, and other social institutions. Moreover, these failures and the associated personal fallout led to a low sense of self-worth that was often compensated for by embellishment of personal stories, creation of new identities, and behavior patterns
237 that appear as attempts at compensating for repeated failure. I was often told stories of failed efforts at turning their lives around where I had to conclude that it was difficult for these individuals to take advantage of opportunities because they had developed patterns of behavior built on repeated failure. Individuals often had developed a strong mistrust of the persons and institutions that were there to help them and the mistrust often led to misdirected behavior that caused them to fail.
In their defense, the institutions that are there to help them were often contributing to repeated failure by not recognizing their needs as individuals with damaged sense of self-worth and low self-esteem. By requiring behavior that many of these people were incapable of delivering without better support the institutions were contributing to the continued failure. Many times the expectations of a particular agency was far beyond what any member of the housed community would tolerate and insensitive to the conditions of those living in homelessness. For example, an agency that provides referrals to the mental health care appointments that are required to qualify disabled individuals for SSI payments required that people line up before they opened to be seen.
That frequently required that they get there by 4:00am or 5:00am and wait in a long line to “maybe” be seen. Many individuals camped outside the agency to be able to get in line first, but many couldn’t and failed to get appointments. Others would wait in line and in the office for hours, only to be told that they were rejected without discussion due to a bureaucratic technicality. To state that this type of treatment was creating a hierarchical relationship, subordination of the homeless individual, and subjecting them to unreasonable expectations, is a gross understatement. However, as we will see in
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Chapter Six, this is often the norm in relationships between our institutions and the homeless or others living in poverty.
It is these exclusionary practices of institutions that can be damaging to the sense of self-worth that is experienced by many homeless individuals. While it may be easy to say that the causation is the dysfunctional families, lack of education and substance abuse in the individuals past, it is also important that we recognize that we are failing to connect with these individuals through poorly designed programs and equally poor bureaucratic processes.
On the Brighter Side
On the positive side many interviewed and observed over a two and a half year period were intelligent individuals that were searching for a way to turn their life around.
I think positive attitudes at some level came through in all the stories presented in this chapter. After conducting many hours of unstructured one-on-one interviews and many more hours of close participant observation, I came to the conclusion that, given the right opportunities, many of these individuals can and will help themselves. The tendency of the social service institutions, law enforcement and politicians to create hierarchical relationships as requirements of service goes back to placing the blame on the victims we discussed in Chapter Three. This is not to say that programs to help individuals with addictions, mental disability or behavioral problems can be allowed to dictate the solutions. However, they are keenly aware in many cases of the issues they face and what they need. Relationships of structure, mentoring and respect where there are realistic expectations of what is determined to be acceptable behavior are required.
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All of these stories presented in this chapter showed some very positive common behaviors. The homeless stories showed four individuals from varied backgrounds and all four were, in some way, desirous of helping other people. Jimi tried his best to be a teacher to children, a tutor to others in his condition and an elder in the SafeGround community. Rose was dedicated to helping those less fortunate than herself, mentored younger women on how to be safe, and where to access helpful programs, and became a
SafeGround elder. James, after twenty-five years of episodic homelessness, found something in Safe Ground that allowed him to step forward and volunteer to run for election as an elder. Finally, Jeff, after years of being in and out of prison and going from one job to another, found something in SafeGround that kept him from going back to prison to complete his parole.
The illegal SafeGround encampment did not provide all the answers to turn the lives of these and other homeless people completely around. However, it did provide a community, an affiliation with others, where their shared aspirations and dreams could become a social force in their lives, giving them agency to do something about their homeless condition. SafeGround had rules and the homeless individuals were the ones who created and enforced the rules within their own community. Individuals and elders often came to board members, committee leaders and volunteers, for advice and guidance where they were not treated as subordinates but rather as recipients in a mentoring or counseling relationship.
In the next chapter, we will look in more depth of the loss of rights experienced by the homeless, the history of those rights, and answer some critical questions including,
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“what are these rights and where did these rights originate?” I close this chapter with another song lyric from G.P. Bailey, a homeless advocate, songwriter, performer and poet for the Safe Ground movement. This song is called “You Can’t Stay Here.”
Where you gonna go where there’s no ho-ho Telling you - you can’t stay here no more Everytime you find a little hide-a-way Someone come along and says you just can’t stay
Can’t stay here and you can’t be there And you can’t lay down not anywhere, not anyplace Is what I see, land of the free Least it used to be
Lost your job and you lost your home Sold everything that you ever owned But you can’t lay down in your own hometown Land of the free, least it used to be
People’s Park, you can’t stay too It could happen here I’m telling you Make history, let’s make it be Land of the free, like it used to be - G.P. Bailey (2010b), You Can’t Stay Here, SafeGround Supporter and Songsmith
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- If we value freedom…because of the importance of choice and of not being constrained in the choices one makes, then the value ought to lead us to pay some attention to how many choices a person has left after each constraint has been exercised. From any point of view that values choice and freedom of action, it ought to be a matter of concern that the choices left open to a person are being progressively closed off, one by one, and that he is nearing a situation where there is literally nowhere he can turn. - Jeremy Waldron, Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom (1991:295).
Chapter Six
THE “EMPTY TENTS” OF FREEDOM
In addition to a look at potential lost freedoms, in this chapter I want to examine the issues of citizenship and human rights faced by the homeless in the United States, and in so doing, answer the following questions. First, is there, as I suspect, and others have reported (Amster 2008; Arnold 2004; Middleton 2011; Wright 1997), a definable loss of freedoms, including citizenship and basic human rights in homeless populations? I approach citizenship not only as the legal rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizens but as the socially, politically and economically contracted rights of all citizens in an egalitarian society. Additionally, I will investigate basic human rights as defined in the
1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, specifically, but not limited to,
Article 25 that states,
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or
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lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control and Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection (United Nations 1948)
Second, if the homeless population does experience an identifiable loss of freedom, citizenship and/or basic human rights, what are the dynamics of the loss? The objective of this question is to understand and to focus on the essence of a loss of freedom and rights by the homeless. I borrow the notion of three levels of citizenship from sociologist, Michael Rowe (1999): “Full citizenship, with strong practical and psychological connections to mainstream institutions, rights and responsibilities; second- class citizenship, with marginal connections to these institutions, rights, and responsibilities; and non-citizenship, in which the individual is severed from society”
(Rowe 1999:6). I then employ Rowe’s hierarchical models of citizenship to estimate the extent of any loss of rights uncovered in this study. Third can the understanding of the dynamics of a loss of freedom and rights help lead to a better understanding of the underlying problems of combating homelessness?
Home of the Free or Homeless and Unfree?
Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Anyone who thinks himself the master of others is no less a slave than they (Rousseau 1988:85).1
The quote at the beginning of this chapter by UC Berkeley law professor Jeremy
Waldron is at the root of the questions I want to address regarding a loss of freedom, citizenship and human rights by the homeless. In Chapter Four I focused on the activities
243 of the SafeGround homeless community and I spoke of the fact that SafeGround and other homeless groups in Sacramento are subjected to frequent law enforcement
“sweeps” of the areas they occupy, sweeps accompanied with threats of tickets, fines, arrests and confiscation of personal belongings. These sweeps serve to force the homeless to move to another hidden campsite where they stay until law enforcement sweeps the area again. Often they go back and forth between several sites as the “cat and mouse” game is played with the law enforcement and local officials. My observations of this continual harassment of SafeGround and others the last two years has demonstrated to me that the harassment by law enforcement accomplishes nothing more than to reinforce the unequal relationship between the local power structure (city and county public officials and law enforcement) and the homeless. In this scenario there remains nowhere for the homeless to “be” and there are no constructive discussions by those exercising authority of how to solve the problem of where the homeless can “be,” where they can go when told to move. Further commenting on material impoverishment or what communications scholar Michael Middleton (2011), refers to as the “first common condition of struggle” encountered by homeless and other communities of resistance,
Jeremy Waldron writes that it is, “…disastrous for those who must live their whole lives on common land…one of the most callous and tyrannical exercises of power in modern time by a (comparatively) rich and complacent majority against a minority of their less fortunate human beings” (Waldron 1991:301-302).
In Sacramento, realistic expectations of the results of the Ten-Year Plan to End
Chronic Homelessness 2006-2016 (Sacramento Steps Forward 2006), insufficient
244 shelters, and underfunded affordable and supportive housing programs, all fall short in addressing this most immediate problem of material impoverishment or where to “be.”
As a participant observer and activist ethnographer I am left asking, “Where do we expect homeless persons in Sacramento to sleep tonight? Where can they realistically go to use toilet facilities or why aren’t there public toilet facilities for homeless people?
“Where do they get a safe drinking water when it is 100 degrees or stay warm and dry when it is cold and wet in the winter months?” All these questions are about activities that are necessary for sustaining human life, yet they remain unanswered for the homeless in the City and County of Sacramento and much of the United States in 2011.
Freedom to “Be” [Somewhere]
Everyone has to be somewhere and every human activity, every action, whether individual or collective has to be performed someplace. SafeGround members like any other persons, need a place to sit, sleep, eat, talk, and take care of bodily functions. This fact is not something that can be negotiated; it is a physical reality, a spatial component to physical life. Moreover, everyone must “be” somewhere or they cease to exist. Waldron takes this in the direction of understanding the freedoms involved when he writes, “no one is free to perform an action unless there is somewhere he is free to perform it”
(Waldron 1991:295). Since the homeless are being told they are not allowed to “be” (sit, camp, sleep, or urinate) on public property and they are not owners of private property, their options are immediately nil unless or until public space regulations allow them to
“be” there legally. If a homeless person in Sacramento can’t get shelter, doesn’t qualify for affordable or supportive housing and owns no private property, their search for safe
245 ground, for a safe and legal place to “be,” leads them into a double bind situation where they can’t perform life sustaining activities (eating, sleeping, urinating) legally and have no choice but to perform them illegally. This is what Wright (1997) refers to as “out of place” and Amster (2008) calls “lost in space.” This exclusionary action by the authorities or “barriers to inclusion by dominant social relations” (Middleton 2011) has been referred to as ‘differential inclusion’ (Hardt and Negri 2004, Middleton 2011).
Middleton explains, “These communities are not necessarily excluded from national and global hierarchies and relations of power by virtue of their marginal economic status.
Rather they are differentially included in ways that limit their ability to be recognized as legitimate subjects” (Middleton 2011:25).2
Private property laws in the U.S. allow the property owner many rights including the right to decide who is allowed access to their property. Laws protect a property owner’s rights and someone who is someplace he is not allowed to “be” on private property can be physically removed and punished. In addition to rules for private property, there are also collective property rules. Using Waldron’s (1991) definition of common property as a subset of collective property that includes sidewalks, streets, parks, subways, etc., I note that the use of this common property (public space) is usually controlled by the state or local governments on behalf of the whole community.
Common property can include privately owned property-places such as shopping malls and commercial parks that are operated as public places. Since the homeless do not own private property, they have no choice but to “be” on common property and they are allowed on common property as long as they don’t violate any usage restrictions or laws.
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For example, the homeless population may find that community parks often close at dusk, and communities may place restrictions on public gatherings without permits, urination in public, or bathing in public waterways. Referring again to Waldron’s quote above, “No one is free to perform an action unless there is somewhere he is free to perform it” (Waldron 1991:295), it becomes clear that the SafeGround and other homeless persons who have nowhere to sleep, and must camp outdoors in public space have lost their freedom to ‘be’ somewhere legally, since they have no other options. This differential inclusion of the homeless population, by reducing their options in comparison with those of the economically stable members of society or the socially dominant withholds rights and privileges from citizens based on economic impoverishment and the subsequent stigmas associated with poverty and homelessness. There is nowhere the homeless are free to “be” when, for example, there is an ordinance like Sacramento’s anti-camping ordinance that prohibits all camping on public property, as well as private property for more than one consecutive day. Provisions are made by the City Manager’s office for the issuance of special camping permits but they are not provided by unofficial policy to the homeless. Those that are not sheltered or housed are not legally allowed to sleep (in Sacramento: camp) in any public space, yet it is biologically impossible for them not to “be” (think eat, sleep, urinate, etc.) somewhere. Moreover, in Sacramento, as in many other U.S. cities, public space or “quality of life” ordinances have been instituted regardless of this obvious fact and make people “unfree” to perform actions they must perform to remain alive as healthy human beings. The disenfranchising of the homeless from the public sphere and criminalization of needing a place to “be,” is our first direct
247 evidence of the political abandonment of the homeless, of their indisputable and substantial loss of freedom here, as well as elsewhere in the United States.
We are reminded by political scientist Kathleen Arnold that, “the home represents the synthesis of two rubrics of normative criteria defining citizenship: it signifies economic independence and is the precondition for any degree of citizenship and further, it symbolizes political identity” (Arnold 2004:3). Can we extend our citizenship and human rights to the economically deprived? Can we provide political recognition to someone living outdoors? How broad are our freedoms? How equal is our justice?
Keeping these questions in mind, I look at the question of citizenship and human rights for those that lack a home.
Citizenship and Human Rights
When we speak of citizenship we often think of a relationship between the individual and the nation-state. However, the notion of citizenship originated long before the nation-state. For example, in ancient Greece citizenship was the term for members of the city-states. In modern moral and political theory citizenship is frequently associated with social contract theory and, thus with the writings of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679),
John Locke (1632-1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).
In Leviathan written in 1651, Hobbes (2011) expressed his thoughts on social contract, which he believed led to the establishment of sovereign society. Hobbes saw social contract as an event where individuals came together and abdicated some of their individual rights so that others would abdicate theirs. With this event and the ceding of
248 individual rights on behalf of the society, Hobbes felt society would effectively move beyond anarchy, which he deemed the result of natural law. Subsequent early liberal thought claimed that every citizen should be provided for, thus allowing for survival of the entire community, and framing this as the right to self-preservation and preservation of all God’s children (Arnold 2004). Richard Ashcraft states that Locke’s radical claim was that “poor relief is a socially constitutive and necessary feature of any legitimate society, since societies are only legitimate to the extent that they realize the purposes and objectives of natural law” (Ashcraft 1993:7). This early liberal thought conceptualized subsistence as a right not a privilege and placed communal responsibility over rights of the individual. Rousseau wrote in On Social Contract (1762), “…but the social order is a sacred right which serves as the basis of all the others. Yet, this right is not derived from nature; it is, therefore, founded upon agreements” (Rousseau 1988:85). In its most basic form Rousseau reduced the social pact (contract) to the following terms, “each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme control of general will, and, as a body, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole” (Rousseau
1988:93). Rousseau’s social contract theory views the pact between the people and the government as the agreement that establishes the public person “formed by the union of all other persons,” that today forms the nation-state or sovereign body politic. Members of the body politic individually are the “citizens when they participate in sovereign authority” and “subjects when they are subject to the laws of the state” (Rousseau 1988).
It must be asked if these men who framed the construct of the social contract argued for
249 equal political power or rights without any mention of economic status, how did we get on a path that disenfranchises the economically vulnerable including the homeless?
The answer can be found Hobbes and Locke’s argument for “socially meaningful labor” as a justification for property and the prerequisite for earned political power as opposed to that through birthright (Arnold 2004). “In this way, the protection of private property…stemmed from the notion that private property was necessary for self- preservation and a manifestation of industriousness” (Arnold 2004:22). The result, however, was the disenfranchisement of the poor as non-productive members of society and, therefore, as those not entitled to equal political rights. In other words, they were citizens, albeit under passive or protective citizenship, as opposed to the active citizenship of the property owners. In contemporary liberal capitalist nations including the United States, the notion of economic independence as a basis for political citizenship rights remains strong, although unstated in the U.S. Constitution.
In the United States today citizenship rights are often considered dual-citizenship rights because a citizen normally has rights (and responsibilities) both as a member of the nation and the particular state they reside in. The citizenship rights of U.S. citizens are found in the U.S. Constitution and the Amendments, and while we usually think of the
Bill of Rights, Amendments I through X, as the foundation of these rights, they go beyond what is written there. The Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that
“the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people” (U.S. Constitution 1791).3 While this amendment has not been generally been viewed as limiting expansion of governmental
250 power other than that based on the rights enumerated in the Constitution, its interpretation has been expanded beyond the original enforcement only against the federal government, to include the states. Of special interest to this study of homelessness is the following
Supreme Court jurist’s concurring opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) which states,
The Framers did not intend that the first eight amendments be construed to exhaust the basic and fundamental rights…I do not mean to imply that the … Ninth Amendment construes an independent source of rights protected from infringement by either the States or the Federal Government…While the Ninth Amendment – and indeed the entire Bill of Rights – originally concerned restrictions upon federal power, the subsequently enacted Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States as well from abridging fundamental personal liberties. And, the Ninth Amendment, in indicating that not all such liberties are specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments, is surely relevant in showing the existence of other fundamental personal rights, now protected from the state, as well as federal infringement. In sum, the Ninth Amendment simply lends strong support to the view that the liberty protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments from infringements by the Federal Government or the States is not restricted to rights specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments (Griswold v. Connecticut 1965).4
What, then, are the other “unalienable rights” that are referred to as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” in the Declaration of Independence? I suggest that one of the modern sources of these unalienable rights can be found in the United Nations
Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and subsequent United Nations Human Rights
Treaties and Covenants that the U.S. has helped author and signed (although not all have been ratified).
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The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Based on “recognition of inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights” of all people as a foundation of “freedom, justice and peace in the world,” the United
Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), was adopted on December
10, 1948. The thirty Articles in this declaration spell out specific and universal human rights agreed to as inalienable by those nations, including the United States that signed and ratified this U.N. declaration. Among some of those rights that I think are important in any discussion of the rights of the homeless are Article 3: security of person; Article 7: equality before the law; Article 13: freedom of movement and residence within borders;
Article 17: protection of property; Article 20: peaceful assembly; Article 22: social security and economic, social and cultural rights; Article 23: employment, unemployment protection, equal pay, just wages; Article 24: rest and leisure; Article 25: standard-of living adequate for health and well-being; Article 26: education; Article 27: participation in cultural life of community; and Article 28: social order within which these rights can be realized.
The UDHR is a declaration and not a treaty and as such is not enforceable against those countries which have signed and ratified it. It is somewhat of an irony that the UN
Human Rights Commission that created the UDHR was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), who while President had proposed
“four universal freedoms” for all people in the world in his 1941 State of the Union
Address,5 which was subsequently adopted by the WWII Allies as their basic war aims, and a Second Bill of Rights in his 1944 State of the Union Address6 shortly before his
252 death. These constructs of freedoms and rights for all men survived and were carried forward to become part of the UDHR.
The UN has continued to work extensively on human rights since the UDHR in
1948. Two of the many achievements that stand out are treaties that bring most of these rights into a realm of enforceability. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights were both adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 16, 1966, and went in force on
March 23, 1976. The United States has signed both treaties and ratified the second of these respectively in 1992. However, in ratifying the second treaty Congress stipulated so many reservations, understandings and declarations, that the treaty has little domestic effect. Since our Congress has not acted with legislation to fully to implement this treaty, it is considered ostensibly binding by international law but is not included in the domestic law of the nation. By not fully ratifying these treaties, the United States has not accepted the same responsibility for these human rights as the majority of nations in the world and, while the United States claims to be the human rights leader and, to some extent, acts as the human rights police in the world, we have demonstrated that we lack the political will necessary to implement these human rights for all our own citizens.
The UDHR and the Homeless
The U.S. failure to fully support human rights in the UDHR and subsequent UN human rights treaties provides an important key to our failure to effectively construct the infrastructure to combat homelessness in the postwar years. Homeless citizens and others living in extreme poverty in the U.S. are not extended the rights that the UDHR and
253 subsequent treaties provide for even if we argue that they are constitutionally guaranteed.
As an example, I refer again to UDHR Article 25 that provides an “adequate standard of living for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including clothing, housing, and medical care…” My observations of the SafeGround community and other such groups in Sacramento have repeatedly demonstrated that these homeless people are left without proper nourishment, clothing and shelter (housing) to protect them from the elements even during seasonal climatic extremes. Moreover, the physically ill, disabled and mentally ill among the vulnerable poor are without healthcare for primarily individual economic reasons and because of the national political will. Given the dramatic failures of the social safety net in the current political economy, they are, in effect, left to fend for themselves, while at the same time being treated as disenfranchised citizens. From the perspectives I have detailed, this is another demonstration of the loss of the unalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” that citizens are constitutionally guaranteed in the U.S.
At this point it must be asked, “What is it that holds back the wealthiest nation in the world from agreeing to provide an adequate standard of living for all citizens if other, poorer nations can attempt to do so?” Even when the argument is made that some nations that have ratified the treaties have failed to provide all these rights, it is hard to justify our reluctance or lack of political will to support these ideals, which would provide the basis for an more adequate social safety net. In Chapter Seven I look at some of the political, economic and social reasons for this reluctance. Before doing so however, I want to look at how the homeless have fared in the legal system within the United States.
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“Empty Tents” of Freedom
As we saw in Chapter Two, the anti-homeless laws designed to support the war on homelessness being fought across the United States today have their roots in the vagrancy laws of 17th, 18th and 19th century England. These vagrancy laws were designed to fight the idleness of vagrants, who were seen as contributing little labor or productivity to the economy. The goal of these laws was the confinement of vagrants where they could be “taught the virtues of labor, in contrast to the medieval charity provided in monasteries and almshouses” (Beier 2004:18). There can be little doubt that the same forces that created these laws led to the concept of socially meaningful labor as a justification of property and political inclusion written about by Hobbes and Locke.
Today’s anti-homeless laws appear more concerned with keeping the homeless out of public spaces and interaction with domiciled citizens than with direct concern about idleness although “idle, lazy, or unproductive” is still part of the stigma the homeless face. The actions supported (local ordinances, law enforcement sweeps) often appear to be at the request of business leaders, who are concerned with maintaining the aesthetics of the public and consumptive spaces to promote business, than with the homeless. Feldman argues that this change from vagrancy laws to anti-homeless laws represents a “significant transformation” in the identification of the problem they address and that it reveals “a larger shift in the very constitution of the public sphere from the productive public sphere and its preoccupation with idleness to the consumptive public sphere and its preoccupation with aesthetic appearance” (Feldman 2004:29).
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These laws must be understood as a response by lawmakers to the hegemony of the business community and not as serious efforts to address social issues. Protection is provided to the business community and to the consumptive public citizens, who are uncomfortable in the presence of the homeless “others.” In other words, many of the anti-homeless laws or public space ordinances are trying to protect the consumption habits of the American citizenry in places like malls, shopping districts, and village squares. In the last thirty years we have seen a multitude of new anti-homeless legislation, city ordinances (anti-sleeping, anti-camping and anti-loitering), provided to law enforcement across the United States as a tool to keep the public spaces aesthetically appealing to the consumptive public.
In a case that provided a stunning victory yet only a temporary gain for the homeless, Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville (1972), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a vagrancy law in Jacksonville, Florida as unconstitutionally vague. However, in the years after the 1972 ruling, as the United States moved forward as a postindustrial economy and the number of homeless persons increased dramatically, cities began to tighten the restrictions, passing anti-homeless legislation regarding the use of public spaces. In Joyce v. San Francisco (1994) the Federal District Court of Northern
California rejected an Eighth Amendment challenge (cruel and unusual punishment) and in doing so declared that homelessness is not an “involuntary status” and, therefore, was considered a “voluntary conduct,” and acts of the homeless could considered punishable
(Feldman 2004:59-60).7 This ruling is important because the determination that homelessness was voluntary meant that the court determined that homeless individuals
256 chose and the court identified, “bare life” and they, therefore, were entitled only to the
“bare life” choices of necessity and not those choices of the consumptive citizen to be in public places. This determination of homelessness as voluntary is an example of misrecognition of the homeless by the courts and a clear example of how misrecognition can have major impacts on homeless person’s lives and well-being.
The concept of homelessness as a voluntary condition was again upheld in Love v.
City of Chicago (1996 and 1998). This case challenged the constitutionality of the routine Chicago police practice of confiscating possessions of homeless persons when they were not at their sleeping location in a public place (Feldman 2004:63-64). Again, the court ruled the homeless chose to be homeless and that the city could not be held responsible for the safety of their possessions left on public property. Some of these homeless plaintiffs had acquired a large number of belongings, “for homeless persons,” such as blankets, clothes, sleeping bags and even furniture provided by social services agencies. The court addressed this as excessive consumption and in the decision described the belongings of the homeless plaintiffs as “accumulating beyond necessity and thereby losing their entitlement to protection” (Feldman 2004:64). The concluding remarks by the court are critical to understanding the ramifications of this case on the homeless. The opinion concludes with the articulation of what was assumed in the prior reasoning that property legitimately possessed by street dwellers is restricted to those items essential for physical survival, reduced to that which sustains bare life. The court concluded:
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My own opinion…is that some of the plaintiffs are entitled to compensation…provided that those belongings were attended to or relocated to safe areas, were not intermingled with unsafe or unsanitary items, and were the basic items, such as sleeping bag and several blankets, required to live on the sidewalk (Love v Chicago 1998 in Feldman 2004:66).
The court further stated that if individuals make voluntary choices to live on the streets they have chosen the bare life existence and, therefore, are not entitled to full rights of property ownership and protection of those rights but only to those of bare life existence. The court in the Love v. Chicago (1996, 1998) decision is warning the poor that if one chooses to be homeless, one chooses to live the bare life and take risk with owning any possessions beyond bare life necessities for survival. Simply stated, if one lives in public spaces one forfeits one’s property rights and risks confiscation of one’s belongings. From my perspective, this ruling represents a direct violation of citizenship and human rights as constitutionally defined both by the Fourth and Eighth Amendments
(1791) to the U.S. Constitution and, as stated in the UN Declaration of Human Rights
(1948) Articles 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 12, and 17.
These U.S. court decisions that look at the condition of homelessness as both voluntary and worthy of only the minimal protection clearly appear to stem from the early liberal concepts of economic independence as a requirement for full or active political rights, from the concept that anything less than full economic independence is worthy only of passive political rights. I argue that this is in disagreement with U.S. constitutional law and out of alignment with the UN UDHR constructs of universal human rights.
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I want to conclude this review of U.S. court cases with a close look at two cases, which side by side make a dramatic point. The first is Clark v. Community For Creative
Non-Violence, wherein the Supreme Court ruled against homeless activists and supported a Parks Department regulation against camping.8 However, the homeless activists were allowed to place two “symbolic campsites” on the Capitol Mall near the White House, but no one was allowed to occupy them. In the second case, Metropolitan Council, Inc. v. Safir, a District Court supported activists for tenant’s rights protesting against rent increases in a rent-controlled district of New York City that could hypothetically force them into homelessness. The court allowed the protest, stating that the ban on public camping was overbroad.
Looking at these two cases we see an interesting dilemma in the courts’ decisions.
In Clark the court ruled to stop the homeless from sleeping in tents but allowed unoccupied tents for symbolic protest by the homeless. In Metropolitan the court allowed domiciled citizens the right to override an ordinance against public camping to protest a rent increase that might make them homeless. I believe, as Feldman also argues, the significance is that the court makes sleeping in public by domiciled (economically independent) citizens significant and worthy of protection and distinguishes it from sleeping in public by homeless by specifically mentioning intoxicated or homeless individuals as those that the ban is aimed at (Feldman 2004:139).
Looking at these two cases side by side, we have to conclude that the courts are supporting a legal position that only domiciled citizens have the right to use sleeping in public as a form of protest. Again, we see a pattern in these cases of the loss of rights by
259 the homeless, who by situation often have no choice but to sleep in public to survive.
Empty tents are OK to protest homelessness, if you are homeless, but if you are domiciled you can sleep outside, regardless of the ban, if it is to protest against potential homelessness. It is a confusing message to the homeless or anyone else trying to understand the court’s position. The result is again a politically exclusionary act against the homeless and a direct attack on their civil rights.
Anthony Lehr et al vs. City of Sacramento
In August of 2009 the City and County of Sacramento were sued in District Court by homeless plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit that asserted that they had been subjected to unconstitutional treatment when their personal belongings were seized by local law enforcement officials (city police and county park rangers). The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the homeless clients, Loaves & Fishes, Francis House and the Sacramento
Homeless Organizing Committee (SHOC) by civil rights attorney Mark E. Merin of
Sacramento. The lawsuit alleges that the Sacramento law enforcement practices of seizing and destroying personnel property of homeless people violated their Fourth
Amendment rights regarding improper search and seizure and their Fourteenth
Amendment rights regarding due process.
On October 27, 2008, Ralf Junior Plunkett had his property taken by Sacramento Police Officer Gish (Officer Gish #707) and another officer when he was cited for unlawful camping near the American River and Canterbury Road. The two officers pulled the tent downhill tearing it while dragging it downhill. Tent was unusable. Thereafter, also damaged cooking stove and ruined food.9
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Description of property seizures, similar to the one above by Sacramento City and
County law enforcement, were provided repeatedly by the homeless plaintiffs in this case. The type of personal property seized ranged from backpacks, sleeping bags, tents and other camping equipment to clothes, blankets, official identification, personal papers, medications, tools and even military medals (including a Purple Heart). Often they reported that law enforcement simply tossed their belongings into a vehicle or trailer as if it were garbage and provided no information as to how to retrieve it. Additionally, the
City Police directed Volunteers of America (VOA) staff to destroy. “Any property left at a site by homeless people, and any property that they are unable to move on short notice, is collected and dumped in a garbage truck, dumpster, or similar receptacle. The person who witnessed this…saw the disposal of property belonging to some thirty homeless people at a time, on six different occasions, at a location across from Union Gospel
Mission on Bannon Street, over the past few years.”10
In early 2010 the County of Sacramento settled the lawsuit, paying $488,000.00 to a fund that would be distributed to settle the claims of the plaintiffs, several homeless organizations and to pay legal fees. At that time attorneys for the City of Sacramento made it clear that they had no intention of settling as the county had. When the case came to court in early 2011, the jury deliberated for over five days before delivering a complicated verdict in which they said that the city had violated the constitutional rights of the homeless people by failing to protect their property during police sweeps of illegal camps and had failed to notify the homeless who had property confiscated how to retrieve their personal property. The jury rejected a claim by the plaintiffs that the city had a
261 long-standing practice or custom of seizing and destroying the property of the homeless.
Brian K. Landsberg, a professor and constitutional law expert at the McGeorge School of
Law, shared the following observations with the Sacramento Bee:
The jury seems to be saying that it was legitimate to tear down the campsites, but that the city should have treated the seized property with respect and preserved it for the owners to claim…The legal conclusion would be that the city deprived the plaintiffs of property without due process of law, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Property rights hold a high place in the constitutional framework, and this is as true of the property of the homeless as it is property of the affluent (Hubert 2011b:A1).
The City of Sacramento is currently considering an appeal of the decision and is expected to, at the least, fight any large scale settlement. In a similar lawsuit, Pottinger et al v. City of Miami (1996) the plaintiffs sued the city in a class action lawsuit for harassing homeless people for sleeping, eating, and performing life sustaining activities.
The plaintiffs won and the city paid compensation of $600,000.00 to homeless people and agreed to establish new police training, record keeping, law enforcement contracts with the homeless and an advisory committee. It remains to be seen at the time of this writing if the City of Sacramento will continue to fight the decision or assume any responsibility for the actions. Regardless of the final actions by the city, it is a landmark case in that the jury determined that a class of people, the homeless in Sacramento, had had their constitutional rights violated by the actions of law enforcement. Here again we have another strong example of the denial of rights to the homeless.
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The UN Meets SafeGround
In September of 2009 UN Special Rapporteur on Housing, Raquel Rolnik, solicited testimony on housing rights issues in Sacramento by contacting Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC) attorney Mona Tawatao. LSNC contacted SafeGround, who in turn contacted independent filmmaker Costa Mantis, who has been actively filming SafeGround’s efforts since Sacramento’s Tent City of 2008-2009. Listen, a nine minute video testimony of homeless individuals in Sacramento was produced and submitted along with a three-page testimony from LSNC on behalf of SafeGround.
Below are two statements provided as testimony to the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the human rights to adequate housing. These stories are from Listen, the video that was submitted to the UN on behalf of SafeGround. The first is Angela, who provides some insight into what the homeless experience can be like for a single woman to become homeless, have no family to stay with and struggle with shared housing solutions with friends and in the shelter system. Angela’s filmed interview was at Sacramento’s
Tent City in early 2009.
Angela’s Story
In November I had a job and lost it. I called a friend and asked if I could stay there and we agreed on a price, $200.00 a month. When I got there I suddenly became the sole responsibility of all her overdue bills. One day I had given her $30.00 to appease her and I heard her husband in the next room make a drug deal with the $30.00
I’d just given them and I knew that the next day I was going to leave no matter where I
263 went. And I left and that was eight months ago. I am grateful that there was a place for me to go to, that I am not out in the street because I couldn’t survive it, but at the end of the day I have an eleven o’clock curfew, I can’t spend the night out with my friends and I have to tell my father I am still homeless. I miss my life so much, it’s very hard. It’s a humiliating experience. Sixty women together, we’re all hormonal, we all have our bad days, we all yell and scream sometimes and it’s rough. When you think that your kids are giving you a bad day, stay in a shelter for a day and see what a bad day really is (Mantis
2009).
The second testimony is given by Tipper as the closing of the Listen video. Tipper moved on from Tent City to the new Safe Ground community and movement in April
2009. “Tip” became an elder in the SafeGround community until he found housing and a job through Sacramento Self Help Housing. It is noteworthy that Tipper’s testimony effectively expands the conceptual range of the efforts of SafeGround by demonstrating how local efforts can “exert a broader influence” by “expanding the continuum of support options available to homeless persons” (Middleton 2011). In addition to this, Tipper’s testimony provides insight into why solutions like SafeGround offer something to the homeless that government housing programs and shelters frequently do not. It comes through in the sense of individual involvement, purpose and community that Tipper expresses.
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Tipper’s Story
I am a home health aide. The gentleman I was working with died and the company I was working with then re-did the police checks in order to assign me a new person. A year previous my little brother had, ah, committed a crime and used my name and social security number to try to get out of it. So my name pops up as an alias for a felon. The company I was bonded with pulls the bond and I effectively lost the job…You may walk past guys sitting on the sidewalk, you may think to yourself I wonder where he is going to sleep tonight, but you go home to your bed. SafeGround means to me
‘community.’ There is more community in this group than I have seen when I lived in a house. We sit and actually talk to each other. When I was In Kentucky I used to go to a little church, Zion Baptist Church, and on every exit they had a little plaque that said,
‘now entering the mission field.’ The mission field was not some other country, it is your own backyard. If you start in your own backyard and work your way out, eventually you’ll cover the whole world, ‘cause you’re always in somebody’s backyard (Mantis
2009).
UN and SafeGround: Round One
Special Rapporteur Rolnik’s final report found the risk of homelessness in the
U.S. significantly increased by the current economic crisis that started in 2008 and, specifically, by the increasing numbers of foreclosures due in part to the subprime mortgage debacle. In addition to calling for homeless strategies that increased available affordable housing as a preventative measure, Rolnik recommended several important
265 and seemingly straightforward steps. First, she recommended that the Interagency on
Homelessness, working with members of civil society, develop “constructive alternatives to the criminalization of homelessness.” Rolnik further clarified this recommendation by stating that, “When shelter capacity is inadequate homeless persons should be allowed to use public areas for shelter” (Rolnik 2010: para.95). Safe Ground’s interpretation of this recommendation was that it was seen as support for the repeal or rewrite of the
Sacramento anti-camping ordinance, and as support for a safe, legal encampment with proper sanitation. Rolnik also addressed the problem of the difficulty of obtaining an accurate count with which to determine the scope of the homeless problem in America based on competing and insufficient definitions of homelessness and census methodologies. She added that it was her recommendation that “the Administration and
Congress should encourage he expansion of the definition of homelessness to include those living with family or friends due to economic hardship” (Rolnik 2010: para.96).
Rolnik concluded her recommendations by encouraging the U.S. Government to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Marie’s HPRP “Housing” Experience
The following narrative is from an interview with a formerly homeless woman I’ll call ‘Marie,’ who has worked with Safe Ground as a volunteer and advocate for homeless causes. The story is included here as an example of what the experience is like for a homeless individual to work with government sponsored housing programs in
Sacramento. Marie is a graduate of the Women’s Empowerment program, is currently working full-time and is housed. This is Marie’s recollection in an interview of her
266 earlier experience with the HUD Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing Program
(HPRP), a housing program funded in the Obama Administration’s stimulus bill and an effort that is aimed at both homeless prevention and the rapid re-housing of those in need.
HPRP has program specific requirements for participation that include the participant paying all or part of the subsidized rent after ninety days. In my observations of
SafeGround members and others that received HPRP housing, this was often a difficult requirement to fulfill, as finding permanent employment is very difficult for many due both to the current state of the economy and the personal difficulty in getting “back on their feet” after being homeless and on the streets. Some programs, such as Sacramento’s
Quinn Cottages, require that the new resident have been in another type of housing for a period of time (often 3-6months) prior to entering their program. Often the only option in this situation is shelter residency, and many shelters place behavioral restrictions that some feel impinge upon their rights as adults. For example, most shelters impose nightly curfews, don’t allow daytime shelter or residency and won’t allow pets or couples to stay.
Others expect the resident to be there by mid-afternoon to reserve their spot for that evening, automatically disqualifying anyone working until 5:00 or 6:00pm. Additionally, some shelters require not only being on a long waiting list to participate but following up daily to maintain their standing on the list. I started this section of my interview with
Marie by asking if she felt some of the service providers were lacking in compassion or understanding when they interacted with the homeless. Here is Marie’s response:
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Everybody has a heart. And when I went through – after I left – when I lived in
Oak Park, when I got through the HPRP program (HUD’s), I lived in Oak Park in a place they was stigmatized as the White Castle. Very drug infested back in the day. Lot of deaths, drugs, and it’s a building that was built in the 1920s. I had no heater from day one. HPRP was paying $625 a month for me and my son to live there. As the months went on and on, I stayed there. My bath – the sewage would get backed up. My oven went out. We would have – we had pneumonia the first winter because the windows were rattle because they were dry-rotted, you know? Drugs...People in and out all the time.
And I just kept saying to myself, “you know, why do I got to – why do I got to live like this?” And I was calling my case manager HPRP every single day. “Where’s my heater”
They said they going to get me a heater. I don’t have a heater in here. How can I live in a unit without a heater? That’s against the law. I said, “you guys are ridiculous.” So I stayed there. I had no other choice. And sometimes I feel like I wanted to go get back in my car and not have to deal with that, because I’m paying bills utilities, but it just not doing for nothing because I don’t even have the – my basic necessities. And this man, the owner of the million-dollar Café Bar in Old Sacramento… He own that. HPRP put us in.
It was several HPRP people there. And I said, “you know…,” and I just kept – I was doing my leadership stuff. And Cathleen was like, “Marie, what’s wrong? You just so not here” I say, “Cat, I can’t stand the way I’m living. This is not right.” I mean, I never met this man. He never came by. They don’t fix nothing, I never got a heater. She say,
“you complain to HPRP?” She’s like, and I learned from her how to keep notes. So every time I called them, I wrote it down and I kept up with it. And I got like, a binder
268 now of, you know, lingo back and forth. And I made my case manager one day, come upstairs. I seen her outside talking to somebody else, and they’re laughing and giggling.
I say, can you just come upstairs and see how they got me living? Can you just come up here and see how you all got me living? Because you associated with HPRP now. And now my mind’s going back to, okay, here we go, we going to get over on the poor people.
We don’t care. We got government money, and we going to put them wherever, because they don’t want shit anyway. They don’t want nothing. They ain’t got no dreams. They ain’t got no hopes. Hell on them. As long as they got somewhere, they cool. So she came up. She said, “oh, Marie wow, they said they were order the heater – back the heater, and I’m going to bring you a vacuum and get you some furniture and get – you know, get your son a bed and I’m going to do – because we got those resources, we got that money for you.” Never heard from her again. I got to the end. I was like, you know what? This is getting really ridiculous. So after I complained and complained and kept complaining about the heater, and I refused to pay the rent after HPRP – after I got my three months, I called my case manager. He say, “oh, you know, Marie, you got to get out on the first.” I said, “I ain’t going nowhere.” I say, “this is unacceptable. How you think I’m going to have a job in 90 days. I been sleeping in my car for a year. I’m just now trying to figure out nights and days” (Transcribed unstructured oral interview with
Marie, July 17, 2011).
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The UN Returns: The Human Right of Access to Water and Sanitation
There’s nothing like a real shower with fresh water, hot and cold. It was good when I was working, but then I came back over here. This is hard living…and I’m used to taking a bath every day. Even if you bathe over here [Loaves & Fishes] and you don’t have clean clothes or clean linen, you feel something is wrong on you mentally. Something in yourself feels like you lost it and that you’ll never be clean (LSNC 2011:8). - George, SafeGround Elder
I’ve seen a lot of different toilets over the last five years. I’ve seen them range from a pit in the ground with a chair over it. I’ve seen a chair over a bucket with tarps around them (LSNC 2011:5). - Daisy, SafeGround Volunteer
The testimony in the above quotes was taken in a special meeting of SafeGround community members along with other homeless people who live along the American
River in Sacramento and a UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation in February 2011. UN Special Rapporteur Catarina de Albuquerque had come to the U.S. to review the way that the U.S. is implementing the right and access to dining and bathing water and proper sanitation. Safe Ground, again working with two attorneys from LSNC, brought together approximately eighteen homeless persons to provide testimony regarding their access to drinking and bathing water, as well as proper sanitation.
Much of the opening testimony provided in a group interview centered on the difficulties experienced in trying to keep enough drinking water at the camps. Several reported using drinking fountains that were about a mile and a half from camp to fill plastic containers that could be transported back to camp. One SafeGround elder in the
270 meeting stated, “…basically at SafeGround camp and other campers around us, on a weekly basis, they say we’re not getting enough water. On a daily basis, the most asked question I get is, ‘do you have any water?’ And a lot of times there is just not enough.
We only get 2-3 bottles from church feedings, we’re far from Loaves & Fishes at that time, we’re just not getting enough water on a daily basis” (LSNC 2011:attachment G:5).
Another homeless camper reported that there used to be a drinking fountain out by the running track in the park but that the rangers had removed it and another asserted that some of the fountains in Discovery Park had the heads removed by the rangers so that they shoot water out straight up, purposely making it difficult to fill their plastic bottles.
During the group interview and in the private sessions that followed it was also acknowledged that it was difficult to find a place to both get showers and wash your clothes resulting in both a cleanliness health concern and a mental stress in feeling unable to get clean as expressed in the first quote at the beginning of this section.
However, the discussion that followed on the issue of access to proper sanitation was even more enlightening for the homeless. The homeless are almost totally without access to proper bathrooms with toilets, sinks and toiletry supplies for several reasons.
First, along the American River Parkway where many are forced to camp, there are few public restrooms. Second, almost all public restrooms are in parks and many have been locked permanently. Others are locked every night, and these are over one or two miles from the camping area. Businesses in the vicinity of the campsites are reluctant to allow homeless people to use their restroom facilities and post signs warning that the bathroom facilities are for “customer use only.” This situation leaves little choice for many of the
271 homeless except to use the outdoors to relieve themselves, and that is not without concern. One camper shared, “I have, on occasion encountered difficulties with the need to take care of my bodily functions. You can’t let anyone see you because if anyone sees you in a park or somewhere, you are labeled a sex offender. So I always go someplace I can’t be seen. It is very stressful” (LSNC 2011:attachment G:6).
SafeGround shared several stories with the Special Rapporteur which are important to a full understanding of the sanitation crisis the homeless face and the message the UN took away. The first I’ll share, from my participant observations in the field, occurred during the late fall months and into winter 2010-2011 season. The
SafeGround community camped for several weeks in an area along the American River that they called “Sherwood Forest.” During that period the community population was at approximately sixty campers and there were other camps along the periphery of the
SafeGround camp due to the presumed safety and lack of ranger interference, which added another twenty-five to the overall population in close proximity. Sherwood Forest is in a low area alongside the first levee on the north side of the river. When the rains came at the beginning of the 2010-2011 rainy season they came fast and lasted many days. At the same time, the dams upstream at Folsom and Natomas were full and required high release rates due to the persistent rains. The river was rising fast; there were breaks in the levee and special efforts had to be made to get people out of the low areas quickly. SafeGround was able to remove their porta-potty and most belongings.
However, some tents and belongings were lost by SafeGround and other camps; fortunately no one was injured and no one drown. The Sherwood Forest campsite
272 flooded to a depth of sixteen to eighteen feet and sites that various camps had used for toilet areas were flooded and spread bio-contamination across the entire area.
This type of incident doesn’t occur without gaining the attention of anti-homeless activists and local politicians. Adding to other public stigmas, photos of the flooded campsites were posted on the internet with strong anti-homeless comments suggesting the homeless were all mentally ill, drug abusers, or criminals and that what was needed was more law enforcement (Sacramento Press 2011). While this may seem an obviously mean-spirited attack by a biased individual, it has resulted in many months’ of unrelenting political pressure being applied by a County Supervisor on the Parks
Commission director and eventually the rangers. The end result was that a campaign of harassment was launched by the county officials, rangers and eventually the local media to get all the homeless off the American River Parkway. Neither the officials or the media made any mention of the extreme weather conditions that caused the flooding or the fact that the homeless people living there were unfortunately moving to more visible sites located on higher ground to avoid the floods. These homeless campers, including the members of SafeGround, were harassed daily by local law enforcement and were forced to move, but with no alternatives provided except to double back to other campsites. Perhaps the most telling incident occurred when the rangers quietly and off the record advised the campers to “just get away from the portion of the river that a particular local citizen,” the original source of the mean-spirited attacks, an anti-homeless activist with some political clout and connections, was complaining about. The entire exercise only resulted in forcing the homeless campers to move daily in the cold and wet
273 weather, threatening their health and safety. Many were disabled, elderly, or sick, and the entire episode caused some to require hospital emergency visits.
During this period one young homeless couple in their early twenties (I’ll call
“Rick”’ and “Maggie”) were living in the SafeGround camp and Maggie was in her last trimester of pregnancy. Rick had been observed by me and others to have some anger management problems and Maggie’s role in the relationship seemed to one of imposed or maybe self-imposed subordination to Rick. They occasionally argued and, although no direct violence was ever observed, some campers suspected Rick of committing violent acts including hitting her while pregnant. I was concerned that once the baby was born
Child Protective Services (CPS) would come and take the baby. I had tried to talk with
Maggie about getting in housing to ensure she would be able to keep the baby. However,
Rick was resistant and she, almost apologetically, refused to go indoors without him. In early February I noted in my fieldnotes that I had received a call informing me that
Maggie, at this time eight months pregnant, had been taken to the hospital and was in danger of losing the baby. I decided to drive to the hospital to see if she would see me.
When I got there Rick met me outside, was friendly and said she wanted to see me.
When I went in they were giving her medication to induce labor by that evening, but they had already told her the baby was lost and would be stillborn. When I was leaving, Rick asked me if I would pick him up in the morning and drop him by the camp to retrieve some of their belongings. When I arrived at 6:30am he met me at the door and showed me pictures they had taken when the baby was delivered. They had dressed the baby and taken pictures to remember him before releasing the body. After that terrible incident, I
274 worked with Rick and Maggie to help raise the necessary money to pay for a cremation so they could keep the baby’s ashes, if they did not do that it would have been buried by the county in an unmarked grave as a baby “John Doe.” Rick and Maggie returned to camp after the loss of the baby but were soon able to receive housing assistance and moved inside. We never knew why Maggie lost the baby. Her nutrition was poor, she smoked, and there were rumors of drug use; however, we did not know what effect all the tension in the camps had on her and the baby’s health and on her relationship with Rick.
I relate this story to suggest that if there had been a safe and legal campsite with proper sanitation and these homeless people had not been forced to move daily in the cold and wet weather, the baby’s death might have been prevented. If the amount of energy andexpense that had been directed at forcing the homeless to move daily had been expended to provide a place to “be,” Rick and Maggie just might have delivered a healthy baby.
In the spring of 2011 SafeGround campers and volunteers led an effort to clean up campsites in this area and the Parks Department quietly moved dumpsters where
SafeGround work parties could bring gathered trash until complaints accusing the Parks
Department of implementing “a homeless infrastructure” on the river (dumpsters) caused their removal. SafeGround workers carried out several tons of debris caught in the flood and transported many gallons of urine left in plastic bottles, a bio-hazard, to an appropriate disposal site. The same argument about creating a homeless infrastructure was again used to refuse SafeGround’s offer of paying for porta-pottys near the area where the homeless camp. When I asked the group in the UN meeting if people would
275 use porta-pottys if they were installed near the entrance to the campsite area they replied,
“more than you [can] know [imagine]” (LSNC 2011:attachment G:5).
A second story that was related by SafeGround members during the testimony is about the SafeGround’s effort to create a sanitary toilet system in their camps. This is a story about a SafeGround member I’ll call “Jim,” who took it upon himself to become the
“sanitation engineer” for the community by creating and maintaining a porta-potty system for all. Here is part of Jim’s testimony describing his porta-potty design and maintenance system at that time:
“We have dowels that are 7 feet [or] 8 feet long. Tarps around it with a very simple doorway that’s open on the bottom so you can go right in, sunk into the ground so it’s pretty weather resistant, completely plastic commode shape, fairly low and it is solid plastic and has a toilet seat which lifts off it hinge on the back. It is a full rectangle so if you have any spills or messes it is easily cleaned. Inside it is heavy nylon netting and it is just about the width of the toilet seat. And you put these [showing thin black plastic bags] the reason I have them with me is because I am going back to camp tonight to switch them. These are 13 gallon very simple kitchen bags and I line one inside the other and then I roll it. I roll the other side and then sink it in the net place and underneath the seat itself, there’s enough of a space so you can tuck it where there’s hooks that keep it from sliding. That will hold about 2 gallons of solid and liquid waste and it sits in there and I’ve got a five gallon bucket next to it with another bag in it…so when its full, I open the seat I don’t glove up because I wash thoroughly with a scrub brush and the I use
276 lemon, that’s essential, so the inner one, lift it up, tie the double knot twice, then outside bag, I lift that into the trash, and then put it into the bucket so I triple bag it. This stuff is super [pointing to trash bag] and then from there I have a basket on my bicycle like a fruit basket and I put it in there. My record is 4 bags and then I bicycle about 1-1/2 to 2 miles, bring it to the men’s room, wait for a big john to be available and dispatch it on its way and then pack all those bags with the residue that is left over, put them all in one bag, tie it all in one bag, put it in the rubbish, after which I wash my hands, scrub them, lemonize them and that’s [it]…the first few times it was horrible, it’s a difficult job but someone’s got to do it and it is worthwhile, absolutely. The men can rough it if they have to, but women…geez whiz, if my ma’ was out there, I would want her to have it…The women really appreciate it, We all do because we are re-humanized, because we’re not just thrown aside. Helen Keller was right. It’s either a great adventure, or it’s nothing”
(LSNC 2011:attachment G:9).
The first UN response after the group interview was a press release in which
Catarina de Albuquerque comments about the effort that is made by Jim to maintain a sanitation system. In part she stated, “…The fact that Jim is left to do this is unacceptable, an affront to human dignity and a violation of human rights and it must be stopped.” Ms. de Albuquerque considers that an immediate, interim solution would be to ensure access to restroom facilities in public places, including during the night (de
Albuquerque 2011a:21). . Her final report insists that access to water and sanitation must be ensured for homeless people (de Albuquerque 2011c:21). Local statutes
277 prohibiting public urination and defecation, while factually constitutional are often discriminatory in their effects. Such discrimination often occurs because statutes are enforced against human individuals, who often have no access to public restrooms and are given no alternatives…As human rights, all people, without discrimination, must have access to drinking water and sanitation, which is affordable, acceptable, available and safe” (de Albuquerque 2011d:21).
Jim’s’ narrative above provides a demonstration of the inventiveness of the homeless population in caring for themselves under difficult circumstances; of how human rights are denied homeless people through actions justified as budgetary constraints (no money for public restrooms) or other political action (pressure from influential community members); and of how local public space or anti-homeless ordinances are passed to punish those who have already lost so much, leaving them no options except to purposely break the law and have their life-sustaining activities criminalized. We again see the clear demonstration of a loss of human rights, this time regarding access to water and sanitation facilities for the homeless. Jim’s narrative clearly demonstrates that the local authorities, including local politicians, parks department leadership and law enforcement, have purposely resisted attempts to provide improved sanitation to the homeless in both SafeGround and other camps by citing the anti- camping ordinance and the dreaded homeless infrastructure they seek to avoid.
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Recognizing Invisible Faces
I listed three questions at the beginning of this chapter that I have attempted to answer. The first question was whether or not there is a loss of basic freedoms, citizenship rights or human rights by homeless persons. My answer to that question is a resounding “yes,” based on the abundance of evidence that supports my contention that political and social rights are withheld by disenfranchising the homeless from full political and social citizenship. First, we saw the basic loss of freedom of a place to “be,” through ordinances that criminalize life-sustaining activities by criminalizing them on public space (common property) and exclusionary practices that prohibit the homeless from the private property of others. Second, we have discussed the widespread stigmatization of the homeless by the general population, local authorities and even some social service providers perpetuating a general misrecognition of the homeless as equal partners in the social fabric of society. We reviewed the decisions by the courts that defined homelessness as voluntary and, therefore, punishable, as in Joyce v. San
Francisco (1994) and Love v. Chicago (1996, 1998), which further criminalize normal everyday activities by the homeless. In Sacramento we saw the recent Lehr et al v. City of Sacramento (2011) decision that determined that constitutional rights of the homeless were indeed violated by improper processes of law enforcement’s property seizure and destruction of the property of the homeless. With the help of the UN’s Special
Rapporteurs we determined that the human rights to adequate housing opportunities and access to water for drinking and bathing, as well as proper sanitation were being denied the homeless in the Sacramento area. We can emphatically state that there has been a
279 loss of equal citizenship and human rights such as extended to housed or economically independent citizens. It is apparent that this disenfranchisement is not a constitutionally constructed disenfranchisement but rather a disenfranchisement established through a vision of the homeless as undeserving and reinforced through the hegemonic actions of social, political and economic institutions.
My second question was whether we can identify the dynamics of the loss of rights. Again, the answer is clearly affirmative. Most of what we discovered in answering the first question provided a clear picture of the dynamics of the loss of rights.
In Chapters Four and Five, we have discussed a recurring tendency within the general public and the media to stigmatize the homeless in ways that reinforce the widely held causal constructs of homeless individuals as a sinful (morally deviant) and sick
(pathological) homeless population of undeserving citizens. This causal reinforcement enables the power of the local political economy (local authorities, politicians and influential citizens) to promote, pass, and enforce ordinances that criminalize the life- sustaining activities of the homeless and implement policy (such as denial of access to water and sanitation) that clearly violate human rights of homeless individuals.
Additionally, we looked at political-moral theory and suggested that legislating away homeless people’s right to “be” in public space when that is clearly their only option was a human rights violation. As a metaphor I have previously suggested a “homeless vortex” of social, political and economic activity that pulls the homeless further into the cycle of homelessness. I refer to that metaphor and view the loss of freedom and rights denied the homeless, as another symptom of the forces within the “homeless vortex.”
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The third question that we have not yet addressed is whether this understanding of the answers to questions one and two can help in providing a better understanding of the underlying problems of combating homelessness? I argue that it does, in fact, help us understand what policies and behaviors are working and which are not, which can lead us to clearer thinking about how we might better design programs to combat homelessness.
However, in answering the third question I want to analyze what was learned in answering the first two questions with a definite “yes.”
Non-Citizens: Undeserving Others
Through the actions of stigmatizing the homeless as deviant and pathological they are misrecognized as voluntarily homeless and, therefore, responsible for their plight and undeserving of equal rights rather than being seen as vulnerable citizens with the same rights as economically independent, enfranchised citizens. In this process they become socially, politically, and economically disenfranchised, unable to participate in the institutional constructs of society as equal members. Thinking back to Rowe’s levels of citizenship, I suggest now that the loss of the basic freedom of a place to “be” places the homeless into the category of disenfranchised level three, non-citizens. There can be almost no more blatant statement or action by authorities than to repeatedly be telling homeless persons to pack up and move on when all parties are keenly aware that there is nowhere for them to go. They are reduced in this process to an existence of “political nobodies,” people without economic independence or homes, that the authorities would prefer remain “invisible,” out of sight of the politically and economically enfranchised public, who often become upset when seeing or interacting with them. Furthermore the
281 authorities try to wish the homeless into political nonexistence by pretending that they can be made to just “go-away.”
These same homeless individuals are then punished for the criminalized behavior of needing to “be” somewhere by actions that go beyond frequent harassment by law enforcement (at the direction of authorities). For example, public restrooms in
Sacramento city and county have been closed permanently or at the least during the night, due to “economic and security” concerns, and many public drinking fountains decommissioned or modified in ways that make it impossible or difficult for the homeless to access safe drinking water. Moreover, we have heard from UN Special Rapporteur’s that these actions violate the UDHR and subsequent treaties of which the United States has been an ongoing proponent and active supporter. It is ironic and symptomatic of the entire issue of how we treat the homeless that the United States can vehemently accuse other countries of human rights violations and yet allow such violations to the human rights of the homeless to occur within its sovereign boundaries. In Sacramento the
SafeGround community members fall into this group of homeless people that have been disenfranchised, had their freedoms to “be” somewhere, and basic human rights severely violated to the extent that they are denied a place to perform life-sustaining activities. In the next chapter I will investigate the contemporary U.S. political economy that supports the disenfranchisement of homeless citizens and the American concept of the “self” or individual that supports these actions.
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Chapter Six Endnotes
1 Rousseau (1988:85). In this quote from On Social Contract, two of the claims of Rousseau in Discourse on Inequality are made apparent. First, that social life robs us of our natural freedoms and, second, that the loss of freedoms is irreversible. 2 Middleton (2011:25). In his explanation Middleton credits Hardt and Negri (2004:134) who state the following, “Our point rather is that these should not be conceived of as a matter of exclusion but one of ‘differential inclusion’, not as a line of division between workers and the poor nationally or globally but as hierarchies within common condition of poverty.” 3 Constitution of the United States of America, Amendment IX, Ratified on December 15, 1791 as ninth of the ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights. 4 Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) Supreme Court concurring opinion by Justice Arthur Goldberg. http://www. law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0381_0479_ZC.html. Accessed 09.15.11. 5 President Roosevelt delivered a 1941 State of the Union Address known as the Four Freedoms speech in which he proposed freedom of speech, worship, from want and from fear as universal freedoms for “people everywhere in the world.” 6 President Roosevelt delivered a 1944 State of the Union Address known as the Second Bill of Rights speech where he announced his support for a Second Bill of Rights that would include the right to employment with a living wage, freedom from unfair competition and monopolies, housing, medical care, education and social security. FDR argued that our first Bill of Rights provided political rights that were no longer sufficient on their own to assure equality in the “pursuit of happiness.” The Second Bill of Rights was conceived as an economic bill of rights. Although it was never pursued after his death in 1945 his wife and widow, Eleanor Roosevelt, was instrumental in creation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. 7 Feldman (2004:59-69) provides an in-depth discussion of these and other relevant cases and the social ramifications of the decisions on individuals living in poverty and the homeless. 8 Clark v. Community for Creative Nonviolence, 468 U.S. 288 (1984), 292, in Feldman (2004:138-141). 9 Anthony Lehr et al v. City of Sacramento, et al. U.S. District Court-East. Dist #2:07-CV-01565 MCE GGH, p.9 10 Anthony Lehr et al v. City of Sacramento, et al. U.S. District Court-East. Dist #2:07-CV-01565 MCE GGH, p.7.
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An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But economic war is no better than armed conflict…An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war properly so called. ..The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil – human greed. - Mahatma K. Gandhi (Klein 2007:161).
The consequences of a half a century of intensified processes of neoliberal globalization announce themselves in growing inequalities in affluent centers of global trade and in impoverished sites populated by exploited communities and resources. - Michael Middleton, Becoming War-Machines: Neoliberalism, Critical Politics and Singularities of Struggle (2011:iii)
Chapter Seven
NEOLIBERALISM AND AMERICAN INDIVIDUALISM
Neoliberalism is not a widely used term outside of academic circles and it is, therefore, important to develop a clear understanding of exactly what is meant by the term. Anthropologist David Harvey, in a frequently quoted definition of neoliberalism, provides us with a clear, concise understanding that will help in this study, as well as helping clarify the actions of neoliberal leaders.
Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices (Harvey 2005:2).
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Neoliberal thought and the associated political agenda go a lot further, especially as it has evolved in the last thirty-five years, during which time it has also become known as “free market fundamentalism.” Neoliberal theory places the effect of the free market, Adam
Smith’s “invisible hand,” as the ultimate solution to society’s problems, social, political and economic. Neoliberals believe in and promote large-scale privatization of any institution or activity that they wish to reform, including schools, prisons, government programs, even the social safety net. In neoliberal theory, privatizing means passing control of an institution, activity or endeavor to the free market and restricting government control. Deregulation of business activities, especially those associated with globalized capitalism, becomes a major talking point for the neoliberal agenda.
Regulation of industry or other corporate activities is viewed by neoliberal advocates as infringing on the freedom of industry and capitalists to let the free market “operate its magic.” Regulation restricts options that neoliberal advocates say may be required for economic security and maximization of profit.
The neoliberal agenda calls for an anti-welfare state framework for society, reduction or, if possible, elimination the social safety net, and instead promotes individual responsibility and entrepreneurial freedom as the way to liberate the population. The neoliberal views welfare as a way of empowering people to be lazy, unproductive, and irresponsible, and not as a way of helping vulnerable individuals, citizens who require help to survive. Moreover, the neoliberals see government as having only the purpose of creating and supporting an institutional framework that will support their agenda. Government, according to neoliberal thought, is there to serve and
285 protect its political and economic agenda. This is accomplished by protection of the integrity of money, the protection of the nation and national interests by law enforcement and military forces, and the creation of legal structures to protect private property and the free markets. According to neoliberal theory, where markets do not exist, they must be created; and it is this free market, not the government, that will serve and protect the interests of the people.
20th Century Capitalism, Imperialism and Neoliberalism
In 1916 Lenin wrote his famed outline on imperialism during the unfolding events of World War I and a year prior to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. It is doubtful that he could have predicted the timing and scope of many of the world-changing events that have occurred since then, including the Great Depression, World War II, the Golden Age of U.S. Capitalism (1950s and 1960s), the numerous military conflicts of the later 20th century, as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of China.
After World War II, embedded liberalism represented by the Keynesian school of economics, provided the framework for capitalism in the world-capitalist societies lead by the United States. Under several postwar administrations, policies of embedded liberalism promoted efforts to avoid the tragic economic effects of the great Depression from happening again. Harvey states, “To ensure domestic peace and tranquility, some sort of class compromise between capital and labour had to be constructed” (Harvey
2005:10). European democracies, the United States and Japan all focused on this compromise as a way of growing their home economy and world-capitalist economy,
286 while maintaining peace. With full employment as a major objective, and the substantial growth and employment rates achieved during U.S. capitalism’s Golden Age of the 1950s and 1960s as an indication, the period was seen as a great success of the capitalist system.
However, during this period the U.S. began to absorb substantial foreign trade deficits, becoming an over-consumer of excess products from other nations.
While earlier economists had blamed the ills of the Great Depression economic collapse on the “real” side of the economy, Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz, in their renowned work, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (1993), proposed that the source of the Great Depression was monetary and could have been combated in strictly monetary terms (Foster and Magdoff 2009:117). Hyman Minsky, famous for his
“financial instability hypothesis,” believes that an event like the Great Depression can be kept from occurring again through monetary stimulation with the role of government as the “lender of last resort,” bailouts and tax credits (Foster and Magdoff 2009:115).
Regardless, Ben S. Bernanke, a student of Friedman’s, chairman of George W. Bush’s
Council of Economic Advisors, and later U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman (2006- ), openly supported Friedman’s monetary cause and solution hypothesis. From the perspective of Bernanke and many others, the world-capitalist economy did not recover from the Great Depression due to the social investments of Franklin Roosevelt’s New
Deal, but rather from the unprecedented military spending brought on by World War II and the associated development of industrial production capabilities on a grand enough scale to support production, exchange and consumption on a scale required for unprecedented capitalist growth. Bernanke, however, was clearly unaware of the
287 impending housing crisis that was coming when, on October 15, 2002, he told the New
York Chapter of the National Association for Business Economics,
Housing prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the last two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals, including robust growth in jobs and incomes, low mortgage rates… (Bernanke 2002:N.p.).
Soon, the housing bubble burst, the crisis spread to the financial industry and Wall Street, and the recession of 2007 threw the economy into the worst economic disaster since the great depression. The impact of the 2007 recession on homelessness is still being felt as this study is written. As of late 2011, the national and local social safety net remains under attack, budgets for governmental programs are dwindling at all levels, housing prices continue to fall nationwide and unemployment remains at 9.1%. Sacramento’s unemployment rate recovery lags behind the national average by several percentage points, currently (as of September of 2011), it is greater than 12%,
The Beginnings of the Neoliberal Agenda: A Look Back
Neoliberal policy, especially neoliberal globalization, has been described as an economic manifestation of imperialism (Foster and Magdoff 2009). Neoliberal ideology in what urban and regional political economist Jamie Peck describes as “identifiable forms of neoliberal thinking” was first observed on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean as early as the 1920s (Peck 2010:3). At that time, Ordoliberalism in Germany, the reconstruction of the Austrian economics, and the “first” Chicago School around the work of Henry Simons at the University of Chicago, represented early stages of neoliberalism. From the early disparate elements of neoliberal thought a transnational
288 neoliberal conversation organized at the “Colloque Lippmann” meetings in Paris in 1938
(Peck 2010:3).
In 1947, shortly after World War II, a group of economists headed by Frederick
Hayek and including founding member Milton Friedman of the Chicago School of economists, met in Switzerland, continued the transnational conversation, and founded an organization called the Mount Pelerin Society (MPS). The purpose of the MPS organization was primarily their joint opposition to the Keynesian interventionist activities that characterized much of the political economy of the post-World War II economy. Although their work was not the first sign of neoliberal thought, it was what amounted to the beginnings of the formation of the neoliberal agenda. Harvey, discussing other events tied to this neoliberal activity, explains, “Internationally, a new world order was constructed through the Bretton Woods agreements, and various institutions, such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF, and the Bank of
International Settlements in Basel, were set up to help stabilize international relations”
(Harvey 2005:10). All went well for the neoliberal “project” until the later part of the
1960s when unemployment started creeping up and inflation surged. The neoliberal agenda is today also sometimes referred to as the “Washington Consensus,” a term originally coined by economist John Williamson in 1989 to designate or describe a set of ten specific economic policy prescriptions that he considered constituted the standard
Washington, D.C. reform package promoted for developing countries in crisis mode, and now commonly used when referring to the neoliberal agenda or market fundamentalism.
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Transnational industrial growth, expanded consumerism and high capital accumulation during this period, followed by economic stagnation, high unemployment, and inflation (stagflation) indicated that capitalism was “on track” with Lenin’s 1916 predictions, but we need to take a broader look at economic conditions. The real evidence of the correctness of Lenin’s observations is the economic imperialist activity of the capitalist world-economy, especially that of the U.S. and Europe. Imperialism no longer appeared as it had in the classical age of colonialism, which effectively ended with
World War I in 1918 (Wood 2003). It was now reminiscent of some facets of an earlier model when the English colonized Ireland during the late-16th century, only this time with a very modern twist.
In the post-World War II world-capitalist economy, imperialism had been transformed into an activity that no longer viewed political or military conquest as the primary objective, the new objective was economic dominance forcing the economy of peripheral nations to assume a subservient role. In the example mentioned above of the
16th century English in Ireland, plantations were formed by the English, on Irish soil, as a way of colonizing and appropriating Irish land for economic reasons. From one famous plantation, the Ulster Plantation, came a revealing document in which Sir John Davies asserted that where land was not used to its maximum value, it should be appropriated and its rightful value created by the efforts of the English colonizers (Wood 2003). In this document, Davies spoke of reducing the Irish from barbarianism to civility and lifting the land to its appropriate value almost as the right and duty of the “civilized”
English. This early economic imperialist activity provided an indication of things to
290 come. The appropriation of land for economic purposes is similar to the 20th century, post-World War II appropriation by the U.S. of economic resources of Latin America that were not functioning efficiently and, in the opinion of the U.S., required support. Let’s briefly look at two examples, Brazil and Chile.
“Of all the direct private investment in Latin America coming from abroad, less than one-fifth (20%) was from the United States when Lenin wrote Imperialism in the spring of 1916” (Galeano 1993:205). After World War II the European interests were quickly leaving Latin America and the U.S. interests were moving in just as quickly. By
1973, the 20% had grown to 75% and, during the 1950s, U.S. capital for manufacturing began to greatly increase its flow into Brazil. By the 1960s, the meager Brazilian automobile and spare parts industry was swallowed up by Ford, Chrysler, Willys
Overland, Simca, Volkswagen and Alfa Romeo (Galeano 1993). Under various dictators,
Brazilian laws reserved specific industries for the state, which were quick to invite foreign, aka U.S., partners to invest in Brazilian industry. Brazilian “Law 56,570 passed on July 6, 1965, reserved the petrochemical industry for the state; Law 56,571, passed the same day, annulled Law 56,570, opening up petrochemicals to private investment…Dow
Chemical, Union Carbide, the Rockefeller group, and Phillips Petroleum won the most coveted ‘filet mignon,’ the oil derivatives industry, in which a boom in the 1970s was anticipated” (Galeano 1973:215). Capitalist imperialism successfully transformed its mode of expansion from earlier state-driven colonial models to capitalist-driven economic exploitation models.
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Similarly, during a severe economic slump of the early 1970s in Chile, the
Marxist Allende government was overthrown in a bloody coup and General Augusto
Pinchot took over control of the government. The Chicago School of neoliberal economists was called in to direct economic policies from cabinet and advisory positions.
Milton Friedman’s official advice to General Pinchot was to “impose a rapid fire transformation of the economy – tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending and deregulation…eventually Chileans even saw their public schools replaced by private ones. It was the most extreme capitalist makeover ever attempted anywhere and it became known as the Chicago School revolution” (Klein 2007:8). Freidman suggested a large scope of economic shifts, made at a rapid pace that he felt would promote the necessary “psychological reactions” to “facilitate the adjustment” by the population. This was a tactic Freedman called “shock treatment” (Klein 2007:8). These policies led to the reinvestment of many of the multinational corporations that had been expropriated by Allende’s government, as well as massive investments in the form of loans from the IMF and World Bank. During an initial several years of widespread business expansion and speculation, Chilean GDP grew but the working classes were hurt by wage decreases of approximately 8%. This fit the model Friedman had developed for spreading his version of the neoliberal agenda, a model calling for the exploitation of crisis, a model we would see used again closer to home.
During the last few decades of the 20th century, burgeoning new technologies brought the information age into full bloom and the rate of growth accelerated at a previously unheard of pace. Along with the ability to manipulate massive amounts of
292 data at almost instantaneous rates came the ability to compress the rising density of the data in both time and space. Harvey refers to this as the “compression of time and space,” which he believes “parallels Lyotard’s famous description of the postmodern condition as one where the temporary contract supplants permanent institutions in the professional, emotional, sexual, cultural, family and international domains, as well as in political affairs” (Harvey 2005:66). The pace and location of global economic transactions that effect all the domains of human life had accelerated, and there were no immediate signs they would not continue to do so.
Capitalism on Steroids: The Rise of Neoliberal Global-Capitalism
By the late 1970’s, the world-capitalist system operating under the embedded liberal policy agenda, was struggling. The European capitalist economies, as well as the
U.S. economy, were stagnating and showed few signs of recovery. Deindustrialization was beginning to spread across the United States and other western capitalist countries.
Then, at the end of the 1970s, everything changed. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping took the first steps to steer communist China towards liberalization. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of Britain, and Paul Volcker was appointed to head the Federal
Reserve, followed by the election, in 1980, of Ronald Reagan as President of the United
States. In quick succession all these leaders took quick and decisive actions that would lead the world towards acceptance of neoliberalism as a replacement policy agenda for embedded liberalism. Deng was to transform China during the next two decades into an open center of capitalist dynamism with sustained growth rates unparalleled in history;
Volcker quickly and dramatically changed monetary policy; Thatcher was handed a
293 mandate to curb trade union power and end inflationary stagnation; and Reagan supported Volcker and set out on a political course to boost the economy by curbing labor power, deregulating industry, agriculture and resource extraction, and liberating finance (Harvey 2005). Although neoliberalism was not a new capitalist framework, its’ time had come to reign atop the world-capitalist economy.
Neoliberalism in recent decades has become unimpeded capitalism or in today’s vernacular, “capitalism on steroids,” capitalism that uses any and all available measures to “stack the economic deck” in favor of the capitalists. Clearly we can see that curbing trade unions translates to reducing organized labors’ resistance; tackling and reducing or eliminating the welfare state translates to reducing government and government spending; and deregulating industry, agriculture and finance translates into to freeing capitalists by removing unwanted government oversight. A case can easily be made for labeling neoliberalism as an elitist framework for capitalism that is intended to remove resistance, and reduce government restrictions, spending and size. Through neoliberal policy, capitalism was given massive injections of these steroids; but has it worked?
An early example occurred in New York City (NYC) during the early 1970s when capital restructuring and deindustrialization associated with an economic downturn brought the city to a point of near bankruptcy. President Nixon’s response was to declare the fiscal crisis over and cut federal funding that might have made a difference according to the view held by many Keynesian economists. In the months that followed, an eventual bailout came with strings attached. Bailouts were made with the provision that control of the NYC budget would fall to others outside of the city’s control. It was, in
294 effect, an economic coup waged against NYC by the financial institutions that bailed the city out. Social services and city budgets were slashed. The workers of NYC were cast into the shadows, neglected and left to cope with growing unemployment, deindustrialization and poor prospects for change. The 1980s saw the working population of NYC struggling with high unemployment, drug abuse and the terrible health scourge of HIV/Aids. The actions of the coup amounted to nothing short of a massive transfer of wealth to the capitalist’s coffers; by 2000 the wealth of the upper class had reached levels not seen since the 1920s. As in Chile, NYC provided an early test bed for neoliberal solutions, and the results didn’t seem promising.
“Common Sense” for American Voters
The task at the beginning of the 1980s for the new neoliberal leaders was to transform the world-capitalist system without losing the support of their constituencies.
This meant, in effect, tackling the labor unions, welfare state systems, deregulating industry and opening free trade without losing popular support. To do this they employed what Italian political philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, calls “common sense,” a strategy which grounds consent (Gramsci 1971; also Crehan 2002; Harvey 2005).
Common sense in Gramsci terms does not mean the same as good sense, which might be derived from a critical analysis of issues. Instead, it is instead a way of managing issues using the cultural prejudices of the population to disguise real political and economic strategies and objectives. Cultural and traditional values (such as belief in God and country or views on the position of women in society) and common fears (of communists, immigrants, strangers, or “others”) can be mobilized to mask other realities.
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Political slogans are invoked that mask specific strategies beneath vague rhetorical devices. “The word freedom resonates so widely within the common-sense understanding of Americans that it becomes a button that elites can press to open the door to the masses’ to justify almost anything” (Harvey 2005:39).1 Freedom, of course, is not the only word that is used to sway public opinion when promoting the neoliberal agenda.
The word “values” has been coopted in the last several decades to represent a host of neoliberal and conservative agendas including stricter laws and law enforcement, and a strong disciplinary penal system. Although different in meaning, neoliberal and neoconservative are often misused interchangeably for this reason. Neoliberalism should be thought of as referring to the political and economic ideology discussed above and neoconservative as an ideology of conservative morality and ethics often applied to social issues.
What does this mean to the world-capitalist nations, the U.S. democracy or the
European Union in terms of their framework of social reproduction? Anthropologist
Susanna Narotzky proposes a disaggregation of reproduction into social reproduction, reproduction of the labor force, and biological reproduction (Narotzky 1997). Social reproduction refers to “the reproduction of the conditions of social production in the totality” (Narotzky 1997:161). This refers to Marx’s idea of social reproduction of the capitalist mode of production that includes production, exchange, and productive – personal consumption that “reproduces the material elements of capital, their value, and the social relations existing between capital and labor which is the key to the capitalist character of production conceived globally” (Marx 1887:20). Reproduction of the labor
296 force refers to the daily maintenance of the laborers (including domestic labor or preparation of commodities for consumption), and allocation of labor to positions within the production process across time. The later includes knowledge transfer and the differential distribution of resources (material and cultural) in society. Biological reproduction refers to the reproduction of human populations and can be analyzed using
Malthus’ ideas about the expansion of the human population as a natural condition
(Narotzky 1997).
Of particular interest to this study is what capitalism’s neoliberal framework does to the process of social reproduction in the capitalist world-economies where it is prevalent. By using “common sense” to disguise their true motives, the neoliberal elites are misleading the working class into accepting less than favorable private property laws that restrict access to modes of production. In other words, the workers have little chance of accessing the mode of production if it is owned as the private property of capitalist elites or transnational corporations and supported by a legal system that further restricts access. Additionally, the curbing of the strength of labor unions by the neoliberal hegemony places the workers in less favorable bargaining positions to negotiate wages and working conditions with the capitalists, who control the mode of production and to whom the proletariat is forced to sell their labor. In our current extended economic recovery we see neoliberal policy set at curbing public employee’s collective bargaining rights in a move blatantly designed to protect tax levels and profits at the expense of the working class. Free trade further reduces the U.S. workers’ ability to compete with the cheap labor markets of underdeveloped nations where labor is easily forced into
297 becoming a cheap commodity, thus harming labor in both the developed and developing nations.
If we take this analysis of production and reproduction a step further through
Marxist analysis of the economic logics, a clearer picture emerges of the neoliberal damage to the workers. Marx says there are two possible economic logics. The first logic says that the objective of production is the final consumption of the needed use values; the second says that the final objective is accumulation (Narotzky 1997). The application of these logics varies within a given society based on a group’s ability to control and act upon different resources. In the capitalist societies where the neoliberal framework is in place, the bourgeoisie (capitalists) restrict the choice of the proletariat
(workers) by disguising the true nature of their restrictive actions against labor unions, welfare programs and balanced trade. Given the differing aspects of social reproduction and the neoliberal framework that misleads the workers, this unquestionably amounts to at the least misleading, if not dishonest and exploitative, actions by the capitalists. Since neoliberal tactics are also deployed globally by transnational corporations seeking cheaper labor markets, as in the case of the move of western industrial production to
China, neoliberalism takes on the role of an international capitalist conspiracy to control the means of production and the cost of resources, while exploiting the labor force on an unequal playing field.
Neoliberal Capitalism, Ecological Sustainability
All human societies, and for that matter all economic systems, must engage in material exchanges with the natural environment for resources or raw materials to support
298 manufacturing activity. “What is unique about capitalism or the capitalist world- economy is that the activities of material production and consumption are subject to the pursuit of profit and the drive for endless accumulation of capital” (Li 2008:139). In other words, production, especially industrial production, requires the material resources of our natural environment to be transformed into products to meet our human needs and desires. During the last 150 years since the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, mankind has simply acquired what was required for production and gone along without giving much thought to our natural environment. In the last forty years it has become increasingly evident that the resources of the earth exist in a finite amount, while the endless accumulation of capital requires an endless supply of resources to support production. Therein lies the basic economic and environmental dilemma, finite resources vs. endless accumulation. Additionally, we have acquired our supply of non-renewable and some renewable resources, at bargain basement prices, giving little consideration to the ecological costs associated with the harvesting of the resources, a condition economist Minqi Li refers to as the “problem of externality.” Capitalism today is a world economy without a world government that can effectively represent all interests (Li
2008). The resources are harvested, and now the bill is quickly coming due, who will or can pay?
There are limits to the earth’s ability to regenerate renewable resources within a given environment and timeframe. There are limits to any ecosystem’s ability to assimilate and render waste harmless within a given timeframe, and when considering the issue of waste, we should also include an ecosystems ability to recover from industrial
299 accidents such as the 2010 British Petroleum (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the
Enron Valdez spill, or the 1969 Santa Barbara spill, and many others. The list of environmental disasters is extensive. Pollution from industrial waste, such as the BP spill, results in environmental degradation to the ecosystems that support fishing industry harvests, the Gulf tourism industry of several states, and other economic activities, as well as irreplaceable oceanic ecosystems. It is likely that neither BP nor the U.S. government will step up to the full cost of the spill cleanup and environmental restoration required to repair the ecological damage done by the spill. Yet the Obama administration has already approved more offshore drilling without long-term regard to the environmental restoration and maintenance costs required to support endless accumulation. This will, of course, eventually lead to environmental breakdown, devastating other industries reliant on the Gulf of Mexico resources. How can this economic behavior be reversed before the earth’s ecosystems are damaged to the point of ecological failure?
The answer, we often hear, is in new technological solutions that will provide new energy sources to power our production and living requirements. Where will this come from and what are the limits of technology; better yet, what are the limits of science to support technological breakthroughs? These questions are not new. Since the beginning of the environmental awareness movement of the late-20th century, technology has been held up as the savior by capitalists. Meanwhile, environmentalists hold out hope that there will also be new technologies to help support sustainable environmental, social and economic changes within society in order to attack the root causes of environmental
300 degradation. Lester Brown, MacArthur Fellow and founder and president of the
Worldwatch Institute, states the following,
What we are now looking at is nothing less than an environmental revolution, an economic and social transformation that ranks with the agricultural and industrial revolutions…The two other revolutions were driven by technological advances - the first by the discovery of farming and the second by the invention of the steam engine, which converted the energy in coal into mechanical power. The environmental revolution, while it will obviously use new technologies, will be driven primarily by the restructuring of the global economy so that this economy does not destroy its natural support systems (Brown 1995:ix).
Ecological sustainability or, more precisely, the lack of ecological sustainability of the capitalist world-economy, plays a crucial role in any discussion of economic imperialism as an integral component of neoliberalism, both the historic and current neo- imperialist activities. In the last 500 years of humanity’s short history, men have ravished the earth of resources without regard for the sustainability of the environment’s ecosystems or the cost to human populations living in those ecosystems. This can hardly be seen as anything other than an ecological “rape” of the natural resources of the Earth to support the capitalist elite’s addiction to endless accumulation. When resource procurement became too expensive in one area, for any reason, capitalists went to new areas to procure the necessary raw materials for production activities. In the early phases of capitalist activity that usually meant imperialist colonializing. From 1918, through the golden days of the U.S. capitalist economy and up to present time, colonizing has been transformed into the imperialist activity of transnational corporations, capitalist wars, and the United States support and control of puppet governments in third world nations with valuable resources. In the current neoliberal dominated capitalist environment, economic
301 imperialism has taken many pathways including globalization, free trade and continued military intervention and actions. All forms of neoliberal economic imperialism have the same economic objectives and all contribute to the reproduction of the framework and inequitable relationship of the capitalist world economy. Neoliberal dominance of the
Western world’s political economy has not always succeeded as we will see with a look at the recent economic recession or “the great financial crisis” of 2007 to present.
The Great Financial Crisis (2007 to 2009) or Great Neoliberal Miscalculations
Although previous economic activities contributed to it, the worst economic crisis in the capitalist world-economy since the great Depression of 1929 began and caught the attention of the capitalist world in the summer of 2007. Two Bear Stearns hedge funds failed followed by the failure of other securities, bank failures and the bursting of the housing bubble, resulting in high and lasting unemployment.
In the U.S. real income had been declining and household debt levels, as well as business and public debt levels, had been increasing since the 1970s (Foster and Magdoff
2009:28-29). Consumer spending is a major economic driver in the capitalist world- economy, so it was of major importance that the consumer was becoming “tapped out.”
At the same time the George W. Bush administration was providing extensive tax cuts to the capitalist elites in the very top income brackets and CEOs were acquiring unheard of seven and eight digit incomes. The gap between the wealthy and average worker was widening as never before. “It follows that increasing inequality in income and wealth can be expected to create the age-old conundrum of capitalism: an accumulation (savings and
302 investment) process that depends on keeping wages down while ultimately relying on wage-based consumption to support economic growth and investment” (Foster and
Magdoff 2009:27). However, the neoliberals were not about to give up; they had additional strategies to deploy.
A stock market bubble meltdown in the year 2000 had pushed the economy in search of something to spur consumer spending and investment activity. Interest rates were low, consumer household debt levels high, home refinancing was booming as homeowners cashed out equity to do their duty and consume more. The 2000 stock market problems were offset by continuing housing price increases in what economist
Stephanie Pomboy termed the “Great Bubble Transfer” (Foster and Magdoff 2009:35).
The stock market bubble of the 1990s had been replaced with the consumer household debt bubble and the housing bubble of the early part of the first decade of the 21st century. The average worker lost spending capacity as the debt caught up with declining real incomes.
The neoliberals had to look for new markets for their products, new sources of raw materials and new sources of cheap labor to help get prices under control. That meant looking to new areas for solutions and that meant imperialist activities.
“Neoliberal globalization is the most recent manifestation of imperialism: capital (large corporations, both financial and non-financial) using governments, and especially the leadership of the U.S. government, to make it easier to exploit the world’s resources and people” (Foster and Magdoff 2009:41). Investments abroad had supplied 6% of the total business profits in the 1960s but by the 2000-2004 five-year period it averaged 18%
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(Foster and Magdoff 2009). Expansion of globalization was seen as a necessary step regardless of the consequences at home, which included declining wages and rising unemployment rates. Additionally, the military spending associated with imperialist activity stimulated the economy through both expenditures for actual warfare such as the current and recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the creation of new industries through military technology development.
The monopoly capital stage of capitalism was marked by the birth of the giant corporation in the early-20th century (Sweeny and Baron 1966). By the golden age of capitalism, after the interruptions of the Great Depression and World War II, these giant corporations were in control of most industries in the U.S. Monopoly practices led to growing surpluses, and stagnation. However, something else was also happening in the
1970s that would have a growing effect on the economy and eventually produce the
“Great Financial Crisis of 2007,” yet to come. It was the financialization of monopoly capital that had already started.
Metaphorical Steroids: Financialization and the Economic Crisis
This new phase of monopoly capital is sometimes termed “monopoly-finance capital” and suggests a shift in focus away from production and into finance. Foster and
Magdoff describe it this way: “rather than advancing in a fundamental way, capital is trapped in a seemingly endless cycles of stagnation and financial explosion” (Foster and
Magdoff 2009:41). They list eight key observations regarding the class and imperial implications of financialization:
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Financialization can be regarded as an ongoing process transcending financial bubbles. Monopoly-finance capital is a qualitatively different phenomenon from…early-twentieth-century age of finance capital, rooted especially in the dominance of investment banking. Ownership of very substantial finance assets is clearly the main determination of membership in the capitalist class. A central aspect of the stagnation-financialization dynamic has been speculation in housing. Globalization is a law unto itself and the IMF, WTO and OECD make up a supranational state with its own powers. Neoliberalism can be seen as the ideological counterpoint of monopoly-finance capital. The growing financialization of the world economy has resulted in greater imperial penetration into underdeveloped economies and increased financial dependence, marked by policies of neoliberal globalization. The financialization of capitalism has resulted in a more uncontrollable system (Foster and Magdoff 2009:84-88).
These observations provide a crucial view of financialization and the current state of the capital world-economy going into the great financial crisis of 2007. In fact, it could be stated that the financialization phenomenon represents capitalism’s “metaphorical steroids.”
A look at the current financial crisis requires a review of the five phases of an economic bubble thought to include (1) a novel offering, (2) a credit expansion, (3) speculative mania, (4) distress, and (5) crash and panic. The novel offering for the great financial crisis consisted of collateralized debt obligations (CDO) and, specifically, the collateralized mortgage obligations (CMO) or the bundling of subprime mortgage debt with lesser risk mortgage debt. Credit expanded, the housing bubble was peaking, debt increased and soon distress hit in the form of a leak in the housing bubble and the failure
305 of the two Bear Stearns hedge funds. Exposure to toxic mortgage funds became evident to investors and credit became scarce. The panic was beginning in earnest and it hit around the world due to the international nature of the investing.
One thing is certain. Large capital interests are relatively well-placed to protect their investments in the downswing through all sorts of hedging arrangements and can often call on the government to bail them out. They also have a myriad of ways of transferring the costs to those lower down on the economic hierarchy (Foster and Magdoff 2009:99).
Neoliberalism’s Crisis Effects on Poverty and Homelessness
Of special concern to this study of homelessness is the effect the emergence of neoliberal political and economic hegemony has had on poverty and, specifically, homelessness in the United States. There has been a dramatic increase in the size of the homeless population in the United States, starting with substantial changes to the demographics first noted at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s. Additionally, homelessness in the U.S. which was once thought to be primarily a problem encountered most often by single, often white, adult males living in skid row sections of our inner cities, has expanded demographically to include women, children and families, as well as people of other ethnic backgrounds including Hispanic, African American and Native
Americans.
In much the same manner as we saw that the number of homeless people is hard to get correct census counts on due to the use of differing census taking methodologies, definitions of who is homeless and should be counted, and knowing where to locate and count homeless individuals who lack a fixed address, it is difficult to determine how many people are living in conditions of poverty. The obstacles in determining and
306 defining who is living in poverty and what designates poverty are similar. According to information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (see Table 6.1) the original versions of poverty measures were through the use of poverty thresholds. Used mainly for statistical analysis, these thresholds are updated annually and provide counts of the income levels that would define those people living in poverty based on weighted income and number of family members. Table 5 provides the income thresholds for a four-person family that I extracted from the HHS website and a
Table 5: Poverty Level Threshold Income for a Family of Four FAMILY OF FOUR FAMILY OF FOUR Year Annual Income Monthly Income Threshold Threshold 1959 $3105 $259 1969 $3909 $326 1979 $7727 $643 1989 $12,619 $1051 1999 $16,954 $1413 2009 $21,832 $1819 Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2011).
column I added breaking income down to monthly income. We will refer to these numbers later when we look at current economic conditions in Sacramento.
An additional method of federal poverty measures is the use by HHS of poverty guidelines. Issued annually in the Federal Register by HHS, the poverty guidelines are meant to be a simplification of the poverty thresholds when used for administrative purposes such as qualification for federal poverty programs. Table 6 is reproduced from the HHS website and Federal Register. The right column has been added computing a
307 monthly breakdown of the annual guideline. The numbers for a four person family appear slightly higher in the 2011 poverty guidelines than the 2009 poverty thresholds.
However, it is small enough that we can conclude it is due to slight change in the consumer price index in the two years between the figures. What is noteworthy is that these HHS poverty threshold and poverty measure numbers are extremely low. For
Table 6: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2011 Poverty Guidelines 2011 HHS Poverty Guidelines Persons 48 Contiguous Alaska Hawaii Monthly in Family States and D.C. 48 States 1 $10,890 $13,600 $12,540 $908 2 14,710 18,380 16,930 $1226 3 18,530 23,160 21,320 $1544 4 22,350 27,940 25,710 $1863 5 26,170 32,720 30,100 $2181 6 29,990 37,500 34,490 $2499 7 33,810 42,280 38,880 $2818 8 37,630 47,060 43,270 $3136 For each 3,820 4,780 4,390 $318 additional person, add Source: Federal Register. January 20, 2011, 76(13:3637-3688).
example, a single individual according to the 2011 HHS poverty measures is identified as living at or below the poverty line when their income is at $908 per month or lower. As we will see below these income levels severely limit the choices that an individual (or family) has in regard not only to housing options but food, health care, transportation and education. It is a figure that reflects the consumer price index but is set at such a low threshold that little beyond basic necessities will be available to individuals who qualify
308 or come close to qualifying at the official poverty level. Additional data is gathered, much by the U.S. Census Bureau, to produce reports including the Annual Social and
Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey, the American
Community Survey (ACS), the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) all which supply the federal government with demographic data on poverty issues including geographic, social, health insurance coverage, economic, and housing data. This data is used primarily for designing and funding federal programs. The following data was provided by the U.S.
Census Bureau:
Real median household income was $49,445 in 2010, a 2.3% decline from 2009. Since 2007 real median income has declined 6.4% (7.1% since 1999). Family household income declined 1.2% between 2009 and 2010 to $61,544. Non-family household income also declined for the same period, by 3.9% to $29,730. Since 2007 the number of men working full-time, year round, decreased by 6.6 million and women by 2.8 million (U.S. Census Bureau 2011).
These U.S. Census Bureau figures provide additional support to the contention that the middle class is steadily losing economic ground and has been doing so since the 1980s, especially since the economic recession of 2001. Additional data which will not be included in this study but is relevant to both issues of homelessness and poverty in the
United States include data on age, race and gender and should be analyzed in further studies of the issues of poverty and homelessness as they suggest that there is a racial and gender component to homelessness not covered in this study.
Neoliberal policies have accompanied the decline in median household income going back to the 1980s and up to present day. While this is a broad statement, it is only
309 necessary to look at the continued loss of manufacturing jobs to the low cost labor markets overseas, the housing, banking, stock market and financialization crises since
2001, and the decline in real income for the working class to understand that the neoliberal policies of the last forty years are failing as an economic policy for all.
Reduced taxation of the wealthy has been in effect since the George W. Bush administration’s 2001 tax cut bill and real jobs have declined. The Bush and Obama administration efforts to bail-out Wall Street, the banks and select industry have failed to release money into the U.S. economy for job creation. Privatization of education and funding cuts to public education have made it difficult for workers to retrain or young people to prepare for jobs of the future, assuming they could be identified. Moreover, as we will see when we look at the economic situation in Sacramento, unemployment is not rebounding from the 2007 recession, housing costs continue to be too high for many segments of the population to pay, certainly for any that qualify for the poverty thresholds discussed above. Hunger and associated improper nutrition are at all time high levels within the United States, as well. At the same time energy companies, banks and other multinational corporations and their CEOs report record incomes. It would appear that neoliberal policies have only succeeded in increasing the gap between those that are wealthy and the rest of the working population. The wealthy are wealthier, the poor are poorer, and the homeless population at the bottom of the extreme poverty scales is increasing. Neoliberal economic policies moved economic thinking to accept an unemployment rate of 5% when it had previously been the norm to target full employment and not accept permanent numbers of unemployed in the U.S. (Harvey
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2005). It must now be asked if we are moving toward acceptance of increased unemployment, maybe in the 7% to 8% range, on a permanent basis as a cost of neoliberal policies resulting in deindustrialization and globalization of the capitalist system. If the answer is yes, we must also acknowledge that there are additional workers who are unemployed and have given up on searching for work and that there are those who are underemployed, making wages insufficient to maintain permanent housing, health care and nutrition. If this is the case, the real unemployment and underemployment rates are much higher. Our efforts focused on combating or ending homelessness must be increased. In fact if these neoliberal economic policies are not resisted it is likely we will see increases in extreme poverty, hunger and homelessness as globalization continues to expand its world-wide hegemonic dominance of the world- capitalist system.
U.S. Conference of Mayors 2011
I turn again to reports from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, this time to results of a January 2011 analysis. At that time, the conference reported an average increase in the homeless population of 2% across the country, accompanied by a 24% increase in requests for emergency food assistance (U.S. Conference of Mayors 2011:1). While unemployment led the causes of requests for food assistance, 30% of the requests came from employed and 56% of the requests were from families. At the same time, 56% of the cities participating reported that their resources to deal with emergency food assistance would decline moderately in the next year due to budget shortfalls, while another 8% expected substantial decreases. An increase in families experiencing
311 homelessness was expected by as many as 72% of the cities and 77% expect homelessness of unaccompanied individuals to increase. Another 19% expect it to remain at about the same level and only one city mayor expected a decrease in homelessness. The mayors’ report quotes a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report that in 2009, 14.7% of American households were “food insecure” or lacked sufficient food for active, healthy lifestyles. This equaled 50.2 million people including
17.2 million children (U.S. Conference of Mayors 2011:3). These statistics are alarming and should be provided to elected officials and business leaders across the nation as an alert to the worsening effects of our economic policies and a public call for action. Let’s turn now to a brief look at economic data for Sacramento.
Sacramento, California: State Capital and Location of SafeGround
Sacramento’s unemployment rate in the early-1990s was in the 5% range, fluctuating monthly by small amounts. It declined to close out the decade at 3.6% (Dec
1999 data) and remained in the 4% to 6% range during most of the first decade of the
Figure 20: Unemployment Rate Sacramento County (1995-2009)
Source: CSUS Sacramento Forecast Project, CA EDD data.
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21st century. However, in early 2009 it rose suddenly to over 10% , beyond forecasts (see
Figure 20) and by 2010 had risen to the 12-13% range (California EDD 2011:1-6). At the same time per capita income in Sacramento was lagging behind California as a whole. Housing starts were down and average apartment rental was reported at $975 per month, although one bedroom apartments in the $750 range could still be found in some neighborhoods. While Sacramento housing values continued to decline through the first decade of the 21st century, foreclosures in California were reported in the San Jose
Business Journal as being the second highest in the nation, trailing only Florida (San Jose
Business Journal 2010:1).
During this period from the start of the 2007 recession through 2011 homelessness in Sacramento was increasing as evidenced by the DHA street counts and the County Board of Education counts provided earlier. The response by Sacramento’s elected officials has been insufficient and is faltering at the present time. Since early
2009, when Sacramento’s Tent City was demolished and Safe Ground was forming,
Sacramento authorities have, in effect, turned their back on the mounting problem and continued to reinforce the city and county anti-camping ordinances further criminalizing homelessness rather than help create a safe and legal place where homeless overflow from insufficient shelter space and inadequate affordable housing could stay.
SafeGround has repeatedly asked for a safe and legal place to camp, where sanitation and basic dignity could be provided to homeless individuals. Additionally, Safe Ground has proposed a transitional housing community model with individualized services that would house up to 100 homeless individuals at a time. This proposal has met repeated
313 roadblocks from city officials, city councilmembers, and county supervisors who, while not always voicing opposition, have not stepped forward to publically support the effort to select a site and provide the political will necessary to allow the initiative to succeed.
Although a similar transitional housing proposal, Stepping Stone, was supported by a special mayoral task force on homelessness, no work was started on Stepping Stone and task force members have reported that they expect Safe Ground to take the lead on the transitional housing initiative.
During the winter of 2010-2011 and again at the start of the 2011-2012 season, complaints by constituents led the county to push for strict enforcement of the anti- camping ordinance on the American River Parkway (ARP) land near downtown
Sacramento. This is an area where from 400-600 homeless individuals have sought shelter in tent encampments during the last several decades. Rain or shine, for a period of several months, the Sacramento County Park Rangers and Sacramento City Police were directed to force the homeless to move, even though there were no available facilities for them to move into. Efforts by a county supervisor provided thirty-two additional beds at the Salvation Army, but the facility already had a waiting list of over 150 individuals.2
These actions, along with repeated confiscation (and often destruction) of the property of homeless individuals along the ARP and refusal to allow Safe Ground to provide porta- potties or trash dumpsters, forced homeless individuals from 18 to 75 years of age to move on a daily basis. Strong among the outspoken anti-homeless voices were the River
District business improvement district and, once again, it was for reasons couched in neoconservative social mores and neoliberal economic reasoning. Their responses were,
314 in effect, to blame the homeless individuals for their homeless condition and suggest that the social ills of the city could best be taken care of by application of more law enforcement and allowing the market forces to seek equilibrium without interference from the homeless intruders.
My research at this point led me to repeatedly asked myself, “What is it that allows public officials in Sacramento (and in the United States), those with the authority to take action, to simply turn their heads and do nothing for the homeless, nothing for our most vulnerable citizens?” Furthermore, “What is it about the American ethos that places the economic success and the business interests of global corporations over the well- being of those less fortunate?” Is there something in our cultural mores or our view of the world that places corporate economic success over individual suffering? In
Sacramento the elected leadership understands that homeless individuals have nowhere else to go, that shelters are full and that affordable housing is at maximum capacity, yet they force them to constantly and repeatedly move their camps, rain or shine. They understand that continual harassment and forced moves only relocate the problem for a few days, yet they continue the abusive actions and hegemonic criminalizing.
Additionally, they continue to place a higher priority on the fact that several outspoken wealthy constituents are concerned about the “dirty” or inappropriate people on the ARP bike trail, than the fact that there are four to six hundred homeless people living outdoors with no options, and hundreds, even thousands more on the streets of the city and county,, as well as those who “couch surf” or double-up with friends and family.
Furthermore, the tendency to blame the individuals as “sinful or sick” is a way of stating
315 that each has personal responsibility to be successful in our system, and that a personal failure by these people is not in society’s interest to remedy. What is it in our character that leads to neglect of this situation and these people? Is it then related to the character of American individualism?
The Place of the Self: The Individual in Culture
I noted earlier that culture can be viewed as a symbolic system that transforms the physical reality of what is there into experienced reality in a process that anthropologist
Dorothy Lee refers to codifying reality (Lee 1987a). Our perception of reality is different from what other cultures perceive based on the filter provided by our culture.
We create different realities based on our cultural framework and this includes our concepts of the self, freedom and equality, all pertinent to the discussion of homelessness.
Intellectual penetration of these separate realities is necessary in this study of who we are, to understand the root causal factors contributing to homelessness in America. We must also consider the cultural isolation that is experienced by the homeless who are excluded from many of the public, media, and institutional influences within our society. This isolation means that they are often out-of-sync with the dominant cultural mores of mainstream society.
Cultural behavior provides a system that links the self to the universe (Lee 1987).
In other words, our collective mores based on collective perceptions and individual experience, link the self to the environment. As unique individuals we are affected by the collective mores of other members of our culture. We, as social beings are linked to the
316 collective cultural mores but remain unique individuals based on our personal experiences. While all societies are organized into some type of social units, not all societies’ social units provide the same concept of individual freedoms.
Lee provides an example of individual freedom different from our own, an
American Indian mother who is caring for her 18 month old child who has very long hair.
When questioned about why the child’s hair has not been cut the mother replies that the child has not asked for it to be cut, thus demonstrating a differing concept of individual freedom, an absolute respect for the individual’s freedom of choice from birth (Lee
1987a:7). The California Wintu provide another example. For the Wintu the inviolate integrity of the individual is basic to the morphology of their language. A Wintu would not say “I took the baby,” but rather would state “I am with the baby,” a statement that demonstrates respect for the baby as a unique individual and equality between the speaker and the baby rather than dominance (Lee 1987a:8).
To look at a different conception of reality and alternate understanding of the self, we can refer to the writings of Raymond Firth on the Tikopia. The Tikopia have a social definition of the self not as man’s individual relationship with the universe, but as man as part of a universal interrelatedness. Individual man is not seen at the top of the social pyramid but as interconnected with all as effectively demonstrated by the Tikopia word arofa which has a broad meaning that can be interpreted as affection, sympathy, concern, social warmth, and pride, appreciation of and continuity of social group (Lee 1987a:35-
38). Arofa and acts of arofa exist only between those socially continuous such as kin and people who have shared living over a period of time. When an individual is under stress
317 the arofa group shows him arofa, when an individual is ill he is given arofa. This also leads the Tikopia to a different relationship to work than in Western cultures. In Tikopia society work can take place without coercion, without incentive or reward, or fear of punishment, without the spur of individual profit. This is because to the Tikopia work as participation with arofa is meaningful. Arofa demonstrates a respect for individual equality and integrity of the individual.
In Western cultures arofa is not part of our worldview. In American society equality has not been viewed as incidental to respect for individual worth. Instead, in
America and other Western societies the equality has taken on the meaning of “equality of opportunity,” more specifically economic opportunity. This is, to a great extent, because we have accepted the political and economic conceptual framework of capitalism as the primary cultural filter of our Western reality.
This is not surprising if we agree that in Western cultures the self is opposed to the other. We support individual competition, as well as, viewing man as finite and comparable, and we perform a utilitarian calculus of an individual’s worth. These can be viewed as actions that are inherently hierarchical in nature and that promote subordinate relationships and a resultant devaluation of the uniqueness of individuals. These actions are, I suggest, inherently violent actions towards particular individuals, as we shall see when we discuss the American individualism and homeless in sections below.
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American Individualism
I have said earlier that I considered mores to be one of the great causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic in the United States. I here mean the term ‘mores’ (moeurs) to have its original Latin meaning; I mean it to apply not only to ‘moeurs’ in the strict sense, which might be called habits of the heart, but also to different notions possessed by men, the various opinions current among them, and the sums of ideas that shape mental habit. So I use the word to cover the whole moral and intellectual state of a people…I am only looking for the elements in them which help to support political institutions (Alexis de Tocqueville 1966a:287).
John Locke had started his defense of individual rights placing individuals in a state of nature from which a social order was derived by society. Locke was an important influence in American thought in which the individual comes first and society is later derived through a voluntary contract between individuals. In 1778, Adam Smith provided further thought regarding an individual’s success as economic success in Wealth of Nations (2009).
As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value…He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good (Smith 2009:26-27).
Later, after extensive observations in a new American society heavily influenced by both Locke and Smith, the term individualism was coined by Alexis de Tocqueville to
319 describe what he observed in America as it relates to individuals ability to isolate themselves from the mass of the citizenry and to withdraw into a circle of friends and family, leaving society to look after itself (Tocqueville 1966b). Tocqueville believed that in an age of equality such as he observed in America, a man found his beliefs within himself. Individualism, which Tocqueville was somewhat fearful or skeptical of, was observed during his visit to the U.S. preceding his two volume work, Democracy In
America, and deemed an outgrowth of democracy and equality. Tocqueville observed social equality in America and many men who had accumulated enough wealth to be somewhat self-sufficient and as a result were beholden to no one, self-reliant.
Tocqueville’s observations were of an early American expression of self-reliance and he feared that it isolated men’s thinking from their ancestors, decendants and contemporaries. He saw the American independence from past aristocratic rule as leading to this new individualism, men drunk with newly acquired power and feeling as if they would never need another man’s help. He expressed concern that this isolation would alter men’s perspective of the collective needs of himself, his fellow men, and his society. Tocqueville felt that despotism and autocratic government would thrive and find permanence if men remained isolated within a society, such as he observed in early
America, and warned that despots would call those who tried to “unite their efforts to create a general prosperity turbulent and restless spirits” and those that cared only for their own well-being “good citizens” (Tocqueville 1966b:509). Tocqueville’s observation one hundred and seventy years ago was astute, and would serve as predictive of the concerns of governmentality – the way governments try to produce citizens best
320 suited to fulfill government policies – the concern that French philosopher Michel
Foucault would raise in the late1970s. Additionally, it was Tocqueville’s observation that immersion in private economic pursuits undermined the person as citizen.
“Involvement in public affairs is the best antidote to the pernicious effects of individualistic isolation: citizens who are bound to take part in public affairs must turn from private interests and occasionally take a look at something other than themselves”
(Bellah et al. 1985:38).
Following Tocqueville’s observations, individualism in America continued in a role that can be seen as one of promoting strong, self-reliant and economically independent citizens. Ongoing westward expansion in the growing republic helped reproduce patterns of a decentralized, egalitarian society with strong self-reliant individuals. By the time of the Gilded Age, in the second half of the 19th century, industrialism reached new heights with the expansive economic success and emergence of self-made industrial barons in railroads, investment banking, oil, steel and new public utilities. Dubbed the “robber barons,” these men were seen as predatory capitalists, honored and respected by some and feared by others who believed “that by releasing the untrammeled pursuit of wealth without regard to the demands of social justice, industrial capitalism was destroying the fabric of a democratic society, threatening social chaos by pitting class against class” (Bellah et al. 1985:43). By the early 20th century the period of robber barons or activist individual entrepreneurs had partially given way to an era of bureaucracy and the business corporation, giving life to the modern 20th century business manager, whose major task was to organize resources in a way that maximized the profit
321 of the corporation. If any different from the robber barons, these bureaucrats were only clearer in the way they pitted class against class.
Tocqueville’s Habits of the Heart
In 1985 sociologist Robert Bellah of the University of California at Berkeley and a team of his former graduate students published a study that had started with them asking questions including, “Who are we as Americans?” and “What is our character?”
These questions led them to an investigation of Tocqueville’s thoughts on the relationship between character and society in America and his description of American mores which he referred to as “habits of the heart” (Tocqueville 1966a:287). The Bellah study noted that Tocqueville singled out equality as a feature that marched through the American experience and noted both admiration and concern for American individualism.
However, it is individualism that has marched through our history and may be threatening our contemporary freedom itself rather than equality and, it is our sense of individualism that has changed the way we define and functionally integrate equality into society.
Biblical and Republican Individualism
Individualism in the early periods of U.S. history was often seen either in the form of biblical or republican (civic) traditions. Biblical traditions arrived on American shores with the early Christian colonists. Tocqueville noted that John Winthrop, one of the first
Puritans to land on our shores, was exemplary of those who brought the biblical traditions to the U.S. Winthrop, an educated and religious man, delivered a sermon in 1630 onboard ship as it arrived in Salem Harbor. Titled A Model of Christian Charity, the sermon described the “city set upon a hill” that they intended to build in the New World.
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Winthrop further stated, “We must delight in each other, make others conditions of our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body” (Bellah et al. 1985:28). Thus we observe Winthrop’s idea of success as tied to his concepts of a moral, Christian community more than to any form of material success. In his search for moral freedom,
Winthrop was determined to do what was good, just and honest. In Winthrop’s beliefs concerning a moral community and an individual’s personal obligations to serve the community, we observe somewhat typical themes of both biblical and republican traditions and a strand of individualism from our colonial period. The biblical and republican traditions in America have continued even to present day but in contemporary society have taken a backseat, to new traditions and forms of individualism which are not focused on universal equality and community. The republican tradition was exemplified during the early years of the republic by many of the founding fathers. Washington,
Adams, Jefferson and others contributed to the republican tradition through their unique experiences and personal beliefs. These leaders brought support for the principle of universal equality to our constitution, while expressing fears of the growth of cities and manufacturing because of the potential for creating a wealthy aristocracy and a poor workingman’s class. Classic republicanism saw an active citizenry contributing to the public good and was supported by Reformation Christianity in both the Puritan and sectarian forms, which inspired a government based on voluntary participation of the individuals with Christian mores.
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Utilitarian Individualism
America soon turned to another strand of individualism, utilitarian individualism which was exemplified early in our history by men like Ben Franklin (Bellah et al.
1985:32-33). Not born into wealth, Franklin was a self-educated man who became a self- made wealthy individual, able to devote his later life to political, philanthropic, and scientific interests. Although Franklin was both a Christian and a supporter of republican traditions, it is for his exploits as a self-made man that he is credited with bringing the most lasting influence to America. In the way he lived his life, Franklin helped to create the American “rags to riches” story, the belief that hard work pays off and that in
America anyone could make it to the ranks of the wealthy. In so doing, Franklin helped to create the vision of the American Dream.
By the 1850s utilitarian individualism had become widespread in American culture. It developed as a cultural tradition of individuals who made calculated, rational decisions to support their own self-interests, more than expressing concerns for the collective value of biblical traditions or republican virtues to their communities. By 1900 it was argued by some that following this utilitarian path through life a man would also contribute to the social well-being of his community and his country as a side benefit of his own hard work and resultant success. This third strand of American individualism is bound to the world of the entrepreneur, commerce, business and economics by its very nature. It defines success as the material success of the individual who has sacrificed and worked hard, rather than as the direct achievements of the collective community sought by the biblical and republican strands. Rather than calling on and rewarding individuals
324 who dedicate their lives to collective efforts on behalf of the community, it looks to the individual to be rational, hard-working, and self-reliant, and expects that individuals will subsequently build strong collective communities. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, a
French settler in the colonies who had been schooled in French philosophy, noted about the American character that the American man represented a “new man, an emancipated, enlightened individual confidently directing his energies toward the environment, both natural and social, aiming to wring from it a comfortable happiness…his labour is founded on the basis of nature, self-interest; can it want a stronger allurement?” (Bellah et al. 1985:35).
Expressive Individualism
American poet Walt Whitman published the first edition of what would become his life’s work, Leaves of Grass, in 1855. Written with a strong personal focus, the first poem in his book, entitled “Song for Myself,” is Whitman’s celebration of himself, his life, his experiences, and ultimately his happiness. His focus was far away from material gain or economic success and more on his desire for achieving happiness through personal experiences. While true to republican ideals, Whitman’s work identified the self with other things, other places (Bellah et al. 1985:34). His work was exemplary of the fourth American tradition of individualism, expressive individualism, which allowed individuals to explore their social identities with a freedom of expression previously denied in more structured or authoritarian societies. Expressive individualism is, like utilitarian individualism, a mode of individualism and expression of freedom that is to the
325 specific benefit of the individual rather than to the direct collective benefit of the community.
Self-reliance
A cultural theme that runs through all these strands of American individualism is self-reliance. Biblical and republican traditions expressed their individualism in a collective context where individuals acted independently for the collective good of the community. However, the latter two stands of American individualism, the utilitarian and the expressive, intended their individualism in the context of personal self-gain. In the course of the 20th century, it was the utilitarian and expressive traditions of individualism that came to dominate in American society. Despite warnings against the loss of concern for the collective good, capitalism was able to repeatedly provide folk heroes, examples of the self-made man, who had achieved economic success and accumulated great wealth. As a result, our culture developed an image of the American work ethic that would transport a self-made man to the realization of wealth and the
American Dream. Capitalists adapted utilitarian individualism to single out supportive behavior and even promoted successful self-made men to positions of heroes, suggesting that actions for personal gain helped promote the well-being of the community. Korean-
American anthropologist, Jin K. Kim, in a letter describing the American cultural ethos to a Korean friend about to come to America states, “The fundamental belief in the value of free will of individuals in pursuing the greatest good for the greatest number with minimal interference from state or societal constraints is vigorously advocated and even glorified when individual efforts bear fruit” (Kim 1998:5).
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American Individualism Meets Capitalism
A growing middle class, made possible by the huge growth of American industrial capacity, new technologies and unsustainable use of resources at bargain prices during the first half of the 20th century, entered the second half of the century prospering with the benefits of the Golden Age of U.S. capitalism. The 1950s and 1960s in America were a period in which the middle class came to believe that hard work and a burgeoning economy could lead them to become home owners, with a car (or two) in every garage, a television (or two) in every home and, potentially, a college education, and an even better life for their children. So what went wrong? Where did the American Dream go astray?
How did we move to the point when extreme poverty, with both double digit unemployment and under-employment, lack of proper health care, widespread hunger, and homelessness are major issues that we cannot seem to resolve? How did we evolve into a democratic society with elected leaders who can turn their back on those not succeeding, who may be even starving and homeless in a wealthy society?
American Individualism Meets Neoliberalism on Steroids
In response to the burgeoning industrial economy and self-made robber barons of the Gilded Age, America experienced strong labor union movements, including socialist- led political activities, in the early decades of the 20th century up to and during the
Depression. These movements were driven by traditions that saw the collective good of the community and all its members as a higher priority than individual gain and feared growing industrialism and corporate dominance as threats to individual equality.
However, when the great Depression gave way to World War II things started to change.
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Economic expansion to support the war effort, built on a base of strong collaboration between government, business and the population, would give rise to the largest economy the world had ever seen. The generation that came home from World War II came home to a new world political and economic order. The United States had become the dominant world military and economic leader and now carried the newly created title of a superpower, with the associated responsibilities. Although the economy experienced brief periods of recession during the 1950s and early-1960s, it was a period of unprecedented economic expansion and general prosperity. The confidence gained through military victory during World War II had spilled over into the economy and influenced the strands of individualism in the general population.
By the early 1960s, America had awakened to the joint realities of widespread racism and high poverty levels in the U.S. The Johnson Administration’s “War on
Poverty” programs and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 attempted to turn these distressing trends around, but America, firmly entrenched in the ethos of utilitarian individualism and heavily influenced by an advertisement industry dedicated to creating a strong consumerist public, continued on a path taking it farther away from the collective end of the individual-collective continuum. During this postwar period America continued the expansion of its manufacturing base and core infrastructure started by many of the New
Deal programs during the Great Depression and expanded during World War II.
Employment remained at relatively high levels, GDP grew and the CPI was stable.
America’s political-economy was at the top of the world’s balance of power. This
328 success had an important and lasting impact on our attitudes and behavior as a people and would mold our cultural ethos for decades to come.
Young Americans coming of age in the first decade or two after World War II grew up in a U.S. that considered itself the world leader in economics, politics, education, military strength and standard-of-living for its people. The late 1960s saw the generation born after the war react to the stark realities of war and poverty, nevertheless the course had seemingly been set by the booming economic and military successes of the last twenty-five years. Through the twin virtues of self-reliance and independence, the
American individual was evolving into the rugged individualist, a person who, through hard work and free competition, became a self-reliant, self-made man seen as smart, strong, and successful. The economic opportunities experienced by the postwar population built support for the economic institutions and the political and economic framework that had produced the biggest economy and the most prosperous people in the world. In other words, confidence in the economy built confidence in the system, its institutions and its economic, political and military agendas.
Utilitarian individualism had unquestionably risen to be the dominant mode of
American individualism; it was the model for economic success, which was now the model for becoming a successful American citizen. Biblical traditions were pushed farther into the background, considered more a matter of personal moral choice than model for an individuals’ success. The social model for success that evolved was of citizens who were free and independent, who had the personal responsibility to be self- reliant, and to use the opportunities accorded by a free market society for his or her
329 personal benefit and gain. The American Dream was for individual’s to achieve through hard-work, independence and self-reliance. Additionally, and perhaps even more importantly, he who did not accept personal responsibility and become self-reliant must shoulder the blame for his own failure.
Expressive individualism became another dominant form of individualism for those who did not fit the tight confines of the utilitarian mode. However, as people were free to express themselves for personal satisfaction, it was still seen as a personal responsibility to be self-reliant and it was also expected that the outcome of this personal expression would be material gain not just personal happiness. Through all this, the concept of freedom was also evolving. Freedom was no longer freedom from outside control but the vernacular freedom translated into “freedom to compete” in the free market system.
All Men Created Equal or All Men Have An Equal Opportunity to Compete?
The America where “all men were created equal” was evolving for many into the
America where, all men were to be given an equal opportunity to compete in the economic system that offered as a prize, attainment of the American Dream. Republican individualist traditions and the collective aspirations of strong community had evolved into being able to achieve economic success and independence by competing successfully in the free market economy. American society had adopted the ideals of the rugged individualist, the self-reliant man, the capitalist competitor, an “economic man” laboring for self-interest and personal gain, no longer or directly for the benefit of the collective community. The moral citizen had been swallowed by this new kind of man.
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Referring back to our discussion earlier in this chapter of the evolution of neoliberal thought, agendas and action, we begin to see that the principles of utilitarian individualism are indisputably interwoven with those of neoliberalism. The neoliberal agenda’s call for less government regulation is an outcry from the utilitarian individualists who want less government intervention in their freedom to compete. The neoliberal principles that were and continue to be fought for are the “metaphorical steroids” that are meant to keep the free market economy unimpeded by government regulation, public institutional interference and high tax burdens. Today, the social, political and economic vision of American culture, the mores and raw ethos of contemporary America, is that of utilitarian individualism. Interwoven with neoliberalism, rugged individualism acts as a behavior modifier or control mechanism that requiring everything in America to be seen, measured, evaluated and acted on through an economic filter that currently supports the neoliberal agenda for the capitalist global economy. Global capitalism, driven by the ethos of utilitarian individualism and supported and directed by an aggressive interwoven neoliberal agenda has drifted far toward the individual sphere of the individual-collective continuum and often drives society to blame those who cannot compete as at fault for their own lack of competitive success. Again, from Korean-American anthropologist Jin K. Kim’s letter to a Korean friend,
…when a rugged individual successfully overcomes adverse social and economic conditions, Americans elevate the man or woman to the status of hero for his or her spirit of independence. The individual is praised for fighting against the encroachment of collective forces…However, when things go wrong, when those individuals fail to achieve what they set out
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to achieve, or when they become victims of circumstances, the same individualistic mentality takes a 180-degree turn; no individual accepts responsibility or blame for the failure or admits the mishap was a reasonable consequence of risk taking in the normal course of life…Americans too readily blame others for all sorts of things (Kim 1998:5-6).
Sin, Sickness, System or the Self?
As a result of this economic filter with which Americans collectively view the world, we see the homeless as sinful, morally corrupt individuals who don’t possess the ability or desire to be self-reliant; or as sick, pathological individuals who can’t compete because they are somehow unfit; or perhaps, as a victim of flaws in the system limiting the free market’s ability to extend the invisible hand and make everything OK. This latter includes perceived flaws such as high taxes, government over-regulation
(interference), or other impediments to the activity of the free market which would, if left alone, create jobs, opportunity and wealth for all. However, as we have seen, that is not what is really happening in the global capitalist economy. Instead, it is a separate reality created by the rugged individualism that supports the needs of the capitalists but neglects the needs of the working man in America. Perhaps instead, we need to look squarely at the economic powers that are driving governmental decisions to eliminate social and welfare programs to help those in need, government regulation of industry which serves to protect the people, and to create tax codes that place a higher burden on the working and middle classes than on multi-national corporations. It is not sin, sickness or the system but our shared sense of self as rugged, utilitarian and expressive individualists that
332 drives our economic, political and even social behavior for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.
It is again the time that we as Americans look at societal problems such as homelessness and ask ourselves if our altered sense of self is not the source of the problem. As has been demonstrated throughout history and discussed in this chapter, the
U.S. capitalist economy left to the invisible hand of the free market is incapable of supporting the needs of all citizens. By allowing economic hegemony to guide decision making, we are placing the requirements of a capitalist system that has created a huge income and wealth gap, favoring the capitalists over the workers at the forefront of our political-economy’s planning and development policies for the entire population. This hardly seems like the best policy for a democracy. I am reminded of anthropologist
Dorothy Lee’s statement on democracy, “…the principle of equality is adequate to democracy only when it derives naturally from the tenant of the dignity of man, only when it is a byproduct of the absolute and permeating respect for human worth” (Lee
1987a:39). The equality that Lee is speaking of does not meet the definition of equality to compete that has become the vernacular in contemporary western global capitalist societies. Dignity of man would require something quite different.
By adopting neoliberal policies and cutting the social safety net we expose those most vulnerable of our citizens to face mental and physical disease without health care; by allowing the free market to control the housing market we create a marketplace where there is not enough affordable housing for unemployed, low income and poverty stricken families; and by allowing deregulation of various industries we allow capitalists to
333 abandon the American worker for lower cost labor in foreign and often third world markets. In so doing we allow the American worker, the vulnerable homeless individual, to be forced to compete and be judged in their performance by an unforgiving economic filter. Can we as a nation continue to support a political–economy that refuses to provide for all our citizens? I suggest instead that we do have other options. These options need not be insurmountable and avoided with the fear created by the common sense arguments, in the Gramscian sense, of the neoliberal capitalist machine. In Chapter Eight we will look at some of these options, short-term and long-term, for the self, for communities and for society at large, and suggest areas for further research.
Chapter Seven Endnotes
1 Harvey notes Rapley's (2004:55) discussion of the symbol of freedom. Rapley describes in detail how individuals use imagery to distill great volumes of information regarding public affairs. This imagery provides symbols that the individuals use to filter and sort the data that comes in regarding the political economy. Rapley uses the symbol of freedom to demonstrate this concept in the U.S. 2 The number of people on the waiting list for beds was personally verified in a private phone discussion with the director of the Salvation Army shelter at 12th and North B Streets. However, Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna had directed the Salvation Army to make the thirty-two additional beds he had helped sponsor, through mostly private donation, available to Safe Ground campers before the waiting list was addressed. Safe Ground members refused to “jump” the waiting list and sent only the most vulnerable homeless people living outdoors to the shelter. This group included those disabled or chronically ill individuals found living along the river.
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To Create is to resist. To resist is to create. - Stéphane Hessell, Indignez Vous! (2010:19)
We live in a world of unprecedented opulence, of a kind that would have been hard to imagine a century or two ago. There have been remarkable changes beyond the economic sphere. The twentieth century has established democratic and participatory government as the preeminent model of political organization. Concepts of human rights and political liberty are now very much a part of the prevailing rhetoric…And yet we also live in a world with remarkable deprivation, destitution and oppression. There are many new problems as well as old ones, including persistence of poverty and unfulfilled elementary needs, occurrence of famines and widespread hunger, violation of elementary political freedoms as well as of basic liberties…Many of these deprivations can be observed, in one form or another, in rich countries as well as poor ones. - Amartya Sen, Development As Freedom (1999:x)
Chapter Eight
BEYOND BLAME, BEYOND SAFE GROUND: PROGRAMS THAT CAN HEAL
In this final chapter, while there are many programs to battle the symptoms of homelessness, I explore possible actions to combat the root causes of homelessness. I go beyond the allegations of sin and sickness that place blame on the victims. I do not focus on the obvious need for more affordable housing, better healthcare services and the restructuring of some of our core social programs. Rather, I look at how we might direct transitional actions toward altering those institutions and our sense of self, our individualism, in a way that supports change in our political and economic institutions, and helps create the social framework that can better support all of society collectively.
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In the course of this research, I have considered institutions as damaged entities within a faulty political economy and focused on the underlying or root causal factors of these damaged social, economic and political institutions. Before I look at programs that can heal us and our institutions, I want to briefly review what has been discussed in previous chapters of this research.
Previous Chapters: A Brief Review
In Chapters Two and Three I reviewed the history of homelessness in the United
States, noting the cultural bias that has existed across several centuries of our development, routinely placing the blame for homelessness on the homeless individuals themselves, be it with the label of tramps, hobos, transients or the new homeless. Our cultural bias against the homeless has been evident in the expressed public attitudes, media coverage, decisions of the legal system, business community attitudes, and academic research. Whether this is a modern, inherited continuation of old 17th and 18th century English perceptions of economically unproductive, “lazy” citizens, or tied to current perceptions perpetrated by these institutions, the homeless through our brief history have been characterized as less worthy individuals and often underserving of society’s help. In Chapters Four and Five, I introduced readers to my target research community, Safe Ground Sacramento, and demonstrated how the unsheltered, adult homeless individuals in SafeGround were able to gain agency through their imagined community. I noted how the collective imagination of the homeless fueled resistance to the forces in the greater community that kept them from escaping homelessness and
336 shared their personal stories about forces and events in their lives that had contributed to their being homeless. Additional insight was provided through ethnographic glimpses of the voices of these homeless individuals, which clearly demonstrate that the solution is not to be found in blaming the victims and criminalizing the homeless condition.
This insight into the lives of homeless individuals and their collective community led to Chapter Six’s investigation into deprivations of human rights suffered by the homeless and perpetuated by the courts, who have frequently labeled homelessness as a voluntary condition and, in so doing, directly implied a condition of “undeserving” of the same rights as the general “normal” population. The court, in Love v. Chicago (1996
1998), clearly stated that the homeless deserve only the rights associated with the courts concept of a voluntary “bare life” existence. This stance by the court is a form of misrecognition, blind to the rights of those at the bottom of the economic totem pole, specifically the homeless. In Chapter Seven I discussed how the neoliberal agenda for the political economy has helped create what I argue is a “culture of inequality.”1
Additionally, I discussed how globalized neoliberalism has produced a version of
“capitalism on steroids” that sees the primary role of government as that of creating and supporting an institutional framework that liberates entrepreneurial efforts within the capitalist economy required to support the further accumulation of elite wealth, while at the same time the assuring the general public that when the capitalists are successful it will create a “trickle down” economic effect that ensures the well-being of all. However, the results of the last thirty years of a neoliberal-led political economy are far from successful at improving the life of the working classes. Indeed, the neoliberal agenda
337 appears at best to be a great deception, a con of the working class, sold and perpetuated by the use of a stream of what Gramsci (1971) calls “common sense” political rhetoric, and developed into the political and economic “science” of global capitalism. Moreover, the reality is a vast expanding gap between the wealthiest and the poorest at the opposite ends of the economic scale, a gap that has been expanded to levels not seen in a hundred years, and is indicative of the lopsided economic, social and political inequality of which homelessness is but one critical symptom. This is the framework of our 21st century culture of inequality.
This knowledge of the human rights violations of the homeless and the hijacking of the political- economy by neoliberal forces, brought my research to a point where I questioned what it was that allowed our public officials and others with authority to ignore most vulnerable citizens including the homeless. My investigation turned to a review of our American ethos of individualism and our “construct of reality” that perpetuates the inequality. We saw how other cultures, such as the Wintu and Tikopia, maintained a respect for individual freedom and equality well beyond our own, and how in the United States equality and freedom have evolved to be interpreted as “freedom of opportunity” and “equality of opportunity,” specifically economic opportunity. In
America a culture of “rugged individualism” has evolved (or been constructed) the focus of which is the freedom of an individual to compete in the capitalist economic system rather than a search for solutions that would lead to an improved, collective well-being of the entire population. In other words, we not only allow economic activity that benefits
338 the few wealthy capitalist elites at the expense of the collective, but admire, encourage and reward it. It is part of the American Dream.
I noted the roots of this self-reliance and individualism in the writings of John
Locke and Adam Smith and the first observations of American individualism in early
America by Alexis de Tocqueville. I discussed how early pioneers of American individualism encountered new opportunities when waves of industrial capitalism opened doors of opportunity for aggressive individuals. However, I also pointed out that after a stunning but brief success of capitalism in post-World War II America in the 1950s and
1960s, aspects of the system started to again falter and that in a post-industrial period starting in the 1970s a growing social, economic and political inequality spread within the
American culture. I ask now whether or not widespread inequality will continue to be tolerated by society’s collective masses and, if not, how society can be redirected toward construction of a culture of equality.
In summary, I identified a substantial loss of rights by the homeless, a loss, driven in part, by an economic filter that both limits options and guides our societal behavior.
The limiting factor is guided by the dominance of the neoliberal agenda, steering our political economy further and further towards the economic, political and social objectives of a capitalist elite. Moreover, as a result of the influence of this dominant neoliberal agenda, I identified an American sense of self that has become out-of-sync with the collective needs of the American working class, and those living in poverty, including the homeless, by merging the concepts of utilitarian individualism and the
339 neoliberal agenda, with the resultant emergence of the American rugged individualist or economic man.
Indignez Vous! Time for Outrage!
In 2010 French diplomat, concentration camp survivor, and leader in the French resistance, Stéphane Hessel, at 93 years of age, published as essay titled “Indignez
Vous!” (Time for Outrage!). Calling for the next generation, the youth that Hessel believes can shape the early-21st century, to step forward, shake off their indifference and show their outrage at conditions of inequality and injustice in the world, Hessel states,
The Western obsession with productivity has brought the world to a crisis that we can escape only with a radical break from the headlong rush for more, always more in the financial realm as well as in science and technology. It is high time that concerns for ethics, justice and sustainability prevail. For we are threatened by the most serious dangers, which have the power to bring the human experiment to an end by making the planet uninhabitable (Hessel 2010:19).
It is doubtful that Hessel could have foreseen the scale of the worldwide protest activities of the Occupy Wall Street movement which would begin in New York’s financial district on September 17, 2011, and spread around the world. However, the movement represents much of what he was calling for in “Indignez Vous!” Often accused of being vague, the Occupy Wall Street movement, “unofficially” headquartered in New York
City, provides the following statement of objectives on its website:
Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring
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tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants (Occupy Wall Street 2012).
Hessel called for “a true peaceful uprising against the means of mass communication that offers nothing but mass consumption for our youth, contempt for the least powerful in society and for our culture, general amnesia and the outrageous competition of all against all” (Hessel 2010:19). Hessel saw non-violent protest actions, the sort that have begun through the worldwide Occupy Wall Street protests, as a necessary step to effect change.
The Occupy protestors have expressed outrage against the inequality of the economic and political system(s) which perpetuate an economic and political framework that directs the accumulated the wealth of the world to the 1% best represented by neoliberal capitalist elites.
In Sacramento, the Occupy Sacramento protestors and the Safe Ground homeless leaders have joined forces to protest jointly against the political-economic power structure that they believe is also to blame for the rise in homelessness since the 1980s.
A young homeless man, Anthony Gallardo, a member of Safe Ground and a parolee now enrolled in college courses, is serving an Occupy Sacramento committee coordinator and is on the finance committee. Gallardo states,
I see Occupy Sacramento’s future growing on people. The longer we are able to pass the word about our vision and pass on information… To put information out about what we consider to be the 99%, which is shown to be kept at poverty stricken levels by larger corporations who control the majority of U.S. wealth…Occupy Sacramento relates to Safe Ground by fighting for the same basic needs: shelter, education, jobs, healthcare, and to be recognized. We are all people with one thing in common – a voice – and we should all be heard (Bowler 2011: para.6).
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Members of Occupy Sacramento regularly attend Safe Ground meetings and the groups have strategized together over their joint concerns. This type of solidarity between the “singularities of struggle,”2 represented above by efforts of Safe Ground
Sacramento and Occupy Sacramento is explored in Becoming War-Machines:
Neoliberalism, Critical Politics, And Singularities Of Struggle (2011), a recent dissertation by Michael Middleton that reviews the singularities of struggles represented by Safe Ground Sacramento and the Zapatistas of Mexico’s Chiapas region. Middleton employs Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of “war-machine” concept as “a critical tool for conceptualizing how neoliberal universalist assumptions are manifested in singular situations” (Middleton 2011:iii). 3 These include “universally-singular expressions of material poverty, differential inclusion, and subordination wrought by neoliberal globalization” (Middleton 2011:iii).4 The concept of these movements as singularities of struggle, a form of active resistance or “war-machines” against the hegemonic neoliberal agenda is a view that plays an important role in communicating the issues to the general public’s attention. I suggest that these movements represent an outcry directly against the social, political and economic inequality perpetuated and expanded by neoliberal globalization. In this chapter I look at various ideas related to how something as powerful and widespread as neoliberal globalized capitalism and something as profound as our sense of self, our ethos of individualism, can be changed in ways that might alleviate the human struggles, including homelessness, associated with inequality.
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Theories of Justice
When we move our discussions beyond the level of placing blame for homelessness on the victims or on identifiable systemic failures, we can benefit from a discussion of the theory of justice. I have demonstrated in previous chapters of this study that there has been a failure of our justice system to extend the same rights to the homeless in our society that are extended to the general population. I have suggested violations of the United Nations (UN) Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and several UN treaties that followed including the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (1966) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (1966), that have contributed to our inability to meet the basic needs of segments of our population, while others prosper in an environment of opulence. For example, I provided details on a human rights violation of the right of access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation in Sacramento. In discussions of Sacramento’s anti-camping ordinance and similar ordinances in other cities, I have pointed out that by outlawing a place to sit and a place to sleep for those without private property, we have used our justice system to criminalize the basic life-sustaining functions of our most vulnerable citizens. I believe it is appropriate now that we look at theories of justice and ask if it is time for a change.
Harvard political philosopher John Rawls in his seminal work, A Theory of
Justice (1971), presents his theory of “justice as fairness” which has been noted by
Amartya Sen as the “most influential theory of justice in modern moral philosophy” (Sen
2009:59). 5 Rawls identifies two principles of justice which he suggests will emerge in
343 the “original position” 6 of a theory of justice which he believed would be unanimously accepted. The first principle is, “Each person has a right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all” (Rawls
1993:291). Rawls first principle then, his justice as fairness doctrine, gives a priority to maximum liberty for individuals subject to the overall liberty for all. This first principle is the highest priority in Rawls doctrine, elevating personal liberty that cannot take away from the liberty of others, to the number one principle. Rawls second principle continues in two parts. “Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions. First, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society”(Rawls 1993:291). Here we see that Rawls is concerned with equality of public opportunities, to which we can apply the principle of no discrimination by race, religion or ethnicity. In the second part of this principle called the difference principle Rawls aims at ensuring that the there is a distributive equity to those at all levels of society and at trying to ensure that those the least well off are as well off as possible
(Sen 2009:59). Noticeably missing in Rawls principles are additional distributive claims, often stated by other theorists, including those based on entitlements related to merits, and claims based on ownership of private property.
Rawls principles can be seen as fitting into an approach to the theory of justice that came from Enlightenment European thinkers and is termed “transcendental institutionalism,” which identifies just institutional arrangements for society that have two explicit features. First, rather than comparing justice and injustice, it concentrates on
344 perfect justice by identifying social characteristics that cannot be transcended in terms of justice and, second, rather than focusing on societies that would emerge from a justice system it concentrates on getting societal institutions right (Sen 2009). These are both features that are related to a contractual social justice and reflect the social contract theories of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau reviewed in the citizenship discussion in Chapter Six. In Sen’s (2009) discussion of transcendental institutionalism he notes that Immanuel Kant and John Rawls both provided “deeply illuminating analyses of moral or political imperatives regarding socially acceptable behavior,” which can be thought of as “arrangement-focused approaches to justice” (Sen
2009:6).
A second theory of justice not reflected in Rawls theory is also rooted in the writings of European Enlightenment thinkers and can be traced to the work of 18th and
19th century writers Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill and others. These theories rely on a variety of comparative approaches that are different from transcendental institutionalism in that they focus their approach on comparisons of societies that already exist or that could emerge under certain principles of justice, rather than a search for perfect institutions. This approach has been termed “realization-focused comparison” and is commonly focused at the removal of apparent injustices from a society rather than searching for perfect institutional justice (Sen 2009). The realization- focused comparison approach lends itself more towards social choice than social contracts, and social choice theory blends elements of welfare economics and voting theory. The methodology is individualistic, in that it aggregates preferences and
345 behaviors of individual members of society. This methodology allows for individual behaviors, but the end goal is an objective of collective participation.
I find these two theories of justice differ vastly in how they come to conclusions regarding justice and injustice in any given society. In searching for perfect institutions, and proposing a perfect institutional model that may not yet exist as the objective, transcendental institutionalism is striving for a utopian justice that may not only be beyond the reach of society, but extremely difficult to define and gain consensus on.
Surely the “original position” called for by Rawls would be a difficult if not impossible position to obtain in our current highly polarized society. Instead, through realization- focused comparison analysis, currently not the prominent theory of justice in America, we could be using social choice to look at what is best for the current collective population. It is my recommendation that multiple academic disciplines take a lead in performing and publishing a series of realization-focused comparison studies on justice in
America to help determine how society might best define those components of justice that we most desire, e. g. freedom, equality and opportunity, and how our current theory of justice might be modified to provide the desired social justice. I believe that our current practice of justice has lost exactly that, a sense of what we most value in our society and how to obtain it. In other words, as I have stated elsewhere, we have allowed our political and economic agendas to co-opt our justice system as these agendas have co- opted other segments of society and robbed us of a clear focus on issues related to that we value the most. We no longer have a clear definition of freedom that speaks to the collective social choices, but rather have adopted a parochial vision of freedom as
346 opportunity to compete in a closed economic system. A series of interdisciplinary studies, an open academic debate, could be used to stimulate a public dialogue on these issues, potentially stimulating new interpretations of justice in society. This is a long- term educational program I am recommending, but it might well be accomplished in an environment of relatively peaceful social evolution.
Moving A Human Rights Agenda Forward
There is something very appealing in the idea that every person anywhere in the world, irrespective of citizenship, residence, race, caste, class or community, has some basic rights which others should respect. The big moral appeal of human rights has been used for a variety of purposes, from resisting torture, arbitrary incarceration and racial discrimination to demanding an end to hunger and starvation, and to medical neglect across the globe. At the same time, the basic idea of human rights, which people are supposed to have simply because they are human, is seen by many critics as entirely without any kind of reasoned foundation. The questions that we are recurrently asked are: do these rights exist? Where do they come from? (Sen 2009:355).
In addressing these questions raised in the above quote from Amartya Sen, Alan
Dershowitz, Harvard Law School Professor, looks beyond the two common answers that place the source of rights as either external to law such as from nature or God or internal to law as in granted by law (Dershowitz 2004). In challenging the common beliefs about the origin of rights, Dershowitz proposes instead that rights be built from the bottom up, through experiential lessons learned from a history of injustices that nurture our understanding of human rights. Such a system might better be termed nurtural rights rather than natural rights (Dershowitz 2004). Dershowitz states it this way,
Rights come from human experience, particularly experience with injustice. We learn from mistakes of history that a rights-based system and certain fundamental rights – such as freedom of expression, freedom
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of and from religion, equal protection of the laws, due process and participatory democracy – are essential to avoid repetition of grievous injustices of the past…In a word, rights come from wrongs (Dershowitz 2004:8-9).
Given Dershowitz’ s position it is, therefore, hard to understand how we allow our political and economic agendas to get in the way of moving forward with a human rights platform that rights some of the wrongs of the past. I suggest that as a nation we should, now, in the early-21st century, learn from the many grievous human rights violations of the last two hundred years, and fully ratify and implement as U.S. law the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, which were both adopted by the UN General Assembly on
December 16, 1966 and went into force on March 23, 1976. Movement towards full ratification of these treaties will spur a robust public discussion of the ramifications to our society of ratifying these treaties, and I suggest that discussion will be a healthy process for human rights in America. A discussion of the type called for will provide a public platform for discussion of the meaning of human rights, freedom, equality and opportunity. Furthermore, full ratification of these treaties would elevate the United
States into a true global leadership position in human rights, help restore our global image, and advance an internal focus away from the constant application of an economic decision-making filter. Movement of a human rights agenda of the type called for above, including these UN treaties, fits closely with the above called-for academic research on the theory of justice. Both are asking us, as a democratic society, to start to look collectively at what it is that will right some of the injustices that perpetuate inequality in
348 our society, as our leaders make decisions that drive us further towards a culture of inequality, rather than toward the freedom, equality and opportunity we desire.
Moreover, while this may seem an impossible task given today’s climate in the United
States political-economy, I suggest that it be taken up by not only a majority in the general public that is desperately dissatisfied with our out-of-balance economy, but also with those who have already expressed disenchantment with our current system. Groups like the tea party, Occupy Wall Street, and independent voters, who would find a venue for expressing their opinions and participating in open discussions.
Social Justice Paradigms: Redistribution, Recognition or Both?
Traditionally, in the United States, there have been two primary types of claims for social justice, redistributive and recognition claims. Discussions of claims for redistribution are often focused on the equitable distribution of resources and wealth in society with a goal of redistributions transferring from rich to poor, or owners to workers; discussions of claims for recognition are often focused on identity politics with a goal of a difference friendly world, attacking claims of ethnicity, race, sexuality or gender.
These types of claims for social justice are often thought of as being disassociated from each other, with claims for recognition having recently dominated in struggles for social justice (Fraser 2003). This, I suggest, may be due to the current power of globalized neoliberal economics that we have also noted as a root causal factor in homelessness. In this section I wish to borrow from political philosopher Nancy Fraser, who presents a
349 thesis that many social justice concerns today require remedies from both paradigms
(Fraser and Honneth 2003:93).7
Redistribution v. Recognition: Opposing or Complimentary Paradigms?
While philosophically these two types of claims may be at odds with each other, politically they can be shown to be associated with specific social movements. In her investigation of these political associations, Fraser looks at redistribution and recognition as folk paradigms, contrasting them in the four different ways listed below:
1. Differing conceptions of injustice, the distributive paradigm focusing on socio-
economic concepts rooted in the economic structure of society, and the
recognition paradigm targets injustices rooted in social patterns of representation,
interpretation and communication such as cultural domination, nonrecognition,
and disrespect.
2. Differing remedies for the injustice, in the distributive paradigm the remedy is
economic restructuring, as new structures of property ownership or redistribution
of wealth and or income; recognition paradigm the remedy is cultural or symbolic
change, such as the positive reevaluation of disrespected identities.
3. Differing conceptions of collectivities that suffer injustices, where in the
distributive paradigm the collective subjects are economic classes; in the
recognition paradigm the collective subjects are Weberian status groups defined
by characteristics of recognition.
4. Differing understandings of group differences, the redistribution paradigm treats
differences as unjust differentials that should be abolished and the recognition
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paradigm treats differences as either as benign cultural variations which have
unjustly been transformed into a value hierarchy or transformed by an existing
hierarchical valuation system, in the first case justice requiring that traits be
revalued and differences celebrated and in the second case justice requiring
deconstruction of the terms used to elaborate the differences (Fraser and Honneth
2003:12-15).
These differences between the redistribution and recognition paradigms of injustice contribute to the perception that they are so different as to be mutually exclusive alternatives and, therefore, incompatible as integrated solutions. However, this requires more analysis, as it can be demonstrated that many subordinate groups are affected by both in ways that are equally direct and immediate, and one not being an indirect cause of the other. At the extremes of each category we can find clear examples of social groups that suffer an injustice and require a like remedy. For example, it is easy to understand how exploited, low-wage service industry workers are in need of redistributive remedies.
However, it is more difficult when the social group (for example, segments of service industry workers) may be both economically deprived and misrecognized, even discriminated against, in its despised social role. “Two-dimensional subordinated groups suffer both maldistribution and misrecognition in forms where neither of these injustices is an indirect effect of the other, but where both are primary and co-original” (Fraser and
Honneth 2003:19). I suggest that this is the situation for many of the homeless including those in Safe Ground, who suffer from severe, abject poverty, are unemployed and often unemployable, and are often also members of misrecognized social groups such as those
351 defined by race, ethnicity, and that of the homeless themselves. This is adequately demonstrated by the stereotypes of the homeless as deviant, pathological individuals and lazy, unproductive people, undeserving of society’s help. Additionally, there is an abundance of evidence of the over-representation of ethnic minorities (see Table 3) within the homeless population, a fact which suggests two-dimensional subordination and, therefore, requires strong consideration of dual or integrated strategies for remedy.
While the distributional claims of injustice of the homeless are usually beyond need of further explanation due to the obvious abject poverty associated, the claims of recognition often requires additional analysis. We need to view recognition as a matter of justice and treat it as an issue of social status for this analysis (Fraser and Honneth
2003). When members of a social group experience recognition injustices we need to look at the social position of the affected members. In the case of the homeless, as in the
Safe Ground Sacramento examples demonstrated in this study, I identified that they were not treated as peers to housed, employed or “normal” members of society, and were routinely excluded from many of the institutional rights that housed citizens have. This was aptly demonstrated in Chapter Six, when we discussed examples of exclusion, including equal access to water and sanitation, the criminalization of normal life- sustaining actions, including somewhere to sit, sleep, or taking care of bodily functions.
This condition is often referred to as “status model of recognition” that constitutes an
“institutionalized pattern of cultural value,” rather than an individual failure or causal factor, that prevents an individual from participating as a peer in social life (Fraser and
Honneth 2003:29). In my study of Safe Ground Sacramento, I have seen that actions of
352 social institutions such as local governments, local ordinances, and healthcare, educational and business institutions, restrict the homeless individual’s right to participate as a peer in social, economic and political activities.
If the homeless are both victims of distributive and recognition injustices, we can agree that the homeless population is in a category of two-dimensional subordination and, is therefore, in need of a two-dimensional approach that emphasizes remedies for inequalities in both class subordination and identity misrecognition. Solutions to these inequalities or types of status subordination will require social arrangements that allow the victims, in this case, homeless individuals, an equal footing or social standing in social interactions with housed peers, what Fraser refers to as “participatory parity”
(Fraser and Honneth 2003:36).
Two approaches stand out as possessing a high potential for addressing these two- dimensional subordination issues. The first is referred to as “substantive dualism”
(Fraser 2003), which treats redistribution and recognition as two different societal domains, the former being the economic domain and the later the cultural domain.
However, she argues, this approach overlooks the integration of the two domains, and how that integration affects both domains. For example, when we look at issues within the economy, such as the effects of the neoliberal agenda on employment opportunities, we must also consider social factors that also play a role including concerns about race, gender, sexuality or homelessness.
A more integrated approach is referred to as “perspectival dualism” (Fraser and
Honneth 2003) wherein “redistribution and recognition constitute two analytical
353 perspectives that can be assumed with respect to any domain” (Fraser and Honneth
2003:63). This approach allows the inspection of either perspective on the dimensions of the other as well and would allow us, for example, to use recognition perspectives to analyze a redistribution effort, such as a subsidized housing program, by also looking at the cultural dimensions such as effects on the social status identities of participants in the program. “With perspectival dualism…one can assess the justice of any social practice, regardless of where it is institutionally located, from two analytically distinct normative vantage points…Does the practice in question work to ensure…conditions of participatory parity?” (Fraser and Honneth 2003:63).
In the following section, I return to Fraser’s perspectival dualism approach to offer ideas on potential development concepts and programs that have the ability to heal the multiple underlying causal factors of homelessness. These causal factors include the loss of human rights experienced by the homeless, the effects of globalized capitalism on homelessness, and the effects of the American ethos of rugged individualism on the homeless.
Myths of Neoliberal (Washington Consensus) Development
It is a somewhat disputed issue as to whether the neoliberal hold upon the political economies of many developed countries has started to decline, losing its grasp on the direction of globalized development or is still firmly driving the political and economic realities of America and other capitalist countries. As we can witness in much of our own political economy, a battle is underway between the elite supporters of the
354 globalized neoliberal movement, and those alter-globalist forces that believe an alternative lens on development is required to implement changes. International policy scholars Broad and Cavanagh have written that the reign of neoliberal dominance or
“Washington Consensus,” is over, as witnessed by the declining influence and international power of neoliberal institutions including the World Bank, International
Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as the emergence of
China, India and other fast growing Asian nations. At the same time, prominent economist Jeffrey Sachs and three-time Pulitzer Prize recipient, columnist Thomas
Friedman, focus on statistics which demonstrate the extreme poverty of many in the world and the laziness of many cultures to perform productive work. Sacks challenges to us to take a “morally correct path” and end extreme poverty by 2025, while Friedman proposes that access to modern technology will provide the path out for many (Broad and
Cavanagh 2009). I disagree with the position of these supporters of economic development [read economic growth] status quo and the technology as savior perspectives, and believe that they have made their analyses based on incomplete data and insufficient analysis of the data they use. For example, Sacks states that “one-sixth of humanity (1.1 billion people) are extremely poor, eking out a bare existence on less than one dollar a day” and another 1.5 billion on less than two dollars a day (Broad and
Cavanagh 2009:83).8 This analysis fails to inform us about the actual economic, political and social condition of those living on two dollars a day in those cultures and fails to consider some of the more critical issues of the day including the potential effects of climate change and the increasing opposition to Western style economic development
355 coming from Latin American countries and others. Perhaps more importantly we should be asking whether globalized capitalist enterprise has entered their countries while practicing a form of economic imperialism, thus confiscating their natural resources to the detriment of the locals, while profiting through such exploitation. We might ask if they have been uprooted from land where they used to grow their own food, have lost access to clean drinking water and medical care, and are being forced to work long hours for that dollar or two a day as cheap labor in order to send products overseas to markets where more affluent consumers are clamoring for lower and lower consumer prices. We desperately need an evaluation of how, as the neoliberal grasp on the political economies of the industrialized and affluent world lessens, we might redefine or reinvent development and even capitalism itself, in a way that can support more freedom, liberty and equality.
There are several concepts that I want to briefly investigate for their potential to move us in a direction of eliminating inequality through the promotion of opportunity through our social, economic and political institutions. These are programs based on ideas about changes to institutions that are by no means an easy task to accomplish, but also, nevertheless, feasible alternatives to continuing with the policies that have created the current disparities in the United States and across the globe. We should also consider these ideas in relation to the observed and documented effects of past policies as they relate to homelessness in Safe Ground Sacramento and other homeless communities.
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Programs That Can Heal
The very nature of development comes into play as we endeavor to take a look at new concepts and programs that can heal the inequity that is at the root of much of the extreme poverty in the world, including the homeless across the United States and in
Sacramento. A narrow understanding of development as simply economic growth, or as providing the environment for economic growth, is insufficient for our analysis for several reasons. Most importantly, defining development as economic growth ignores the dual claims for social justice arising out of the conditions of inequality, distributive and recognition inequality. If economic growth is to be a component of increased well- being of the population, it cannot ignore the injustices of many of the current developmental institutions and policies. Thus when we look at development programs proposed by global institutions, including those mentioned above, or at local, regional or national institutions, we must apply the integrated analytical perspectives that Fraser and
Honneth (2003) referred to as “perspectival dualism” and ask the difficult questions that pertain to parity participation to achieve policies and programs that seek equality for all.
Development As Freedom
A compelling argument has been put forward by Amartya Sen that development should defined as “a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy,” and, as such, requires the removal of unfreedoms such as poverty, lack of economic opportunity or even systemic social deprivation, all which can be viewed as capability deprivations
Sen (1999:3-4). 9 “What people can positively achieve is influenced by the economic opportunities, political liberties, social powers, and the enabling conditions of good
357 health, basic education, and the encouragement and cultivation of initiatives. The institutional arrangements for these opportunities are also influenced by the exercise of people’s freedoms, through the liberty to participate in social choice” (Sen 1999:5).
This call for the participatory parity we discussed earlier as a condition of defining the role of institutions in development provides a strong conceptual shift away from the neoliberal concept of the institutions being purposed to enable entrepreneurial competition and free market prosperity, without mention or apparent concern for the social equality for all people to participate and, I suggest, applies directly to the exclusion and subordination of groups such as the homeless. Parity of participation can also be considered inclusionary individual agency. Instrumental freedoms allow people to participate or gain agency and are often interconnected and cross-promotional. These instrumental freedoms include political freedoms, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees and protective securities (Sen 2009:10). Political freedoms include the rights of individuals including human rights; economic freedoms include opportunities to utilize resources for consumption, production and exchange; social opportunities include access to educational, healthcare and other social resources; transparency guarantees include a right to openness and lucidity in dealing with others; and protective securities include the expectation of a social safety net (Sen 1999). These instrumental freedoms can also serve to transform our “common sense” definition of freedom in America from “freedom to compete,” and restore it to a broader definition of individual instrumental freedoms, freedoms that empower individuals and encourage collectivity.
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This concept of redefining development with the concept of freedom as a main objective and means of development not only redefines what we conceive of as development, but also can be seen as a step toward placing the collective well-being of the population as a higher objective for society than maximizing profits or accumulation of individual wealth. Development as freedom is a concept that could start to change the character of capitalism, and the agency of individuals, but how can something as powerful as global capitalism be transformed?
Reimaging Capitalism for a New Economy
In a recent issue of The Nation, in an article edited by political correspondent
William Greider (Greider 2011), thirteen contributors offered various ideas about transforming and reimaging capitalism. Greider suggested that to get started politicians must stop the rhetoric over big government and focus instead on big capitalism, which he suggested is the source of our economic predicament. Greider further suggested that the economy will not fully recover unless capitalism is refashioned. Contributor’s recommendations to this conversation covered far-reaching ideas, including the adoption of a Maryland law providing for benefit corporations, or B-Corps, which are allowed by the law to combine the profit motive with the “purpose of making a positive impact on society and the environment” (Greider 2011:14).
Below I will explore this concept of socially responsible corporations with legal rights to bypass the bottom line as the prime objective. Other contributors to Greider’s article called for ideas ranging from boardroom policing, taxes on speculators, more government involvement in the private sector as a direct participant and rule setter, an
359 expanded role of “government as employer of last resort,” and “inclusive capitalism,” where firms receiving tax incentives have to reward the bottom 80% of employees as much as they do the top 5%. Are these ideas a way to ease the private sector towards a more humanistic capitalism that could drastically reduce the inequalities behind many of our social ills including homelessness? I propose that these ideas should be considered and further investigated, tested, and when appropriate, implemented.
The ecological concern that sprang to life after the first Earth Day in 1970, and has continued to gain momentum in the last decade as the potential effects of human induced climate change have gained acceptance, is one of the major influences of the new-economy movement. Additionally, the failure of neoliberal market fundamentalism to sustain an economic prosperity that provides economic security and an acceptable level of equality of opportunity and well-being has inspired many economists and socially minded business leaders to look for new paradigms. Moreover, as a result of concerns over the slow recovery associated with the recent global economic recession and the global debt crisis, a small but vocal segment of the public has begun to seek change. The idea of a change to the capitalist system frightens many and, as political economist Gar
Alperovitz states, “The idea that we need a new economy – that the entire economic system must be radically restructured if critical social and environmental goals are to be met – runs directly counter to the American creed that capitalism as we know it is the best, and only possible, option” (Alperovitz 2011:20). Yet surprisingly, we are now beginning to witness an increasing level of economic experimentation with concepts that
360 do not seek to eliminate the capitalist system, but rather to change it in a way that creates a more equitable and sustainable economic structure.
Cooperatives appear to be at the center of much of this social economic activity, as well as employee stock ownership plans (ESOP), B Corps, and social enterprises where profits are used to support and promote environmental and community goals.
These are often egalitarian, green oriented, and worker-owned businesses, that seek to implement policies that are sustainable and provide for increased community well-being.
Recently, an alliance of like-minded business professionals has emerged, the American
Sustainable Business Council, and now has over 150,000 members and sponsors activities to support social minded business activities (Alperovitz 2011). The New
Economics Institute (NEI) – a joint venture of the former “small is beautiful,” E.F.
Schumacher Institute and the New Economics Foundation – is working on a longer term vision (see Schumacher 1973). For example, Alperovitz (2011) reports that NEI is working on the development of indicators of sustainable economic activity that looks at something other than traditional GNP or Dow Jones levels. “Precisely how to develop a dashboard of indicators that measure genuine economic gain, environmental destruction, and even human happiness is one of NEI’s high priorities” (Alperovitz 2011:23). These and other evolving economic models move away from measures of growth and seek to define measures of sustainability which can be used to evaluate collective or community well-being. This work may lead to the development of a standard of living index for the
21st century that is more interested in human equality and economic and environmental sustainability than unending growth, and the accumulation of wealth by a few economic
361 elites at the top of the capitalist pyramid. It is a movement that has the potential to peacefully alter the face of capitalism in the 21st century.
The Evolving Face of the New Economy: The Social Economy
As a distinct segment of the call for a new economy, the social economy has brought together many ideas for new programs, and is now considered by many to be a third sector along with the private and public sectors. Those who promote social economy concepts argue for a new system that will support “diverse forms of social ownership, harness finance to productive use, mobilize local resources and capabilities, serve social and developmental needs, empower producers and consumers, and reinforce human solidarity and ethical care” (Amin 2009:3-4).10 The social economy also referred to as the solidarity economy, “must do more than socialize the market economy, by making money, markets and the productive system work for human development, ecological preservation, spatial equality and collective fellowship” (Amin 2009:4).
In the last ten or fifteen years the social economy movement has dramatically grown, finding footholds around the world. Governments have enacted legislation and supported policies supporting the different facets of the social economy. While these new social economy based businesses are not replacing the multi-national corporations, the neoliberal strongholds, they are changing what the public in different countries might begin to accept as workable. These new social economy businesses include such efforts as cooperative day-care centers, community farms, recycling programs, social housing programs, community regeneration projects, alternative financing schemes, and community based job training, to name just a few examples (Amin 2009). These types of
362 social enterprises not only change the concept of a business enterprise from that of the private sector’s profit motive, but also help to change the public perception of what is beneficial to their lives. Therein lies the key to a potentially peaceful transition to, at the very least, a third sector of the economy. Amin states, “This shift in mainstream thinking is not entirely of a utilitarian nature. It also stems from a desire to make capitalism more caring, through markets and modes of delivery that are socially responsible, needs-based and stakeholder-oriented” (Amin 2009:5). I argue that this third sector, the social economy, provides a critical step in the transition to a new mode of capitalism and, maybe more importantly, to a renewed sense of self, a new individualism that values the collective well-being in the community over individual gain. I discuss that more in the next section but first I want to look further into the emerging social economy sector.
Prior to the emergence of a social sector there were two clear economic sectors, the public and private sectors. The private sector is represented as “business for profit” and, as we have discussed, became the dominant global system under neoliberal capitalism in the 20th century. The private sector ranges from small micro-businesses to traditional small to medium sized business, all the way to the multi-national corporation.
The commonality between all these is the for-profit basis of the business and the associated bottom-line mentality driving all their decisions about reinvestment, employees, materials, etc. The public sector is represented by government, which in
America has played the role of the regulator of the private sector and is a major employer on its own right. The public sector also has tremendous range in the scope of its organizations ranging from small community-based councils to local and regional
363 government bodies to national, regional, and global governing bodies including the
European Union and the United Nations.
Like the private and public sectors, the social sector has a number of important sub-sectors, some of which have existed for a long time but never came together as they now are under the emerging third sector. First, there is the community subsector activities organized for the mutual benefit of the community members. These usually small organizations include volunteer organizations, neighborhood watch groups, and local civic groups. Second, there are the voluntary subsector organizations such as housing associations that are self-governed and non-profit. The third subsector is the social enterprise sector which is the primary focus of the growing social economy movement, and includes businesses that trade, and have social objectives that override the maximization of profit.
As mentioned earlier there are growing numbers of social sector businesses and organizations in the U.S. but there is also a global emergence of the social sector which in some cases dwarfs that of the United States. In France the term social economy derives from the French économie sociale, which was a term first used around 1900. Today in
France co-ops, mutuals, associations (volunteer organizations) and foundations are reported to account for both 12% of the economy and 12% of the GDP. In Spain it is reported to account for 9% of the employment (Wikipedia 2012).
Scottish community developer and social enterprise consultant John Pearce writing in the volume edited by Ash Amin (2009) documents what he proposes are the fundamental principles that formulate the philosophy or underlying fundamentals of
364 social economy and which he believes we should expect all social enterprises and social economy organizations to adhere to.11 The first is the concept of “working for the common good” by which Pearce means working for what he terms the “triple bottom line” consisting of the impact on people, on the environment and on the local economy
(Pearce 2009). This triple bottom line is what Pearce helps organizations report on as a measure of success in his auditing consultancy and clearly reflects a change from the aggressive profit bottom line of status quo capitalism. Working for the common good also reflects that the core purpose of these organizations is to achieve a specific community benefit(s) and, secondly, that in doing so the organization operates in a way that is beneficial to the triple bottom line, people, planet and economy (Pearce 2009).
The following principles are noted as secondary to this first overarching principle of working for the common good. They are:
Caring for human resources: In other words, valuing employees, volunteers, and management personnel in how they are treated and the nature of the work expected of them. Good governance and accountability: A social enterprise must be independent of outside control, free of undue influence by outside interests, adopt democratic principles, and fully engage all stakeholders and members. Asset lock and use of resources: Assets of a social enterprise should be retained to benefit the organization and its community, and profits should not be distributed to the private gain of members or directors. Co-operation: Social economy organizations should collaborate and build the type of social capital which will serve to strengthen the sector. Subsidiarity: This principle presumes that organizational decisions should be made at the lowest possible level and only upward delegated when there is clear benefit in doing so (Pearce 2009:25).
These concepts clearly appear to be at the opposite end of the behavior spectrum from those of today’s neoliberal capitalism, where the triple bottom line of the social
365 economy is replaced by a single bottom line designed to maximize profit, sometimes to the detriment of the other principles listed above. Capitalist enterprises are expected by the stakeholders (and stockholders) to maximize the use of labor to the benefit of the business, and the search for the lowest cost labor is certainly a major part of the current post-industrial economic problems including high unemployment and high underemployment of the developed countries. Today’s for-profit enterprises are not democratically managed, often follow a strict “top-down” management style, and struggle with the problem of outside control and interests, as they deal with the issues of cutthroat competition and government regulation. Additionally, distribution of the profits to owners and stockholders is the prime objective, and most organizations struggle with the need to reinvest at a level that benefits their industry sector.
If we look at the social economy as a movement and analyze how effective it is at addressing our concerns from the perspective of Fraser’s perspectival dualism, I argue that it addresses the concerns of both a need for redistribution and recognition remedies better than the private sector. The social economy looks at the distribution of any excess profits by looking at the triple bottom line (people, planet, economy), a more egalitarian and sustainable measure than that driven by the single bottom line (profit). This ensures that excess profit is used to strengthen the social organization and build in a sustainability often lacking in private sector businesses where profits are often inequitably distributed to the top management and stockholders. By paying out multi-millions to CEOs
(hundreds of times greater than average salaries in the corporation) and large payouts to top management, private sector companies often bypass important reinvestment
366 opportunities in order to hit a targeted short-term bottom line number by quarters end, squandering profits. In contrast, social enterprises are focused at achieving equality among members, employees and volunteers and have less incentive to discriminate against anyone because of race, religion or ethnicity. By treating individuals fairly and equally, by not discriminating and by striving to better the entire community these social organizations are by their very nature applying a social justice remedy to issues of redistribution and misrecognition.
Proceed With Caution
Proposing transformation of a system the size and complexity of globalized capitalism is not something that can be approached without extreme care. First, we must recognize that the unequal distribution of wealth is also very reflective of an unequal distribution of power and, that those who may see changes to the status quo as threatening often possess greater power and may react in fear of losing it. These changes must come because the people of a democratic society recognize the greater collective value in the transformation of development and the emergence of the third sector social economy. Once these benefits to the collective are accepted, once human rights has become understood after a reevaluation of our desire for, and the meaning of freedom, liberty and opportunity, only then will we be able to move forward with some urgency in transforming our institutions and capitalism itself for a more equal 21st century. In the meantime, as society feels its way through these conceptual changes, we will flounder along and make mistakes. One interesting, although somewhat convoluted example of this was uncovered during my fieldwork research.
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In Sacramento, as discussed early in this work, the city and county constructed a joint leadership council, the Sacramento Cities and County Board on Homelessness which, in turn worked to create the Sacramento City and County Ten-Year Plan to End
Chronic Homelessness 2006-2016, a document outlining strategies for ending chronic homelessness in the Sacramento region. Today, in early 2012, the Interagency Council to
End Homelessness (IACEH) has a stated mission to create and oversee new initiatives to end homelessness of families and individuals in Sacramento County, to further make recommendations regarding the county’s Continuum of Care (CoC) activities and ending homelessness to the Policy Board to End Homelessness (PBEH). The PBEH has a stated mission to provide community leadership, participation and oversight to Sacramento
County’s system for serving homeless individuals and families and ending homelessness.
Furthermore, a CoC Advisory Board will be fully constituted in their place in 1Q2012 and the political leadership at both the city and county levels of Sacramento have determined that a new non-profit, Sacramento Steps Forward (SSF), be the mechanism for both a unified voice and HUD funding. However, in practice, the CoC Advisory
Board will be responsible for developing strategic recommendations involving policy and funding. It is anticipated that the PBEH and IACEH will be disbanded soon leaving the
CoC Advisory Board and SSF, which grew out of initiatives of these earlier organizations. While all these local governmental organizational transformations sound complicated, it has followed a reasonably rational, although, a worrisome, accelerated evolution. One concern is that the new non-profit, SSF, is there to manage an annual estimated $15-30 million in federal funds and raise private funds to meet the federal
368 matching requirements that the county can no longer support due to falling revenues causing budget shortfalls.
So while a socially responsible non-profit may fit into a subsector of the social economy, it is suspected by some social service leaders and others I have spoken with during my research as being a way for the county to avoid its fiscal responsibilities. The plan for a conversion to a non-profit was predicated by a declining Sacramento County budget that would no longer pay for staffing to manage the federal funds and that the county says forced them to find new solutions. While Sacramento County shifts the responsibility of raising funds to a non-profit, it still wants a say in what is done via a
Joint Powers Authority (JPA) still to be established. One concern is that Sacramento
County is using the concept of a social economy subsector, namely a non-profit, to help diminish the social safety net for homelessness, which it has traditionally been responsible for. What is needed is a better definition of responsibility between these sectors. Either the county should scale back on diminishing social responsibilities, or it should continue to fiscally support social economy enterprises like SSF until a reasonable transition to fund raising has taken place. It might make more sense for a social enterprise business that raises money through trade activities to step in and support these services. So, while this may or may not be a move in the right direction, it is disconcerting that the transition may be implemented for the wrong reasons (lack of funding), and that the county still wants to provide governance from outside the non- profit, outside the sector. Regardless of whether it is a non-profit or social enterprise business that eventually assumes the sole responsibility for this portion of the social
369 safety net previously a public sector (government) responsibility, it must be expected to create, maintain, and apply principles of sustainability to the program that the public sector failed to do.
The American Self and Agency
In Chapter Seven we traced the evolution of individualism in America from the biblical and republican traditions in the 18th and 19th centuries to the emergence and eventual domination of the utilitarian and expressive traditions that dominate today. It was an evolution in which rugged individualism won out over the collective well-being of the population, and an evolution that led us to redefine the terms that detail our cultural character, such as equality, freedom, and opportunity. This evolution and the resultant move away from caring about the well-being of the collective left us with a society that is deeply divided. On one side are those that are firmly in the camp of utilitarian individualism and, as such, often supportive of the neoliberal agenda in the current institutions of the political economy. On the other side are those that sense something is failing when the gap between the wealthy and the rest of society continues to stretch to record levels, when poverty levels continue to rise and when homelessness becomes a problem in the wealthiest nation in the world. It should not be thought of as conservative vs. liberal, left vs. right, or republican vs. democrat. Rather, it is better thought of as the individual vs. the collective. We must ask ourselves "if we want to continue to be a society where the economic wealth of the nation is directed to the benefit of a few instead of the collective well-being of the many?" What I am suggesting is that if we want to support the well-being of the collective as a top priority, we need to look at our sense of
370 self, our individualism. I am not suggesting that we need to abandon our democratic government or our capitalist economic system, but that we need to look at what we expect as the main benefits, political, economic and social, of those institutions and ask ourselves if, in their present form, they are providing us what we desire.
In the previous sections I discussed a number of recommended actions and programs that I believe would, if successfully followed, help to transform our sense of self and develop a new construct of individualism. These programs have the potential to construct a new individualism that, like the biblical and republican individualism of the past, would focus on the collective well-being of our communities and a redefinition of freedom, equality and opportunity. I would like to end this study with a brief review of those recommendations.
Final Thoughts on Healing
First, in the eloquent spirit of Stéphane Hessel’s “Indignez Vous!,” I recommend that we listen to the outrage that is being expressed in America by the tea party, whom I disagree with politically but who has a lot to say about the size and efficiency of our public-governmental sector, and the Occupy protestors who are expressing outrage over the inequality that has been discussed in this study. I recommend that we listen to the concerns of the youth who are participating in both of these movements and often have an unfettered perspective on issues of the day. I further recommend that a voice be given collectively to the singularities of struggle, like Safe Ground Sacramento’s advocacy for the homeless, which is struggling to give voice to the unrecognized in opposition to the
371 economic globalization and neoliberal economic and political institutions that subordinate them.
Second, I recommend that we undertake the academic research into our theory of justice and particularly a series of interdisciplinary studies, an open academic debate, utilized to stimulate a public dialog on these issues, potentially stimulating new interpretations of justice in society and a new look at our desired meanings of freedom, equality and opportunity. Additionally, it is appropriate that our academic research into our theory of justice include a discussion of the theory put forward by Alan Dershowitz that “rights come from wrongs,” that we must learn from the injustices of the past and redefine our future. Not only would this be beneficial in helping the general public but it would pull academic and members of other communities together in a broad discussion of the possibilities of change. Conferences, national, regional and local forums could discuss the issues and explore alternatives. As public awareness increased, so would a generation of young educated minds.
Third, I recommend that we start the public dialog necessary to move toward adoption of the two UN treaties mentioned previously, the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights. This needs to be accompanied by a public discussion of the implications of full implementation of these treaties in our society. I am sure that we have not ratified these treaties into law because it means we will need to confront our inability to cope with many of the social ills of our political and economic institutions. It will be a difficult but beneficial exercise and should be able to help initiate change peacefully.
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Fourth, I recommend that we start to utilize the integrated approach referred to as
“perspectival dualism” by Nancy Fraser (Fraser and Honneth 2003) into our policy and program analysis process. It is time to realize that if we want to end societal problems like homelessness we can no longer avoid dealing with the redistribution and recognition programs necessary to achieve such collective goals. This means looking at some of the sacred institutions of our society. This will not be easily accomplished, but if we cannot mount the political will to look at our social, economic and political institutions, we will not achieve our goals and problems, like homelessness, will only worsen.
Fifth, I recommend that we start to rethink our concept of development as economic growth and replace it with Sen’s (1999) concept of development as freedom, giving special concentration to the instrumental freedoms including political freedoms, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees and protective securities. It is these instrumental freedoms that we can build into our evolving institutions in an effort to achieve the participatory parity for all citizens.
Sixth, I recommend that we start to design legislation that will support the evolution of the third sector, the social economy. This is a critical recommendation because we are not recommending the demise of capitalism but rather that it be supplemented with a new component that can offset some of the problems attributed in this study to our current notion of capitalism. It is an approach that will allow capitalism to evolve and, based on our evolving theories of justice and definitions of the desired freedom, equality and opportunity we desire, help us meet those needs. Once we are
373 open to economic change, we will become open to developing the political will that can drive changes to our institutions.
As mentioned previously, I recommend we proceed with caution in all these evolutionary changes. A political-economy that is as powerful and robust as our current one does not change easily. There will be false starts, wrong paths and potentially dangerous resistance to change.
Finally, and in conclusion, I urge that we start the public dialog about who we are as a people. I believe it will be inspired by some of these other initiatives and programs just mentioned, but it must be public and it must be open. I argue that whenever there has been a major paradigm shift in society in the past it has been accomplished against tremendous odds, yet steadily increasing public awareness and education drove it to the forefront with the public support and created the political will to make it happen. It is an exercise in changing a part of our cultural codification of reality, no small feat, but possible. Extreme poverty, hunger and homelessness are not only a sign of our failed policies, they are a sign of our failure as individuals who have forgotten the true definition of the collective community of equality we desire.
Chapter Eight Endnotes
1 My use of the phrase “culture of inequality” is not to be confused with the controversial concept of a “culture of poverty” first suggested by cultural anthropologist Oscar Lewis in Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty (1959), which critics felt implied that little social change can result from individual action. The concept of a “culture of poverty” was further criticized after publication of The
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Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965), by Daniel Moynihan, in which the author suggested that the deterioration of the Negro family in America was the result of a Negro culture that reproduced deteriorating families and kept the Negro population in poverty. I do not agree with the culture of poverty argument of these authors. Instead, I am suggesting with my use of the phrase “culture of inequality” that our hegemonic political-economic institutions and our sense of self as self-reliant and rugged individuals, free to compete in the neoliberal capitalist system, has led us to the formation of a culture in which inequality has emerged as an expanding and persistent trait. I further am suggesting that, along with changes to our political-economy, a renewed sense of self or renewed construct of individualism in which individual actions are designed and aimed to benefit the collective, offers a potential way to combat the inequality in our culture. 2 “In these protests, collectivities contest the failures of neoliberal globalization’s promised “new integration of the human enterprise, of joining diverse cultures and civilizations into one single marketplace, [and of] nudging along governments and elites” to “convert their war-machine” into an engine of economic prosperity transcending borders, markets, ethnicities, and cultures (Illich 1997:94; Kothari 1997:150). Political upheavals, social marginalization, and economic insecurities introduced by these failures in local communities in both the Global South and the Global North constitute a tenuous common ground between diverse collectivities of struggle. These coalitions and singular instances of struggle offer inspiration for activists and critical scholars, and generate consternation for critics of non-traditional tactics. Rather than aiming to overtake institutions of power, these struggles build new coalitions and rely on forms of constituent power aimed at changing the world without taking power” (Middleton 2011:2). 3 Deleuze and Guattari (1987). In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari characterize resistance to the state-form as a “war-machine” which is exterior to the state apparatus. 4 Middleton (2011:iii). By presenting research on Safe Ground Sacramento and the Zapatistas of Mexico, Middleton looks at how local struggles waged by communities across the globe “contest and evade the conditions of neoliberalism, and what forms of political identity, collective identifications, and micro- political power are invented in these struggles.” 5 Rawls (1971). See also Rawls other works on the theory of justice including Political Liberalism (1993), Justice As Fairness: A Restatement (2001), and others. 6 Rawls (1971:17). Rawls describes his “original position” in the following way, “the original position is the appropriate initial status quo which insures that the fundamental agreements reached in it are fair. This fact yields the name “justice as fairness.” It is clear, then, that I want to say that one conception of justice is more reasonable than another, or justifiable with respect to it, if rational persons in the initial situation would choose those principles over those of the other for the role of justice. Conceptions of justice are to be ranked by their acceptability to persons so circumstanced.” 7 Fraser and Honneth (2003:93). Fraser argues that “to pose an either - or choice between the politics of redistribution and the politics of recognition is to posit a false antithesis,” and proposes a “comprehensive framework that encompasses both redistribution and recognition” to challenge both claim fronts. 8 In Development Redefined Broad and Cavanagh provide a look back at the emergence of the Washington Consensus and the disastrous effects it has had on the global economy. They dispel some of the prominent myths about the Washington Consensus and call for a new look at development. 9 Sen sees freedom as central to development for two main reasons. First, an evaluative reason, that we should assess progress in terms of whether the freedoms of people are enhanced, and second, an effectiveness reason, that achievement of freedom is thoroughly dependent on the free agency of people. 10 Geographer Ash Amin edited this book on the social economy and economic solidarity. Various contributors provide a clear and refreshing definition and pathway to achieving a social economy, while providing good information and examples on programs already underway around the world.
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11 John Pearce has worked in community development for more than forty years. He currently runs his own consulting organization and was formerly Chief Executive Strathclyde Community Business. He is a director of Community Business Scotland Network and of the Social Audit Network. In recent years he has focused on developing a social accounting and audit process suitable for social economy organizations. He has facilitated social accounting throughout the UK and in India, New Zealand and Australia.
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APPENDIX A
UNITES STATES CODE, TITLE 42, CHAPTER 119, SUBCHAPTER 1, ɠ11302.
General definition of a homeless individual.
(a) In general
For purposes of this chapter, the terms “homeless”, “homeless individual”, and “homeless person” means—
(1) an individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence;
(2) an individual or family with a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings, including a car, park, abandoned building, bus or train station, airport, or camping ground;
(3) an individual or family living in a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designated to provide temporary living arrangements (including hotels and motels paid for by Federal, State, or local government programs for low-income individuals or by charitable organizations, congregate shelters, and transitional housing);
(4) an individual who resided in a shelter or place not meant for human habitation and who is exiting an institution where he or she temporarily resided;
(5) an individual or family who—
(A) will imminently lose their housing, including housing they own, rent, or live in without paying rent, are sharing with others, and rooms in hotels or motels not paid for by
Federal, State, or local government programs for low-income individuals or by charitable organizations, as evidenced by—
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(i) a court order resulting from an eviction action that notifies the individual or family that they must leave within 14 days;
(ii) the individual or family having a primary nighttime residence that is a room in a hotel or motel and where they lack the resources necessary to reside there for more than 14 days; or
(iii) credible evidence indicating that the owner or renter of the housing will not allow the individual or family to stay for more than 14 days, and any oral statement from an individual or family seeking homeless assistance that is found to be credible shall be considered credible evidence for purposes of this clause;
(B) has no subsequent residence identified; and
(C) lacks the resources or support networks needed to obtain other permanent housing; and
(6) unaccompanied youth and homeless families with children and youth defined as homeless under other Federal statutes who—
(A) have experienced a long term period without living independently in permanent housing,
(B) have experienced persistent instability as measured by frequent moves over such period, and
(C) can be expected to continue in such status for an extended period of time because of chronic disabilities, chronic physical health or mental health conditions, substance addiction, histories of domestic violence or childhood abuse, the presence of a child or youth with a disability, or multiple barriers to employment.
378
(b) Domestic violence and other dangerous or life-threatening conditions
Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, the Secretary shall consider to be homeless any individual or family who is fleeing, or is attempting to flee, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, or other dangerous or life-threatening conditions in the individual’s or family’s current housing situation, including where the health and safety of children are jeopardized, and who have no other residence and lack the resources or support networks to obtain other permanent housing.
(c) Income eligibility
(1) In general
A homeless individual shall be eligible for assistance under any program provided by this chapter, only if the individual complies with the income eligibility requirements otherwise applicable to such program.
(2) Exception
Notwithstanding paragraph (1), a homeless individual shall be eligible for assistance under title I of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 [29 U.S.C. 2801 et seq.].
(d) Exclusion
For purposes of this chapter, the term “homeless” or “homeless individual” does not include any individual imprisoned or otherwise detained pursuant to an Act of the
Congress or a State law.
(e) Persons experiencing homelessness
Any references in this chapter to homeless individuals (including homeless persons) or homeless groups (including homeless persons) shall be considered to include, and to refer
379 to, individuals experiencing homelessness or groups experiencing homelessness, respectively.
Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/11302, accessed June 7, 2011.
380
APPENDIX B
SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND MENTAL HEALTH SERVICE ADMINISTRATION
National Resource and Training Center on Homelessness and Mental Illness Data Tables
Table 1: Health Problems Reported by the Homeless Population
Health Problem Percent Comments Reported Reporting 1. Alcohol 38% Abuse 2. Other Drug 26% Abuse 3. Mental 39% 20-25% Met criteria for serious Health mental health condition. 4. Either 1, 2 or 66% 3 5. HIV/AIDS 3% 6. Acute Health 26% Reported acute problems such as Diagnosis tuberculosis, pneumonia, or sexually transmitted diseases. 7. Chronic 46% Reported chronic health conditions Health Issue such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or cancer. 8. No Health 55% Compared to 27% of the general Insurance population, approximately 47 million Americans. 9. Go Hungry 58% A growing problem for those living with incomes below the established U.S. poverty level.
Source: SAMHSA 2009.
381
Table 2: Background, Education and Employment of the Homeless Population in the U.S.
Reported Percentage Comments Background Veterans 23% Compared to 23% of general population. Suffered abuse 25% Physically or sexually abused as children. Foster care graduate 27% In foster care or similar institution as children. Homeless as child. 21% Previously 54% At some point in their lives, no designation of incarcerated level of offense. Educational Percentage Comments Level < High school diploma 38% High school diploma 34% High school 28% Some college, trade or technical school, etc.
diploma
Employment History Percentage Comments Previously worked 44% Have regular job 13% Employment History Percentage Comments Receive < $300/mo. 50% Report panhandling, 70% prostitution, etc.
Source: SAMHSA 2009.
382
APPENDIX C
DATA TABLES FROM SOLENBERGER (1911)
Table 1: Classes of Men in Cheap Lodging Houses in Chicago (1900-1903)
Classes of Comments Men 1. Self- All men of whatever trade or occupation who support supporting themselves by their own exertions. Some are employed all the year; some are seasonal workers; others casual laborers; but all are independent. 2. Temporarily Runaway boys; strangers who lack city references and dependent are not yet employed; men who have been robbed; victims of accident or illness; convalescents; men displaced by industrial disturbances, or by the introduction of machinery; misfits; foreigners unacquainted with the language and not yet employed, and other men without means who could again become self-supporting if tided past temporary difficulties. 3. Chronically Contains many of the aged; the crippled, deformed, dependent blind, deaf, tuberculosis; the feeble-minded, insane, epileptic; the chronically ill; also certain men addicted to the continuous and excessive use of drink or drugs, and a few able-bodied but almost hopelessly inefficient men. 4. Parasitic Contains many confirmed wanderers or tramps; criminals; imposters; begging-letter writers; confidence men, etc., and a great majority of all chronic beggars, local vagrants, and wanderers.
Source: From Solenberger (1911:9-13), Compiled from Solenberger’s data.
383
Table 2: Defects and Diseases Among 627 Men
Condition # % Insanity* 52 8.3% Feeble-Mindedness* 19 3.0% Epilepsy* 18 2.8% Paralysis 40 6.4% Other Nervous Disorders† 21 3.3% Tuberculosis 93 14.8% Rheumatism 37 5.9% Venereal Diseases 21 3.3% Other Infectious Diseases† 15 2.4% Heart Disease 14 2.2% Diseases of organs other than the heart† 19 3.0% Cripple, Maimed,‡ or Deformed – from Birth or by Accidents 168 26.8% Rupture 11 1.8% Cancer 6 1.0% Blind – including partially blind ɠ 43 6.8% Deaf – including partially deaf ɠ 14 2.2% Defective Health – Through Drink and Drugs 16 2.5% Defective Health – from lack of nourishment/other 24 3.8% Convalescent 33 5.2% Aged* 35 5.6% All other known diseases or defects† 7 1.1% Doubtful† 16 2.5% Total Instances 722 - Total Number of Different Men in 627 Defective Health or Condition - Table Footnotes from Solenberger Study *See special chapters dealing with the insane, feeble- minded, and epileptic, and with the aged. †For additional data with regard to these groups, See Appendix A, Table 4, P. 279. ‡In addition to these 168 there were 86 men crippled or maimed by diseases, making a total of 254 in all. See Chapter IV. ɠ Special data concerning the blind and deaf will be found in Appendix A, Table 6, P.281.
Source: Solenberger (1911:36, Table II). Percentage column calculated and added.
384
APPENDIX D
S.E.R.A. 1935: SOCIAL SERVICE DIVISION
Transient Men And Camps Present Status and Progress of the Federal Transient Service
Source: State Emergency Relief Administration (1935d:31-31e)
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
APPENDIX E
REVIEW OF ACTIVITIES OF THE S.E.R.A. OF CALIFORNIA, 1933-1935
“(1) the breakdown of local public and private relief agencies between 1930 and
1933 under the enormous burden of a new unemployed population; (2) federal and state assistance to local public agencies between January, 1933, and part of 1934, with funds of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Federal Emergency Relief
Administration, and the state, loaned and granted to the counties under the general supervision of the State Emergency Relief Administration; (3) a huge work program for all of the unemployed conducted between November 15, 1933 and March 31, 1934 by the
Civil Works administration; (4) a group of special, federal financed relief programs administered between October, 1933, and September 1935, by the State Relief
Administration through the Transient Division, Division of Self-Help Cooperative
Service, Surplus Commodity Division, and Emergency Educational and College Student
Aid Programs; (5) a federal and state financed Emergency Work Program for only the unemployed on relief, conducted between May, 1934, and August, 1935, the State Relief
Administration through its own county organizations which absorbed practically all of the unemployment relief cases of the county welfare agencies and made the State relief
Administration the only organization administering unemployment relief; and (6) the
Federal; work program of the Works Progress Administration inaugurated in September,
1935, primarily to absorb unemployment relief cases, leaving the State Relief
Administration to administer direct relief to the persons not given employment.”
Source: SERA (1935a) State Archives Sacramento, California. File F3448:24
392
APPENDIX F
A TRANSIENT’S DIARY
“At 9 o’clock I went to the SRA Intake Office on 8th Street, where a janitor told me that the office had been moved to the Community Chest Building at 1428 H Street.
When I reached this address there was a long line of me waiting in the back yard for the office to open…Seventy-three men of all ages had gathered in the line before the office opened at 10:35…The first five men who went into the office came out with yellow TR-
10 cards filled out. These, they said, would get them into the shelter…The sixth man that came out of the office said the shelter had filled up and that ‘they’ had just registered him and told him and told him to come back at 1:00pm…I was the 10th man in line…A soon as I told him I was a resident of Texas, he started filling out a blue TR-10 card. When this was completed he told me to come back at 1:00 o’clock and maybe I could get into the shelter. I left the office through the front door and went down to sit in the park until 1:00.
I returned to the SRA intake office at 12:45 and found 15 men already in line. By one o’clock there were 81 waiting. At 2:05 the worker came out into the yard and said there would be no men accepted until Saturday morning as the shelter was still full.
After men had scattered in all directions I waited around the front gate until another young man who works in the intake office came out of the building. I asked him what the men were going to do until the shelter had more room. He could offer no suggestions. He said the federal transients were going to be taken into the camps. When I
393 told him I had no food for nearly 40 hours and was feeling very ill, he suggested that I apply to the Community Chest.
Thereupon I went to the front of the building and waited in a large waiting room for 30 minutes to see the worker who handled the intake for the city shelter at the end of I
Street. When I went into his office he showed little interest in the fact that I was sick and very hungry. He asked me my name and home state and said all he could do was to give me two meals and a bed at the city shelter…
As I left the office a man came out of the SRA office with a TR-10 and I asked him if they had re-opened the SRA intake. He said they had. I went around to the back door and into the office. When I went in he said, ‘Well, we got some new orders, so I can send you to the shelter now’…He gave me a card and told me to go to the shelter and take all my belongings with me.
I got to the shelter around 3:30 and was directed to an intake office where an elderly man took my TR-10 card and made out a meal and bed ticket which he handed to me as he directed me to the check room where I would get further orders. He never even looked at me during the interview and gave me no directions as to the procedure.
At the check room I was told to go to the shower room, take off all my clothing and bring them back to take a bath and return for some clothes I would wear until mine came out of the fumigator…the next morning at 8:00…
After I had put on the ‘monkey suit’ I went into the waiting room to wait for supper, which was to begin at 5:00. This room is about 100 by 30 feet and is equipped with six or eight long tables with benches where men can sit and read or write…I asked if
394
I might see a doctor and was told he was gone. By this time I had a temperature and felt very ill...The food was well-cooked and seemed to be clean a; however, I was unable to eat very much due to my illness or to the fact that I had gone without food until the smell of it almost nauseated me...
From shortly after six until eight o’clock there was nothing to do but hang around the waiting room where about 200 men read, smoked, talked, or just sat…At 8 o’clock the men lined up in a hall leading out of the bath room and filed up the stairs to the large dormitory. As each man passed the blanket room at the head of the stairs, he showed his meal ticket and was issued three single blankets each…There were no sheets or pillow cases. Most of the men slept in at least a part of their clothes, and put their shoes under their pillows or mattresses…I was given an upper bunk, the lower half of which was occupied by a colored man. He coughed all night, while I tossed with feverish nightmares. Coughing and groaning were kept up all night throughout the room…”
Source: Henley (1993:35-39).
395
APPENDIX G
WHITE’S PRINCIPLES OF SELF-GOVERNANCE
Government policy should be aimed at restoring the social, educational, and cultural functions and resources of daily life to the institutions of family and place – neighborhood, work site, voluntary grouping, informal association, friendship group, religious assembly, and other spontaneous and natural communities.
All who can, should be expected to behave in a civilized manner. The exercise of individual rights in public places is not unlimited but contingent on the maintenance of public order so that others are free to enjoy the commons in comfort and safety.
Governments should discontinue the practice of providing cash welfare grants to known substance abusers.
Mental illness is a disease. Insofar as possible, the mentally ill should be cared for by those who love them.IN doing this they are carrying out the work of society and should not have to carry an excessive financial burden for it.
No working family should fall below a decent subsistence level. Families are carrying out the fundamental social functions of our society. The difference between what they can earn in the labor market and a minimum adequate income should be provided as social income, through the tax system. This is not a matter of entitlement, but of social justice – our collective belief in what is best for our society.
Alcohol and drug abuse are not best understood as diseases in the classical sense.
They are in significant measure symptoms of a breakdown in productive community and
396 individual responsibility. Treatment, while it may often be helpful, should not be substituted for recognition of the responsibility of the individual and the need to strengthen natural institutions of support such as the family and community.
Housing can only be produced efficiently by the private market. States should set local housing goals and follow these with appropriate rewards and penalties. Because economic isolation is not in the best interest of society, land use policies should be administered so that a significant amount of person-to-person interaction across income levels will take place naturally
Source: White (1992:267).
397
APPENDIX H
RIVER DISTRICT REDEVELOPMENT AREA AND BUSINESS DISTRICT
River District Redevelopment Area Maps from organizational website.
a. Map of Downtown/Railyards/Richards Blvd Areas.
b. Map of future vision of the River District.
c. Street Map of River District.
Source: The River District. http://www.riverdistrict.net/. (accessed August 8, 2011).
398
Source: The River District. http://www.riverdistrict.net/. (accessed March 31, 2012).
399
Source: The River District. http://www.riverdistrict.net/. (accessed March 31, 2012).
400
Source: The River District. http://www.riverdistrict.net/. (accessed March 31, 2012).
401
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