The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has found that Section 8 voucher recipients are often unable to secure apartments outside of high-poverty areas in tight urban rental markets. However, intensive housing placement services greatly improve the success and mobility of voucher holders. Drawing on ethnographic research in the housing placement department of a private, nonprofit community-based organization, I first describe how fundamental problems in implementing the public subsidy program in a tight private rental market generate apprehension among landlords and voucher recipients that can prevent the successful use of vouchers. Second, I demonstrate how housing placement specialists can dispel and overcome this apprehension through a variety of tactics that require extensive soft skills and a deep commitment to the mission of housing poor families.These findings provide support for the increased use of housing placement services to improve success and mobility rates for Section 8 vouchers.
a b s t r a c tThe characteristics of the immediate locale greatly affect the ability of homeless people to adapt to life on the street and in shelters, with different types of places nurturing different circumstances for survival. Current conceptualizations of the place-survival nexus are too narrow, relying on small-scale, intensive studies of particular places that are known to sustain homeless survival while ignoring more suburban and exurban locales, as well as failing to set these places of survival within the larger socio-economic spaces of the metropolitan area. Further, the literature is heavily qualitative, lacking any kind of ''big picture" quantitative assessment of the nexus. In response, we contribute to the place-survival nexus literature by developing a typology of space for homeless survival and then use interview data to examine the variation in survival strategies across three types of urban space in Los Angeles County. Our results speak to how our innovative and exploratory approach enabled a broader, more extensive and variegated understanding of place-survival among homeless people than previous studies.Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. IntroductionSurvival among people experiencing homelessness is understood to be far more precarious than for the housed population (Wolch and Dear, 1993). Recently, and spurred by worries about their image, public safety and livability, local governments and businesses have systematically implemented anti-homeless ordinances to outlaw certain behaviors and survival techniques in public spaces, including panhandling, camping, sleeping, sitting, loitering, urinating and, in some cases, even providing free meals to the hungry (Mitchell, 1997;Merrifield, 2000; National Coalition for the Homeless, 2007). Residential communities have also resisted development of shelters and other housing programs, causing them to be concentrated in some neighborhoods and excluded from others (Takahashi, 1999). While we should not overestimate the impacts of these trends upon a group that is often very resilient (DeVerteuil, 2006), they nonetheless have presented additional challenges to persons living in public space and shelters.This context makes understanding the nexus between place and homeless survival all the more important. Since homeless people are resource-poor by definition, the characteristics of the immediate locale greatly affect their ability to adapt to life on the street and in shelters (Wolch and Dear, 1993). Moreover, different types of places nurture different circumstances for survival. But we also contend that current conceptualizations of the place-survival nexus are too narrow, relying heavily on small-scale, intensive studies of particular places that are known to sustain homeless survival. The current literature also does not set these places of survival within the larger socio-economic spaces of the metropolitan area. Last, the literature is heavily qualitative, lacking any kind of ''big picture" quantitative assessment of the nexus.In this paper...
The widespread entrenchment of gaping urban inequality has aroused concern about how economic, demographic and (neoliberal) ideological globalization interacts with local conditions to shape its magnitude, manifestations and experiences. This article explores how the process of exiting homelessness is affected by an interaction of social contexts operating at multiple levels, from the global to the individual. I advance and assess a multilevel framework of exiting homelessness by combining comparison of secondary data at multiple social levels and fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis of longitudinal interview data from persons using transitional housing programs in Los Angeles and Tokyo. In the two cities, individual vulnerabilities and acculturation to homelessness are superseded via different pathways out of homelessness. Pathways in Los Angeles rely on social and organizational ties amid a paucity of economic opportunities, whereas pathways in Tokyo use economic resources amid limited ties. Contrary to approaches that emphasize singular contexts driving marginality, I demonstrate differing local impacts of globalization and the important and interacting roles of the state, organizational contexts of social service delivery and cultural dimensions of social capital. This points towards the utility of a new poverty management framework for understanding interventions addressing homelessness as fragmented, contradictory and contingent upon multiple contexts. Résumé Le creusement généralisé de l'inégalité urbaine a suscité un intérêt pour la manière dont la mondialisation économique, démographique et idéologique (néolibérale) en dessine l'ampleur, les manifestations et les expériences en fonction des situations locales. Cet article étudie comment l'état de sans‐abri est affecté par une interaction entre contextes sociaux opérant à différents échelons (du mondial au local). On peut définir et évaluer un cadre multi‐niveaux pour l'état de sans‐abri, en combinant une comparaison de données secondaires à plusieurs niveaux sociaux et une analyse comparative qualitative d'un ensemble flou de données longitudinales tirées d'entretiens avec des personnes participant à un programme de logement provisoire à Los Angeles ou à Tokyo. Dans ces deux villes, les vulnérabilités individuelles et l'acculturation à l'état de sans‐abri sont surmontées via des cheminements de sortie différents. À Los Angeles, ceux‐ci s'appuient sur des liens sociaux et organisationnels face au manque d'opportunités économiques, tandis qu'à Tokyo, ils passent par des ressources économiques face à des liens limités. Contrairement aux approches qui mettent en avant la singularité des contextes conduisant à la marginalité, ce travail montre des impacts locaux différents de la mondialisation, ainsi que l'importance et l'interaction des rôles de l'État, des environnements organisationnels, de la fourniture des services sociaux, et des dimensions culturelles du capital social. Un nouveau cadre de gestion de la pauvreté paraît nécessaire pour ap...
This study develops a more nuanced concept of homeless resistance, incorporating a range of resistance behaviors (exit, adaptation, persistence, and voice) that bridge the gap between current frameworks that either romanticize or ignore it. We also consider the possibility that different kinds of space may theoretically allow for different kinds of resistance. To this end, we employ an ecological approach to homeless space by classifying Los Angeles County into three place-types (prime, transitional, and marginal). We empirically consider the issue of resistance within the hardening context among a group of 25 homeless informants, focusing on whether and how some of them have exercised their voices and sought to ameliorate one or more aspects of their situation, as well as how resistance may vary by place-type.
With state safety nets failing to keep up with expanding urban poverty, ties to community organizations can provide crucial resources. But what explains variation in such tie activation at urban, organizational, and individual levels? I advance a multilevel framework of organizational client-staff tie activation that centralizes the role of trust and specifies effects of multiple social contexts. I apply the framework to an exploratory comparison of transitional housing programs in Los Angeles and Tokyo, including analysis of qualitative data collected among clients, staff, and administrators. I argue that urban welfare regimes and organizational cultures are key contexts shaping how macro-level forces like neoliberalism intersect with micro-level processes of social capital building in differentiated ways. Urban scholars can inform theory and practice by further analyzing how organizational-level trust building practices of holism and flexibility can be affected by urban-level regulations on scope of aid and inter-organizational ties.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.