The Ambiguities of Homelessness Governance: Disentangling Care and Revanchism in the Neoliberalising City

Abstract

Whilst "caring" responses to homelessness (e.g. shelters, drop-in centres) have been held up by some as a counter-current to the revanchist city, recent US studies highlight how the structural dynamics of neoliberalisation can implicate caring spaces in revanchist processes of discipline and spatial control. In this paper, we employ an assemblage approach to examine the intersections between care, revanchism and neoliberalisation in Brisbane, Australia. We extend the insights of recent studies by showing how the vulnerability of care to the revanchist pressures of neoliberalisation play out outside the US, despite the prominence of care rationalities and a milder revanchist politics. However, we also push beyond this insight to demonstrate the ongoing progressive potential of care in the neoliberalising city, despite its vulnerabilities to revanchism. Specifically, we highlight the capacity of housing-focused responses to homelessness to shield people from criminalisation and to prefigure and call-forth post-neoliberal practices and spaces.

Punishment, support, or discipline? Taking stock of recent debates about homeless governance in neoliberal cities

“…Although local governments have historically funded emergency shelters to deliver coercive care, officials have recently coopted homeless encampments to monitor service recipients, incentivize self‐improvement, and push residents into local labor markets (Speer, 2018). Law enforcement officers coerce service utilization by punishing the long‐time homeless, issuing tickets to prevent homeless individuals from settling in urban spaces, limiting access to essential resources outside rehabilitative services, and/or threatening to incarcerate homeless individuals who decline supportive interventions (Aalbers, 2011; Clarke & Parsell, 2020; Stuart, 2016). Frontline workers use features of exclusionary design such as closed‐circuit television to protect the homeless from violence, identify homeless encampments, find missing clients, and/or connect individuals to homeless services (Clarke & Parsell, 2019; Huey, 2010; Löfstrand, 2015).…”

“…Parsell and Marston (2016) define soft power exercised by supportive housing providers as “justified paternalism” because it promotes self‐sufficiency without imposing systemic goals on service recipients. Clarke and Parsell (2020) defend the displacement of homeless individuals by law enforcement officers in Brisbane for thwarting place/social attachments that prevent the unsheltered poor from transitioning into permanent housing. A battery of research challenges this rosy picture.…”

“…In short, urban scholars have conceptualized supportive interventions as a legitimate act of care that helps those who cannot or will not help themselves (Clarke & Parsell, 2020; Cloke et al., 2011). That said, research on supportive interventions suffers at least two notable weaknesses.…”

“…A compendium of applied research has examined the efficacy of Housing First (Baxter et al, 2019; Leclair et al, 2019; Ly & Latimer, 2015; Rog et al, 2014; Tsai, 2020; Woodhall‐Melnik & Dunn, 2016). To date, sociologists have devoted little if any attention to the use of this governmentality to manage urban homelessness (see Baker & Evans, 2016; Clarke & Parsell, 2020; Lancione et al., 2018; Parsell & Marston, 2016). This knowledge gap hinders sociologists from identifying, explaining, and evaluating emergent trends of homeless governance.…”

Surveilling the marginalised: How manual, embodied and territorialised surveillance persists in the age of ‘dataveillance’

“…As Clarke and Parsell (2020) demonstrate, homelessness governance in Brisbane is primarily organised around the objective of securing permanent housing for people on the street. Hence, much of Brisbane’s surveillant assemblage is geared towards generating and distributing information to support this objective.…”