Metropolitics

Can the Market Solve Los Angeles' Housing and Homelessness Crisis?

Katherine Smock — 2025-02-27T06:00:00Z

Policymakers in Los Angeles hope that market-based solutions will solve the city's housing crisis. Data from the first years of the city's planning streamlining program show that inviting investment won't improve conditions for low-income renters.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle The city of Los Angeles, like many cities across the US, is in dire need of much more affordable housing to alleviate and prevent homelessness. Despite the promise of alternative methods of creating

- Debates / United States, California, Los Angeles, homelessness, housing, housing crisis, housing markets, tenants

When Rising Expectations Meet Rising Reaction: New York's 2024 Housing Policy Fight and the Prospects for the Future

Oksana Mironova & Samuel Stein — 2024-09-10T05:00:00Z

How did New York housing policy fare with Democratic control of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government? Oksana Mironova and Samuel Stein review the 2024 housing policy fight and the stakes going forward for the housing movement.
A few years ago, the New York tenant movement forced the state government to strengthen and expand its rent regulation system. This was the greatest expansion of renters' rights New York had seen in decades. In the years since, the movement has

- Debates / housing, real estate, real-estate industry, tenants, homelessness, New York, affordable housing, housing crisis, housing policy, housing justice, social housing

Reflections on Four Years of Housing-Justice Support Work with Mapping Action Collective

Sachi Arakawa & Tim Hitchins — 2021-04-13T05:00:00Z

Mapping Action Collective, based in Portland, Oregon, leverages mapping and data to support housing-justice organizing, using GIS to dismantle systems of oppression, and grounding its work in the needs of the communities and movements with which it works.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research As the interwoven US crises of homelessness, evictions, displacement, and housing instability reach catastrophic levels, students, scholars, practitioners,

- From the Field / housing, housing justice, mapping, cartography, data, community organizing, Portland (Oregon), Oregon, United States, homelessness, evictions

Understanding Why Homeless People Refuse Emergency Accommodation

Édouard Gardella & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-03-09T06:00:00Z

The refusal of emergency accommodation by many homeless people expresses the intensity of their attachment to the communities to which they belong. While this attachment to the street or to their neighborhood exposes them to extreme precarity, it also reflects a need among homeless people for recognition and a certain rootedness.
If people sleep on the streets, it is because they have chosen to do so. This is what Sylvain Maillard, a French member of parliament from the ruling LREM party,

- From the Field / exclusion, homelessness, precarity, emergency accommodation, poverty

Homeless Theory and Research Collaboration: A Tribute to Nikita Price

Eric Goldfischer & Odilka Santiago — 2020-06-09T05:00:00Z

At a time when too many people are dying, Eric Goldfischer and Odilka Santiago remember Nikita Price of Picture the Homeless, and the participatory action-research he encouraged and produced.
“Homeless people have bestowed their knowledge upon academics, upon movements, and it's starting to come to fruition now” — Nikita Price, March 2018.
Collaborations between academics, activists and organizers lie at the core of many powerful community-based projects. Sometimes such partnerships serve

- Essays / homelessness, participatory action-research, research methods, community organizing, New York, urban research

Diverting Eyes and Bodies: The Management of Homeless Visibility in New York City

Eric Goldfischer — 2019-11-19T06:00:00Z

Eric Goldfischer argues that homeless diversion programs in New York City simultaneously divert the bodies of homeless people away from public spaces and the eyes of housed people away from these populations, so that city residents will not see and attempt to comprehend the crisis of homelessness.
In recent months, renewed attention has focused on the visibility of homeless New Yorkers in the subway system. Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) president Andy Byford and others have publicly

- Debates / homelessness, New York, visibility, invisibility, marginalized populations, public space

Excluding Fast and Slow: Charlottesville's Long Battle over Public Space

Frank Muraca — 2018-01-09T06:00:00Z

The “Unite the Right” white-supremacist rally in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, erupted into violence, killing one person and injuring many others. While local politicians distance themselves from the largest hate gathering in the US, a closer look at Charlottesville's public spaces reveals the exclusionary tactics of local business-oriented leaders.
“It's definitely been a sad vibe today but if you didn't know any better looking out the window, you would think it was a typical Sunday,”

- From the Field / public space, United States, exclusion, affordable housing, displacement, race, homelessness, Charlottesville

Impossible Compliance: Policing as Violent Struggle over Bodies and Urban Space

Michelle Billies — 2016-03-01T06:00:00Z

The absence of charges brought in the case of a police murder of a Black lesbian in front of the homeless shelter where she lived reveals the impossibility of compliance with police authority for those already made criminal by race, disability, class, gender, and sexuality.
Yvonne McNeil, a 57-year-old Black lesbian who used a cane for walking, was shot to death by police in front of the New York City homeless shelter where she was living in 2011. Short news reports of the incident offer

- Debates / public space, gender, police, race, homelessness, brutality, Blackness, queer

How Children Cope When Home is a Hotel

Erwan Le Méner & translated by Christina Mitrakos — 2016-02-05T06:00:00Z

Emergency housing in social hotels is affecting a growing number of families in the Paris region. How does this experience impact the lives of children? What are the consequences on children's relationship to space, on how they grow up, and on how they learn, make friends and play? Erwan Le Méner shows how school plays a central role in stabilizing an otherwise precarious situation.
---- Series: Children in the City Today, one in five people experiencing homelessness in the Paris region are

- From the Field / France, Paris region, housing, children, public policy, sociabilities, vulnerability, homelessness, precarity, vulnerable housing, emergency accommodation, social emergency, social hotel, school

Good neighbours? Homeless people as seen by those who live alongside them

Marine Maurin & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-06-05T04:50:00Z

Prejudices regarding the poorest in society die hard. Does living in proximity to some of these populations help change perceptions? And what role does discomfort and disturbance – whether real or merely anticipated – play in this? A study presented in Habiter à côté des SDF (“Living alongside homeless people”) seeks to analyse the reactions provoked by the presence of homeless populations among those who live nearby.
Marie Loison-Leruste's work, adapted from her PhD thesis in sociology,

- Reviews / Île-de-France, public space, Paris region, Nanterre, housing, Paris, cohabitation, nuisance, emotions, poverty, homelessness, precarity, assistance, coexistence, NIMBY, hospitality, emergency accommodation, neighbors, disturbance