The Governance of Homelessness and Public Space

In 1980s New York City, residents and officials grappled with the extraordinary growth of people experiencing homelessness residing in public spaces. Public homelessness emerged at a time of rising value of public spaces, which finally began to receive infusions of public and private capital after years of neglect—a development homeless bodies seemed to threaten. The city’s seeming inability to stem public homelessness led private sector actors and the quasi-public officials who oversaw the subways and major Manhattan transportation centers where the homeless resided in the greatest numbers to implement more punitive policies as a solution to public homelessness. Buttressed by new legal measures that expanded private sector governance over public space, these tactics ultimately influenced officials’ adoption of similarly aggressive measures toward public homelessness to protect the enhanced value of public space.