Neighborhood Distribution of Unsheltered Homelessness and its Temporal Changes: Evidence from Los Angeles

2021 ◽  
pp. 107808742110599
Author(s):  
Eun Jin Shin
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Count Data ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Homeless Population ◽  
Neighborhood Characteristics ◽  
City Center ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
The City

Using the 2016–2020 point-in-time homeless count data, this study investigates neighborhood characteristics associated with the levels of and changes in unsheltered homeless population density in Los Angeles. The results show that unsheltered homeless people in the study area are heavily concentrated in and around the city center, and in neighborhoods with greater access to shelters and lower socioeconomic status. Notably, neighborhoods closer to the city center experienced a relatively large increase in unsheltered homelessness during the study period, implying a persistent spatial concentration of unsheltered homelessness. The results consistently indicate that residential land share, Hispanic resident share, and the number of bridges in the baseline year are significant predictors of relative changes in unsheltered homelessness in subsequent years, whereas access to shelters and poverty rates are not. This study’s findings provide several important policy implications that could potentially help prevent and mitigate unsheltered homelessness.

The Geography of Homelessness in American Communities: Concentration or Dispersion?

2004 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barrett A. Lee ◽  
Townsand Price‐Spratlen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Homeless Population ◽  
Central Cities ◽  
Large Cities ◽  
States Data ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Contemporary United States

Few recent studies of homelessness have focused on the distribution of the phenomenon across different types of community contexts. Nevertheless, claims are often made about the decline of urban skid rows and the increasing spatial ubiquity of the homeless population. Motivated by these claims, our research analyzes 1990 Census S‐night data at multiple geographic levels to determine whether homeless people remain locationally concentrated or have become more dispersed in the contemporary United States. Data from the 2000 Census, though limited in scope, are briefly examined as well. We find that the “visible” homeless are overrepresented in metropolitan and urban portions of the nation, in central cities of metropolitan areas, and in a minority of neighborhoods within these areas. Such an uneven distribution, which favors the concentration over the dispersion perspective, often takes a polynucleated form in large cities. Forces shaping the geography of homelessness are discussed, as are the policy implications and methodological caveats associated with our results.

Resisting Dispossession: Performative Spatial Irruptions and the LA Poverty Department

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Chantal Welch
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
City Council ◽  
Political Subjectivity ◽  
Skid Row ◽  
Community Organizer ◽  
Formerly Homeless ◽  
The City ◽  
Neighborhood Council ◽  
The Way

I was so unimpressed with the city council. … They had a line of homeless people who were allowed to vote because Kevin [Michael Key] was running for councilman and everything. So, they wanted IDs … [The person tabling] asked me, “Well I need some id. Do you have any ID?” And the way he said it, he knew I wouldn't have any id. It was like I wasn't even there. I was invisible. He was just going through the motions of making the sound. But he didn't know he was dealing with R-C-B. So when I dropped my passport, and I do mean dropped my passport on the table, that's when I got respect.—RCB, Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD)What does it mean to perform presence or selfhood? What conditions necessitate these performances? In the opening epigraph, RCB articulates an instance when transparency was mapped onto his body—a moment in which he was simultaneously invisible as an individual and hypervisible as the projections of stereotypes surrounding homelessness and blackness collided on his body, rendering his history, present, and future as instantly knowable. During the election cycles of 2010, 2012, and 2014, KevinMichael Key, a prominent, formerly homeless Skid Row activist, community organizer, and member of the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), ran for a position on the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council (DLANC). As part of his campaigns, Key sought to help homeless residents of Skid Row exercise their right to vote. One instantiation of this objective involved tabling in the neighborhood. In a show of support, RCB lined up to vote and subsequently encountered the tabler. “And the way he said it, he knew I wouldn't have any ID. It was like I wasn't even there. I was invisible.” As understood by RCB, the tabler did not expect homeless individuals to possess government-issued identification. Instead of acknowledging RCB's individuality and subjectivity, the tabler assumed that RCB's status as homeless meant not having state ID, an official marker of occupancy in a state-recognized residence. In this interaction, RCB's political subjectivity was under erasure, invisible. For RCB, in this confrontation, homelessness marked him as a knowable (non)subject—a generic homeless man.

scholarly journals Residence registration to cope with homelessness: evidence from a qualitative research study in Milan

Genus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Pasqualini ◽  
G. Bazzani
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Homeless Persons ◽  
Homeless Population ◽  
Qualitative Research Study ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
Registration Process ◽  
The City

AbstractHomeless people are one of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in developed countries, and their homelessness situation often persists over the long term. However, so far, no studies have explained the specific role played by residence registration as it relates to deprivation amongst the homeless population and its contribution to improving the lives of homeless people. This paper investigates the paths homeless people in Milan use to access residence registration, via a case study in the city of Milan. Home to Italy’s largest homeless population, the city of Milan has implemented the innovative ResidenzaMi project to improve access to residence registration for homeless people. The study considers official statistics and individual interviews with service providers involved in the registration process. It further investigates the main factors impeding the registration process and outlines the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from our study indicate that a residence certificate plays a critical role in helping homeless people exercise their rights and access the services they need to escape homelessness. Our findings suggest the importance of a holistic, multidimensional approach to ensure access to residence registration for homeless persons.

scholarly journals Residential Mobility of a Cohort of Homeless People in Times of Crisis: COVID-19 Pandemic in an European Metropolis

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agathe Allibert ◽  
Aurélie Tinland ◽  
Jordi Landier ◽  
Sandrine Loubière ◽  
Jean Gaudart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Residential Mobility ◽  
Large City ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Homeless Population ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Sociological Factors ◽  
Unique Information ◽  
Actual Model ◽  
Emergency Shelters ◽  
The City

Most vulnerable individuals are particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study takes place in a large city in France. The aim of this study is to describe the mobility of the homeless population at the begin-ning of the health crisis and to analyze its impact in terms of COVID-19 prevalence. From June to August 2020 and September to December 2020, 1272 homeless people were invited to be tested for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and virus in and completed questionnaires. Our data show that homeless populations are sociologically dif-ferent depending on where they live. We show that people living on the street were most likely to be relocated to emergency shelters than other inhabitants. Some neighborhoods are points of attraction for homeless peo-ple in the city while others emptied during the health crisis, which had consequences for virus circulation. People with a greater number of different dwellings reported became more infected. This first study of the mo-bility and epidemiology of homeless people in time of pandemic provides unique information about mobility mapping, sociological factors of this mobility, mobility at different scales and epidemiological consequences. We suggest that homeless policies need to be radically transformed since actual model exposes people to infection in emergency.

Codifying Invisible Borders: How Municipal Ordinances Inscribe Market Values on the Landscape in Downtown Los Angeles

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-393
Author(s):  
Mindy Farabee
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Homeless Population ◽  
Neighborhood Revitalization ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Market Values ◽  
Urban Core ◽  
The City

AbstractZoning codes dramatically impact every community they touch. Ostensibly, these ordinances are meant to impose some collectively determined order on our built environments. In practice, they often draw lines in the sand that distribute power unevenly between residents. As home to the U.S.’ second largest homeless population, Los Angeles is but a stark example of the widespread housing crisis hitting many cities around the globe. In the 1970s, this is where the city drew borders around its Skid Row and consolidated social services in a bid to contain homelessness within the region’s urban core. As part of a an ambitious initiative launched in 2013, the city is now updating the zoning codes across its downtown area, a move that is prompting a vigorous debate over the role of municipal ordinances in codifying market-driven approaches to neighborhood revitalization. This interview engages with the Janus face of borders as inclusionary and exclusionary, asking: through what mechanisms – subtle and overt – do zoning codes dictate the shape of our private and communal spaces? And how can communities stake out their turf among competing value systems?

Being a Coptic Man: Masculinity, Class, and Social Change among Egyptian Copts

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 516-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bard Helge Kartveit
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Lower Socioeconomic ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Arab Societies ◽  
Patriarchal Power ◽  
The City

Inspired by Marcia Inhorn’s work on Arab masculinities, this article looks at changes in masculine ideals and practices among Egyptian middle-class Copts. Based on fieldwork among Copts in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, this article argues that young Coptic men embrace ideals of manhood that highlights conjugal connectivity and involved fatherhood at the expense of other social commitments; that in doing so, they define themselves in opposition to Muslim men of lower socioeconomic status, widely construed as their “masculine others”; and finally that these men ascribe to forms of masculinity that do not seem to reinforce patriarchal power relations, nor lend themselves to hierarchical placement in relation to otherwise dominant forms of masculinity within a predominantly Muslim society. As such, they constitute forms of masculinity that are parallel, but not subordinate to a “hegemonic masculinity,” challenging some of the central premises on which the concept of hegemonic masculinity is commonly based. The case of middle-class Coptic men point to the concept of “emergent masculinities” as a promising starting point for analyzing masculinity in diverse Arab societies.

scholarly journals No place to shelter: ethnography of the homeless population in the COVID-19 pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (suppl 2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermes Candido de Paula ◽  
Donizete Vago Daher ◽  
Fabiana Ferreira Koopmans ◽  
Magda Guimarães de Araujo Faria ◽  
Patricia Ferraccioli Siqueira Lemos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Preventive Measures ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Domain Analysis ◽  
Homeless Population ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Population Isolation ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Great Circulation ◽  
The City

ABSTRACT Objective: to analyze how homeless people live, in times of COVID-19 pandemic, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Method: an ethnographic research that used interviews and observations and articles published in newspapers and magazines of great circulation, using domain analysis. Results: the results tell how the COVID-19 pandemic emerged for the homeless population. Isolation led to emptying the streets and reducing passers-by, damaging their ways of living and their survival tactics. Hunger, thirst, absence of places for bathing and for fulfilling physiological needs became part of their daily lives. Final considerations: given the impossibility of having a place to shelter, acquiring food and water and the limitations in carrying out preventive measures, care actions offered by managers to limit the virus to spread, even in this population, are ineffective.

Particularities in immigration amongst homeless women in Girona

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. s900-s901 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Calvo ◽  
C. Giralt ◽  
C. Xavier
Keyword(s):  
Homeless People ◽  
Homeless Women ◽  
Homeless Population ◽  
Demographic Differences ◽  
Prospective Longitudinal Study ◽  
Affected Person ◽  
Competing Interest ◽  
Prospective Longitudinal ◽  
The City ◽  
Migratory Process

IntroductionHomelessness is a problem which affects all the areas of those who suffer it, affecting their health seriously. These risks increase when the affected person has carried out a migratory process. Another risk factor, apart from immigration, is to be woman.ObjectivesTo analyse the gender demographic differences in a total cohort of homeless people in the city of Girona in 2006 and continued until the present day.MethodsProspective longitudinal study of the total population of homeless people in Girona. In 2006, a list was made of all the homeless people detected by both specialized and non-specialized teams which have been followed until the present day.ResultsThe total number of women in the sample is lower (n = 106, 11.2%). There are fewer immigrant than autochthonous women (Chi2 = 23,1, df = 1, P < 0.001).After following the total homeless population in 2006, we can confirm that currently we can still identify 62 people in the territory (6.7%). In this subsample there are no differences between genders (man: n = 54, 6.5% vs. woman: n = 8, 7.5%; Chi2 = 0.21, df = 2, P = 0.89). That is, men and women remain in their homeless condition in a proportional way. This fact presents great limitations, since we do not know what happened with the other 93% of the initial sample.ConclusionsThe masculinisation of the homeless people from Maghreb has tended to increase the gender differences in the homeless population, in itself more masculine. This presents a risk of increasing the invisibility of homeless women.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

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