Class monopoly rent, property relations, and Portland's homeless crisis

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study deepens our understanding of the political-economic drivers of contemporary homelessness by bringing scholarly literature on land rent theory and the political economy of homelessness into closer dialogue. We interrogate the tactics in which the actors that comprise urban growth machines collaboratively work to control the spatiality of the homeless as a means of preserving their investments in urban space. In the process, we hypothesize that it is not just the mobilization of property toward rent-enhancement that both produces and spatially manages homeless populations, but in the neoliberal era, it is specifically the mobilization of property toward one particular category of rent: class monopoly rent. Based on a case study of Portland, USA, the study illustrates the conceptual value of this category of rent in illuminating the specific economic relationships that have underpinned the past four decades of homelessness in urban America, and concludes by discussing implications for policy.