The Politics of Homelessness: Shelter Now and Political Protest

Abstract

This study examines a homeless social movement organization-Shelter Now-that is attempting to influence policy and empower homeless people in a small California city. Interviews with Shelter Now leaders, service providers, and city and county policymakers explore the role of Shelter Now in city politics. Specifically, I analyze Shelter Now's political organizing strategies and tactics, its relationships with elites, and the outcomes of its efforts to change local homeless policy. By considering Shelter Now's activities through the lens of social movement theory, I suggest that assessing the groups victories and its defeats serves to sharpen our sense of the limitations of homeless groups and to focus social movement theory more centrally on such limitations. Shelter Now faces significant obstacles in trying to organize homeless people politically; the homeless suffer police reprisals and loss of shelter and other services as a result of their activism. Service provider and police repression of Shelter Now reveals the extreme social and political marginalization experienced by groups like the homeless; such marginalization translates to a precarious and sometimes limited form of grassroots activism. Shelter Now1 is a homeless social movement organization (SMO) attempting to influence policy and empower homeless people in a small California city. The groups political organizing efforts include increased participation for homeless people on local boards and commissions that address homelessness, changes to service providers' rules and operating procedures, and the creation of a zone. The safe zone would provide a place for people who camp out or live in their cars to stay at night without risk of harassment, arrest, or of having their belongings confiscated by the police. A self-described ad hoc networking Shelter Now thus far has rejected organized protest as a means to reach its goals. Instead, it has pressured local government and shelters to include homeless people in decisionmaking processes. Because of its questions about the usefulness of protest, according to many typologies of social movements, it is difficult to define Shelter Now as an SMO. It appears to incorporate elements of an SMO, an interest group, and a social service agency. By examining Shelter Nows political organizing strategies and the outcomes of its work, however, I suggest that despite its rejection of grassroots protest, it is nevertheless fruitful to study the group as an SMO. First, Shelter Now meets the definition of an SMO in a variety of ways; most importantly, it shares many of the objectives and tactics of other homeless SMOs. second, Shelter Now has met with sonic success in inscriing ils demands into the local policy agenda as well as among service providers; those successes are better comprehended and analyzed when Shelter Now is studied within the context of social movement theory. Finally, the groupfe refusal to protest helps to highlight its lack of resources. Thus, the case of Shelter Now focuses social movement theory on the limitations of groups like the homeless, particularly in terms of the specific resources needed to organize homeless political protest. Arguably, the constructs of social movement theory do not fully allow for-nor come to terms with-the limitations of homeless groups trying to make change collectively. Homeless peopled extreme lack of resources and dependence upon social service agencies, particularly shelters, for their very survival, creates a very different set of challenges than those faced by social movements dominated by middle class leaders and followers. Homeless peoples severe social marginalization, buttressed by the social construction of homeless people as mentally ill, lazy, and disassociated from normal life, shapes their political marginalization. Shelter Nows activism-and its rejection of street protest particularly-can be analyzed fully only within the context of homeless people's social and political marginalization. …