Homeless Movement Research Articles

La participación ciudadana como motor de las políticas de vivienda: el caso de la ocupación del Hotel Cambridge

Faced with State inefficiency in housing provision, the occupation of the Cambridge Hotel, located on the outskirts of São Paulo’s city center, was used as a case study to identify possibilities in the struggle for social housing. The building, initially a hotel built in the 1950s, closed in 2002, was expropriated in 2011, and occupied by the Downtown Homeless Movement (Movimento Sem Teto do Centro) in 2012. The movement, after social tensions and participation in participatory councils, obtained the donation of the property and its license in a federal requalification program. Through qualitative analysis of the housing deficit in Brazil, characterized by the excessive burden of rents and the precariousness of real estate, in contrast to housing policies focused on the production of units through development programs in peripheral locations, it is understood that the analysis of the determining factors for the case study’s feasibility can contribute to the discussion of government policies and actions. The methodology, based on the procedural field, observational methods, and literature review in the logical field, was structured in dialectical and inductive methods for the research, systematization, and critical analysis of bibliographic and documentary references and, in empirical processes, in the qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews and onsite visits. It was concluded that the power of dialogue and formation of the movement’s networks and its strategy, based on surrounding itself with actors that solidify its struggle, contributed to the viability of the Cambridge Hotel as a residential property. Based on the data analyzed, it is also argued that the participation of municipalities is undeniable in enabling the provision of housing in central areas. However, considering the hegemonic bias identified, the political action of social movements and the participation of academia in its instrumentalization are essential to strengthen the Capital-State relationship and enable the collation of territorial policies that the right to the city contemplates.

Freedom of Spirit and Fatality of Embodiment: Intellectual Controversies of Valerian Pidmohyl’ny’s Prose

The article focuses on the analysis of philosophic and existentialist collisions of Valerian Pidmohylny’s prose. He appeared to be the most consistent urbanist in the Ukrainian prose of the 1920s, as in Tretia Revolutsia (The Third Revolution) and Misto (The City) he showed two scenarios of the relationship between representatives of rustic and urban culture. The main theme of the novel is the brutal city occupation, its submission, and desecration. This path of fair revenge is anyway desperate for both winners and losers. The novel encompasses the process of a village-born person’s understanding and adoption of the elitist city culture and the way how a “black-earth” adds to the artistic values creation. In Misto, the factors that provided meaning to the existence were culture, creative work, and writing. However, the characters of Nevelychka Drama (A Little Touch of Drama) appear to be in the situation when the modernist belief in the art’s ability to change the world is lost, when no universal values define people’s behavior, and a moral choice does not agree with any authorities. Another Pidmohylny’s work, Povist bez Nazvy (The Untitled Novel), is one of the few direct fixations of traumatic experience of the early 1930s. Povist bez Nazvy focuses on the final questions of the human existence, when everything built over the foundations of being and cornerstones has lost its meaning and value. The hero of the novel feels like a homeless person, rootless, exhausted, and devastated by unbearable challenges. The last work of Pidmohylny is associated with reflections on the possibilities to escape the epoch and existence, which – recalling a sarcastic complaint of its hero – had better not coincide with the great convulsions of the beginning of the 20th century. Hashish was a temporary escape that ended up in even more catastrophic returning to the cage. Pashchenko, a rational person, took care of a rescue ampoule with poison beforehand – it guaranteed the permanent disappearance. Horodovsky almost tried the variant of a traceless disappearance in the throng, a ceaseless and homeless movement through new paths.

Homeless Policy as a Policy for Controlling Poverty in Tokyo: Considering the Relationship between Welfare Measures and Punitive Measures

In Japan, the increasing number of homeless people on the streets has been perceived as a social problem since the 1990s, and government policy regarding homeless people has been developed in an attempt to deal with it. This study examines the conditions of homeless people and describes how homeless policy started and developed in Tokyo, using the concept that homeless policy is a mixture of welfare measures and punitive measures. Examining the development process in three periods, it is pointed out that in the case of Tokyo, development of homeless measures has been influenced by the number of homeless people, reactions of homeless movement organizations, and public opinion. From the angle where punitive measures dominate, through to the point where welfare measures are superior, the aspect where punitive measures are dominant again supported by welfare measures.

Occupy, Resist, Construct, Dwell!: A Genealogy of Urban Occupation Movements in Central São Paulo

This paper offers a genealogy of building occupations carried out by occupation movements in central São Paulo to shed light on the particular form of urbanism that emanates from such downtown occupation practices. The main objective is to illustrate how occupation movements played a structural role in the urban recuperation of São Paulo’s central area by re-inhabiting a disaggregated stockpile of vacant buildings with thousands of homeless families, initiating parallel processes of architectural renewal and social reform. To that end, the contribution reconstructs the emergence and subsequent proliferation of occupation movements in central São Paulo between the 1970s and the 2010s. It dwells on particular exemplary building occupations during this period. This contribution draws from extensive discourse analysis, and multiple years of participant observation carried out in close collaboration with multiple occupations movements, especially the FLM (Alliance of the Struggle for Housing) and the MSTC (Homeless Movement of the Centre).

DA BRANQUIDADE DO ESTADO NA OCUPAÇÃO DA CIDADE

O artigo busca argumentar como a branquidade do Estado operou e opera na ocupação da cidade de São Paulo, a partir de experiências etnográficas com movimentos de luta por moradia. Por branquidade do Estado entendo os vínculos entre os diferentes tipos de racismo presentes em algumas práticas e concepções estatais, especialmente no que diz respeito à política urbana e à repressão policial. A branquidade do Estado, enquanto modo de funcionamento, vincula-se à heteroclassificação racial realizada pelo próprio Estado, atrelada à propagação do não reconhecimento das relações sociais como racializadas. Não obstante, a branquidade do Estado é constantemente desafiada e confrontada por pessoas e grupos não brancos e seus modos de ocupar as cidades, como o footing, as ocupações de prédios e os rolezinhos.

Institutionalization and Depoliticization of the Right to the City: Changing Scenarios for Radical Social Movements

AbstractThe right to the city, a concept previously associated with radical social movements, has been accepted by several governments and has inspired new public policies. However, some authors see this process of institutionalization as involving a loss of a significant part of the radical origins of the concept. This article approaches this process and the new opportunities and limitations it may entail for social movement organizations with a more radical perspective on the right to the city. We explore the paradigmatic case of Brazil and the action of a particular organization, the Movimento dos Sem Teto da Bahia (MSTB, or Homeless Movement of Bahia) in the city of Salvador. We draw on the discussion of the politics of the right to the city and on an original combination of social movement theories and critical discourse analysis in order to analyse political‐institutional and discursive changes in urban reform in Brazil and Salvador. We then analyse how the MSTB moves within this new context, navigating its tensions and contradictions while advancing a radical project of transformation of urban reality within a reformist context. We also reflect on the relevance of Lefebvrian ideas for understanding and inspiring contemporary struggles for the right to the city.

Ocupações do movimento dos sem-teto e a psicologia do trabalho

O objetivo deste artigo é discutir a importância das atividades coletivas nas ocupações realizadas pelo movimento dos sem-teto e descrever algumas características de sua organização de trabalho, a partir do diálogo entre as referências epistemológicas e teóricas que embasam os estudos da psicologia sobre o trabalho humano e a experiência de um dos autores como apoiador da ocupação. O planejamento, a entrada no imóvel e a sua manutenção são etapas realizadas por um trabalho coletivo. Observa-se a mobilização de uma inteligência astuciosa que permite intervir criativamente na ocupação, lidando com situações imprevistas através de soluções novas. A análise da organização do trabalho permitiu perceber que, embora o ideal de responsabilização coletiva não seja plenamente atingido, essa experiência de organização afirma valores de solidariedade de uma vida em comum, na qual a luta contra a exclusão e a miséria não deriva para saídas totalmente individualistas e marginais.

Taking back the city: Inner-city slum and homeless movement collective action in São Paulo

This article analyses the collective action of the São Paulo inner-city slum movement during the 1997-2000 period. This movement mobilized thousands of slum dwellers and homeless in the downtown core and occupied dozens of abandoned buildings during this period. The author explains through economic, political and social factors the building occupations in the Sao Paulo downtown core, an urban region with little history of collective mobilisation and political contention, at a time when urban movements became more institutionalized. In addition, this article introduces a different analytical frame that identifies both structural and agency factors, while taking into account the associated objective (economic) and subjective (political and cultural) conditions. It first describes the relevant economic variables in their specific situational context, which in this case are the changes in the political economy and their impact on the low income urban population and on state restructuring. Second, it explores local urban political dynamics, institutional practices involving housing policy and the interaction among different political actors which condition the collective action and organisation of social movements. Finally, it studies the characteristics of this movement and how the contention of other national social movements influenced the repertoire of action and the framing of this urban popular movement.Key words: social movement, slums, collective action, urban poor, housing, Brazil.

CONTEXTUALIZING TECHNOLOGY USE

This paper presents a contextualized analysis of the ways that organizers did and did not use Internet-enabled communication technologies in an organizing context in which material inequality was a prominent focus: a local homeless movement. Few studies on ICTs and social movements have taken seriously the very real material inequalities that structure technology use. While all movements include participants that either do not have access to ICTs or choose not to use them based on organizing contexts, these participants have been systematically excluded from analysis in the rush to understand how a narrow technological elite think, feel, and act in relation to ICTs. This paper draws on a communication-oriented participant observation of three overlapping campaigns to examine the communication practices employed by both housed and unhoused organizers: a campaign to ‘Stop the Sweeps’ of urban homeless encampments, a direct action tent-city project aimed at providing emergency shelter for up to 1,000 people called ‘Nickelsville’, and a campaign to stop the construction of a new jail organized around the ‘No New Jail’ slogan. Four themes are presented that characterize the strategies organizers used in communicating within and between constituents: how organizers emphasized ‘relational’ face-to-face communication, used ICTs to connect with housed allies, encouraged participants to move from the computer screen to street, and relied upon existing organizationally sponsored communications infrastructure in facilitating communication tasks. This paper proposes that an analysis of communication practices broadly defined is important in understanding the role of technologies of communication more specifically.

Listening to Kamagasaki

Keywords: commentary, Japan, soundscape, urban, music, labor, homeless

Framing Emerging Social Mobilizations: A Comparative Study of French Homeless, Illegal Immigrant and Unemployed Movements in TV News

Using the mass media to attract the public's attention to a cause is an ongoing tendency of contemporary politics, particularly in the case of ‘excluded’ groups. Literature in this domain emphasizes the conservative position of mass media. This article aims to nuance this perspective by retracing some particular features of the French case, through a comparative study of homeless, illegal immigrant and unemployed movements in TV news. Even victims of social exclusion can gain some space and weight in the public arena, via the media and especially television. This emergence is nevertheless mitigated. The loss of radicalism of their discourse confirms the general tendency of mass media to depoliticize the most subversive of new issues, although this process has quite complex and subtle features.

Homeless Movement Gains Ground

Homeless Movement Gains Ground

Food consumed does not account for the higher prevalence of obesity among stunted adults in a very-low-income population in the Northeast of Brazil (Maceió, Alagoas).

To study the food pattern of stunted and nonstunted, obese and nonobese individuals in a very-low-income population. A household survey. Slum set up by the 'Homeless Movement', city of Maceió (Alagoas), Brazil. A total of 532 adults classified by sex, stature (Z</= and Z > -2s.d. of the NCHS curves), and body mass index (BMI) were compared using the following variables: waist circumference, waist-hip circumference ratio (W/H), percentage body fat (skinfold thickness and bioelectrical impedance), and food intake (24-h recall). The prevalence of stunting was 22.6%. In all, 30% of the stunted subjects were overweight or obese, compared with 23% for the nonstunted individuals (P<0.05). In women, logistic regression analysis showed a strong association among weight, abdominal fat, and stunting (r=0.81). No significant differences were observed in the values of W/H or in the qualitative menu of the different categories. Energy intake was below the RDA figures (about 63%). There was similarity among the groups regarding the proportion of macronutrients, except for the fact that stunted obese women ingested less fat and protein than nonstunted obese women. Stunted obese individuals consumed less energy (5962 kJ) than the population as a whole (6213 kJ), an amount far lower than their average needs, which were calculated on the basis of their shorter stature (8109 kJ). The observed energy consumption seems compatible with the panorama of undernutrition present in the population, but it does not explain the high prevalence of obesity detected.

Global economic restructuring and the world of labor in Brazil: the challenges to trade unions and social movements

The crisis and challenges faced by labor, including the trade unions and social movements have proportions not yet fully understood. The repercussions, owing to globalization, also reached Third World countries, especially intermediate countries that hold important industrial estates such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, etc. Brazil is part of an economic, social, political and cultural context which has universal traces of global capitalism, but also possesses singularities. During the last decades, Brazilian trade unions and social movements have either followed a different path. There was a widespread and highly significant strike movement (in the 1980s) with a notable expansion of trade unions organizing salaried sector (teachers, bank workers, public sector workers, etc.); there was also the rise of the Union Congresses such as the CUT-Central Única dos Trabalhadores (Workers Central) and the advance of rural unionism and the Landless Workers' Movement (MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra) and new urban social movements such as the Homeless Movement. By the end of these decades, we joined in a more significant way the challenges which were presented to the unionism and social movements. These challenges are discuss in this paper.

Economic developmentism and change within the Brazilian urban system

The crisis and challenges faced by labour, including the trade unions and social movements have proportions not yet fully understood. The repercussions, owing to globalisation, also reached Third World countries, especially intermediate countries that hold important industrial estates such as Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, etc. Brazil is part of an economic, social, political and cultural context which has universal traces of global capitalism, but also possesses singularities. During the last decades, Brazilian trade unions and social movements have either followed a different path. There was a widespread and highly significant strike movement (in the 1980s) with a notable expansion of trade unions organising salaried sectors (teachers, bank workers, public sector workers, etc.); there was also the rise of the Union Congresses such as the CUT – Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (Workers Central) and the advance of rural unionism and the Landless Workers' Movement (MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra) and new urban social movements such as the Homeless Movements. By the end of that decade, we joined in a more significant way the challenges which were presented to the unionism and social movements. These challenges are discussed in this article.

The subject's propriety, space, and place

This article deals with the "scenery", "horizons", and perspectives constituting the subject's place and situation from the psychoanalyst's limited perspective. Moving away from the body and its "embodiments" and places, many of which are institutionalized, including language itself, we look into such matters as velocity and other "conjectures" associated with technique. In addition, we also consider the body and nature as a whole as sites of action and presentations, which in several scenes lead to representations of the world in view of the peculiarities in the subject's experiences. All virtualities, together with the "disembodiment of physical presence", add one more variable to our thoughts. Recent endeavors like the feminist and homeless movements have shed new light on our understanding of the desire to possess and govern a territory. Art (and here drama plays an essential role) seems to be the perfect system towards which perceptions and syntheses are directed in search of new concepts and directions for understanding (which, in turn, has recently undergone an unprecedented crisis). Still, we should point out that the latter issue, not dealt with in this article, will be discussed at a suitable opportunity.

Homeless in Paradise: A Map of the Terrain.

Acknowledgments Introduction: Why Are They Homeless? 1. Paradise 2. Becoming Homeless 3. Being Homeless 4. Hanging on and Hanging out 5. The Homeless Movement 6. Getting Ahead and the Barriers to Escape 7. Homelessness and the American Paradise Appendix: Researching Homelessness: A Case History Notes Index

Homelessness and the homeless movement: A clue to the problem of intersubjectivity

Homelessness and the homeless movement: A clue to the problem of intersubjectivity

Homelessness and Police Policy in Tucson

The homeless movement in the United States has taken a more activist-oriented approach, as those advocating the rights of displaced poverty-stricken people seek solutions that go beyond the usual "out of sight, out of mind" offerings of charity such as soup kitchens and shelter. Organizations such as the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Union of the Homeless have staged demonstrations and publicity-capturing acts of disobedience all across the country, including the erection of a tent city in front of City Hall when the Union was organized in Tucson in December 1987. The collective demand is housing, specifically that Federal funds be restored to pre-Reagan levels. On July 14, 1988, as part of a national "Take Off the Boards" demonstration that occurred in fifty-four other cities, homeless people and advocates in Tucson occupied several vacant buildings to protest, in the words of the president of the Southern Arizona Coalition for the Homeless, the "moral crime" of letting housing resources go unused. Jobs, education, health care, and equal rights are also target concerns.

Right To Shelter: History of the Mobilization of the Homeless as a Model of Voluntary Action

Surprisingly, in this era of cutbacks and conservatism, a poor people's movement of great strength and popularity has surfaced. This paper charts the genesis and formation of the homeless movement analyzing its strategies and successes in light of current resource mobilization theories. Special attention is paid to the charac teristic use of litigation as a major advocacy tool. The mobilization of this disor ganized, disadvantaged, often disabled group is an inspiring story, one that may prove to be a blueprint for voluntary action in the 1980's.