Homelessness and the Built Environment
originally written Fall 2015, updated Fall 2020
In January 2014, over 578,000 Americans were without homes. This includes anyone sleeping outside, in an emergency shelter, or in transitional housing. (14) Modern homelessness tends to be impartial; The racial demographics of the homeless population of any given place tend to be more and more representative of the general population of said place. (1) As criminology professor Gregg Barak reflected in 1991, homeless people are not just the “displaced and deinstitutionalized” individuals (those with mental illness or addiction struggles) but also abused or neglected youth and adults in the form of refugees, veterans, and immigrants. (1) More than twenty years later, this list has only grown to include over 67,000 family households, many of which were affected by the housing market crash of 2008. (14) Particularly in a city such as New York, where the average cost of rent for a 2 bedroom apartment recently surpassed $4,000 per month, it’s no wonder families are regularly displaced. (6) However, any combination of factors can land a person (and their family) on the street. As rent costs and the cost of living continue to rise, incomes are not seeing a proportionate increase. In fact, according to Vice News, “Many of New York's homeless individuals have jobs, often more than one, and children in school”. (13) Individual circumstances (ie. tendency towards addiction) combined with broader structural circumstances (ie. racial discrimination in the workplace) can be enough to cause someone to lose their home.
Despite these striking numbers, the rate of homelessness in the U.S. has actually decreased from 2013 to 2014. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, this is probably in part because targeted federal funding to address homelessness is at its highest level in history: $4.5 billion in fiscal year 2015 for a variety of programs spanning HUD, VA, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Education. In addition to increased resources, the homeless assistance field has shifted its focus to “permanent housing solutions to homelessness: permanent supportive housing and rapid re-housing capacity continues to grow”. (14) That said, there are more roles to be played in solution seeking and implementation beyond that of policy makers and federal budgeters. Urban designers, architects, city planners, etc. (those responsible for the formation and physical evolution of cities) have a responsibility and power to create livable, efficient spaces, as well as elicit and shift behavioral patterns.
In this essay, I intend to address the ways in which the built urban environment in 21st Century America shapes the lives of our country’s homeless population. The use of urban design as a band-aid to ‘fix’ America’s ‘homeless problem’ is indicative of a certain cultural relationship that cities, particularly those in power within them, have with homeless people. Hostile infrastructure is being used not only to corral homeless people into less-desirable areas, but to make their lives outside of these areas even more unpleasant. I intend to explore examples of anti-homeless urban design, as well as seek out examples of urban design used for the betterment of the lives of the homeless, if it exists. I also intend to explore how the built environment interplays with policy and nonprofit organizations to define what it means to be homeless in U.S. cities. Can design be a part of the solution instead of a tool used by policy makers to perpetuate the problem?
I fully believe that our country’s relationship with homelessness is a direct reflection of our country’s relationship with not just mental illness, but also physical disability. The stigmatization of homelessness is only perpetuated by the dichotomy of the visibility and invisibility of the lives of homeless people, both of which drive the problem. In many ways, homeless populations are ‘othered’ and criminalized, which furthers the stigma that they are potentially a danger to greater society. Not only are homeless populations largely not dangerous, but they tend to be the most vulnerable and overlooked citizens who need assistance and protection more than anyone. (1) Unfortunately, it often seems as though the design of cities serves to further ostracize and disempower the homeless.
The quality and design of public space in a city is wholly indicative of the quality of life of its inhabitants. (12) But what does it mean when public space is your private space? Even small-scale elements of the built environment can have massive effects on what it means to be a homeless person. As outlined in Mike Davis’ Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space , “Urban form obediently follows repressive function”. This manifests in a series of micro-aggressions that create incredibly inhospitable environments. There are several examples of anti-homeless design in Fortress Los Angeles that are an adequate representation of such installments in most American cities. “Bum proof” benches have been installed at bus stops and around the city (barrel shaped so that they’re impossible to sleep on). Sprinklers have been installed in public parks with the intent of drenching inhabitants randomly during the night. City planners and developers forgo public toilets for “quasi-public” toilets (in restaurants, etc) only accessible to business people and tourists. Homeless-proof trash cans replace regular ones so that their contents are locked away or out of reach. (3) Tragically, these tactics are consistent not just nationwide, but in other western countries as well. In both London and Montreal, citizens drew attention to the inhumanity of “anti-homeless spikes'', that make it impossible to sleep on the ground in certain areas. After this outcry, the mayors of both cities publicly agreed with the sentiment of their citizenry, and removed the spikes from the specific areas initially addressed. In many cities, there was no such public outcry. Philosophy professor Robert Rosenberger draws the comparison to skateboarding-preventative additions to public space. Unless you’re a skateboarder who skates in public spaces, the function of metal ridges on retaining walls, etc. may not occur to you, if you notice them at all. (11) In this way, the strife of homeless people is invisible in plain view.
I’d like to take a minute to further contemplate the topic of homeless-proof trash cans. I happen to live and work in two neighborhoods that are the most notorious, shining examples of modern New York gentrification, respectively; the East Village in Manhattan, and Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Something that I’ve recently noticed as of a few months ago are the new solar-top trash cans in both neighborhoods. The contraptions are large metal boxes with solar panels on top and a trash-insertion compartment that swings down in a similar fashion to a street-side mail-drop box. In the same way that these mailboxes prevent people from reaching their hands inside and stealing others’ mail, these trash cans prevent people from reaching inside and retrieving trash. With that in mind, the new cans most likely use the solar energy for trash compaction, and the enclosed nature of the new design keeps the trash out of reach from rats. Is any of this done with malicious intent? Probably not. But what does it say about our society that we have human beings and rats sharing and competing for a single food supply? Moreover, what does it say about our society that making garbage cans more efficient and environmentally sound is impacting a certain population’s nutrition? My hope is that this unintended consequence will not go unnoticed by policy makers.
Also outlined in Fortress Los Angeles is the so-called “containment” of the homeless in skid row districts. Although Davis refers specifically to Los Angeles, the same is true in many U.S. cities, namely San Francisco, as I’ll later address. The conscious act of city governments to corral incredibly vulnerable populations into smaller and smaller allotted areas for the betterment of the rest of a city only serves to further isolate said populations, making their reintegration into society even more dubious. Davis writes, “This containment strategy breeds its own vicious cycle of contradiction. By condensing the mass of desperate and helpless together in such a small space, and denying adequate housing, official policy has transformed Skid Row into probably the most dangerous ten square blocks in the world”. (3) Additionally, this phenomena perpetuates a vicious cultural cycle. As homeless people are compressed into a smaller and smaller patch of a city, that patch of the city becomes more and more dangerous. As the conditions where exclusively homeless people live become more and more dangerous, the stigmas regarding the homeless themselves being harmful only worsen. As a society, we tend to correlate characteristics of a place with characteristics of the individuals that live there. Just because where someone lives is dangerous, doesn’t necessarily mean the individuals who live there are dangerous. Ultimately, those who have been systematically oppressed to such an extent often resort to criminal activity (i.e. stealing), or sometimes informal labor markets (i.e. selling drugs), just to survive. This, again, serves only to further ostracize an individual from society, and perpetuates negative stigmas as well.
In San Francisco, homeless people have been gradually condensed into a neighborhood called the Tenderloin. Similar to L.A.’s Skid Row, it is largely regarded as the most dangerous neighborhood in the city. In 2011, San Francisco’s mayor, Ed Lee, implemented his “Central Market Economic Strategy” (Central Market referring to the city’s Market district) that offered tax incentives to businesses, many of which are tech companies, to locate or relocate in and around this impoverished neighborhood. (15) Not surprisingly, an influx of up-and-coming businesses has changed the demographics and ‘feel’ of the area. That said, no action has been taken to relocate the even more constricted homeless population, and tech workers are literally stepping over people sleeping on the streets on their way to work. As the ‘homeless problem’ worsens and homeless people begin to spill out of their designated areas, those who have social / political power are more affected by their presence. Despite having an entire sector of city government dedicated to “managing homelessness”, it’s not enough. (5) The lack of attention to San Francisco’s homeless is being picked up by other public servants, namely firefighters and police officers. Fire Engine 1 of San Francisco’s Tenderloin was the busiest engine in the country last year, making 10,221 runs, only 1.5% of which actually involved a fire. They spend a disproportionate majority of their time, in full uniform, responding to calls of “Male, apparently homeless, sprawled unconscious on a train platform.” or “Male, prone on a street corner pushing a needle into his arm”. (10) This reflects an immense misallocation of resources, and is a disservice not only to homeless people, who deserve long term solutions, but also to the firefighters who spend all too much of their time tending to problems they didn’t sign up (or receive training) to solve.
It’s rare that a public sector has any sort of positive relationship with homeless people. A petty example of this is happening in my own backyard. In the summer of 2015, the Sergeants Benevolent Association launched a campaign urging NYPD and their friends and family to “get more involved” in bringing awareness to the rise of homelessness in the city and to “help create accountability across the board” through photographing homeless people and posting these photos on social media. (2,9) Not only is this a blatantly disrespectful idea, it’s also ineffectual. Some consider the campaign to be a direct criticism of Mayor DeBlasio’s unsuccessful attempts at alleviating homelessness, as tensions between the NYPD and the Mayor remain high. Others theorize that this is an attempt by the police to get a grasp on a tool that has been used against them repeatedly in recent months (social media). (2) Ultimately, this only further highlights the aggressive self-involvement and delusion of the police. As stated by Simon McCormack of The Huffington Post, “Research has shown that one of the best and most cost-effective ways to alleviate homelessness is not to take pictures of homeless people or arrest them, but to give them homes."
Unfortunately, most of the policy approaches to addressing homelessness intend to criminalize homelessness and remove them from the public eye. In Boise, Idaho, homeless people have resorted to living in forests to avoid police interaction. Homeless people are regularly ticketed for things like sitting for too long, lying outside, and sharing food in public, which are policies that can be found nationwide. Supporters of laws such as Boise’s “anti-camping ordinance” argue that they get people off the street and into shelters, but oppositions believe they create a “whack-a-mole dynamic” where homeless are forced to move somewhere else, or end up in jail. The latter claim is supported by the insufficient number of shelter beds supplied by the city of Boise. Ticketing of the homeless in Boise has gotten so bad that a group of homeless people who live behind a homeless shelter for lack of beds inside it are being ticketed for staying there. To make matters worse, after homeless people are released from jail for having broken the law, they’re left right back on the street where they were picked up in the first place. (4)
Contrarily, most of the programmatic approaches to addressing homelessness simply intend to improve the day to day life of a homeless person. This holds true with respect to nonprofit organizations nationwide. An organization in San Francisco called Lava Mae is repurposing old Muni buses into bathrooms on wheels, giving homeless people the opportunity to take a shower. (8) This is an amazing example of repurposing a core infrastructural element of a city to address one of the most prominent issues plaguing said city. Lava Mae began offering their services in the summer of 2014, which coincided with a public outcry regarding the heightening of the ‘homeless problem’ and grimy public spaces. The company drives their few buses in neighborhoods notorious for being homeless hubs. (8) The company has been received with enthusiasm and positivity, not just by individuals using the services they provide, but also by regular San Francisco residents and attendees of the Woman in the World Summit, honoring “female industry titans, celebrities, and political leaders”, alike. (7)
An organization in New York City is working to assist city government in assisting the homeless. Homeless Outreach Population Estimate, or HOPE, launched in 2003, is a boots-on-the-ground operation that, with the help of hundreds of volunteers, collects data to “better serve the homeless people that are not able to get shelter at night”. Groups of volunteers, set out with maps and the occasional police officer, take to a given territory to conduct a census of homeless people. Assisting people in getting access to shelters is imperative, especially in the winter months. New York City was the first city to conduct a homeless census, and this is now a federal requirement for the U.S. (13)
Something that has become clear through my research is the internal diversity of a group of people often just blanketly referred to as “the homeless”. Because there are so many combinations of elements that can land an individual (or a family, for that matter) without a place to live, there must be a series of solutions to alleviate homelessness as varied as the demographics within the larger mass. A disabled veteran is not necessarily homeless for the same reason that a single mother with two kids is homeless, and this must be reflected in solution proposals. Beyond what designers and planners can do, it’s imperative for policy makers, etc, to attack the ‘problem’ from the core. It’s much more effective to alleviate the factors that cause homelessness than it is to pick up the pieces after someone is already on the street.
The ability of urban design to alleviate homelessness is limited for the following reason: a designer, architect, landscape architect, etc. may only create and implement their ideas when given the funding to do so. If given a ‘program’ by a city (or development cooperation), they are limited in what is to be designed. That said, designers have ample ability to influence the lives of homeless people in two spheres: visibility and humanization. The power of ‘environmental’ designers (those in the aforementioned fields) to elicit behavioral changes of the greater public is wholly under-acknowledged. Cities are notoriously resistant to changes in their environment, and yet adapt almost instantaneously. When New York City announced the plan to close Broadway in Manhattan’s Times Square to vehicle traffic, the city was up in arms. Yet six years later, the neighborhood would be unrecognizable without this element. People respond subconsciously to their surroundings, and shifts in behavior and spatial relationships are the first steps to changing a public culture. Integrating homeless individuals into society on a spatial level is just as valuable as any other form of societal integration. Public consciousness is integral to initiating change, especially in the political realm. Housing should be a human right, and it’s going to take action in all city spheres to eradicate homelessness for good.
1. Barak, Gregg. Gimme Shelter: A Social History of Homelessness in Contemporary America . New York: Praeger, 1991. Print.
2. Curry, Colleen. "New York Cops Are Now Shaming Homeless People On Social Media." VICE News . N.p., 12 Aug. 2015. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
3. Davis, Mike. "Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space." City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles . London: Verso, 1990. 154-80. Print.
4. Hiding the Homeless . Perf. Vice News. VICE News . VICE News, 23 Nov. 2015. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
5. Kampmark, Binoy. "The Mask of Indifference: Homeless Industries in San Francisco." CounterPunch . N.p., 3 June 2013. Web. 4 May 2015.
6. Kasperkevic, Jana. "Too Damn High: Manhattan Average Apartment Prices Reach Record of $1.87m." The Guardian . N.p., 1 July 2015. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
7. Knight, Heather. "Accolades Pour in for Lava Mae Mobile Shower Stalls." San Francisco Chronicle . N.p., 24 Feb. 2015. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
8. Knight, Heather. "Nonprofit Providing Showers for the Homeless Rolling along." San Francisco Chronicle . N.p., 8 Sept. 2015. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
9. McCormack, Simon. "NYPD Union Responds To Calls For Reform By Shaming The Homeless." Huffington Post . N.p., 11 Aug. 2015. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
10. Nir, Sarah Maslin. "San Francisco Firefighters Become Unintended Safety Net for the Homeless." The New York Times . The New York Times, 26 Aug. 2015. Web. 27 Nov.
11. Rosenberger, Robert. "How Cities Use Design to Drive Homeless People Away." The Atlantic . Atlantic Media Company, 19 June 2014. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
12. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces . Dir. William H. Whyte. Internet Archive . N.p., 1980. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
13. Speri, Alice. "New Yorkers Hit the Streets Looking to Bring HOPE to the City's Homeless." VICE News . N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
14. "The State of Homelessness in America 2015." National Alliance to End Homelessness .N. p., 2015. Web. 27 Nov. 2015.
15. Whiting, Sam. "Arts' New Heart: S.F.’s Cultural Center Shifts to Once-seedy Central Market with ACT’s Strand t