inclusive and empathetic language use guidelines

Alliance for Healthier Communities Communications Guide | 1

Inclusive and Empathetic Language Use Guidelines

Language is a powerful tool. The way we talk about people and communities facing barriers has

a tremendous impact on the way they are viewed in our society. Words can either empower

people and affirm the value of diversity and difference, or demean them and perpetuate the

stigma they already face.

Referring to people as the vulnerable, the poor, the homeless, drug addicts, mentally ill,

disabled, etc., is common in policy documents, media and our own communications. Unlike

derogatory terms or slurs, these words are not meant to be intentionally harmful. More often

than not they are used out of convenience or convention. That doesn’t mean this kind of

language doesn’t have harmful effects.

Reducing human beings to their medical or social conditions contributes to the othering of

people and whole communities. The resulting stigma leads to discrimination and reluctance on

the part of people facing barriers to access supports and services, which in turn exacerbates

existing health inequities. Negative public perception of certain groups also results in lack of

support for the policy changes required to create a more equitable and just society.

The first step to advancing our policy agenda, transforming the health system, and ensuring the

best possible health and wellbeing for everyone in Ontario is to shift the conversation and

create a new narrative. This narrative should be rooted in respect and appreciation for our

differences. It should reaffirm the intrinsic value of every person in our society regardless of

their social or medical circumstances. That’s why words matter. Proper language use is not

about political correctness. It is a matter of health equity and social justice.

The guidelines provided below are in no way complete. We acknowledge that language is

constantly evolving. The words and terms that are acceptable today may be rejected in a few

years. This document is meant to encourage Alliance employees to be more thoughtful writers,

deliberate in their language choices, and to help prepare them to take responsibility for the

words they use.


Guidelines

- Don’t reduce people to their social or medical conditions: avoid referring to people as the

homeless, the poor, the disabled, the drug user, etc. Homelessness, poverty, disability or drug

use are only one aspect of people’s lives. They are also parents, children, friends, artists,

writers, professionals, workers, and so on. When we use the adjective that describes their

social or medical condition and turn it into a noun to refer to people, we erase the other facets

of their lives and rob them of their humanity.

- Use people-first language. The concept of “person-first language” emerged among disability

advocacy groups in the 1980s. The movement’s objective was to use language in a way that

allowed people with disabilities and/or particular diagnoses to reclaim their agency, autonomy,

and personhood in the face of stigma and dehumanization. The rule is to put the word “person”

first, before the disability or condition, in order to emphasize that those being referred to are

people first, not just diagnoses or disabilities. In addition, when we put an adjective before the

noun, for example a disabled person, it implies that the whole person is disabled, which is

usually not the case. That is why “a person with disabilities” is a preferred term. The concept

person-first language has since grown beyond the disability community and can be used when

referring to many groups facing barriers. So try using “people experiencing homelessness” or

“people living in the streets” instead of “the homeless,” “a person living below the poverty line”

instead of “the poor,” “people who use drugs” instead of “drug users.”

- Our aim should be to shift focus from people to the systems that create inequities. When we

call people vulnerable or at-risk, it implies there is something inherently wrong with them and

because of that, they cannot deal with their life circumstances. We know that it is government

policies that make people vulnerable to poverty, food insecurity, inadequate housing, and at

risk of poor health. So it makes more sense to say “people made vulnerable to poverty”,

“people disadvantaged by the system”, “communities facing barriers” or to talk directly about

policies that put people at risk of poor health.

- Be as specific as possible. Quite often we refer to large, generic groups of people when we

mean much smaller communities. Using specific and clearly defined terms will help get the

message across as well as avoid lumping different groups of people together. Try to specify who

you mean by disabled people: is it people with mobility issues, deaf people, etc. When you talk

about at-risk youth, do you mean youth living in inner suburbs, youth from families living on

low incomes, newcomer youth, etc.?


- Avoid judgmental language. Do not use language that carries judgmental undertones, i.e.,

normal, clean, dirty, or words that victimize people, i.e., victim, afflicted, restricted, stricken,

suffering, etc. Don’t call someone brave, heroic or a fighter simply for living with disability or

dealing with a disease. Instead, use neutral terms: deal with, live with, manage, or have.

- Avoid war metaphors and combatant language, such as: fighting, combatting, war on the

virus, frontline defense, mobilizing, etc. Military language often leads to portraying people who

are sick as an enemy. Healing and war are inherently in opposition. The use of militaristic

metaphors and violent language undermines the efforts to humanize healthcare.

- Avoid ableist language. Disability metaphors abound in our language, and they usually have a

negative connotation, for instance: economy crippled by debt, blind to the suffering of other

people, crazy to do it, etc. Ableist language perpetuates negative and disempowering views of

disabled people and therefore should not be used. Instead, employ your imagination or refer to

a thesaurus (thesaurus.com) and try to find a more appropriate word for what you are trying to

say.

- Remember the new golden rule: Treat people the way they want to be treated. When in

doubt, don’t be afraid to ask people how they would like to be referred to. And always respect

an individual person’s preference for identifying or describing themselves, even if that is not

what the majority in a community prefers, or if it deviates from this style guide.

Glossary

Avoid Try instead

Vulnerable populations, at-risk populations, our most vulnerable, at-risk people

People and communities facing barriers People disadvantaged by the system People made vulnerable by inadequate policies People put at risk of poor health by inadequate policies

Poor people, the poor People experiencing poverty People living under the poverty line

Homeless people, the homeless People experiencing homelessness People without a home People living on the streets

Low-income people People living on low incomes

The uninsured People without medical insurance

Ontarians, Canadians, citizens People living in Ontario People living in Canada

Undocumented, illegal, unauthorized, unlawful, alien

People without legal status

http://www.thesaurus.com/


Avoid Try instead

Offender, convict, criminal Person with a criminal record Convicted person

Mentally ill People with mental health issues People with a mental illness

Disabled people People with physical/mental/intellectual disabilities

Physically challenged, handicapped People with a physical disability

Confined to a wheelchair Uses a wheelchair

Suffer from bipolar disorder Diagnosed with bipolar disorder

Normal People without disabilities

Stroke victim Person who had a stroke

Drug addict, drug user, junkie Person who uses drugs Person with substance use disorder

Clean Person who has stopped using drugs

Dirty Actively uses drugs Positive for drug use

Addiction Drug habit

Substance use disorder Problematic drug use

Fight, combat, struggle, counter Deal, address, manage

Frontline staff Front-facing staff

Trans/transgender (as a noun) Trans woman, transgender man

Born male, biologically female Sex assigned at birth

Sex reassignment surgery Sex change surgery

Gender confirming surgery

Making Sense of NIMBY*poverty, power and communityopposition to homeless shelters

VINCENT LYON-CALLOWestern Michigan University

Local citizens mobilizing in opposition to the presence of homeless people andservices is increasingly common in communities across the United States. Such"'not in my backyard" poUtics have often been understood as resulting from prej-udice, bigotry, or misguided understandings. I argue for an analysis of thesesocial movements through considering how particular strategies and practicescome to seem "natural" to social actors while other possibilities are effaced.Analyzing these ''common sense" reactions thus must entail examining theinterplay between discursively made representations of homeless people and his-torical, class, and power dynamics that impact on people within particular com-munities. [Ethnography, homelessness, inequality, NIMBY, Massachusetts]

APUBLIC MEETING IN Northampton, Massachusetts toannounce the location of a winter homeless shelter turnedquite contentious on August 19, 1998 as nearly one hun-

dred and fifty citizens voiced concerns and opposition to locatingthe program on city land in a predominately upper-middle classarea of the city. For the second time in as many years organizedneighborhood opposition quickly coalesced to oppose the shelter.Neighbors came to the meeting with a lawyer already in placewhile their statements portrayed the vast majority of homelesspeople as mentally ill, dangerous, chemically addicted, lazy, or aspotential criminals and vandals. As in many communities acrossthe country, political turmoil and increased animosity betweengroups of city residents resulted from this effort to find an accept-able location for services for homeless people. These events inNorthampton are far from unique. In fact, several recent studiesdocument "not in my back yard" (NIMBY) efforts as an increas-ingly popular response to homelessness throughout the nation(Laws 1996; National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty

183City & Society 2 0 0 1 . XIII |2| 183-209.

Copyright 2002 by lh» American Anthropologlcol Association

City & Society

1997, 1995; Takahashi 1998; Werner 1998).A decade of widespread implementation of neoliberal efforts to

provide services to "help" homeless people coincided with eightyears of what has been widely proclaimed as an area of unprece-dented economic growth and prosperity. Despite the "strong"economy and the implementation of a range of "helping" practicesadministered to homeless people, homelessness and requests forhousing assistance continued to increase during recent years.1 Localgovernments and community members are responding to the con-tinued growth of homelessness. Unfortunately, despite the lack ofresources adequate to meet the needs of homeless people, wide-spread public support for political movements aimed at decreasingsystemic inequalities, which are a root cause of homelessness, havebeen largely absent. Many of these citizens and policy makers arenot striving to implement measures aimed at less exploitative orliving wages for the 30—40% of homeless people who are employedand still can not afford housing. Nor are they working toward cre-ating more affordable housing units or working to ameliorate othersystemic inequities such as structural racism and sexism related toproducing homelessness. Instead, local governments and commu-nity residents continue to be more likely to attribute homelessnessto shortcomings within homeless people themselves.Consequently, the most vocal and organized community mobiliza-tions appear to be aimed at preventing the location of services forhomeless people in "their" neighborhoods. In this paper I drawupon ethnographic research in Northampton to argue that thepolicies and practices related to economic growth and prosperityfor some people in the late 1990s combined with dominant indi-vidualizing neoliberal discursive conditions have helped both toproduce increasing hunger and homelessness in the United Statesand to produce what are characterized as NIMBY responses tohomelessness in local communities.

Making Sense of "NIMBY"

THERE ARE MANY POSSIBLE WAYS of understanding prac-tices commonly classified as NIMBY. In analyzing local oppcsition to human services, often social scientists have largely

focused on the beliefs and public perceptions about homeless serv-ices and homeless people (Henig 1994; Dear 1992; Gilbert 1993).Similarly, many homeless people and shelter employees I have spo-

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Making Sense ofNIMBY

ken with represent the opposition to services or shelters as result-ing simply from either selfishness or misguided, prejudicial stereo-types. In that vein, a report by the U.S. Conference of Mayorsargued that local opposition to homeless services is largely theresult of "hostility and fear, based often on ignorance" (U.S.Conference of Mayors 1993:19) while the National Law Centeron Homelessness and Poverty argued that "not in my back yard"(or NIMBY) efforts "are the result of misinformation that could beremedied through education and communication" (National LawCenter on Homelessness and Poverty 1995:vii). These under-standings are somewhat supported by studies showing that a num-ber of arguments are repeated in multiple settings. For example,opponents of homeless services frequently argue that the servicewill attract homeless people from other places, cause property val-ues and businesses to decline, cause traffic and crime to increase,and cause the quality of life to deteriorate (National Law Centeron Homelessness and Poverty 1995).

This may very well be a partial explanation, but I have cometo believe that the NIMBY phenomenon should be understood asa much more complex phenomenon than simply selfish or unin-formed beliefs and responses by residents. As the nation is becom-ing increasingly more segregated in terms of race and class (Masseyand Denton 1993) NIMBY politics and their corresponding atti-tudes are increasingly becoming understood by critical socialscholars as embedded within broader changes in the politicaleconomy and that have positioned even communities that appearto be relatively stable on very tenuous ground (Gibson 1998;Takahashi 1998; Takahashi and Dear 1997; Lake 1993; Rose1993).

Such research has considerably enhanced our understandingsof why NIMBY responses to homeless services are increasingly sowidespread. Yet, what is left largely unexamined is an analysis ofprecisely how such attitudes and understandings come to makesense to people. As Lois Takahashi has argued, we must also con-sider "what social relations contribute to evaluations that personsand places have less value and are considered 'abnor-mal"^ 1997:907). Drawing on Takahashi's analysis, I suggest that itis necessary to analyze the constitutive effects of everyday practicesand public discourses on producing particular subjectivities anddominant understandings about homeless people if we hope tomake sense of NIMBY politics. In order to understand these socialmovements, scholars must consider how particular strategies andpractices come to seem natural to social actors while other possi-

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bilities are effaced. Analyzing these "common sense" reactions thusmust entail examining the interplay between discursively made uprepresentations of homeless people and historical, class, and powerdynamics that impact on people within particular communities.2

As Timothy Gibson, drawing upon the work of Stuart Hall andAntonio Gramsci, details in his study of efforts by citizens in amostly white-working class neighborhood in Philadelphia tooppose racial integration in order to understand such oppositionalefforts, it is imperative to examine the ideological resources peoplehave available from within their particular social milieu, in orderto help them sense of the conditions of their existence. Gibsonwrites, "the kinds of ideological resources we use to make sense ofdaily events and experiences will go a long way in determiningwhether we actively work to change or to reproduce existing socialrelations."(1998:142). Utilizing a similar theoretical framework,this paper seeks to make sense of what has been characterized asthe NIMBY response to homelessness through an ethnographicanalysis of a specific case study—the efforts of a group of neighborsin Northampton, Massachusetts to oppose the location of a winteremergency cot program in their neighborhood during 1997 and1998.

In this study, I analyze how and why some people organizeopposition to shelter services. In particular, the paper exploreswhat types of understandings about homelessness are embracedboth by those who support and those who oppose homeless servic-es. I ask, how do people come to understand homeless people inthese particular ways? How is it that particular strategies andresponses come to make sense to people while others do not? Inaddressing such questions, it is vital to understand the intercon-nections between activists' practices and their knowledge abouthomelessness and homeless people.

The combination of a number of methodological tools was uti-lized in addressing these questions. I conducted ethnographicresearch in and around the homeless sheltering industry inNorthampton from 1993 through 1998. This research examinedthe practices and languages that homeless advocates and serviceproviders have used in responding to the growth of homelessnessin the city. I analyze homeless advocates' participation in publicmeetings, planning task forces and shelter routines in addition toexamining written documents. I also used reports from the cityplanning department, county government, Census Bureau, andDepartment of Labor as sources for data regarding the political-economic context within which the local debate is being played

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out. Interviews were conducted with shelter staff, volunteers,homeless advocates, city officials, homeless people, and neighborsof the shelters.

This data was supplemented with both viewing of videotapedrecordings of public meetings and a month of further targetedinterviews with public opponents and supporters of the shelter'splacement which took place during the summer of 1999. Duringthis time, one of the lead neighborhood organizers also providedme with access to public and private documents written by someof those who were lobbying against the shelter. These texts includ-ed letters to governmental officials, petitions, letters to the editorof the local newspaper, and correspondence pertaining to the legalchallenge to the shelter's location. These documents provide for aclearer account of what people actually did and wrote at particularmoments rather than what they might have recollected or found itappropriate to say during later interviews. Finally, I conducted atextual analysis of public representations of homeless people foundin such documents as pamphlets, shelter statistics, shelter newslet-ters, guest editorials in local newspapers, and fundraising brochuresproduced by homeless service providers.

A Progressive Community?

WIDELY PROCLAIMED AS ONE OF the more progres-sive communities in New England, with a thrivingdowntown, and a mayor and city council quite active

in supporting HUD's "continuum of care" concept while provid-ing a broad array of homeless services, the city of Northampton,Massachusetts was the scene of much public conflict and conster-nation regarding the placement of a winter emergency homelessshelter in 1997 through 1999.3

Northampton, the home of Smith College, with a bustlingdowntown of locally owned businesses in the heart of a vibrantacademic setting, is seen as a model of how to overcome the effectsof deindustrialization.4 The city is also widely recognized as a "pro-gressive" community, especially in terms of the relatively large,openly lesbian population. Yet, beneath the surface, there isanother side to the city. Like all of New England, Northamptonhas undergone significant economic restructuring in recentdecades. One impact has been the loss of 40 percent of the manu-facturing jobs in the county since 1980. These have been replaced

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largely by lower paying jobs in food service and retail trade. Thesetrends are expected to continue as a 1999 study by the NationalPriorities Project found that 61 percent of the jobs with the mostgrowth in Massachusetts paid less than what they defined as a liv-ing wage with 42 percent of those jobs paying less than one-half aliving wage (National Priorities Project 1999).

As wages have stagnated for many citizens, income inequalityhas increased rapidly since 1970. When adjusted for inflation, thepoorest 20 percent of state residents saw their income decline by 2percent during this period while the wealthiest 20 percent of thepopulation experienced a 60 percent increase in income. This ram-pantly spreading inequality has increased even more rapidly since1980 with even the middle 20 percent of the population seeingtheir incomes decline by 4 percent while the incomes of thewealthiest 20 percent increased by 18 percent (Bernstein et al2000). At least in part as an outcome of these trends, many peopleare living on the margins of economic viability. A 1999 study bythe Massachusetts Family Economic Self-Sufficiency Projectfound that an estimated 300,000 Massachusetts citizens (almost 25percent of the state citizens) made too much money to qualify forfederal assistance, but did not make enough money to pay theirbills.5 The situation in Northampton was found to be slightly worsethan that for the state as a whole, with 28 percent of all families inthe city making less money than they needed to make ends meet(Brown 2000).

Like many communities, Northampton also suffers from a lackof affordable housing units. As the studies by HUD indicate, theavailability of affordable housing has failed to keep up withrequests for services nationally as the number of people on waitinglists for housing assistance continued to increase between 1996 and1998, during the height of the economic boom (HUD 1999).According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rents increased rasterthan income for the 20 percent of American households with thelowest incomes as the consumer price index for residential rentrose 6.2 percent between 1996 and 1998 (HUD 1999). This situa-tion is especially acute in Massachusetts. In Northampton, themean rent for a one-bedroom apartment was $706 in 1997 with anoccupancy rate of over 95 percent. A study by the National LowIncome Housing Coalition found that 44 percent of renters inNorthampton were unable to afford market rate rents in 1999 for atwo bedroom apartment. To do so as renters would have to earn$15.26 per hour working a 40 hour week to pay for an averagelypriced rental unit in the city (Dolbeare 1999).

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In Massachusetts, over one million eligible families competefor 100,000 subsidized housing units or vouchers. Additionally,gentrification has resulted in the loss of many affordable housingunits. The city of Northampton, for example, currently hasapproximately one-half the number of single-room-occupancyunits that existed in 1970. Moreover, rent control was voted out ofexistence in Massachusetts in 1995. Combined with an economythat has created unprecedented wealth for some people, theseforces have resulted in rental costs, housing prices, and assessedhousing values skyrocketing throughout the state. A volunteer atthe shelter described the local housing market as follows: "Thismarket is so hot that people are offering more money for housingthan the buyer is asking and they pay it in cash."

This economic and political restructuring has also resulted inan increasing rate of homelessness in the city for over a decade. Inthe late 1980s, homelessness increased in Northampton to thepoint where community pressure began to be placed on the citygovernment to resolve the problem. In 1990, a tent city was erect-ed in a downtown park where homeless people camped and livedfor several months. Soon thereafter, local advocates, homelesspeople, and church officials organized a building takeover on thegrounds of a soon-to-be-closed state mental hospital. Negotiationsensued which eventually lead to the creation of a twenty-bed shel-ter in 1990. For the next two years, the existing shelters were ableto accommodate most requests for shelter. However increasednumbers of homeless people during the winter of 1992 began toplace a strain on existing resources. A variety of responses to theoverflow problems were developed; these eventually resulted inthe establishment of a city wide planning group whose stated pur-pose was to develop a long-term plan for ending homelessness inthe city. The group was also charged with the responsibility of alle-viating the immediate shortage of shelter space, resulting in thedevelopment of a sixteen-bed winter, emergency shelter.

Beginning in the winter of 1994-95, this shelter, staffed large-ly with volunteers, rotated between different church basementsfrom November through April. The shelter operated in this man-ner for three winters. Meanwhile, the volunteer community groupalso searched for a permanent, downtown location for the shelter.Unfortunately, even with three years of searching, this committeewas unable to locate an affordable building anywhere within thecity. Finally, during the summer of 1997, many of the churcheswhich had been hosting the rotating cot shelter announced theywould not participate the following winter, for reasons ranging

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from thefts in the churches and excessive pressure on church facil-ities to a concern that the program was not doing enough to solveor decrease homelessness.

After several months of frantic searching by community vol-unteers, a space available for rent was finally located in WardThree of the city in August. Ward Three, a section of town whichis predominately lower-middle class, seemingly made a perfect set-ting for the shelter. Located in the southwestern corner of thedowntown area, bordering two of the main streets and extendingto include the former farmlands of the lush Connecticut RiverValley, the area features two streets with a few large, Victorianhouses now mostly owned by educators, artists, lawyers, and doc-tors surrounded by an area of small businesses, social service pro-grams, and much smaller homes. These smaller houses made up aworking class neighborhood of older, mostly Polish, ex-farmers andex-manufacturing workers. These are people and professions thathave seemingly been left behind in the prospering newNorthampton of boutiques, galleries, and up-scale restaurants.Additionally, a designation of this neighborhood as the workingclass and "ethnic" part of the city has a long history as some olderresidents of the neighborhood told stories about having alwaysbeen seen as "the wrong side of the tracks" by those connectedwith Smith College at the other end of Main Street. Consequently,there was also a long history of placing social service programs inthat section of the city, especially in the 1970s and 1980s with theclosing of the state mental hospital. This area of the city wasalready home to many social service facilities, a methadone treat-ment program, and most of the remaining single room occupancyunits in the city. Thus, the location was seen to provide easy accessto the resources of the downtown for the homeless people using theprogram.

A few days after signing the lease, the city planning depart-ment and the social service agency overseeing the cot programcalled a public meeting to discuss shelter policies and norms withneighbors. Much to their surprise and dismay several dozen neigh-bors spoke out against the location. This opposition shocked themayor and shelter administrators because, unlike communitiesthroughout the nation, this was the first public sign of any opposi-tion to homeless services of any type in the city. Many city resi-dents had understood the lack of opposition as one of many indi-cators of the liberal, progressive nature of the city.

Shelter administrators and city officials responded to the oppo-sition by holding public meetings and other "educational efforts."

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The goal of these events was to educate community membersregarding the "truth" about homelessness. Current and formerlyhomeless people with the "best" jobs and the most education werehandpicked and put on display as models of "good, hard-working"homeless people who had been "reformed" and "saved" by theshelters. The expectation was that opposition would dissipate oncethe neighbors were informed about the success stories produced atcity shelters. However, these efforts still failed to assuage fears. Asone women stated, "Nice stories of redemption can't alleviate ourfears." When these efforts failed to alter the public's perceptionsand the opposition to the shelter, many homeless advocatesbecame even angrier at what they saw as simple bigotry and dis-crimination. When the city and the agency opened the shelterdespite their opposition and concerns, further protests ensued.Eventually, virtually every resident of the neighborhood signed apetition opposing the shelter and a lawsuit was filed arguing thatthe shelter violated local housing codes.

Despite the turmoil, the shelter operated that winter while asearch continued for a more desirable, permanent site. On August19, 1998, a public meeting chaired by the Mayor was held toannounce the location of the shelter on city land in a differentneighborhood, a predominately upper-middle class area of the city.This meeting was even more contentious than that of the previousyear. Nearly 150 citizens voiced opposition to the proposed site(Parnass 1998). Several speakers stated that the shelter wouldbring drunken people into "their" neighborhood and wouldincrease crime and vandalism. These neighbors came to the meet-ing with a lawyer already in place and portrayed the vast majorityof homeless people as mentally ill, dangerous, chemically addicted,lazy, and not really a part of their town. Eventually, as fate wouldhave it, the upper-middle class residents of this neighborhood werespared from the shelter as toxic waste was found on the proposedsite. In result, in October of 1998, it was announced that the shel-ter would once again be placed in the same building back in WardThree. Many neighbors were outraged and once again respondedwith organized protests.

Shelter administrators, volunteers, and city planners hadsearched for three years to locate an affordable space for the shel-ter within the city. They proposed two different sites, only to bemet with organized neighborhood protests. Both of the proposedsites resulted in threats, lawsuits against the city, thinly veiledracism, organized political campaigns against local politicians seenas supportive of the shelter, petitions, and anger and outrage

Current and

formerly home-

less people with

the "best" jobs

and the most

education were

handpicked and

put on display

as models of

"good, hard-

working"

homeless

people

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throughout the city (Cameron 1997; Kerstetter 1998a; Kerstetter1998b; Loisel 1997). Despite a severe shortage of shelter beds,decent paying jobs, and affordable housing units, citizens in this"progressive" community had organized to publicly oppose thelocation of this shelter for the second consecutive year.

How do we understand these collective efforts to oppose theshelter? To most of the homeless advocates, homeless people, shel-ter staff, volunteers, and city planners I've worked with, the answerwas clear. They attributed the opposition to parochialism and big-otry, selfish concerns with property values, misguided fears aboutincreased crime, and misinformation on the "truth" about home-less people. My research suggests, however, that while these maycertainly be a part of the story, they are only a small part of a muchmore complex situation. This is made especially clear when look-ing at the explanations, articulations, and practices of those neigh-bors who organized to prevent the shelter from locating in WardThree.

When I spoke with neighborhood activists and read the law-suit, petition, and correspondence they shared with me, a muchmore complicated picture began to emerge. Some of the opponentsof the shelter did characterize homeless people as alcoholics, drugaddicts, mentally ill, or criminals. As the local city council repre-sentative told me:

It is common-sensical to say that it's going to be not sopleasant to have facilities in your neighborhood wherepeople are under a lot of stress. Whether the stress isbecause of their alcohol dependency or drug dependen-cy or just downright bad luck or ill health or whatever.People like that aren't so stable, it's hard to keep trackof them. Occasionally they may be erratic people. A fairnumber of our homeless, what is estimated at between50 and 80 percent of the homeless, are people who havemental health problems. Those are not your idealneighbors.

Additionally, people referred to past negative experiences withhomeless people. Homeless people were accused of entering neigh-bors' garages and homes and of creating other problems when res-idents of the shelter were not allowed in due to drug or alcohol useon a particular night. For example, one woman told me, "On thenights that the cot shelter was in our neighborhood, we can corre-late that, either that night or the next morning, with incidents of

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minor vandalism, of entry into our houses. I mean, there was along list of problems which were systematically ignored."

However, several of these neighborhood activists insisted thatthis was not just a case of NIMBY politics and strongly resentedtheir being characterized as uncaring and bigoted. When I inter-viewed the woman who played the lead role in the opposition, shebegan the interview by stating, "First, there certainly was aNIMBY reaction, but that's partly because we're used to housing orgiving shelter to all kinds of programs, people in half-way houses,we have tremendously high numbers of single-room occupancyplaces, so, we're used to them." As another neighbor insisted,"NIMBY has been used as a flag to turn off protest, to shut peopledown instead of really listening to people it becomes a battletool on the part of people who don't really pay attention . . . to say,'Oh well, that's just a NIMBY response, we don't have to take thatinto account.'"

Several of the leading organizers of the opposition to theplacement of the shelter had lengthy careers as educators as well aslong histories of activism in progressive social-justice movements.They especially expressed frustration that such commitmentscould be dismissed as they were now labeled bigots for organizingopposition to the shelter. For example,9 while I was interviewingher during the summer of 1999, the lead organizer of the opposi-tion still expressed profound sadness at this characterization. Asshe related, "I lost a friend down the street who insisted that I wasjust a bigot. And, I have a long history of not being a bigot. I havebeen an activist all my life." She felt that the biggest surprise tocity officials and shelter administrators was that liberal residents ofthe two streets in the neighborhood with large Victorian housesspearheaded the opposition. She pointed out that these were most-ly university professors, artists, teachers with long histories of lib-eral activism. I asked if she could tell me a little about her history ofactivism:

I started out in the peace movement in the '40s Iworked on the Rosenburg committee for years. And, Iwas one of those who picketed the bands when it wasstill a six day work week to get the five-day week. I'vebeen around. I belonged to the American Labor Partyfor a long time I came back here. Retired. And, Ifound a neighborhood that was fragmented and I want-ed to do something about it. So, I began hosting blockparties. I've done as much as I could.

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I asked, "So, to be condemned as a caricature of the opponent of ahomeless shelter in the community is the same as being an igno-rant, bigoted, selfish person?" "It hurt. I'm a teacher, an editor, ahumanist." Similarly, many of the shelter opponents argued thatthey have been supportive of efforts to "help the homeless" in thepast. Several of those who signed the petition and reportedlydonated money towards the lawsuit apparently had also donatedmoney to past shelter fundraising efforts, had volunteered at thecot shelter in previous years on the nights it was held in a neigh-borhood church or had volunteered at a soup kitchen which hadpreviously been located in that neighborhood. The city councilrepresentative for this region of the city explained:

Our part of town is, I think unquestionably, the part oftown that has the most diverse population in terms ofethnicity, in terms of race, in terms of socio-economicbackground. And, by and large, this neighborhood hasbeen incredibly welcoming of diversity. And, that'sanother thing that just makes the neighborhood out-raged when we are accused of being intolerant and big-oted.

Opponents of the shelter emphasized repeatedly in their pub-lic articulations, private communications, legal efforts, and peti-tion language that they were not against homeless people or home-less shelters, but emphasized that they simply opposed this partic-ular shelter in this particular location. In fact, the petition express-ly stated that the residents fully supported two existing shelters inthe community as "bona fide city projects" (even though both wereoperated by private social-service agencies) that were helpful toboth the city and homeless people. If they supported the othershelters and were not bigots or prejudiced against homeless people,how did they explain their concerns with the proposed shelter?Was it simply that the shelter was going to be located in theirneighborhood?

In looking at the lawsuit that ten neighbors of the shelter filed,they expressed a concern with both the suitability of the particularbuilding for housing people and with the quality of care beingoffered at the winter cot shelter. The building that was rented waszoned as a commercial structure located in an industrial zone. Theprogram received a permit because it was slated for educationalpurposes and thus exempt from the zoning codes. Neighbors of theshelter, however, argued that no education actually happened atthe shelter as it was run mostly by volunteers who fed and talked

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with homeless people with very little professional staff presencethroughout the night. Although not wanting to appear to agreewith the opponents of the winter shelter, several staff members atother shelters in the city confirmed the validity of these senti-ments. In fact, my observations while doing fieldwork at one ofthese shelters established that it was routine for the winter shelterto send their clients to seek help from the staff at other city shel-ters during the day. Similarly, volunteers and the one staff memberat the winter shelter routinely called the professional staff at themore established emergency shelter for assistance with problemsduring the evenings. However, as those shelters were alreadyunderstaffed, the overworked staff could offer very little tangibleassistance.

As one woman explained to me, it was the inadequacy of theproposed shelter to actually help homeless people deal with theproblems that the sheltering agency claimed were the causes oftheir homelessness that she found offensive. As she put it:

We also objected on the basis that the permit had beengranted saying that this was for educational purposes,which was nonsense. It started at seven at night andended at seven in the morning. You could hardly callthat educational. They were also to be transportedat seven in the morning into the middle of the city inthe middle of the winter and we felt that was cruel andunconscionable We also minded the fact that somuch money was being put into this, what we consid-ered an inadequate and inappropriate response tothe plight of the homeless It's this kind of superi-or, upper-middle class benevolence that really chillsme. It's so snobbish. It's simply charity and I'm opposedto charity.

She went on to explain how she felt:

The shelters haven't really been of assistance. Theproblems have not been addressed. The problems arelow wages and inadequate housing. It's clear if you justwalk through the middle of town . . . . And what aboutfamilies? It's families who lose their housing. Well,we're not a very good society are we?

Other opponents frequently articulated a similar sentiment;they were not opposed to homeless people. What they objected to

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were more and more homeless programs that seemed to be doingvery little to actually decrease homelessness.

The location of the shelter, however, also did come up as amajor concern in both my interviews and in opponents' prior artic-ulations. Here again, several of these activists made a clear effort todistinguish that it was not that they were against providing socialservices in their neighborhood. They emphasized that what mostconcerned them was the apparent "dumping" of a disproportionatenumber of social-service programs in one neighborhood instead ofbeing scattered throughout the city. As an opponent of the shel-ter location argued, "There's been concern of the behavior of notall homeless people, not all people who occupy single-occupancyplaces, but of some It was because of the density of the place-ment of 'unfortunates' in our particular ward. It was not that weobjected to the homeless themselves." The concessions theseneighbors tried to negotiate from the city government included acommitment that the shelter would not return there the followingyear, a study of where social-service programs were located in thecity, and a more open process for making such decisions.

A mapping of the location of social-service programs through-out the city that was completed the following year indicated thatthere was some validity to this argument. The vast preponderanceof social-service programs were located in two neighborhoods inthe city, one of which was the four block area surrounding the cho-sen site for the shelter. Meanwhile, many of the upper-middle classareas of the city housed very few programs. In part, however, thiswas undoubtedly due to the cost and availability of rental units invarious regions of the city. However, the uneven political cloutthat different city neighborhoods possess also may have con-tributed to these programs being located in Ward Three; at thevery least that was the feeling expressed by activists workingagainst the shelter location.

Moreover, changing economic conditions have clearly con-tributed to homelessness in the city. For example, I found thatapproximately forty percent of homeless shelter residents inNorthampton were employed during the late 1990s, but theirwages were simply insufficient to meet the basic cost of living inthis area. Political-economic restructuring has also contributed tothe current overflowing homeless shelters in the state despite itsbooming economy. Some people have done quite well in the newNorthampton. These changes, however, have also contributed tofeelings of unease and insecurity felt by many city residents whichmanifest themselves in multiple ways, one of which, I would sug-

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gest, is a feeling of being unwanted and viewed as unimportant inthe community. These feelings then fueled the neighborhoodopposition to the placement of the shelter in their neighborhood.

Many of the opponents of the shelter's location articulatedfeelings of being unwanted and outdated workers who have noplace to live, work, or shop in the new "progressive"Northampton. As one opponent of the shelter described the city:

I am not fond of our becoming a huge boutique. I don'tlike the fact that it's becoming so expensive I'mglad people are prosperous and that the arts are flour-ishing, but I don't really like what's going on . . . I go totown and bread costs three dollars a loaf . and pastais what, three or four bucks a pound or something. It's,it's not a town for people of modest means. You have toshop on the outskirts and we all hate that.

This sentiment is fairly wide spread among those neighbors ofthe cot program who have worked and lived in the community forfifty or sixty years and now see themselves as nobody in the eyes ofcity administrators. Several supporters of the shelter expressedsimilar sentiments. As one woman told me, "Old timers, peoplewho have lived here a long time don't like the direction thatNorthampton has gone."

As one neighbor stated, "We're worried, we're scared. We arenot ashamed of trying to defend our homes." Their homes, whichare now worth more than ever before, are the only assets many ofthese working-class citizens possess. As one of the leaders of theopposition to the homeless shelter explained, "The solution to thisproblem will come in when all of the old Polish families are forcedto sell their homes. Once the new rich move into this neighbor-hood and gentrify it, we won't have any more social services placedhere because they'll be listened to in city hall."

To many of the neighbors it was not surprising that theirneighborhood was chosen as the location for the cot shelter. It wassimply one more example of how decisions affecting their lives andtheir neighborhood were being made by those with more wealthand power in the community. One woman stated, "It's not surpris-ing that the Elm Street, the Smith College crowd is trying to foistsomething they wouldn't want in their neighborhood on us.They've done it all along." Another neighbor voiced similar senti-ments, "There's a traditional legacy of opposition between thispart of town and the Smith College sort of educational, profes-sional classes in town." A similar sentiment was expressed over

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and over by opponents of the shelter. Almost everyone I spokewith relayed a story about their neighborhood's being looked downupon by those with more money and political power and that thecity chose to site the shelter in their neighborhood because theywere considered unimportant.

One of the organizers of the opposition told me:

We were told that the reason they were placing theshelter here on Hawley Street was that nobody livedhere. And that is the very edge of the Polish communi-ty here in town. And we were absolutely outraged atthat statement which implied . a blindness, that thePolish are nobody. That this is an unimportant neigh-borhood . . . . Of course, that's why it was chosen. And,don't think that people here didn't know that.

Likewise, the local city council representative for the wardwho played a major role in organizing the opposition stated:

They kept saying that we were so prejudiced, but theychose a site where seventy percent of the abutters andthe abutter's abutters were old Polish people, old PolishCatholic people. I mean, they would have been hardpressed to find another location in town that demon-strated that kind of prejudice. Of course nobody livedthere. Those people don't count.

Yet, all of these concerns were marginalized, silenced and notaddressed by proponents of the shelters or the city government.They continued to emphasize how opponents were uncaring, big-oted, and uninformed. Several neighbors in Ward Three read thisas further evidence of a lack of democracy within the city and feltthat the NIMBY caricature was used as a way to silence or margin-alize discussion regarding broader, systemic inequality in favor ofwhat several opponents described as "feel good charity by the ElmStreet/Smith College crowd which is patronizing to homeless peo-pie"

So, in speaking with the organized opponents of this shelter inWard Three, it became clear to me that issues of class and powerin the community played a role in producing the NIMBY reaction.Here were people who felt devalued and disempowered politically,marginalized economically, and, thus, inequitably targeted in anundemocratic way for the placement of social-service programs intheir neighborhood. They felt disempowered by the belief that

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most of their representatives in city hall devalued their worth, thatcity administrators and service providers were interested in onlymore shelters and not in working on housing or wages, that theirbroad concerns were characterized simply as NIMBY politics, andthat practices by service providers indicated an arrogance andunwillingness to work with neighborhood residents. This helps usto understand some of the political-economic stresses which mayhave helped produce their oppositional rhetoric and practicesinstead of, for example, attempting to collaborate with homelesspeople to address systemic inequities locally and regionally. Yet, itdoesn't really help us to understand why it appeared as "common-sensical" to oppose homeless people and the homeless shelterwhile there is no evidence of any widespread effort to oppose anyof the many other social programs which were previously placed inthis neighborhood. For that we need to examine representationsabout homeless people or how discursive imaginings about home-lessness and homeless people also helped produce NIMBY prac-

tices.

Representations and Imaginings

MY RESEARCH INVESTIGATING THE relationshipsbetween knowledge about homelessness and homelesspeople and community members' responses to homeless-

ness, suggests that much opposition to this particular shelter canbe traced to popular understandings and imaginings of homelesspeople as pathological and deviant. Many neighbors stated thattheir opposition was based on the inadequacies of this proposedprogram to actually help treat the range of pathologies they hadcome to believe characterized many of the shelter guests. Moreimportantly, I suggest that the "well-meaning," vocal proponentsof the shelter often working within the local sheltering industrymay have actually helped reproduce and reinforce such images ofpathology through their representations of homelessness innewsletters, appeals for funding, statistical record keeping, pressreleases, and similar discursive documents.

Interestingly, among all the people involved in the homelessshelter controversy, I could discern little difference between thosewho supported the shelter and those who opposed it regarding fun-damental causes of homelessness. A few people on both sides dis-cussed the importance of systemic inequities, yet most supporters

1 could

discern little

difference

between those

who supported

the shelter and

those who

opposed it

regarding fun-

damental caus-

es of homeless-

ness.

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and most opponents still described many local homeless people ashomeless because of mental illness or chemical dependency. As thecity council representative for Ward Three stated:

People aren't stupid. They know that the majority, or atleast half, of the people who are homeless are havingmental health problems. That's out there in the litera-ture, it's in the newspapers all the time . . And oftenthey have multiple problems. You have people who arementally ill who have substance-abuse problems. That'sa standard pattern. You have people who are havingproblems who are self-medicating. Alcohol is a bigproblem.

Several neighbors expressed similar understandings of home-lessness being caused by substance abuse or mental illness. Theyadditionally stated they opposed the shelter due to a concern thatthe largely volunteer staff would be unable to adequately cope withthese problems arguing that a professional, trained staff was neces-sary to ensure safety. As one opponent put it, "Well, there certain-ly were genuine homeless who were bankrupt or whatever, but somany of them are really people who were addicts or just don't knowhow to deal with their own lives or are just really just hangers on.And they do need assistance, but they need it seriously." Sheargued that the volunteers were incapable of coping with some ofthe problems, "With the drug addicts, with people who arrivedreally drunk."

In fact, while not admitting this in public, even the moretrained staff working at other city shelters expressed similar views.Most of these staff members understood, when I relayed that eventhough I had worked in shelters for close to ten years, I could some-what sympathize with some of the neighbors to the extent that, ifI had a choice, I would not want to live next door to a homelessshelter or any other situation where a group of relative strangers,many of whom are under much social stress are forced into a sharedliving situation.6 Most of these trained staff members agreed thatthe vast majority of people we had met and worked with made verygood neighbors, but also agreed that there were a few people whowe were happy not to have living in the next house or apartment.Not surprisingly, none of these former shelter residents had beenasked to speak at the community education meetings.

Additionally, I found that neighbors' imaginings about somehomeless people as deviant, pathological, and outsiders were con-

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firmed for them through the practices and languages with whichhomeless advocates and service providers addressed the growth ofhomelessness in the city. Many of the same people who were label-ing the opponents of the location of the shelter as misinformedand bigoted for portraying homeless people as pathological havespent the past decade reinforcing just such images. In fact, theopposition to the location of the shelter by residents of WardThree was unwittingly and unintentionally assisted by the verypeople who were advocates for the shelter by virtue of the fact thatthe advocates had also largely reduced the issue of homelessness toa question of individual pathologies in their public articulations.

An examination of fundraising appeal letters, shelter statisti-cal record-keeping practices, shelter newsletters, grant applica-tions, quotes given by shelter administrators to local newspapers,and similar public representations of homelessness reveals that thelocal sheltering industry itself contributed to these popular imag-inings by symbolically representing homelessness as the result ofdeviant and dysfunctional individuals in need of reform andretraining. As homelessness has become routine in this communi-ty, these advocates and service providers have publicly argued thatthey have the solution to homelessness within their shelters. Theimage has been publicly portrayed that the professionalized andtrained shelter staff is necessary to solve local homelessnessthrough reforming and retraining deviants. These articulationsurge the community to give more donations and support grantapplications asking for more staff and more programs to helphomeless people address "issues within their lives."

Year after year public reports, fundraising appeal letters,newsletters, and media accounts lauded the efforts of the localsheltering agency "helping" treat such conditions as drug addic-tion, alcoholism, mental illness or poor work ethics within theindividualized bodies of homeless people. Little to no attentionwas spent addressing issues of systemic inequality in language or inpractice. As one sheltering industry employee told me, "We can'ttalk about those issues, we'll turn off all of our donors in the busi-ness community."7 Instead, a position has been publicly put forththat staff will solve the problem of local homelessness by reform-ing homeless individuals. These texts urge community members togive more donations and support grant applications asking formore staff and more programs to help homeless people address"issues within their lives." Those issues were substance abuse,depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other such patholo-gies.

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For example, in 1996 the shelter received significant statefunding creating the opportunity for hiring two additional staffmembers. After a contentious process involving input from staffand guests, job descriptions were written. One position was to workduring the day with primary emphasis on case management ofyounger homeless people and creating workshops and job trainingsfor guests in the shelter. The second job would be mostly anevening position of "site manager" with additional case manage-ment and surveillance duties at the shelter. When an advertise-ment was placed for the two jobs, qualifications included "experi-enced with the homeless population and knowledge of alcoholismand addiction issues and recovery. Bilingual (Spanish) preferred.Must have reliable transportation. Excellent organizational skillsrequired."8These are the "common sense" traits and skills assumedto be needed in a professional shelter staff and represented to allthose reading the job advertisement. Perhaps more importantly,the hiring of these new staff members, with an emphasis on theirjob responsibilities for reforming homeless people and their quali-fications for doing so, played prominently in the shelter newsletterdistributed to over a thousand city residents that fall in a publicrelations and fundraising effort.

To cite a second example, a 1995 grant application to HUDargued (much to the dismay and amazement of many shelter staffand guests) that 82 percent of locally homeless people were home-less due to mental illness or substance abuse. Likewise, the shelterreceived significant state funding for the first time in 1995 throughthe state Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA). The DTArequired the compilation of statistics in a monthly summary of howmany males and females used the shelter during the month, howmany people were served meals, and how many homeless peoplewere case managed through referrals for mental health, job train-ing, and substance abuse services. Resulting were monthly reportsdetailing the extent of pathology among the population of theshelter. To justify their opposition, opponents of the shelter subse-quently cited data imbedded in these reports.

My research showed that shelter staff and administratorsbecame quite cognizant of the problematic nature of how theywere representing homeless people. The staff at one shelter spentmuch of 1995 and 1996 debating how to both work with homelesspeople in new ways and how to represent the political economicfactors contributing to homelessness more fully in public forums.These discussions resulted in some new practices. For example,shelter staff and a local television news reporter put together a

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three part series on homelessness broadcast during the eveningnews in late November of 1996.9 This series focused on workinghomeless people, young people, and causes of homelessness with aconsistent focus on economic restructuring, pay in existing jobs,and housing costs. In fact, most interviews with homeless peopleemphasized how they were recently lower-middle class, housed cit-izens, but could not find a job with wages adeqate to maintain thatexistance. By 1997, the shelter newsletter and fundraising appealsalso began to move away from any discussion of substance abuseand mental illness and towards education and skills training.Recent newsletters have even included articles like, "WelfareRuns Out, But Poverty Persists" and "Northampton Jobs andLiving Wage Campaign" while fact sheets on child poverty,increasing inequality, and lack of affordable housing have been dis-tributed at public events.10

Interestingly, however, when opponents of the shelter used thecharacterizations of deviancy imbedded in previous accounts tojustify their NIMBY politics, shelter administrators and city offi-cials characterized those residents of Ward Three as simply unin-formed bigots. To the opponents of the shelter, this provedextremely frustrating. For example, in a November 11, 1997 letterfrom the city councilor representing Ward Three to the CityPlanner, she wrote:

[The agency running the cot shelter] repeatedly uses akind of circular logic to forestall debate: claimingimmunity from local laws because it services those pro-tected by federal and state laws, but then claiming thatthe neighborhood has the wrong idea of the homeless,assuming they are mentally ill or alcoholic. [Theagency] has also attempted to dismiss neighborhoodconcerns by stigmatizing anyone who questions theirpractices as bigoted or prejudiced.

I am not suggesting that selfishness or bigoted stereotypes ofhomeless people do not play any role in NIMBY responses. Nor,am I suggesting that many public imaginings about homeless peo-ple are produced only by those employed within the shelteringindustry. Opponents of the shelter, volunteers, city officials, andhomeless advocates have all been exposed to a vast array of imagesabout homeless and housed people. These representations help tooutline the parameters of how these people respond to homeless-ness. What I am suggesting is that the notion of "the homeless" asa discursive category consisting of deviant, homeless people in

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need of professional reform and retraining was re-produced andreinforced through these well-meaning efforts by the shelteringindustry. These languages and practices may have unintended,often contradictory effects through which advocates for homelesspeople become complicitous in crafting NIMBY opponents bypromulgating images of dysfunctional homeless people in need ofthe expert help professionals within the shelters can provide. Inthis manner, these common sense, "helping" efforts may actuallycontribute to producing community opposition to public home-lessness when the resources spent on more shelters does not appearto decrease homelessness or address larger economic, housing, andwage concerns. At the very least, they contribute to the content ofthat opposition.

The discursive resources available to members of this commu-nity were such that they could not imagine practices which wouldactively work to change existing systemic conditions. Severalopponents of the shelter suggested that to really do somethingabout homelessness, the community would need to have a broadergrassroots discussion about where it's going and what problemsexist in the city. However, opponents of the shelter saw the cityand social-service agencies as resistant to such discussions. As oneneighbor stated, "You can't just create that in a vacuum. You haveto have a city hall that's conscious of the need. You have to havemore democratic organization of the town, which doesn't look likeit's going to happen for a while." As a result, the practices of bothneighbors opposing the shelter and supporters of the shelterworked towards reproducing existing social relations. An opportu-nity was missed by administrators of the local sheltering industry,progressive city politicians, and neighborhood activists to worktowards a broad-based movement addressing political-economicissues of concern to many citizens in the city rather than simplyliving with systemic inequality and abject poverty by buildingmore shelters.

If we hope to make sense of, or stem the tide of, the growingphenomenon of poverty within prosperity, organized NIMBYmobilizations against social-service programs, and the proliferationof anti-homeless legislation being enacted throughout the nation,it is imperative to analyze the interplay between power and classdynamics within communities and the subject making effects ofdiscursive representations regarding homelessness and homelesspeople. Through such an analysis of how social actors make senseof their conditions of existence, a more complex understanding ofthe practices of social actors may be discovered. Ultimately, new

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understandings may emerge through the process of such ethno-graphic research providing for opportunities to stretch the param-eters of "common sense" understandings about economic restruc-turing, community instability, and potential practices.

Notes

Acknowledgments. This paper has benefited greatly from the thought-ful suggestions of Sue Hyatt, Deb Connelly, Peter Lawson, and theanonymous reviewer for City and Society. I am also extremely grateful toall the people in Northampton who worked with me and spoke with meabout and around homelessness. It was a rare pleasure to work with suchcommitted and caring people.

'In December of 1999, the Department of housing and UrbanDevelopment (HUD) along with other federal agencies released theresults of the most comprehensive study to date of homelessness in theUnited States. The report clearly demonstrated a continued, pervasivehomelessness problem throughout the nation (Interagency Council onthe Homeless 1999). A few months later HUD released a further reportsuggesting that millions of additional American families were at risk forhomelessness as 5.4 million families across the nation paid more than 50percent of their income for housing in 1998, an increase of 12 perecntsince 1991 (US Department of Housing and Urban Development 2000).These reports confirmed the findings of several other studies (Burt 1995;Dolbeare 1999; National Coalition for the Homeless 1997; National LawCenter on Homelessness and Poverty 1999; United States Conference ofmayors 1998; United States Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment 1999) in demonstrating that homelessness, hunger, hous-ing stress, and economic inequality continue largely unabated through-out the United States despite widespread proclamations about a vibrant,expanding economy.

2Here I am drawing upon Stuart Hall's reading of Antonio Gramsciin terms of how understandings of the meanings, possibilities, and senseof the world is made up and produced through practices of significationand representation (Hall 1985; 1999).

The "continuum of care" approach came out of a summit of expertsbrought together by HUD and HSS early in the first Clinton presidentialadministration to develop a comprehensive solution to homelessness.What came out of this meeting was a goal having the federal governmentand local communities work together to provide all the services neededto detect, diagnose, and treat the conditions which made individual peo-ple homeless. Unfortunately, the early stated commitment to increasedaffordable housing as a part of this plan never materialized in practice.

4Smith College is located in the heart of the city while Mt. Holyoke,

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Amherst, Hampshire, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherstare all located nearby.

This "self sufficiency standard" is derived from a formula that factorsin the costs of food, housing, child care, transportation, health care, taxes,and other household expenses rather than the federal poverty standardswhich are tied primarily to food costs.

61 had worked alongside many of these people as a fellow staff mem-ber and, later, as assistant director of one of the other shelters in the cityfor over five years ending two years previously. Prior to that, I had workedin a different shelter in Connecticut for several years.

'See Lyon-Callo (1998) for a fuller discussion of the role that fund-ing concerns play in constraining the practices and politics within thehomeless sheltering industry.

This quote is taken directly from the classified advertisement for theposition from The Daily Hampshire Gazette of February 3-4, 1996.

The series was broadcast on Channel 22 out of Springfield,Massachusetts in November 1996.

"These articles appeared in the shelter newsletter/funding appeal in1997 and 1998 and the fact sheets were given out at a 1998 workshop.

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