Fran Klodawsky

Home Spaces and Rights to the City: Thinking Social Justice for Chronically Homeless Women

The central argument of this paper is that current Canadian discussions about the relative merits of Housing First and Continuum of Care raise both theoretical and substantive questions about neoliberalization as an orientation that, following Graefe (2006), promotes certain types of social rule at the expense of other considerations. The possibility is raised that a wholesale shift to Housing First might well become a vehicle for further excluding marginalized people, not only in terms of their rights to public space but also their visible presence in any spaces in the city, including the specialized congregate spaces of emergency, transition, and supportive housing associated with Continuum of Care. Through a focus on the particular situations and challenges faced by chronically homeless women, using a gendered and race-sensitive analysis, an alternative policy framework is offered that is informed by the social justice perspectives of Fraser (2003) and Purcell (2008).

Landscapes on the Margins: Gender and homelessness in Canada

This introductory article examines the issue of gendered homelessness and asks why so little academic feminist writing addresses this theme. The article begins with reference to a feminist novel—The Longings of Women by Marge Piercy—that does tackle this matter. The invisibility of the novels homeless character is used as a way of introducing some distinctions between womens and mens homelessness. More generally, the article has two objectives. The first is to examine what feminist and other critical geographers have said, conceptually and empirically, about gendered homelessness, especially in Canada but also in other Western contexts. The second involves highlighting the problematic nature of too great a focus on visibility in relation to gendered homelessness, and offers an alternative reading drawn from examining the relations of bodies and urban space in conjunction with a discussion about the politics of scale and difference. All told, this collection of essays is an effort to highlight the often hidden and variable nature of gendered homelessness in Ontario, Canada and to argue that the theme is worthy of greater attention by feminist geographers. Paisajes en los margines: género y la falta de vivienda Éste artículo introductoria examina el tema de género y la falta de vivienda y pregunta porque hay pocos escritos feministas académicas que toca éste tema. El artículo empieza con relación a una novela feminista—The Longings of Women por Marge Piercy—que trata el tema. La invisibilidad del personaje sin hogar en el libro se utiliza como una manera de introducir algunas distinciones entre la falta de vivienda de mujeres y hombres. Más generalmente, el artículo tiene dos objetivos. El primer es examinar lo que feminista y otros geógrafos críticos han dicho conceptualmente y empíricamente sobre género y la falta de viviendo, no solo en Canadá sino en otros contextos Occidentales. El segundo involucra destacar la naturaleza problemática de un enfoque extensivo en la visibilidad en relación a género y la falta de viviendo, y ofrecer una lectura alternativa que viene de examinando las relaciones de cuerpos y espacio urbano conjuntamente con una discusión sobre las políticas de espacio y diferencia. En general, ésta compilación de ensayos es una tentativa para enfatizar que la naturaleza de género y la falta de vivienda en Ontario, Canadá son a menudo escondidos y variables, y además para argumentar que éste tema vale la pena de tender más atención por geógrafas feministas.

Resilient Educational Outcomes: Participation in School by Youth With Histories of Homelessness

Disrupted high school experiences, including dropout, are educational consequences for many youth with histories of homelessness. Using an ecological resilience prediction model (ERPM) based on the literature on resilience in at-risk youth, the study followed 82 youth who were initially homeless for a 2-year period, to identify predictors of participating in school. Female sex and increased duration of rehousing at Time 2 significantly predicted being in school at follow-up. Youth who were not in school reported a greater increase in satisfaction with social support compared to youth who were participating in school at follow-up. The study adds to what is understood regarding the longitudinal consequences of housing instability and discontinuity in school participation in youth by examining ecological predictors of resilience. Implications of findings for policy and program development targeting education and housing for youth are discussed.

‘Choosing’ Participatory Research: Partnerships in Space–Time

Participatory action research has increasing attention in geography in recent years, with numerous discussions about how best to proceed and lessons learned from past efforts. There has been less interest, though, in critically probing the circumstances under which participatory research takes place: in other words, the sociospatial contexts within which such research approaches are chosen. One explanation may be that participatory action researchers sometimes infer that the reasons for their choices are primarily ethical and political. In this paper, I consider this and other assumptions about participatory action research, drawing upon my own involvement in two action research projects in Ottawa, Canada. I argue that reflecting on this question is a particularly timely undertaking, given the ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’ in which professionalization and partnerships are becoming more prominent. I begin by reviewing what has been said about participatory action research and the circumstances under which this approach is likely to be selected, and reflect on how these discussions might be enhanced by linking their circumstances specifically to emerging analyses about spaces of neoliberalism. Using these insights, I then examine the sociospatial context for the two studies and how their characteristics had specific effects on their methodological choices. All of these elements provide the scaffolding for consideration of the rationalities that supported the usage of participatory research in one study and the lack of engagement with this approach in the other.

The Relationship Between Victimization and Mental Health Functioning in Homeless Youth and Adults

This study examined the relationship between victimization and mental health functioning in homeless individuals. Homeless populations experience higher levels of victimization than the general population, which in turn have a detrimental effect on their mental health. A sample of 304 homeless adults and youth completed one-on-one interviews, answering questions on mental health, past victimization, and recent victimization experiences. A hierarchical linear regression showed that experiences of childhood sexual abuse predicted lower mental health functioning after controlling for the sex and age of individuals. The study findings are applicable to current support programs for victims in the homeless population and are relevant to future research on homelessness and victimization.

Urban Contestation in a Feminist Register

Abstract Approaches to urban contestation that challenge the dichotomy between institutionalization and opposition, and understand contestation as including engagement, are explored. The emphasis is on how recent forms of feminist analysis and critical scholarship open up a conceptual terrain for such thinking, and the discussion is grounded using further details of City for All Women Initiative/Initiative: une ville pour toutes les femmes (CAWI-IVTF), which is seen to be a concrete, successful case. Its tactics and strategies are noteworthy because of the manner in which ideas drawn from feminist and progressive organizing in other (including non-urban and non-Western) contexts have been incorporated. CAWI-IVTFs successes are most striking in relation to women who previously felt alienated from local politics. The organizations rationale, strategies, and tactics provide insights into how women active in this network create new spatialities, and how their interactions in space are producing new political subjects.

Introduction—Rights, Space, and Homelessness

The articles in this and a subsequent special issue of Urban Geography were first presented at a series of panels, organized for the 2007 Association of American Geographers Meeting, on the theme of rights, space, and homelessness. The conference was held at the Hilton Hotel, located on the edge of San Francisco’s infamous Tenderloin District, but also close to fashionable Union Square, home to Prada, De Beers, and Gucci. At the fault line between the city’s public commercial face and a zone of sharp poverty and mass homelessness, the very geography of the Meeting spoke eloquently to many of the themes of the presentations. A right is a privilege or claim to which one is justly entitled. Conversely, to be denied a right is to be placed at a particular disadvantage, forced to acquiesce to the rights claimed of others. In liberal societies, rights are notionally universal, applying to all equally. The reality, of course, is that people are differently positioned in relation to rights. Homeless men and women—who disproportionately consist of stigmatized and marginal populations—occupy a highly ambivalent position in relation to rights. On the one hand, the rights of the homeless (to equal treatment, to security, to expression, to economic and social entitlements, to health and the like) are routinely abrogated, curtailed, and hedged about. Yet rights can provide a rallying call, either in broad terms (such as the right to the city, noted by Mitchell and Heynen), or as the basis for analysis in a more specified sense (including Klodawsky’s appeal to gender-sensitive rights to shelter, Blomley’s critical unpacking of meanings of property vis-a-vis homelessness, Sylvestre’s examination of disorder policing, or Sparks’s examination of meanings of privacy). Similarly, the Tenderloin provides clear evidence of forms of exclusionary practice, such as the trespass notices widely posted on commercial premises, in which property rights are mobilized to provide the police carte blanche to roust the sleeping bodies of the public poor; yet the neighborhood is also testament to years of creative and engaged organizing

An investigation of predictors of mental health in single men and women experiencing homelessness in three Canadian cities

ABSTRACT Homelessness is related to poorer mental health, yet, there is limited understanding of the predictors of mental health of men and women experiencing homelessness. To support service providers in identifying individuals who might be at particular risk of poor mental health, this study investigated the predictors of mental health in 501 single men and women experiencing homelessness in Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa, Canada. Data were obtained via in-person, structured interviews. In order to identify whether predictors differ by gender, multiple linear regressions were conducted separately for men and women. Mental health status was measured by the Mental Component Summary score of the 12-item Short-Form Health Survey. Better mental health for men and women was associated with the presence of fewer chronic health conditions and a higher level of social support. An older age, not having experienced a recent physical attack, and absence of a mental health diagnosis were related to better mental health for women. The absence of unmet mental health needs within the past 12 months was associated with better mental health for men. The study highlights differences in factors associated with mental health for men and women. Service providers should be aware of the association of these factors with mental health to guide assessment and service planning.

Introduction—Rights, Space, and Homelessness: Part II

… All in all, the new law-and-order geste transmutes the fight against crime into a titillating bureaucratic-journalistic theatre that simultaneously appeases and feeds the fantasies of order of the electorate, reasserts the authority of the state through its virile language and mimics, and erects the prison as the ultimate rampart against the disorders which, erupting out of its underworld, are alleged to threaten the very foundations of society. (Wacquant, 2009, p. xii–xiii) Americans have never had so many rights … and so little power to shape collective justice and national aims. (Brown, 2004, p. 459) Wacquant’s provocative interpretation of how American justice has become a vehicle for punishing the poor, and Brown’s lament for the countervailing force of rights, are powerfully illustrated in three articles that constitute the second part of the special issue on Rights, Space, and Homelessness. 2 As noted in our introduction to the previous installment, the articles capture a multitude of activities, connections, places, and tendencies that explicate myriad instances of growing hostility and exclusion for North Americans marginalized by virtue of their lack of a permanent residence, as well as acts of resistance and reaction to these circumstances. Here, three fine-grained case studies focus on the experiences of those caught in the crosshairs of interactions between law, space, and the state. The manner in which marginalization is perpetrated both directly and indirectly is explored with the help of qualitative research and in two cases, the words and thoughts of the homeless. All three studies also illustrate how awareness of the imbrications of law, space, and the state help to identify multiple points at which repressive outcomes might be challenged.