Geoffrey DeVerteuil

Complexity not collapse: Recasting the geographies of homelessness in a ‘punitive’ age

Over the past decade there has been a proliferation of work on homelessness by geographers. Much of this has been framed by the desire to connect discussions of homelessness to wider debates around gentrification, urban restructuring and the politics of public space. Though such work has been helpful in shifting discussions of homelessness into the mainstream geographical literature, too much of it remains narrowly framed within a US metric of knowledge and too closely focused upon the recent punitive turn in urban social policy. Here we advance instead a framework that recognizes the growing multiplicy of homeless geographies in recent years under policies that are better understood as multifaceted and ambivalent rather than only punitive.

Homeless Mobility, Institutional Settings, and the New Poverty Management

Poverty management involves organized responses by elites and/or the state to contain potentially disruptive populations. As a result of global, national, and institutional compressions, the new poverty management tends to circulate these populations, especially the mentally disabled, across an array of unrelated and frequently institutional settings. This restructuring of interactions between mobility and institutional settings, in the form of institutionalized cycling, has yet to be investigated for other potentially vulnerable groups, such as single homeless women. Using a convenience sample of twenty-five women at a shelter in Central Los Angeles, I seek to understand their residential patterns, identify evidence of institutionalized cycling through a fivefold typology, and to elucidate the personal and structural factors behind why some women were prone to institutionalized cycling whereas others were not. Results point to highly uneven evidence of institutionalized cycling across the sample, with the most obvious impacts in the institutional cycler and institutionally accommodated categories.

Residential mobility and severe mental illness: a population-based analysis.

This research uses population-based administrative data linking health service use to longitudinal postal code information to describe the residential mobility of individuals with a severe mental illness (SMI), schizophrenia. This group is compared to two cohorts, one with no mental illness, and one with a severe physical illness of inflammatory bowel disease. The percentage of individuals with one or more changes in postal code in a 3-year period is examined, along with measures of rural-to-rural regional migration and rural-to-urban migration. Demographic, socioeconomic, and health service use characteristics are examined as determinants of mobility. The odds of moving were twice as high for the SMI cohort as for either of the other two cohorts. There were no statistically significant differences in rural-to-rural or rural-to-urban migration among the cohorts. Marital status, income quintile, and use of physicians are consistent determinants of mobility. The results are discussed from the perspectives of health services planning and access to housing.

Reconsidering the legacy of urban public facility location theory in human geography

In 1968, Michael Teitz initiated a new locational theory, focusing on how best to locate urban public facilities given the need to balance efficiency and equity. This locational problematic would evolve into a coherent set of geographical concepts steeped in normative, neoclassical and quantitative assumptions. Building on Teitzs original formulations, quantitative geographers and regional scientists focused on operationalizing efficiency and equity concerns according to distance, pattern, accessibility, impacts and externalities. The legacy of these concepts in human geography, however, has not been systematically traced. While both reflecting and bolstering wider stances in welfare, urban and behavioral geography during the quantitative era, the legacy of urban public facility theory in the postquantitative era is decidedly uneven. On the one hand, the legacy was effectively refuted by situating location theory within a much broader political, economic and social matrix. Adopting a more conflictual framework, geographers shifted the focus of locational theory to larger questions of how costs and benefits are spatially distributed in urban society. On the other hand, the legacy was sustained by retaining the normative interest in balancing equity with efficiency within a model-building paradigm, while jettisoning the reliance on neoclassical economics and universalistic assumptions for more nuanced, socially embedded accounts. In this sense, the legacy of urban public facility location theory emerges as a nested sequence of normative models that grew increasingly sophisticated, inclusive and contextualized over time. The rise of the nonprofit and privatized sectors, however, threatens to erode the existence of a distinctly public facility location theory.

Evidence of Gentrification-induced Displacement among Social Services in London and Los Angeles

This paper addresses two key gaps within the gentrification/displacement literature: whether gentrification is displacing social services and whether displacement patterns differ comparatively. To this end, evidence is examined of gentrification-induced displacement of 81 purposively sampled social service facilities across gentrifying boroughs in London (Islington, Lambeth, Southwark and Westminster) and areas in Los Angeles (Downtown, Hollywood, Santa Monica and Venice) during the 1998–2008 period. Results suggested that substantial entrapment co-exists alongside displacement and, in fact, was more commonplace.This paper addresses two key gaps within the gentrification/displacement literature: whether gentrification is displacing social services and whether displacement patterns differ comparatively. To this end, evidence is examined of gentrification-induced displacement of 81 purposively sampled social service facilities across gentrifying boroughs in London (Islington, Lambeth, Southwark and Westminster) and areas in Los Angeles (Downtown, Hollywood, Santa Monica and Venice) during the 1998–2008 period. Results suggested that substantial entrapment co-exists alongside displacement and, in fact, was more commonplace.

Conceptualizing violence for health and medical geography.

Despite the fact that violence is a major threat to public health, the term itself is rarely considered as a phenomenon unto itself, and rarely figures explicitly in work by health and medical geographers. In response, I propose a definitionally and conceptually more robust approach to violence using a tripartite frame (interpersonal violence, structural violence, mass intentional violence) and suggest critical interventions through which to apply this more explicit and conceptually more robust approach: violence and embodiment via substance abuse in health geography, and structural violence via mental illness in medical geography.

Where has NIMBY gone in urban social geography

It is now more than thirty years since Dear and Taylors landmark Not on Our Street (1982). A key insight of the book was the sophisticated treatment of community attitudes to mental health care fa...

Any space left? Homeless resistance by place-type in Los Angeles County

This study develops a more nuanced concept of homeless resistance, incorporating a range of resistance behaviors (exit, adaptation, persistence, and voice) that bridge the gap between current frameworks that either romanticize or ignore it. We also consider the possibility that different kinds of space may theoretically allow for different kinds of resistance. To this end, we employ an ecological approach to homeless space by classifying Los Angeles County into three place-types (prime, transitional, and marginal). We empirically consider the issue of resistance within the hardening context among a group of 25 homeless informants, focusing on whether and how some of them have exercised their voices and sought to ameliorate one or more aspects of their situation, as well as how resistance may vary by place-type.

Systematic Inquiry into Barriers to Researcher Access: Evidence from a Homeless Shelter*

Geographers using qualitative methods face numerous challenges, including barriers to access to the research setting that emerge through the interactions among the researchers identity, participants, and the research setting itself. However, few geographers have systematically traced, within a single research setting, (1) how barriers originate, (2) how they subsequently complicate the research enterprise, and (3) how they may potentially be overcome. Upon defining various generic barriers to access, I focus on the origins of, encounters with, and potential strategies to overcome two barriers (factions and spatiotemporal limits) during my research experiences at the Palms Mission, an emergency shelter in Central Los Angeles. Ultimately, understanding the negotiation of these barriers informs the broader research process.

Survive but not thrive? Geographical strategies for avoiding absolute homelessness among immigrant communities

This article seeks to unpack why certain immigrant communities manage to avoid absolute homelessness, emphasizing how survival strategies embedded in immigrant community space may be deployed in both advantageous and disadvantageous fashions. Bangladeshis in Greater London and Central Americans in Los Angeles County were compared, based on the fact that they are similarly vulnerable immigrant communities in terms of poverty and segregation, yet have successfully avoided the streets and/or shelters. Key strategies included the beneficial clustering of non-profits and overcrowding strategies within immigrant community space, although Bangladeshis differed substantially in terms of more state support for their community space. The implications for the study of race and survival are offered.