Permanent Shelter in the Empire City: Youth Experiencing Family Homelessness and Navigating the Homeless Industrial Complex With a Narrative Inquiry Approach

• In Event: Race, Space, Homelessness, and Education

Abstract

Objective. Many studies have examined unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness; however, a relative silence persists about the lives of youth and young adults (YYA) while in family homeless shelters. This study aims to fill the gap in the literature pertaining to the lives of high school students residing in family shelters and to learn about successful transitions from adolescence to young adulthood while experiencing family homelessness. This transition interacts with various social collectives (family, peers, community), political institutions (municipal, state, and federal), and an overwhelming economic system (global racial capitalism).

Theoretical Framework. These complex perspectives are considered with a narrative activity-meaning system research design to understand the structural and personal dynamics of homelessness systems (Daiute, 2014). The complex and life-defining scale of the NYC homelessness system is described in this analysis as the Homeless Industrial Complex (HIC) comprising nested collectives of institutional actors, youth, and their families, functionally limiting the individual autonomy of those experiencing homelessness within the political-economic practice that often ensnares generations of families.

Methods. I sample those diverse perspectives as expressed with institutional and individual voices, including policy and mission statements, regulatory materials, and interviews with a focal group of young adults who experienced family homelessness in a NYC DHS tier-two shelter. Young adults (n=6) who successfully transitioned with their families to permanent housing provide the lived experience of the system, having lived within it and navigating their way out. With a snowball method, I reached out to a group of such experts, who then shared narratives in three genres inviting different dimensions of their vast knowledge.

Findings. This study presents this methodology and findings of these intersecting actors in the homeless system, foregrounding the youth primarily as central knowledge-builders and subjects of the system. In addition, this research shifts to a paradigm that understands youth narratives as offering knowledge and expertise with input for institutional and personal change. Furthermore, the results of this study can be helpful for ongoing supportive practices and policies for the targeted population, as well as informing tools for quantitative research.

Significance. This paper argues that the everyday stories of NYC youth in family shelters speak to how they engage the HIC. I further posit that the HIC system is centered on the restriction of autonomy over BIPOC youth and families experiencing intersectional levels of marginalization, specifically housing instability. The narratives of Youth and Young Adults (YYA) living in family shelters provide critical insight into processes of meaning-making and resistance as they navigate housing instability in the context of the center of global racial capitalism.

Author

• Henry Love
  Presenting Author