Self-organization as a Response to Homelessness: Negotiating Autonomy and Transitional Living Inside a "Village" Community

• In Event: 2483 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 14. Tactics of Everyday Life

Abstract

Tent cities date back to the 1930s; however, the past decade has seen a rise in formalized camps, many attempting to function as democratic communities for today’s homeless. Here, democratic communities refer to temporary spaces in which people experiencing homelessness (PEH) live together with the goal of governing their own affairs (horizontal rather than top-down). Research indicates mixed results with self-governance among PEH in terms of empowerment of individuals or as a method to mitigate homelessness. Given decline of social welfare budgets, as well as criticisms that shelterization and criminalization are poor responses to homelessness, government-sanctioned camps have provided safe, legal, dignified spaces for PEH.
Studies of newer tent cities are growing, yet few follow their attempted implementation of self-governing principles within the first few years of existence. This ethnography of a transitional “village” in the Pacific Northwest fills a gap by uncovering socio-cultural and organizational processes that facilitate / impede self-organization. The village is collaborative; a nonprofit provides oversight to residents dwelling in tiny houses. The village is neither run exclusively by the homeless nor directly managed by housed “outsiders.” Using participant-observation, interviews, and documents, I study the development of the village’s vision, rooted in Occupy. Preliminary findings indicate perceptions of success and contradictions in implementing self-governance. While some view this village as a safe, stable place in which to secure future housing while providing dignity and autonomy, residents were divided in how they experienced autonomy. For some, freedom to contest fellow villagers’ actions contradicts their perceived lack of power in regulating others. The authority of the nonprofit board is inadvertently reproduced as it seeks to relinquish that authority. My work also has implications for research on relations between “housed” and “homeless”, and for decoupling processes that focus on divergence between stated organizational policies and actual practices.

Author

• Robert L. Molinar, University of Oregon