Black Lives Experiencing Homelessness Matter: A Critical Conceptual Framework for Understanding How Policing Drives System Avoidance among Vulnerable Populations

Abstract

This paper examines racialized encounters with the police from the perspectives of people experiencing homelessness in San Diego, California in 2020. By some estimates, homelessness doubled in San Diego during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We conducted a survey of (n = 244) and interviews with (n = 57) homeless San Diegans during initial shelter-in-place orders, oversampling for Black respondents, whose voices are often under-represented despite high rates of homelessness nationally. Our respondents reported high rates of police contact, frequent lack of respect; overt racism, sexism, and homophobia; and a failure to offer basic services during these encounters. Centering our Black respondents’ experiences of criminalization and racism in what Clair calls “criminalized subjectivity,” we develop a conceptual framework that brings together critical theoretical perspectives on the role of race in the governance of poverty and crime. When people experiencing extreme poverty face apathy, disrespect, and discrimination from police—as our data show—the result is a reluctance to seek services and to engage with outreach when offered. This reinforces stereotypes of unhoused people as not “wanting” help or “choosing” to be homeless. We reflect on these findings and our framework for envisioning a system of public safety that supports and cares for—rather than punishes—the most vulnerable members of our society.

Keywords:

• Homelessness
• policing
• criminalization
• critical race theory
• poverty governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Some reasonably might wonder if the nature of regulations around COVID compliance might heighten respondent sentiment about police and/or service interactions, and thus the time of the study might have influenced responses. Based on our ample past research with this community, which has included questions regarding policing (Flanigan & Welsh, 2021; Welsh & Abdel-Samad, 2018; Welsh, 2018), we feel confident that this is not the case. However, as our findings will show, individuals’ responses do indicate an influence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

2 There are documented vulnerabilities in other demographic groups of people experiencing homelessness (e.g. Ecker et al. 2019), and our data pointed to reported use of slurs related to gender and membership in the LGBTQIA+ community. Our sample did not allow us to speak to these populations or important intersectionalities with race and often compounded vulnerabilities related to these intersectionalities in this paper. However, this is an important topic deserving of further investigation. See Ritchie (2017) for an important example of this work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by: the University of California Research Grants Program Office, Emergency COVID-19 Research Seed Funding, Award Number R00RG2664 (2020); the San Diego State University (SDSU) Summer Undergraduate Research Program (2020); the SDSU Emergency Funding for Student Assistance with Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities (RSCA) Award (2021); and the SDSU School of Public Affairs.