Unsheltered Homelessness in Public Natural Areas Across an Urban-to-Wildland System: Institutional Perspectives

Abstract

This article conceptualizes homelessness on public lands within a social-ecological systems framework, exploring dynamics in public natural areas in the Seattle metropolitan area (USA), a system with a compact urban-to-wildland gradient. While prior research has studied the dynamics of unsheltered homelessness within particular parks or cities—often in areas where camping is prohibited—our interview-based study makes integrated considerations of these dynamics across a range of jurisdictions. We present a thematic analysis that examines professionally diverse perspectives on the dynamics, stressors, and outcomes of public natural area usage by unsheltered individuals. We found a generally uncoordinated system in continual motion, in which considerable resources were expended for short-term, site-specific solutions that yielded system-wide detrimental outcomes perceived for unsheltered individuals, social service and environmental institutions, and ecosystem health. We discuss how improved institutional coordination and mutual understanding about intersecting governance systems could sustain better public land, public health, and social outcomes.

Keywords:

• Ecosystem services
• governance
• homelessness
• public lands
• social-ecological systems
• Seattle

Acknowledgments

We thank our study participants for generously sharing their time and perspectives with us for this study. We also acknowledge Alex Iancu and Sara Perrins for their contributions as members of our research team, and Abigail Kaminski for creating the map for this article. We are grateful to four anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments on our manuscript.

CRediT Authorship Statement

Conceptualization: DJB, MMD, LKC, GNB; Methodology: DJB, MMD, LKC, GNB; data collection: MMD, CL, LKC, NS; Formal analysis and investigation: MMD, CL; writing – original draft preparation: MMD, PF, LKC, GNB; writing – review and editing: DJB, NS, CL; funding acquisition: DJB, MMD, GNB; supervision: GNB, MMD.

Ethical Approval

The University of Washington Human Subjects Division reviewed this project and determined that the activity qualified for exempt status. All participants signed an electronic consent form prior to participation.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

Study participants did not agree for their full interview transcripts to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Notes

1 Two interviews were conducted with more than one person: for these, our initial contact requested that one or more of their colleagues be interviewed concurrently.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station under Joint Venture Agreement #19-JV-11261985-145.