Invisible homelessness: anonymity, exposure, and the right to the city

ABSTRACT

The city of Denver, Colorado recently outlawed camping in all open space. Part of a broad effort to accelerate the profit potential of prime urban land through real estate speculation and commerce, the camping ban has dislocated homeless people from the city’s marginal spaces. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Denver, this article develops a tripartite approach to public space—prime, everyday, and marginal—to analyze challenging ways in which people who are homeless in Denver must now manage their exposure to others in everyday public spaces. In addition to eliminating places of hard-won safety and security, this singular new code disrupts hygiene, mobility, and sociability routines, thus throwing already precarious lives into further disarray by rendering housing status visible. To demonstrate how everyday social justice springs from interaction between different people co-present in public space, we foreground the voices of Denver’s homeless people, those most impacted by quality of life laws. Evicting individuals from marginal spaces and rendering them visibly homeless in everyday and prime spaces, the ban deprives them of a fundamental right to the city: anonymity.

KEYWORDS:

• Homelessness
• anonymity
• public space
• exposure theory
• right to the city

Acknowledgments

Our work would not have been possible if it were not for our participants. They took precious time out of their days to talk to us—days otherwise filled with tasks of securing normalcy in their lives. Lisa Raville and Ruth Kanaster of Denver’s Harm Reduction Action Center not only provide people with the means to lead safe and healthy lives, they also served to bridge us with the people we got to know during the course of our fieldwork. Anna Janes transcribed interviews and contributed invaluable assistance throughout the writing process. Helena Janes provided insightful copyediting advice. Carolyn Cartier, Richard Shearmur, and three blind reviewers provided well-aimed and indispensable critique. Any errors remain our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Funded by private commercial property owners, this business improvement district concentrates on economic development, street beautification and cleaning efforts, and manages a highly visible security force along the 16th Street Mall.

2. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the Civic Center Conservancy, advocates for facility improvements, programs park events, raises funds for capital improvements to the park and oversees activities to revitalize the Civic Center Park