Gentrification Beliefs and Attitudes Towards Park and Recreation Agency Actions Intended to Support People Experiencing Homelessness

Abstract

After declining from historically high levels following the Great Recession, homelessness in the United States is again on the rise due to an increase in the prevalence of unsheltered homelessness, and homeless encampments in public spaces such as parks. As such, there is significant interest in understanding opinion regarding community park agency activities intended to support unhoused users. Unfortunately, these actions and investments may also contribute to the process of environmental gentrification. In this note we use structural equation modeling of survey responses to examine how beliefs about the gentrification process influence public attitudes toward park and recreation agency activities intended to support people experiencing homelessness. Gentrification beliefs were significantly related to attitudes toward both housing-related and service-related agency activities. Managers and other decision makers should consider the potential impact of agency activities on the gentrification process, and seek to understand stakeholder attitudes toward gentrification as a phenomenon.

Keywords:

• Gentrification
• homelessness
• parks
• public services

Notes

1 These figures are drawn from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) January 2022 point-in-time survey, which is commonly considered to be an underrepresentation of the actual unhoused population.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Health and Human Services Faculty Research Grant through the University of North Carolina Greensboro [fund #120662].