LAUSR

Since Peter Marcuse published Neutralizing Homelessness in 1988, The United States has undergone a dramatic shift in homeless policy away from the emergency shelter model toward an emphasis on Chronic Homelessness and supportive housing (Del Casino & Jocoy, 2008; DeVerteuil, May, & von Mahs, 2009). As part of this shift, cities across the country were tasked by the federal government with creating “ten year” plans that would lay out a comprehensive set of goals, procedures, and practices for addressing local homelessness (US Departments of Housing and Urban Development, 2003). Ten years later, most cities (including Seattle) have witnessed the number of those lacking stable shelter grow, while affordable housing options continue to dwindle (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2013). To address this growing disparity, the City of Seattle passed ordinance # 124747 in May of 2014. This ordinance allows transitional encampments to be legally sited on private or public land within the city of Seattle. Central to the city’s justification for the ordinance was the finding that “the current capacity of our housing and homeless services continuum cannot meet the needs of all those who are homeless” (City of Seattle, 2015). This decision is a great accomplishment and a testament to many years of hard work and struggle of homeless individuals and their advocates for the legalization of this most basic form of shelter. However, in the course of advocating for encampments as a shelter of last resort, the fact that many encampment dwellers choose encampments even when other options are available was often lost in the din (Herring, 2014; Murphy, 2009). Here I raise some of those voices above the fray and situate them within a conversation that explores and extends the analysis that Peter Marcuse postulated in his seminal essay “Neutralizing Homelessness” (Marcuse, 1988). Today, the United States once again faces a crisis in homeless policy eerily similar to that which Marcuse observed in 1987. Once again, as real wages stagnate and housing costs skyrocket, cities across the American West are seeking federal help through “declarations of emergency” to address the “worsening homeless crisis” (Beitch, 2015). In response to these crises, both the federal Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Department of Justice have urged cities to consider legalized tent encampments in