The Compassionate city reading List
Chris Herring, PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley and StoreFrontLab have assembled a resrouce list to accompany our series, Towards a Compassionate City: A Conversation About Homeless Encampments.
"Tent City, America." Chris Herring's article for Places examining the history of homeless encampments, and efforts to dismantle or defend them, that served as a catalyst for our series. More articles by Chris may be found on his website.
"The Old Runaround," A vivid retrospective historical and ethnographic analysis of policing homelessness in the 1990s from Sociologist Teresa Gowan's award winning book Hoboes, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless In San Francisco (see page 54).
"Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco." A community-based study on the impact of anti-homeless laws on those experiencing homelessness carried out by the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness and scholars at the UC Berkeley Center on Human Rights. Dilara Yarbrough of SF State and TJ Johnston of the Coalition will present key findings of this report at the panel. Video Selections from the interviews can also be found here.
"Homelessness and the Cost of Quality of Life Laws." A report completed by the Independent Budget and Legislative Analysts Office of the City of San" Francisco on the costs of enforcing quality of life laws aimed at homelessness in the city.
Proposition Q Legal Text: The full legislative language of Proposition Q on the November Ballot changing the SF Police Code to Ban tents.
"One Night with the San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team." A KALW Radio feature by Lisa Veale on the city's homeless outreach team.
"Citizens Without Property: Informality and Political Agency in a Seattle, Washington Homeless Encampment." An article by Tony Sparks examining informal dwellings in the US as sites of creative political agency and experimentation. Sparks argues that everyday practices of camp management produce localized forms of citizenship and governmentality through which ‘‘homeless’’ residents resist stereotypes of pathology and dependence.
"SF Homeless Project Roundup: A Review of San Francisco’s Media Blitz on Homelessness." T.J. Johnston, associated editor of Street Sheets and a contributor to the "Punishing the Poorest," wrote this assessment of the much publicized SF Homelessness Project, a joint project of more than 70 media organizations in the San Franicsco Bay Area. You can follow Johnston on Medium.