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Homelessness Aff (1/3)
Homelessness Aff (1/3) ............................................................................................................................................................... 1
1AC .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 5
1AC .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 6
1AC .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 7
1AC .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 8
1AC .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 9
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 10
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 10
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 11
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 12
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 13
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 14
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 15
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 16
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 17
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 18
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 19
1AC ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 20
****Inherency**** ................................................................................................................................................................... 21
Inherency—No Social Services Now ........................................................................................................................................ 22
Inherency—Homeless Excluded/Neoliberalism Now ............................................................................................................... 23
****Criminailzation Advantage**** ........................................................................................................................................ 24
Criminalization Advantage—Fear of Homeless ........................................................................................................................ 25
Criminalization Advantage – Exclusion .................................................................................................................................... 29
Criminalization Advantage – Exclusion .................................................................................................................................... 30
Criminalization Advantage – Exclusion .................................................................................................................................... 31
Criminalization Advantage – War on the Poor .......................................................................................................................... 32
Criminalization Advantage – Media .......................................................................................................................................... 33
Criminalization Advantage ........................................................................................................................................................ 34
Criminalization Advantage – Must Address Root Cause .......................................................................................................... 35
Criminalization Advantage ........................................................................................................................................................ 36
Criminalization Advantage – AT: Their Dangerous .................................................................................................................. 38
Neoliberalism Advantage Internals ............................................................................................................................................ 39
Privatization Bad—Neoliberalism I/L ....................................................................................................................................... 40
Privatization Bad—Neoliberalism I/L ....................................................................................................................................... 41
Privatization Bad—Neoliberalism I/L ....................................................................................................................................... 42
Privatization Bad—Neoliberalism I/L ....................................................................................................................................... 43
Neoliberalism Bad Impacts ........................................................................................................................................................ 44
Neoliberalism Bad Impacts ........................................................................................................................................................ 44
Neoliberalism Bad Impact ......................................................................................................................................................... 45
Neoliberalism Bad Impact ......................................................................................................................................................... 46
Neoliberalism Bad Impact ......................................................................................................................................................... 47
Neoliberalism Bad Impact ......................................................................................................................................................... 48
***Socialization Advantage*** ................................................................................................................................................ 49
Socialization Advantage Internal // AT– Housing Assistance CPs............................................................................................ 50
Socialization Advantage Internal // AT– Housing Assistance CPs............................................................................................ 50
Socialization Advantage– Language Shapes Reality ................................................................................................................. 51
Socialization Advantage —Homeless are Bare Life .................................................................................................................. 52
Socialization Advantage —Excluded from Public Space .......................................................................................................... 55
Socialization Advantage —Protection vs. the Other .................................................................................................................. 57
Socialization Advantage—Homelessness is Resistance ............................................................................................................ 60
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Socialization Advantage—Neoliberalism I/L ............................................................................................................................ 61
Socialization Advantage—Neoliberalism I/L ............................................................................................................................ 62
Socialization Advantage—Neoliberalism I/L ............................................................................................................................ 63
Socialization Advantage—Neoliberalism I/L ............................................................................................................................ 64
Socialization Advantage Internal ............................................................................................................................................... 65
Socialization Advantage Internal ............................................................................................................................................... 66
Socialization Advantage Internal ............................................................................................................................................... 67
Socialization Advantage Internals ............................................................................................................................................. 68
Socialization Impact – Value to Life ......................................................................................................................................... 69
Socialization Advantage – Being ............................................................................................................................................... 70
Socialization Advantage – Invisibility ....................................................................................................................................... 71
Socialization Advantage – Space ............................................................................................................................................... 72
****Agency Advantage**** ..................................................................................................................................................... 73
Agency Advantage—Eligibility I/L ........................................................................................................................................... 74
Agency Advantage Internal ....................................................................................................................................................... 79
Agency Advantage—Citizenship I/L ......................................................................................................................................... 80
Agency Advantage – Exclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 81
Agency Advantage—Numbing Impact ...................................................................................................................................... 82
****Eligibility Requirements Bad**** ..................................................................................................................................... 83
Restrictions Create Exclusion – Bureaucratic Disentitlement ................................................................................................... 84
Restrictions Create Exclusion – Bureaucratic Disentitlement ................................................................................................... 85
Restrictions Create Exclusion – Bureaucratic Disentitlement ................................................................................................... 86
Restrictions Create Exclusion – Bureaucratic Disentitlement ................................................................................................... 87
Eligibility Restrictions Bad—Churning ..................................................................................................................................... 88
Eligibility Requirements Bad—Churning .................................................................................................................................. 89
Eligibility Requirements Bad—Churning .................................................................................................................................. 90
Eligibility Requirements – Laundry List ................................................................................................................................... 91
Eligibility Requirements – Administrative Hurdles ................................................................................................................... 92
Eligibility Requirements – Administrative Hurdles ................................................................................................................... 93
Eligibility Requirements – Welfare to Work ............................................................................................................................. 94
Eligibility Requirements Bad ..................................................................................................................................................... 95
Eligibility Restrictions Bad ........................................................................................................................................................ 96
Eligibility Restrictions Bad ........................................................................................................................................................ 97
Eligibility Restrictions Bad ........................................................................................................................................................ 98
Eligibility Requirements Bad ..................................................................................................................................................... 99
Eligibility Requirements Bad ................................................................................................................................................... 100
Eligibility Requirements Bad—Now Key ............................................................................................................................... 101
Eligibility Requirements Bad—EVR ....................................................................................................................................... 102
Eligibility Requirements Bad—EVR ....................................................................................................................................... 103
****Solvency**** .................................................................................................................................................................. 104
Solvency—Eligibility Restrictions—1AC (?) ......................................................................................................................... 105
Solvency – Social Services Key .............................................................................................................................................. 106
Solvency—Federal Government Key ...................................................................................................................................... 107
Solvency – Federal Government Key – A2 – Actor CPs ......................................................................................................... 108
Solvency – Federal Government Key – A2 – Actor CPs ......................................................................................................... 108
Solvency—Legal Change—AT: Kritiks of Law ..................................................................................................................... 109
Solvency – Legislation / Neolib ............................................................................................................................................... 110
Solvency—Food Stamps.......................................................................................................................................................... 111
Solvency—Kritik of the Home ................................................................................................................................................ 113
Solvency—Reclaiming Space .................................................................................................................................................. 114
Solvency—Spillover ................................................................................................................................................................ 115
Solvency—State Action Key ................................................................................................................................................... 116
****AT: Neg Arguments**** ................................................................................................................................................. 117
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AT: Topicality ......................................................................................................................................................................... 118
A2 – Welfare Reform Act Good .............................................................................................................................................. 119
AT: Kritiks—Permutation Solvency........................................................................................................................................ 120
AT: Kritiks—Permutation Solvency........................................................................................................................................ 121
AT: Law Kritik—AT: Must Focus on Root Cause .................................................................................................................. 122
AT: Disadvantages—Social Justice K of War Impacts ........................................................................................................... 123
AT: Disadvantages—Social Justice K of War Impacts ........................................................................................................... 124
AT: Disadvantages................................................................................................................................................................... 125
AT: Disadvantages................................................................................................................................................................... 126
AT: Disadvantages................................................................................................................................................................... 127
AT: Economy Disadvantage .................................................................................................................................................... 128
AT: Economy Disadvantage .................................................................................................................................................... 129
AT: Politics .............................................................................................................................................................................. 130
AT: Politics .............................................................................................................................................................................. 131
AT: Politics .............................................................................................................................................................................. 132
AT: States CP .......................................................................................................................................................................... 133
AT: States CP .......................................................................................................................................................................... 134
AT: States CP .......................................................................................................................................................................... 135
AT: States CP .......................................................................................................................................................................... 136
AT: States CP .......................................................................................................................................................................... 137
AT: States CP .......................................................................................................................................................................... 138
AT: Private Actor CP ............................................................................................................................................................... 139
AT: Housing CP ...................................................................................................................................................................... 140
Misc—K of “The Homeless” ................................................................................................................................................... 141
****Neg**** ........................................................................................................................................................................... 142
****Case****.......................................................................................................................................................................... 143
Socialization Advantage Answers ........................................................................................................................................... 144
Criminalization Answers ......................................................................................................................................................... 145
Solvency – Can’t Solve Homelessness .................................................................................................................................... 146
Solvency – Can’t Solve Homelessness .................................................................................................................................... 147
Solvency – Homeless Will Reject Services ............................................................................................................................. 148
A2 – Solvency Mechanism – Food Stamps ............................................................................................................................. 149
Solvency Turn – Victimization ................................................................................................................................................ 150
Solvency Turn – De-politicization ........................................................................................................................................... 151
Solvency Turn – Agency ......................................................................................................................................................... 152
Solvency Turn – Dependence .................................................................................................................................................. 153
Solvency Turn – Eligibility Restrictions Good – Independence .............................................................................................. 154
****Counterplans**** ............................................................................................................................................................ 155
States CP Solvency / Federalism Link ..................................................................................................................................... 156
Courts CP Solvency – Eighth Amendment .............................................................................................................................. 157
Courts CP Solvency – Criminalization .................................................................................................................................... 158
Habitat Agenda CP 1NC .......................................................................................................................................................... 159
Habitat Agenda CP—Solvency ............................................................................................................................................... 160
Habitat Agenda CP—Solvency ............................................................................................................................................... 161
Habitat Agenda CP—Solvency—International Law ............................................................................................................... 162
Habitat Agenda CP—Solvency—International Law ............................................................................................................... 163
Habitat Agenda CP—Solvency—International Law ............................................................................................................... 164
Habitat Agenda CP—Solves Exclusion ................................................................................................................................... 165
Habitat Agenda CP—Solves Exclusion ................................................................................................................................... 166
****Disad Business**** ......................................................................................................................................................... 167
Spending Link .......................................................................................................................................................................... 168
Must Weigh Consequences ...................................................................................................................................................... 169
Nuke War Outweighs .............................................................................................................................................................. 170
A2 – Our Impacts Are Systemic .............................................................................................................................................. 171
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***Kritiks*** .......................................................................................................................................................................... 172
Foucault Link ........................................................................................................................................................................... 173
Foucault Link ........................................................................................................................................................................... 174
Foucault Link ........................................................................................................................................................................... 175
Foucault Link ........................................................................................................................................................................... 176
OBJ Link/Impact ..................................................................................................................................................................... 178
OBJ Link/Impact ..................................................................................................................................................................... 179
OBJ Link/Impact ..................................................................................................................................................................... 180
OBJ Impact .............................................................................................................................................................................. 181
OBJ Link.................................................................................................................................................................................. 182
Kritik Link—Single Issue Focus Bad ...................................................................................................................................... 183
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Contention One: Inclusive Exclusion
Status quo approaches to homelessness attempt to combat the social problems of poverty through
criminal sanctions, trying to expel those without homes from membership in our political
communities by denying them eligibility for social services.
Jonathan L. Hafetz; March, 2003; J.D., Yale Law School, 1999; M. Phil., Oxford University, 1992; B.A., Amherst
College, 1990. The Author was formerly a staff attorney at The Partnership for the Homeless in New York City; 2003
Fordham University School of Law Fordham Urban Law Journal; 30 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1215, Homeless Legal
Advocacy: New Challenges And Directions For The Future, Lexis-Nexis.
If early efforts to establish an affirmative right to shelter reflect the expansive hopes of advocates, subsequent challenges to
attempts to criminalize behavior associated with homeless people suggest a defensive response to an angry backlash. 140
Local governments have turned increasingly to law enforcement and the criminal justice system to
address homelessness, rather than addressing the underlying problems, such as the lack of affordable
housing or social services. 141 This shift reflects decreased sympathy for homeless people generally and
outright hostility towards more visible activities like aggressive panhandling and sleeping in public
parks. The reliance on law enforcement as a substitute for social welfare and housing policy 142 is more prevalent in those
localities that do not provide sufficient shelter space for their homeless population, 143 though it also exists in localities
where there is a right to shelter. 144
Attempts to regulate the movement and behavior of the poor through threat of imprisonment have a long history. The
Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, which dramatically influenced social welfare policy in America, authorized the imprisonment
of able- [*1236] bodied adults who refused to work. 145 During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, police in
American cities relied on vagrancy and loitering statutes to help ensure that homeless people remained in skid row areas.
These practices were eventually limited by Supreme Court decisions invalidating local vagrancy 146 and loitering 147
statutes. The most recent wave of anti-homeless criminal sanctions, however, seeks to return to an approach
of combating the social problems of poverty through criminal sanctions and to increase the discretion
given to local law enforcement officials while trying to avoid potential constitutional problems of vagueness and
overbreadth. 148
Cities claim they are merely protecting residents against crime, controlling threats to public health and sanitation, and trying
to attract business and tourism. 149 New York City and San Francisco - municipalities with disproportionately large
homeless populations - have lately taken particularly tough stances, seeking to rid their streets of
homeless people through aggressive enforcement of "quality of life" measures. 150 Some localities, however,
have pursued more constructive alternatives that seek to facilitate the intervention of social service providers on behalf of
homeless people, rather than simply sweeping them from public view. 151
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In particular, eligibility requirements for welfare benefits exclude the homeless because their lack
of a permanent residence precludes them from meeting artificially high standards for confirming
their qualifications—the ownership of a home has become the bright line for who gets to count as
a citizen.
Susan D. Bennett June, 1995, ("No Relief But Upon the Terms of Coming into the House," - Controlled Spaces,
Invisible
Disentitlements,
and
Homelessness
in
an
Urban
Shelter
System
http://www.lexisnexis.com:80/us/lnacademic/search/journalssubmitForm.do Professor of Law and Director of the
Public Interest Law Clinic of the Washington College of Law of the American University)
The practice of churning explains why homeless persons are underrepresented among the ranks of benefits
holders, despite their indisputable financial eligibility. n93 Homelessness increases the impact of
churning practices simply because rootless families cannot keep, or never receive notice of, the
multiple appointments demanded for confirmation of eligibility. n94 When homeless recipients fail
to meet these administrative burdens, workers churn them off the benefit rolls. One unusually detailed
study tracking the experiences of homeless recipients of nonemergency public assistance in New York
City found that over seventy-five percent of the clients studied had their benefits terminated within
six months of first receiving them. n95 The study blamed this high incidence of churning on the
recipient's difficulty in receiving or responding to the many notices of required recertification
appointments that welfare offices in New York regularly mail to all recipients. n96 The study also [*2182]
noted that fewer than half of the individuals in its sample succeeded in opening a public benefits case . n97
The formal system of protections for welfare applicants and recipients offers little to redress the
invisible injuries inflicted in the preapplication "twilight zone." In the AFDC program, the statute requires
the state to provide a fair hearing if a "claim for aid" is "denied or not acted upon with reasonable promptness." n98
Regulations obligate the state to inform "[e]very applicant or recipient" of the right to a hearing and the rights associated with
it, "at the time of application and at the time of any action affecting his claim." n99 Where the unit of grievance is "the
claim," and the triggering mechanism for complaint is the "time of application," needy persons who
never reach the formal application stage are denied formal redress. The concrete harm of
disentitlement can be measured in benefits lost. However, the unquantifiable, and perhaps greater, harm is a
dampening of the spirit, a lowering of expectations of any kind of fair treatment or favorable result from
a bureaucratic system. Lipsky describes this effect as a residuum of "disentitlement." n100 It is this reduction in
poor persons' expectations, as much as the reduction of services, that makes disentitlement tactics
effective.
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These restrictions amount to conditioning homeless people’s survival on their willingness to
assimilate into ownership society—it is these not so subtle limits on what type of people are eligible
for a helping hand from the state which reinforce the logic of criminalization by suggesting that
citizenship should be assumed only for those with a permanent address.
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 46-47)
aimed at criminalization and exclusion are complemented by "compassionate"
alternatives that work through the logic of assimilation, not criminalization.67 Yet strategies of assimilation,
seeking to reintegrate homeless persons (considered as damaged or incomplete subjects) into full citizenship as
economic actors, actually produce a similar division between the upstanding citizen and the homeless.
For instance, charitable groups, business improvement distnets, and neighborhood associations have established
voucher and referral programs whereby citizen consumers can give non-monetary aid to panhandlers in
shopping districts, thus ensuring that they will not be funding drug or alcohol use. Although the voucher
programs do not display the same logic of literal exclusion (excluding the homeless from valued consumer
spaces through the force of legislation on panhandling, sidewalk sitting, and public sleeping), their ultimate goal may be to
drive panhandlers away by closing the spigots of liberal guilt. Furthermore, these programs symbolically mark off
the homeless from the status of consumer (and legitimate occupant of the consumptive public sphere), reinforcing
the link between homeless people and non-market providers of social services. For instance, the "Helping
These punitive policies
Hands Panhandling Cards" program sponsored by a business association in Durham, North Carolina, provides citizen
consumers with cards listing social service referral information. The campaign, as Kawash points out, addresses
citizen-consumers as the "we," instructed in how to avoid giving "them" cash.68A more elaborate
program has been developed in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, where "Community Coupons" give more
than just referrals; vouchers distributed by neighborhood residents to pan handlers are redeemable for
services and cash at a homeless resource center. To redeem the coupons, however, a person must enroll in
the resource center's "Step Program" of rehabilitation: "If the citizen declines enrollment within the North Beach
Citizens Step Program, they will be unable to use the coupon. On the positive side, that means our resource center retains full
face value of the coupon, plus, the homeless person has been informed of our outreach efforts and existence." The
Community Coupons program makes distinctions, first, between home-dwelling citizens and homeless
clients who need help and, second, between (deserving) homeless clients who belong to the neighborhood
and (undeserving) "transients" who do not: "As awareness grows within the community, declining a coupon will also
be a quick way to determine if this is a local citizen that needs help, or a transient person that is not aware of our community's
proactive campaign for change." In other words, the North Beach Citizens association conflates the distinction between "local
citizen" and "transient person" with the distinction between submissive and resistant. The program turns the local
homeless citizen who resists the disciplinary strings of the Community Coupons into an outsider who is
just passing through. An assimilative project turns out to have its own exclusionary force in converting
the resistant subject into the outsider. Accepting a coupon and enrolling in the Step Program leads to
"database enrollment as a Citizen of North Beach" and a photo identification. For a home-dweller, of course,
"citizenship" in North Beach proceeds from physical residence. For a street dweller, on the other hand,
neighborhood membership is contingent upon his or her agreement to enter into a social worker-client
relationship as a damaged subject in need of rehabilitation.
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these policies of criminalization construct the homeless as others whose very existence threatens
the livelihood and productivity of the body politic, ushering in an era of authoritarian violence
where we must forcefully purge society of any perceived impurities.
Amster 2008 (Randall, Amster teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College and is the Executive Director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Association. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for the Contemporary Justice Review and
the Peace Studies Journal. "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of Homelessness"
p. 83-85)
Many of those in favor of regulating, containing, and/or criminalizing the homeless readily embrace
such disease metaphors and their potentially ethnocidal implications. Robert l Ellickson (1996) implicitly
affirms the image through his "revulsion at body odors the stink of urine and feces" (Waldron 2000); as Kohu (2004:169)
adds in her critique of Robet Ellickson's vision of 'homeless free zones, ' it the perception of that "the smell or
appearance of street 'a people may discourage others from sharing public space." A recent piece
advocating for the utility of policing practices in Los Angeles Skid Row (MacDonald 2007) invokes
images of "feces, urine, and drug-resistant bacteria coating the ground," as well as "filth and disease."
On the other side of the ideological coin, a homeless advocate in Seattle recently observed that there
would he a "smear campaign" in advance of new city policies regarding homeless encampments that
would focus upon "trash, feces, drug use, and criminality" (Harris 2008). Further confirming this perspective. it has been
observed that "others, including many city officials, celebrate gentrification for reversing urban decay and boosting the tax
base. They often refer to it as 'revitalization,' drawing on the metaphors &t disease, deterioration, death, and rebirth"
(Williams l996:l47). As Jeff Ferrell (200la:l75) contends, "drawing on evocative images of filth, disease, and
decay, economic and political authorities engage in an ideological alchemy through which unwanted
individuals become [a] sort of 'street trash' [and which] demonizes economic outsiders, stigmatizes
cultural trespassers, and thereby justifies the symbolic cleansing of the cultural spaces they occupy."
Countless newspaper editorials, including political cartoons (cf Wright 1997:209), contribute to these trends by depicting
the homeless as vile, malodorous, and dangerous - starkly evident in this Arizona Republic editorial image from February
2002 of Tempe's Mill Avenue: In political terms, the pervasiveness of the disease image in connection
with the homeless serves simultaneously to empower officials and merchants to assume the mantle of
speaking for 'the health and safety of the community' in devising and implementing schemes
to remove the perceived threat, and to disempower the homeless themselves from having effective
domains of self-presentation and resistance. As Wright (1997:39) concludes, "living with
'spoiled identities,' the very poor are categorized, inspected, dissected, and rendered mute in the
public discourse about their future by those who have the power to enforce [such] categorical
distinctions," Tempe's Piper (2000) waxes philosophically about the whole state of affairs: "They think their lives
would be so much better if they didn’t have to see the 'slime' and the 'scum that lives on the street, but you know what? This
is fucking real life, this is here, a diverse amount of things -- in this world you never know what you're a gonna see so why
try to hide it? Their kids are gonna find out about it anyway…” Lyn Lofland (1998:190) also acknowledge: this sense if the
eventual permeation of homeless identity, despite attempts at regulation “If regulation alone could achieve the purification of
tie would all currently live in a world from which…the homeless…had in completely disappeared." Nonetheless
despite their realization in the present, it is apparent, as Jeff Ferrell explains, that such regulatory
efforts serve to "reinforce patterns of power and privilege, as they spawn a aggressions and
indignities against the disadvantaged, enforce new forms of spatial exclusion within urban promote a
type of spatial cleansing whereby unwanted populations are removed, by the force of law and money,
from particular locations and situations. But this spatial cleansing Is at the same time a cultural
cleansing; as economic, and legal authorities work to recapture and redesign the public spaces of the
city, they work to control public identity, and public perception as well, to remove from new spaces
of consumption and development images of alternative emotive identity ii'' Forces of economic
development and corporate control, of legal and political domination, of symbolic erasure and perceptual policing all
intersect and
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intertwine in the spaces of the city."
Here, then, is the upshot of an ecological perspective on
homeless demonization: a geography of 'cleansing' put into the service of regimes of control that
construct the 'other' as sick and diseased. It is a classic twist borrowed from the sociology of deviance,
I' fan the flames of public perception around the 'danger' presented by conic abject class of people,
and then to use this burgeoning public fear to justify a spate of policies and practices aimed at attaining
greater degrees of political and economic control. From the so- -called 'war on terror' to the
implicit 'war on the homeless,' the cultural arithmetic is the same: fear, demonization, regulation,
authoritarianism.
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These twin pillars of assimilation and criminalization work together to create a society which has
no space for homeless people because each citizen’s value is measured only in terms of their
productive capacities—in this way, our society’s decision to let the homeless die is based in an
attempt to produce a population which is unwavering in its commitment to market rationality.
Sanford Schram 2006 (Review Essay: Homelessness in the Ownership Society: An Inclusive Exclusion
http://ptx.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/34/1/132.pdf Teaches social theory and social policy in the Graduate School of
Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College P.132 )
When President George Bush accepted the Republican nomination to run for re-election, he staked his
second term in the White House on creating an “ownership society.” Enamored with the idea that the
market economy can solve all social ills, the President is dedicated to reducing government regulation,
taxes, and social welfare provisions in the name of freeing up individuals and families to participate in
markets, acquire their own private property, grow assets, and create wealth all on their own. Numerous
times the President has noted that his administration’s main housing policy is promoting home
ownership. I can not help but feel that the President advocates home ownership because, like other forms
of privatization, it leads to reduced reliance on government, thereby facilitating his larger goal of
dismantling the welfare state. The discourse of an ownership society did not, of course, begin with
Bush, who only accelerates a trend deeply embedded in U.S. political culture. But where does this sort
of ownership discourse take social welfare policy? And what could two works of political theory have
to say about this timely policy issue? The books by Kathleen Arnold and Leonard Feldman both
provide important intellectual resources for resistingt he exclusionary practices of ownership discourse.
Both provide rich theoretical background that clarifies how the President’s “ownership society”
exacerbates historical biases within liberal capitalism. In particular, ownership discourse risks further
tightening the terms of citizenship and entitlement, while increasing the marginalization and
neglect of those unable to meet the threshold requirements for inclusion. One major victim of the
exclusionary practices of ownership discourse is the homeless.
Arnold offers a philosophical meditation on the idea of homelessness in recent times, especially in the United States. She
shows that citizenship is built upon notions of economic contribution and national ties that
simultaneously define both a Self deserving of inclusion in the public sphere and an Other who
fails to meet the threshold requirements for citizenship . Immigrants represent an external exclusion, while the
homeless represent an internal exclusion. A return of the repressed, the homeless among us highlight the
central role of what Michel Foucault calls “governmentality,” where sovereign power operates first
and foremost through a “micropolitics” of “biopower,” where the social order is regulated more
through practices of self-discipline than overt coercion.
Arnold effectively critiques the exclusionary logic of contemporary notions of citizenship by reaching into the depths of the
history of political theory, and also by making the best possible use of contemporary forms of analysis, including Derridean
deconstruction. These come together nicely in her use of Giorgio Agamben’s idea of “Homo Sacer,” bare
or naked life, defined as that which is beyond the reach of the law, such that it can be killed but not
sac- rificed. Arnold is most compelling in demonstrating that the homeless are today’s Homo Sacer,
who, if included, are so in ways that reinscribe their exclusion, depriving them of the rights to
entitlement and, in the extreme, the right to live.
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This stripping away of the welfare state is part and parcel of a neoliberal politics which attempts
to recast human misery as a function of poor personal choices which can only be deterred with
criminal sentences, reducing democracy to the expansion of the free market—critical thought is
impossible within this framework where democratic deliberation is replaced with uncritical
acceptance of market rationality.
Henry A. Giroux 2005 (The Terror of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of Cultural Politics
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25115243.pdf Henry A. Giroux holds the
Communications at McMaster in Hp.9)
Global TV Network Chair in
With its debased belief that profit-making is the essence of democracy, and its definition of citizenship
as an energized plunge into consumerism, neoliberalism eliminates government regulation of market
forces, celebrates a ruthless competitive individualism, and places the commanding political, cultural,
and economic institutions of society in the hands of powerful cor porate interests, the privileged, and
unrepentant religious bigots (Peters and Fitzsimons 2001). Neoliberal global policies also further the broader
cultur al project of privatizing social services through appeals to "personal respon sibility as the proper
functions of the state are narrowed, tax and wage costs in the economy are cut, and more social costs
are absorbed by civil society and the family" (Duggan 2003, 16). As I have mentioned, though it is worth repeating, the hard
currency of human suffering permeates the social order as health-care costs rise, one out of five children fall beneath the poverty line, and 43 million
Americans bear the burden of lacking any health insurance. As part of this larger cultural project fashioned under the sovereignty of neoliberalism,
human misery is largely defined as a function of personal choices and human misfortune is viewed
as the basis for criminalizing social problems. Misbehaving children are now put in handcuffs and taken to police stations for
violating dress codes. Mothers who test positive for drugs in hos pitals run the risk of having their children taken away by the police. Young, poor, black
men who lack employment are targeted by the criminal justice system and, instead of being educated or trained for a job, often end up in jail. In fact, a report
by United for a Fair Economy states that "One of out three Black males born in 2001 will be imprisoned at some point in their lifetime if current trends
continue [and that] in 2000, there were at least 13 states in which there were more African-American men in prison than in college" (Muhammad, et. al.
2004, 20-21). Once released from prison, these young people are consigned to a civic purgatory in which they are "denied the right to vote, parental rights,
As
stipulated in the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, if convicted on a single drug felony, these youth when
released are further pun ished by a lifetime ban on food stamps and welfare eligibility. Such policies are
not only unjust and morally reprehensible, they are symptomatic of a society that has relegated
matters of equality and racial justice to the back burner of social concerns . In a market society
caught up in "the greed cycle" (Cassidy 2002), addressing persistent injustices gets in the way of
accumulat ing capital and the neoliberal and neoconservative revolution aimed at transforming
democracy into a one party, corporate state.
Within the discourse of neoliberalism, democracy becomes synonymous with free markets, while
issues of equality, racial justice, and freedom are stripped of any substantive meaning and used to
disparage those who suffer systemic deprivation and chronic punishment. Individual misfortune,
like democracy itself, is now viewed as either excessive or in need of radical con tainment. The media,
largely consolidated through corporate power, routinely provide a platform for high profile right-wing pundits and
politicians to remind us either of how degenerate the poor have become or to reinforce the central
neoliberal tenet that all problems are private rather than social in nature. Conservative columnist Ann
Coulter captures the latter sentiment with her comment that "[i]nstead of poor people with hope and
possibility, we now have a permanent underclass of aspiring criminals knifing one another between
having illegitimate children and collecting welfare checks" (qtd. in Bean 2003, para.3). Radio talk show host
Michael Savage, too, exemplifies the unabashed racism and fanaticism that emerge under a
neoliberal regime in which ethics and justice appear beside the point. For instance, Savage routinely
refers to non-white countries as "turd world nations," homosexuality as a "perversion" and young
children who are vic tims of gunfire as "ghetto slime" (qtd. in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting 2003,para.2, 6, 5).
drivers' licenses, student loans, and residency in public housing?the only housing that marginal, jobless people can afford" (Staples 2004, 7).
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As Fredric Jameson has argued in The Seeds of Time, it has now become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism (1994, xii). The
breathless rhetoric of the global victory of free-market rationality spewed forth by the mass media, right-wing intellectuals, and governments alike has found
its material expression both in an all-out attack on demo cratic values and in the growth of a range of social problems including: vir ulent and persistent
poverty, joblessness, inadequate health care, apartheid in the inner cities, and increasing inequalities between the rich and the poor. Such problems appear to
have been either removed from the inventory of public discourse and social policy or factored into talk-show spectacles in which the public becomes merely
Within the discourse of neoliberalism that has taken hold of the
public imagination, there is no way of talking about what is fundamen tal to civic life, critical
citizenship, and a substantive democracy. Neoliberalism offers no critical vocabulary for speaking about
political or social transformation as a democratic project. Nor is there a language for either the ideal of
public commitment or the notion of a social agency capa ble of challenging the basic assumptions of
corporate ideology as well as its social consequences. In its dubious appeals to universal laws, neutrality, and
selective scientific research, neoliberalism "eliminates the very possibility of critical thinking, without
which democratic debate becomes impossible" (Buck-Morss 2003, 65-66).This shift in rhetoric makes it
possible for advo cates of neoliberalism to implement the most ruthless economic and politi cal
policies without having to open up such actions to public debate and dialogue . Hence, neoliberal
policies that promote the cutthroat downsizing of the workforce, the bleeding of social services, the reduction of
a staging area for venting private interestsand emotions.
state gov ernments to police precincts, the ongoing liquidation of job security, the increasing elimination of a decent social
wage, the creation of a society of low-skilled workers, and the emergence of a culture of permanent insecurity
and fear hide behind appeals to common sense and allegedly immutable laws of nature.
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neoliberalism is a political and cultural movement which makes impossible resistance to
authoritarianism by eliminating any ethical language for politics outside of the realm of the
market—unending war is the inevitable result of this of this incredibly limited notion of the
political.
Henry A. Giroux 2005 (The Terror of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of Cultural Politics
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25115243.pdf Henry A. Giroux holds the
Communications at McMaster in Hp.13-14)
Global TV Network Chair in
Neoliberalism has indeed become a broad-based political and cultural move ment designed to
obliterate public concerns and liquidate the welfare state, and make politics everywhere an exclusively
market-driven project (Leys 2001). But neoliberalism does more than make the market "the informing principle of
politics" (Duggan 2003, 34), while allocating wealth and resources to those who are most privileged by virtue of their class,
race, and power. Its supporting political culture and pedagogical practices also put into play a social
universe and cultural landscape that sustain a particularly barbaric notion of authoritarianism, set in
motion under the combined power of a religious and market fundamentalism and anti-terrorism laws that sus
pend civil liberties, incarcerate disposable populations, and provide the security forces necessary
for capital to destroy those spaces where democracy can be nourished. All the while, the landscape and
soundscape become increasingly homogenized through the spectacle of flags waving from every flower box, car, truck, and
house, encouraged and supplemented by jingoistic brava do being broadcast by Fox Television News and Clear Channel
radio stations. As a cultural politics and a form of economic domination, neoliberalism tells a very
limited story, one that is antithetical to nurturing democratic identi ties, values, public spaces, and
institutions and thereby enables fascism to grow because it has no ethical language for
recognizing politics outside of the realm of the market, for market excesses, or for the underlying
tenets of a growing authoritarianism bolstered by the pretense of religious piety.
Neoliberal ideology, on the one hand, pushes for the privatization of all non-commodified public spheres
and the upward distribution of wealth. On the other hand, it supports policies that increasingly militarize
facets of pub lic space in order to secure the privileges and benefits of the corporate elite and ultra-rich.
Neoliberalism does not merely produce economic inequality, iniquitous power relations, and a corrupt
political system; it also promotes rigid exclusions from national citizenship and civic participation. As
Lisa Duggan points out, "Neoliberalism cannot be abstracted from race and gen der relations, or other
cultural aspects of the body politic. Its legitimating dis course, social relations, and ideology are
saturated with race, with gender, with sex, with religion, with ethnicity, and nationality" (2003, xvi).
Neoliberalism comfortably aligns itself with various strands of neoconserva tive and religious
fundamentalisms waging imperial wars abroad as well as at home against those groups and
movements that threaten its authoritarian misreading of the meaning of freedom, security, and
productiveness.
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the terminal impact of this understanding of life as valuable only in economic terms is sacrifical
genocide on a global scale—extinction is inevitable absent a reorientation of understanding of the
social.
Boaventura De Souza Santos, director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra,
2003
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2003/63/santos.html
According to Franz Hinkelammert, the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it should try to
save humanity by destroying part of it. This is a salvific and sacrificial destruction, committed in the
name of the need to radically materialize all the possibilities opened up by a given social and political
reality over which it is supposed to have total power. This is how it was in colonialism, with the
genocide of indigenous peoples, and the African slaves. This is how it was in the period of imperialist
struggles, which caused millions of deaths in two world wars and many other colonial wars. This is how
it was under Stalinism, with the Gulag, and under Nazism, with the Holocaust. And now today, this is
how it is in neoliberalism, with the collective sacrifice of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of
the world system. With the war against Iraq, it is fitting to ask whether what is in progress is a new
genocidal and sacrificial illusion, and what its scope might be. It is above all appropriate to ask if the
new illusion will not herald the radicalization and the ultimate perversion of the Western illusion:
destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it.
Sacrificial genocide arises from a totalitarian illusion manifested in the belief that there are no
alternatives to the present-day reality, and that the problems and difficulties confronting it arise from
failing to take its logic of development to ultimate consequences. If there is unemployment, hunger and
death in the Third World, this is not the result of market failures; instead, it is the outcome of market
laws not having been fully applied. If there is terrorism, this is not due to the violence of the conditions
that generate it; it is due, rather, to the fact that total violence has not been employed to physically
eradicate all terrorists and potential terrorists.
This political logic is based on the supposition of total power and knowledge, and on the radical
rejection of alternatives; it is ultra-conservative in that it aims to reproduce infinitely the status quo.
Inherent to it is the notion of the end of history. During the last hundred years, the West has experienced
three versions of this logic, and, therefore, seen three versions of the end of history: Stalinism, with its
logic of insuperable efficiency of the plan; Nazism, with its logic of racial superiority; and
neoliberalism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the market. The first two periods involved the
destruction of democracy. The last one trivializes democracy, disarming it in the face of social actors
sufficiently powerful to be able to privatize the state and international institutions in their favor. I have
described this situation as a combination of political democracy and social fascism. One current
manifestation of this combination resides in the fact that intensely strong public opinion, worldwide,
against the war is found to be incapable of halting the war machine set in motion by supposedly
democratic rulers.
At all these moments, a death drive, a catastrophic heroism, predominates, the idea of a looming
collective suicide, only preventable by the massive destruction of the other. Paradoxically, the broader
the definition of the other and the efficacy of its destruction, the more likely collective suicide becomes.
In its sacrificial genocide version, neoliberalism is a mixture of market radicalization, neoconservatism
and Christian fundamentalism. Its death drive takes a number of forms, from the idea of "discardable
populations", referring to citizens of the Third World not capable of being exploited as workers and
consumers, to the concept of "collateral damage", to refer to the deaths, as a result of war, of thousands
of innocent civilians. The last, catastrophic heroism, is quite clear on two facts: according to reliable
calculations by the Non-Governmental Organization MEDACT, in London, between 48 and 260
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thousand civilians will die during the war and in the three months after (this is without there being civil
war or a nuclear attack); the war will cost 100 billion dollars, enough to pay the health costs of the
world's poorest countries for four years.
Is it possible to fight this death drive? We must bear in mind that, historically, sacrificial destruction has
always been linked to the economic pillage of natural resources and the labor force, to the imperial
design of radically changing the terms of economic, social, political and cultural exchanges in the face
of falling efficiency rates postulated by the maximalist logic of the totalitarian illusion in operation. It is
as though hegemonic powers, both when they are on the rise and when they are in decline, repeatedly go
through times of primitive accumulation, legitimizing the most shameful violence in the name of futures
where, by definition, there is no room for what must be destroyed. In today's version, the period of
primitive accumulation consists of combining neoliberal economic globalization with the globalization
of war. The machine of democracy and liberty turns into a machine of horror and destruction.
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thus we think that the United States federal government should remove eligibility requirements
for social services which preclude homeless people from accessing those services.
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Observation Two: Solvency
This debate is ultimately about renegotiating our relationship to those excluded from our
conception of citizenship—embracing public policy which enables the homeless to dwell on their
own terms without sacrificing membership in our political community is key to break down the
ownership society.
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 147-148)
Recognizing our common dwelling plight means recognizing that those displaced from "house" and "home" must
dwell—will seek out sustaining habitats as best they can, despite their abandonment by law—and that public policy
should be oriented toward enabling dwelling, not criminalizing it or reducing it to the stripped down client
relationship of the shelter. Solutions to homelessness should build upon the efforts by homeless per sons to
create sustaining habitats rather than, as in shelterization, seeking to disrupt these efforts by isolating
the individual homeless person (whether as bare life or as client with pathologies) for treatment and shelter. The
denial of homeless placemaking activities and the attempt to disrupt these habits of dwelling is common
to both punitive policies targeting "disorder" and therapeutic efforts to isolate and reform the homeless client.
Wagner and other scholars such as Loch and Slayton describe the role played by helping agencies in disconnecting
homeless persons from their sustaining habitats and networks of mutual support and thereby fostering
the dependencies the agencies seek to overcome. Wagner argues that the subcultures and networks of homeless
persons should be employed rather than attacked by the therapeutic welfare state and that entails "recognition
of the homeless as a community." And Loch and Slayton argue that preserving and constructing single-roomoccupancy hotels is a way of providing affordable housing, embedded in working class communities, without the cultural
stigmatization that accompanies the shelter system.29 Given the cultural, political, and economic injustices of
homelessness, recognizing and enabling the dwelling activities of the displaced is a worthy goal, neither
self-defeating nor antidemocratic. Attending to these cultural, political, and economic injustices means
refusing the consignment of street-dwellers to an invisible, shadowy, outlaw existence, excluded from
the empty tent of citizenship by the ban on bare life. And as home and public space become pluralized,
home dwelling citizens might start to work on an identity that was itself partly constituted in opposition
to homeless bare life. All of us, dwellers in a wider sense, are neither abstract citizens capable of symbolic speech only
by virtue of our domestic dwelling nor bare biological life banned from the tent and consigned to the shadowy existence of
the outlaw. Rather, we are members of a pluralizing polity in which these rigid distinctions begin to break down. Such a
political ethic is not Utopian, but it is, I think, democratic. It seeks to unsettle the dream of home and a
purified public sphere with an attunement toward the dwelling habits of people as they are now, and it
points to a politics no longer premised on the isolation and exclusion of bare life.
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Removing eligibility restrictions is key to allowing the homeless to participate in the public sphere
regardless of their productive capacities—our legal advocacy is an essential starting point.
Our call for legal advocacy to remove eligibility restrictions is key to include homeless people in
Jonathan L. Hafetz; March, 2003; J.D., Yale Law School, 1999; M. Phil., Oxford University, 1992; B.A., Amherst
College, 1990. The Author was formerly a staff attorney at The Partnership for the Homeless in New York City; 2003
Fordham University School of Law Fordham Urban Law Journal; 30 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1215, Homeless Legal
Advocacy: New Challenges And Directions For The Future, Lexis-Nexis.
Because federal
welfare programs have traditionally been limited to families with children, single adults have
been forced to rely on state general assistance programs that provide significantly lower benefit rates , if
they exist at all. Single adults still make up a majority of the homeless population, though the proportion of
families with children has been rising steadily. 233 Many homeless single adults suffer from mental illness. For this
population, it is important, where possible, to obtain benefits under the SSI program, 234 the federal means-tested program
for low-income persons who are elderly (sixty-five and older), blind, or disabled. 235 Indeed, [*1251] for non-elderly,
mentally ill single adults - who are ineligible for TANF funds and unable to work - accessing SSI represents perhaps the best
chance to gain the financial means to escape homelessness. Many homeless people meet the Social Security disability
standard 236 because they have chronic health problems, which being homeless often exacerbates. 237 Yet, many eligible
homeless people are not receiving SSI benefits, 238 as the Social Security Administration ("SSA") itself has
recognized. 239 The problem may partly be explained by the lack of information about SSI, the lack of
assistance in filing for benefits, and the length and complexity of the application process itself. 240 The
SSA, however, has made some attempt to increase outreach efforts aimed at homeless people. 241
Given the often inappropriate denial of disability claims by homeless people, 242 and the high rates of
reversal at the administrative hearing level where such denials are challenged, 243 legal advocacy can
make a significant difference. 244 This is particularly true for individuals who suffer from alcohol or substance abuse in
light of a 1997 change to eligibility criteria that prevents receipt of SSI benefits if drug or alcohol "is a contributing factor
material to [*1252] the determination of disability," 245 and thus face greater difficulty establishing disability.
Further advocacy is also needed around regulations that directly impact homeless people, such as those
governing residence in public institutions such as homeless shelters, jails, and hospitals. 246 Regulations
preclude receipt of SSI benefits by individuals who remain in public homeless shelters for six months
within a nine-month period. 247 Even though the regulations require that an individual remain in the shelter for the
entire month for that month to count in terms of the restriction, 248 SSA often incorrectly counts months against recipients in
which they were absent for part of that month. Also, SSI benefits are suspended when an individual enters other public
institutions, such as jails. Under the pre-release program, individuals in such public institutions may either file new SSI
applications or seek to reactivate previously open cases prior to their release so that, if approved, they will receive benefits
upon release. 249 Many public institutions, however, have not complied with the pre-release program. 250
While SSI benefit rates may, in many cases, still be insufficient for homeless people to obtain permanent
housing at market rates, 251 they provide a critical source of income, particularly for single adults 252 who
must otherwise rely solely on meager state general assistance funds to survive. Indeed, obtaining SSI benefits may open the
door to new housing opportunities, including subsidized housing programs run by not-for-profit organizations in the
community.
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Federal government action is key to challenging the politics of exclusion and criminalization—only
the plan can send a broad enough signal that we no longer consider the homeless to be second
class citizens.
National Coalition for the Homeless 2004 (a national network of Homeless Rights advocates, composed of a 32
member board. “Illegal to be Homeless” http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/introduction.html)
This report, "Illegal to Be Homeless: The Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States," is the third annual report
since 2002. This study documents the widespread trend of violations of the basic human rights of people
experiencing homelessness in 179 communities in 48 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. Through the
passage of possibly unconstitutional laws, the "selective enforcement" of existing laws, arbitrary police
practices, and discriminatory public regulations, people experiencing homelessness face overwhelming hardships in
addition to their daily struggle for survival. Instead of spending precious public resources and funding to
address the significant lack of affordable housing in this country, local governments in urban, suburban, and
rural areas divert these funds to local Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and to policing, which often
penalize the very people this money could help. In addition to continuing the documentation of this trend, this report
emphasizes the connections between the creation of a public environment of intolerance and the increasing danger of living
on the streets that results from this attitude.
This report is an annual summary of continuous investigation with evidence that criminalization is not only a local
issue that is duplicated nationwide, but is also a national concern that demands a federal response . We
have asserted and continue to assert that a pattern and practice of civil rights violations and unconstitutional
behaviors by local government authorities, including the police and other city agencies, exists in many cities around
the country. These practices exact enormous economic, social, political and individual costs and do nothing to
prevent and end homelessness that plagues individuals nationwide.
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Our seemingly small step has devastating consequences for neoliberalism as a cultural and
political institution—our challenge to welfare reform functions as a radical incrementalism which
can create a small fissure which undoes policy hegemony.
Boyer, Kate 2002, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Reform and
Resistance:
A Consideration of Space, Scale
and Strategy in Legal Challenges
to Welfare Reform,
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118562122/PDFSTART, P. 9
In addition to legislative advocacy, administrative advocacy, and community organizing, some advocates and activists have
turned to the courts as a means of challenging welfare reform.3 Litigation has an important role to play in the policy
process, and though legal challenges can be difficult to mount, when successful they can result in dramatic change. Even
when unsuccessful, litigation can be a powerful policy signal.4 Toward creating strategies to challenge neo-
liberal social policy, Sanford Schram advises looking for openings in the current socio-political
fabric, focusing attention on these points of opportunity, and paying attention to even small
victories. He calls this approach ‘‘radical incrementalism’’ (Schram 2002). I suggest that legal
challenges to welfare reform can function as a kind of radical incrementalism, leveraging
sometimes small fissures as a way to begin to challenge a policy hegemony.
This strategy is comparatively better than radical rejection—our modest demand is able to
subvert the dominant ideology from within without devolving a paralyzing search for moral
purity.
Zizek 1998—Slavoj, professor at the University of Ljubljana, Law and the Postmodern Mind, p. 92
The dialectical tension between the vulnerability and invulnerability of the system also enables us to denounce the ultimate
racist and/or sexist trick, that of "Two birds in the bush instead of a bird in the hand": when women demand simple equality,
quasi-"feminists" often pretend to offer them "much more" (the role of the warm and wise "conscience of society" elevated
above the vulgar everyday competition and struggle for domination... )the only proper answer to this offer, of course, is "No
thanks! Better is the enemy of the good! We do not want more just equality!" Here, at least, the last lines in Now Voyager
("Why reach for the moon, when we can have the stars?") are wrong. It is homologous with the Native American who wants
to become integrated into the predominant "white" society. And a politically correct progressive liberal endeavors to convince
him that he is thereby renouncing his very unique prerogative. The authentic native culture and tradition- no thanks, simple
equality is enough. 1 also wouldn't mind my part of consumerist alienation!... A modest demand of the excluded
group for the full participation at the society's universal rights is much more threatening for the system
than the apparently much more "radical" rejection of the predominant "social values" and the assertion of the
superiority of one's own culture. For a true feminist, Otto Weininger's assertion that, although women are "ontologically
false," lacking the proper ethical stature, they should be acknowledged the same rights as men in public life is infinitely more
acceptable than the false elevation of women that makes them too good for the banality of men's rights. Finally, the point
about inherent transgression is not that every opposition, every attempt at subversion, is automatically
"co-opted." On the contrary, the very fear of being co-opted that makes us search for more and more
"radical", "pure" attitudes, is the supreme strategy of suspension or marginalization. The point is rather
that the true subversion is not always where it seems to be. Sometimes. _a small distance is much more
explosive for the system than an ineffective radical rejection. In religion, a small heresy can be more
threatening than an outright atheism or passage to another religion; for a hard-line Stalinist, a Trotskyite
is infinitely more threatening than a bourgeois liberal or a social democrat, as le Carre put it, one true
revisionist in the central committee is worth more than a thousand dissidents outside it. It was easy to
dismiss Gorbachev for aiming only at proving the system, making it more efficient- he nonetheless set in
motion its disintegration. So one should also bear in mind the obverse of the inherent transgression: one is tempted to
paraphrase Freud's claim from The Ego and the Id that man is not only much more immoral than he believes, but also much
more moral than he knows- the system is not only infinitely more resistant than invulnerable than it may
appear (it can co-opt apparently subversive strategies, they can serve as its support). It is also infinitely
more vulnerable (a small revision etc. can have a larger unforeseen catastrophic consequences)
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****Inherency****
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Inherency—No Social Services Now
Although there have been attempts to reform services aimed towards the homeless, basic hostility
still exists, preventing programs from being effective.
Amster 2008 (Randall, Amster teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College and is the Executive Director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Association. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for the Contemporary Justice Review and
the Peace Studies Journal. "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of Homelessness"
p. 19)
"Nonetheless, Tempe more recent: has slowly shifted its rhetoric and policies, hiring a 'Homeless
Coordinator and launching a pilot program called HOPE (Homeless Out treachh Program after HomeBase's
mobile service, the program includes with area service providers and referrals, Is, advocacy and ' to services" (TCC 2006;
James 2008). A number of other begun operating in the city, including he Tempe Youth Resource Center, Project
Homeless Connect , PAP Community Program), and I-HELP (Interfaith Homeless Emergency Program). While these are
indeed positive developments and motivations of the people supporting these efforts are no doubt and
well-intentioned, it is still the case that the prevailing mood net the years among the city's policymaker
generally has not been of accommodation. In the three years that I collected articles and conducted
interviews (1998-200]), there were many accounts the city's basic hostility toward the street people in
the downtown area a phenomenon succinctly dubbed by one of my informants ('L un 2000) as "a crusade
of demonization." For example, by early 1999 the State Press had reported that the last restroom on Mill A venue ope
n the general public had been officially closed (Aas 1999, Boos 1998) One article (Boos) noted that the remaining
"restrooms on Mill Avenue are located within places of business and are only for customers." chic the other (Aas) quoted a
22-year old homeless man saying. 'I IlueP there should be a public bathroom here when you've got to gi you've got to go."
My own interview notes include Bill (2000) observing that "there ain't no public restrooms in this town it nowhere” (Dante;
2000) boasting about being able to use the Jack-in-the-Box bathroom once in a while; and Julie Cart (2001) noting that in
addition to using Salvation Army bathrooms by day, some of the homeless had taken to using the restrooms at the Tempe
Police station!
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Inherency—Homeless Excluded/Neoliberalism Now
The current provisions of welfare prop up neoliberalism.
Yvonne Hartman 2005( In Bed with the Enemy: Some Ideas on the Connections between Neoliberalism and the
Welfare State http://csi.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/53/1/57 PHD candidate at Southern Cross University)
In this article I suggest that neoliberal states such as the UK, the US and Australia employ anti-welfare
rhetoric
partly to disguise a fundamental reliance upon forms of governance which incorporate major elements
of what has come to be known as the welfare state. Contrary to their claims that welfare provisions must be
dismantled for the health of the nation, neoliberal rationalities have in fact pursued a strategy of
reshaping but not abolishing welfare regimes, which, it is here argued, form an integral component of a
neoliberal governmentality. To illustrate, the relationships between the casualization of the labour market and state
provision of income support – particularly in Australia – and the maintenance of low- waged workers are examined for their
capacity to illuminate the connections between welfare provision and neoliberal modes of existence. In order to explore
these connections it is necessary first to establish the existence of the paradox alluded to in the preceding paragraph, namely
the gap between rhetoric and practice regarding welfare provision under neo-liberalism. This entails a discussion on what
constitutes neoliberalism, the defining features of a welfare state in general terms and how the two articu- late. Such an
articulation is conceptualized by employing Foucault’s notion of governmentality, which provides a theoretical approach
capable of sustain- ing an enquiry of this nature. Having established the paradox, I continue on to explore the various
ways in which the welfare state serves the purposes of neoliberal rationalities, most notably the support of a
capitalist dynamic and the process of constructing ‘docile bodies’ rather than active citizens. This means that while it relies
mainly on governmentality theory, the latter part of the article also gives some consideration to how a functionalist analysis
of the benefits of the current set of arrangements can yield similar conclusions. Although similar conclusions were reached
by theorists such as Offe (1984) in earlier analyses, there are important differences between my position and theirs which is
elaborated upon later. It should be emphasized that this is an exploratory undertaking, which it is hoped will stimulate further
critical discussion of the relationship between welfare and neoliberalism. Therefore, it is theoretically rather than
empirically based. Accordingly, it is stressed that although the casualization of the labour market and the maintenance of
low- waged workers are discussed, these are not intended to serve as a case study, but rather as illustrations of
theconceptualargument.
The homeless are excluded from eligibility for public benefits.
Susan D. Bennett June, 1995, ("No Relief But Upon the Terms of Coming into the House," - Controlled Spaces,
Invisible Disentitlements, and Homelessness in an Urban Shelter System
http://www.lexisnexis.com:80/us/lnacademic/search/journalssubmitForm.do Professor of Law and Director of the
Public Interest Law Clinic of the Washington College of Law of the American University)
The practice of churning explains why homeless persons are underrepresented among the ranks of benefits
holders, despite their indisputable financial eligibility. n93 Homelessness increases the impact of
churning practices simply because rootless families cannot keep, or never receive notice of, the multiple
appointments demanded for confirmation of eligibility. n94 When homeless recipients fail to meet these administrative burdens,
workers churn them off the benefit rolls. One unusually detailed study tracking the experiences of homeless recipients of nonemergency public assistance in
New York City found that over seventy-five percent of the clients studied had their benefits terminated within six months of first receiving them. n95 The
study blamed this high incidence of churning on the recipient's difficulty in receiving or responding to the many notices of required recertification
appointments that welfare offices in New York regularly mail to all recipients. n96 The study also [*2182] noted that fewer than half of the individuals in
its sample succeeded in opening a public benefits case. n97 The formal system of protections for welfare applicants and recipients offers little to redress the
invisible injuries inflicted in the preapplication "twilight zone." In the AFDC program, the statute requires the state to provide a fair hearing if a "claim for
aid" is "denied or not acted upon with reasonable promptness." n98 Regulations obligate the state to inform "[e]very applicant or recipient" of the right to a
hearing and the rights associated with it, "at the time of application and at the time of any action affecting his claim." n99 Where the unit of grievance is "the
claim," and the triggering mechanism for complaint is the "time of application," needy persons who never reach the formal application stage are denied
The concrete harm of disentitlement can be measured in benefits lost. However, the
unquantifiable, and perhaps greater, harm is a dampening of the spirit, a lowering of expectations of any kind
of fair treatment or favorable result from a bureaucratic system. Lipsky describes this effect as a residuum of
formal redress.
"disentitlement." n100 It is this reduction in poor persons' expectations, as much as the reduction of services, that makes
disentitlement tactics effective.
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****Criminailzation Advantage****
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Public space regulations are targeted at criminalizing the homeless to protect the normative social
order and its citizens from dangers of non-productivity that may threaten the neoliberal society
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 27-28)
Both critics and defenders of the new public space ordinances targeting the homeless tend to find a great
deal of continuity between these policies and common law prohibitions against vagrancy that stretch back
to fourteenth century England. Critics of current anti- homeless laws frequently trace their origin to centuries-old vagrancy
laws in order to denounce these policies as "old wine in new bottles." As Harry Simon argues, "Official efforts to punish
homeless indigents are not new. For more than six centuries, vagrancy and loitering statutes made it a crime to wander
without visible means of support." When the Supreme Court in 1972 struck down vagrancy statutes as unconstitutionally
vague, cities turned to more targeted ordinances that "changed the form, but not the substance, of official efforts to control
the homeless."1 Since critics contend that the essential goal of " these ordinances and policies remains the
same—the criminalization of homelessness and poverty in order to control the displaced poor—Robert
Humphreys asserts that "in many ways, the plight of the modern-day street homeless is strikingly similar to that of roving
vagrants and vagabonds of former times." 2 And Don Mitchell argues that anti-homeless laws have "roots in long
standing ideological or cultural concerns about the relationship between the deviant poor and the
upstanding bourgeoisie."3 Defenders of the current policies make much the same argument— describing a historical
continuity in social policies to control the poor and displaced. Like the critics, one prominent advocate of current and homeless ordinances, Robert Tier, sees a common underlying goal to these various efforts. But this goal is not to
wage war against the homeless so much as it is to satisfy the perennial need of social orders to defend a
culture of work and responsibility from the disorders of idleness and begging. What has improved is the
method: we now have more focused laws (bolstered by social scientific knowledge about the causes and consequences
of disorder) that apply directly to the conduct that societies have long recognized as subversive. So, Tier
says, although "westerners have historically and consistently sought to prevent, or at least control, begging" the new statutes
"do not criminalize the status of being a beggar (or being poor)" but reach "only conduct which is egregious, dangerous or
intrusive." The new public-space ordinances gain constitutional legitimacy in their discontinuity from past efforts but they
gain a broader moral legitimacy from their connection to that tradition. Tier says he wants "to distinguish the current efforts
from the more sweeping measures of the past, but also to demonstrate that the current efforts are part of a long tradition of
community efforts to maintain safety and civility in public spaces."
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Anti-homeless measures and social service reform seek to criminalize the poor to prevent threats
to the public and the social culture they value
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 29-30)
First, I would argue that these views may prevent an appreciation of the particular contradictions, anxieties, and normative
idealizations of self, citizenship, and public sphere that lie behind particular punitive policies; thus, both the legitimating and
the delegitimating narratives of continuity shield the political order from examination. Another way to put this is that
although the bare-life predicament may recur across historical periods—from homo sacer the refugee—the
specific contours of the opposition between bare life and the political sphere change quite dramatically.
Therefore, I seek to trace a genealogy of the punitive policies surrounding beggars, homelessness, and vagrancy. The
movement from vagrancy law to anti-homeless legislation, I argue, involves a significant transformation in
the identification of the very problem or threat to which the laws address themselves. This transformation
reveals, in turn, a larger shift in the very constitution of the public sphere: from the productive public
sphere and its preoccupation with idleness to the consumptive public sphere and its preoccupation with
aesthetic appearance. Thus, I connect vagrancy law and contemporary anti-homeless legislation to
historically contingent constructions of the public sphere and forms of governance through work and
consumption. These constructions are not completely discontinuous. Concerns about "idleness" link older
vagrancy prohibitions with contemporary discourses of welfare reform, and arguments about the "future
criminality" of the displaced poor constitute a thread that links vagrancy law to anti-homeless legislation. But there
has also been a significant shift: Rather than incorporate (through coercion) the idle into a world of work
and discipline, contemporary anti-homeless laws protect (through exclusion) a consumptive public from
threats to its security.
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Concerns with productivity and crime shape laws dealing with homelessness to prevent the spread
of their ‘parasitic’ lifestyle into society
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 31-32)
Nevertheless, concerns about idleness persisted as well. Kenneth Kusmer, in his historical study of homelessness
in the United States, points to productivity and idleness as key to society's response to vagrancy in the late
nineteenth century. Discussing the subcultures of tramps and hoboes in that period, he argues that "although they
operated within industrial society, their pattern of intermittent work and leisure, as well as the social
organization of the hobo jungles, reflected a commitment to preindustrial values." With work and
productivity emerging as central values, "the vagrancy problem" became "a recognized national issue."
As Kusmer writes, " In a nation comprised, ideally, of sturdy yeomen, small capitalists, and upwardly mobile
working men, the vagrant seemed a footloose, goal less wanderer, living not by his hands but by his wits and—
worst of all—in the dissipation of idleness."12 The rationale of preventing crime also continued. Caleb Foote, in
his study of vagrancy law application in post -World War II Philadelphia, documents how prominent a justification it was for
arrests, frequently offered by early twentieth-century courts to defend vagrancy statutes. Arresting vagrants was a form
of crime prevention, explained by metaphors of disease and reproduction: vagrancy statutes "check the
spread of a parasitic disease"; "the vagrant mode of life denounced by the statutes is of itself a crime
breeder"; and the vagrant is "the chrysalis of every species of criminal."13 Although there is, then, disagreement
as to the relative significance of these two concerns at different points in time in the history of vagrancy law, it is safe to
say that idleness and future criminality have constituted twin rationales for vagrancy law for a
considerable time.
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Fears of the homeless based in their position outside the reward-based capital system and social
structure
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 10-11)
Bahr's account of disaffiliation as both freedom and constraint occurs in a discussion of the reasons why the
housed public
fears the homeless: "There are some functional bases for the generalized distrust of the disaffiliate. It is
not so much that he is a deviant as that he is outside the usual system of sanctions, and hence his
behavior cannot be predicted with any certainty." And furthermore, the homeless person "poses a threat
because he has moved beyond the reward system. Being functionally, if not actually devoid of
significant others, property, and substantial responsibility, he is not subject to the usual social restraints.
It is no threat to the fully disaffiliated to threaten the forfeiture of his property, the imprisonment of his
family or the loss of his job. He has none of these."36 Despite (or perhaps because of) the neutral-sounding functionalist
language, there is a certain undecidability in Bahr's account. Is disaffiliation a form of freedom or a form of constraint?
Although on one level it is no doubt correct to say that it is both, homelessness is not, in these passages, recognized as
containing a mixture of freedom and constraint but rather as oscillating between complete freedom from constraint and
absolute deprivation—a double image. On the one hand, disaffiliation is portrayed as a condition of natural
liberty, a lack of social constraints. Thus, Bahr describes the disaffiliate as someone who is "outside the usual system
of sanctions"— a person within the boundaries of the political community but outside the social contract. In
so doing Bahr echoes Rousseau's observation that (in the late stage of the state of nature) the rich see themselves
as having everything to lose, whereas the poor have nothing to lose but their natural liberty. Of course, the functionalist
spin on having "nothing to lose but one's natural liberty" is to be "outside the usual system of sanctions" and "not subject to
the usual social restraints." But the passages cited above alternate between this image of disaffiliated man as having
transcended all social discipline in moving beyond the reward system and another image of disaffiliated man as having lost
all social goods and attachments. It is almost as if the natural liberty must be disavowed because "affiliated man" might
otherwise long for an escape from those containment fields. Thus, the text shifts registers, describing the state of being above
or beyond social sanction in the language of constriction and dispossession: the homeless are untouched by
conventional forms of discipline because they have none of the invest men is, attachments, or
possessions that make the domestic(ated) citizen so receptive to a system of reward and sanction. No
property, no family, no job—the freedom from social constraints and sanctions is a consequence of the
absolute deprivation of social goods,
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Criminalization Advantage – Exclusion
Laws are and attitudes in the status quo frown upon homeless people and often criminalize their
day-to-day activities as well as their bodily functions, prohibiting homeless people’s very existence
The New York Times 2002 [January 18, 2002 “In Famously Tolerant City, Impatience With Homeless,” Lexis Nexus]
A proposed ordinance designed to curb panhandling would ban loitering on median strips, with violators
subject to a $500 fine and six months in jail.
The proposal is one of many that legislators in this city known for its tolerance have recently introduced that point to a
growing impatience with San Francisco's highly visible population of people living on the streets.
Other proposals would create a special telephone line for people to report quality-of-life infractions like
loitering, and an ordinance that would ban sleeping in public.
"I'm walking past people who are sick in the streets," said Tony Hall, a city supervisor who suggested the ban on
sleeping and relieving oneself in public (which require that the city double its shelter beds, to 3,500, and open about 100
public toilets). " It's getting to me and it's getting to other people."
Mr. Hall's sentiment resounds in cities across the country. But advocates for homeless people say that at a time
when a bad economy and a tight housing market are creating record levels of homelessness, more and
more cities are responding by cracking down on the consequences of homelessness -- the sleeping,
urinating and shopping-cart-hauling habits of homeless people -- rather than by addressing the causes.
"Nationally, a big reason driving the phenomenon of the criminalization of homelessness is concern
about the visibility of that population, especially with respect to how they affect businesses and tourism,"
said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, an advocacy
organization based in Washington.
The law center, in conjunction with the National Coalition for the Homeless, released a report on Tuesday declaring San
Francisco, New York and Atlanta as the "top three meanest cities," when it comes to treatment of homeless people.
The cities on the list all have ordinances that make the everyday activities of many homeless people subject to a jail term, Ms.
Foscarinis said.
"There are legitimate concerns about having large numbers of people living in public," she said. "What we take issue with is
what you do about it. Do you respond with passing laws or do you respond by providing an alternative to people living in
public?"
In San Francisco, the most expensive city in the country, homeless people lugging trash bags with everything they own haunt
downtown doorways and alleys, and the issue of homelessness generates daily headlines and unending debate. At least three
successive mayors (in 16 years) have vowed to clear the streets of homeless people. None have promised to solve
homelessness; the current mayor, Willie L. Brown Jr., has called it "intractable."
The city has consistently made the advocacy organizations' "meanest cities" list, as one of the first to outlaw aggressive
panhandling and soliciting money near A.T.M.'s, and to sweep people from the streets despite having few other options to
offer them. But George Smith, director of the Mayor's Office on Homelessness, said the city had never driven homeless
people away, as other cities have done.
"There are places that give homeless people one-way tickets out of town," Mr. Smith said. "So I don't know what they mean
by 'mean.' All I know is that we've struggled in San Francisco about how to serve people who need help."
Certainly, everyone agrees, there are at least as many homeless people on the streets as ever . The city counts
more than 7,300 people living in the streets or in emergency housing, but doubles that number when including those people
who live in transitional housing and other impermanent housing, the definition used by the federal Department of Housing
and Urban Development.
In 1999, the city issued more than 42,000 citations to homeless people for infractions like sleeping in a park after hours or
camping in public, according to the national report. Even so, calls for the city to do more have grown louder, with local
television news shows and newspapers issuing special reports on the problems of street people.
In response, three months ago the city stepped up its practice of rousing sleeping people from doorways. The Department
of Public Works now sends crews fanning through the streets, waking homeless people and scrubbing
down their sidewalk sleeping place with disinfectant, so they have no choice but to move.
Gavin Newsom, a supervisor widely expected to run for mayor next year, recently offered several proposals that he said
were designed to solve a problem that had "become out of control."
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They include a new department of homelessness to replace the city's current hodgepodge system, a centralized method of
processing single homeless people who enter the city's social service system, modeled after New York City's, and a database
for tracking them, as well as ordinances banning loitering on street medians or in public garages.
"It's time for tough love, accountability and outcomes," said Mr. Newsom, who received favorable editorials and scores of
approving e-mail messages after floating his ideas a few weeks ago.
Mr. Smith said a remedy he had seen in Chicago and New York that he might seek to use here involved centers that address
specific areas of need.
The idea recognizes that there are different categories of homeless people, with different needs and capabilities, he said. So a
mother and her children would be served differently than a single drug abuser, for example.
Such an ambitious idea is a long way from execution. And advocates for homeless people here say San Francisco should be
wary of using New York, where a record high 29,400 homeless people live in city shelters and hotel rooms, as a model for
ending homelessness.
"I don't see New York having solved homelessness," said Paul Boden, executive director of the San Francisco Coalition on
Homelessness.
Mr. Boden has consistently found himself locking horns with the mayor and other politicians over their push to outlaw
behavior associated with homeless people.
"A lot of stuff that's really frustrating," he said of the latest proposed ordinances, "is that we've seen all of this stuff before.
We're enacting legislation that's used for media bites, as opposed to legislation that addresses the problem. It turns the
debate around homelessness into this nasty debate about urinating and defecating and shooting up in the
streets instead of 'How can we help the problem?' "
30
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Criminalization Advantage – Exclusion
Criminalization is an unethical way to address homelessness—entrenches exclusionary practices.
Maria Foscarinis et al; A.B. 1977, Barnard College; M.A. 1978, J.D. 1981, Columbia University; 1999 Georgetown
Journal on Poverty Law & Policy6 Geo. J. Poverty Law & Pol'y 145FEATURE: Out of Sight -- Out of Mind?: The
Continuing Trend Toward the Criminalization of Homelessness; Lexis-Nexis
A more complex justification of anti-homeless policies characterizes them as a means of preventing crime. This idea
is based on the "Broken Windows" theory proposed by criminologists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. 38 Wilson and
Kelling argue that allowing indications of disorder, such as a broken window, to remain unaddressed
demonstrates a loss of public order and control in the neighborhood and thus breeds more serious
criminal activity. 39 This theory has served as the basis for crackdowns on "quality of life" and other minor offenses in
several cities. For example, in New York City, Mayor Giuliani and police officials have initiated a campaign to curb minor
infractions in the city's subway system and elsewhere as a means of deterring more serious criminal behavior. 40
This punitive approach raises serious concerns about fundamental fairness. First, punishing one group of
people to prevent future criminal activity by others runs afoul of the basic notions of equity underlying
our criminal justice system. 41 Second, in relying on police to distinguish between desirable and
undesirable elements in the community, there is no way to ensure that the criteria they use to make these
distinctions will not be invidiously discriminatory, or otherwise impermissible. Indeed, Wilson and Kelling
themselves noted the difficulty in ensuring that "the police do not become agents of neighborhood bigotry." 42 The likely
success of the only safeguard suggested by the authors -- appropriate selection, training, and supervision of police officers 43
-- is belied by examples of discriminatory enforcement of criminal laws and ordinances by police officers across the country.
Reliance on criminal sanctions to address homelessness, and related problems such as mental illness or substance
abuse that are more appropriately handled by social workers and health care professionals , causes problems
and widespread frustration within the criminal justice system. Furthermore, the criminal justice system does not, and possibly
cannot, provide adequate treatment or rehabilitation opportunities. Police officers are not adequately trained to address these
problems. 44 Detaining individuals who have not committed serious crimes but who may suffer from mental illness or
addiction, causes difficulties for jail officials. Correctional officers usually are not adequately trained to provide the necessary
special supervision, and they often experience problems interacting with other detainees. 45 Additionally, many jails,
particularly "mega-jails" in larger cities, are already severely over-crowded. 46
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Criminalization Advantage – War on the Poor
The ongoing campaign against homelssness is reminiscent of Nazi Germany—the status quo has
transformed to war on poverty into a vicious war on the poor.
Amster 2008 (Randall, Amster teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College and is the Executive Director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Association. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for the Contemporary Justice Review and
the Peace Studies Journal. "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of Homelessness"
p. 121)
And so we return to the 'extermination scenario that keeps rearing its head - unsurprising, after all, since
c eradication is the logical aim of these myriad policies and practices of' criminalization. As Madelaine
Stoner opines, "the images of homeless sweeps are reminiscent of holocaust roundups in Nazi Germany.
To dramatize the message that homeless people are not welcome, police officers frequently conducted
large-scale campaigns in which they arrest homeless people, handcuff 11 them, mark their arms with
identification numbers, drive them to the police station where they await formal charges for hours
without food and water, and finally drive them to the edge of town after detention, drop them off, and
tell them not to return" (1095:161). Samira Kawash likewise describes an "increasingly vengeful war on the
homeless" in which "both threats and acts of violence are necessary ii maintain this exclusionary
force," and suggests that homeless advocates "discover ways to make the violence written on the
homeless body legible" (1998:336-7). Throughout the many incarnations my Investigations of' and participations in
homeless issues have taken, I remain guided ho principles such as this that are grounded in the material conditions
and lived experiences of street people themselves, hoping through discourse and activism to 'make the violence legible. It
this work is useful in accomplishing even that much, it has been well worth the effort.
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Criminalization Advantage – Media
Mainstream publications contribute to the view that homeless are “dirty” and therefore
externalize the homeless from the population. Images of sterility and perfection exclude the
homeless.
Amster 2008 (Randall, Amster teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College and is the Executive Director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Association. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for the Contemporary Justice Review and
the Peace Studies Journal. "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of Homelessness"
p. 80-81)
In mainstream publications, both academic and journalistic, even depictions intended to be sympathetic
to the homeless often contribute to a mindset of demonization. One of the most enduring signs of this
is the association of homelessness with images of dirt, filth, decay, disease, disgust, pests, and vermin
(see Gowan 2000:98; Mitchell 2003:196-7; cf. Lees 2003:625-6). In what is ostensibly an empathetic rendering of the
health risks inherent in homelessness, Fitzpatrick & LaGory (2000:145) nonetheless reify this pervasive view by noting
the prevalence of infections, ailments, numerous "chronic physical disorders," and diseases such as "AIDS and
tuberculosis." Miller (1991:22) likewise observes that historically the vagrant was seen as a person of
'"many vices and debilities; was sickly and suffered from the ravages of tuberculosis, typhus, cholera,
scrofula, rickets, and other disorders too numerous to mention; was apt to be a member of
the despised races; [and whose] life was characterized by all the usual depravities: sexual license,
bastardy, prostitution, theft.” Miller’s analysis suggests to related but distinct strands. homeless
stigmatization. The first arises out of invocations of disorder, illegality, and immorality, and leads to
process a criminalization, and enforcement. The second is the disease and decay image, which leads to
processes of sanitization, sterilization, and quarantine. In a sense, these two spheres are
undoubtedly both leading to the same ends of exclusion eradication. On a deeper level, both spheres
also converge around the homeless, who occupy spaces that (like themselves) are often viewed
as disorderly, and therefore require both regulation and sterilzation. As 'Mike Davis (1990:260) observes,
public spaces, like the homeless are imbued with "democratic intoxications ions, risks and unscented odors. For purposes
of the analysis here, I believe it will be illustrative consider the disease image as conceptually distinct
from the disorder characterization. This arises primarily out of the Disneyfication of space in general
(and downtown Tempe in particular) that has been indicated thus far, since the Disney metaphor (and
reality antiseptic sterility and disinfected experience, of shiny surfaces and squeaky-clean images. It is the apotheosis of
what Herman nail described in Steppenwolf (1972:16) as "bourgeois cleanliness,” representing "the very essence of neatness
and meticulousness [and devotion . . . a paradise of cleanliness and spotless mediocrity its, of
ordered ways." Disney is
above all the 'sterilized' environment a place stripped of any outward signs of filth, decay, spoliation,
or despair. Underneath that facade, however, is an interior dystopian world of darkness, brutal
efficiency, neurosis, ricid control and emptiness. As Hesse (1972:23-4) describes the plight of
his protagonist, trapped in a place not unlike the Disney-dystopia (or 'Distopia' for short), the disease
he suffers from "is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves,
the neurosis of that generation ... a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless
only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts." Dis-topia, then, comes to he
seen not as a place for the 'clean' to gather and play, but as an antiseptic retreat for the diseased of spirit to he temporarily
distracted from the depredations of their existence. When that temporary distraction is made permanent, control is
complete and the inevitability of dystopia is realized.
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The homeless are brutally criminalized
Gregg Barak and Robert M. Bohm.12-08-2004. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Alabama State
University, Department of Criminal Justice, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Contemporary Crises.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/xt542371jk34821/fulltext.pdf
The modern welfare state is the product of decades of class struggle and of political efforts by ordinary
Americans to gain some control and stability over their lives in the face of massive economic
disruptions. As the economic crisis deepens worldwide and as more Americans are marginalized by the introduction of
new technologies and the new international division of labor, increasing numbers of poor and homeless persons are destined
to become visible victims of the hardships associated with the transitions. Yet, at a time when a reformed and
expanded welfare system is needed most, the "ideological opposition to the welfare state has never been
so intense, so well organized, and so powerfully represented. '' Consequently, if prevailing ideology triumphs
over a progressive alternative, the poor and homeless are likely to be viewed as members of a new dangerous
class, and their status and behavior are likely to be criminalized. Historically, the poor and homeless
have often been viewed by those more fortunate as a "dangerous class" and held liable for societal ills:
sin, urban disorder, crime, disease, poverty, etc. As early as 14th and 15th century England, for example, the
bourgeoisie were successful in having the poor and homeless criminally sanctioned for idleness, vagrancy, and migrating;
their punishment consisting of forced labor or indentured servitude. According to the still dominant bourgeois ideology,
crime is limited to behavior proscribed by the criminal law and blamed on individual offenders instead
of structural circumstances. The bourgeois solution to crime has always called for protection of the unequal distribution
of wealth, power, and property. By contrast, radical/critical ideology generally assumes that crime is often a
consequence of social injustice and economic inequality, and that solution calls for changing the
alienating, dehumanizing, and marginalizing conditions of the political economy. In any event, vagrancy and
curfew laws, which remain on the "books" in most American jurisdictions today, and identification of vagrants and
homeless people as "criminals" and a threat to social order, reflect the needs to control, regulate, or
surveil the marginal classes of capitalist accumulation and to resist reform and expansion of the welfare
state. The political-economic crises of the last two decades have increased the marginality and impoverishment of workers
and have contributed to the slowly growing phenomenon of homelessness nationwide. However, only since the recession of
1982 have the problems of the homeless in America really become "political" and part of "public consciousness'. Unless
housing markets and labor trends radically change to ameliorate the related problems of impoverishment and homelessness,
then pressure for some kind of governmental intervention should intensify. A critical question is whether that intervention
will be repressive, individual, and punitive or humane, communal, and supportive. In other words, will the poor be
criminalized or provided with the means to allow them to maximize their potential? The answer, at least
to some extent, depends on whether the homeless in America are responded to as "victims of the crime
of homelessness" or as "criminal members of the dangerous class."
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Criminalization Advantage – Must Address Root Cause
Criminalization and exclusion of the homeless from political life is rampant in the status quo—
failure to address root causes guarantees cycles of poverty go unabated.
Maria Foscarinis et al; A.B. 1977, Barnard College; M.A. 1978, J.D. 1981, Columbia University; 1999 Georgetown
Journal on Poverty Law & Policy6 Geo. J. Poverty Law & Pol'y 145FEATURE: Out of Sight -- Out of Mind?: The
Continuing Trend Toward the Criminalization of Homelessness; Lexis-Nexis
I. INTRODUCTION: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF HOMELESSNESS
The past decade has seen a rising economic tide lift many Americans towards ever greater prosperity; however, this
prosperity has not been enjoyed by all. Homeless Americans often serve as an unpleasant reminder of this cruel
economic fact. Unfortunately, in many cases what has proven even crueler is the fact that in many American cities the
official government policy towards homeless people has become an aggressive effort to sweep them out
of sight -- with the misguided hope that the root causes of homelessness will disappear with the victims.
Instead of addressing the fundamental economic and social causes of poverty and seeking long-term
solutions for the problem of homelessness, local governments have turned to the criminal justice system
in an effort to drive homeless people from their streets. 1 This is, at best, a misguided "quick-fix" that addresses
the visible symptoms of homelessness but not its underlying causes. Typical examples of this misguided policy are the
enactment and enforcement of city ordinances that restrict the use of public spaces by homeless people for necessary
activities such as sleeping or sitting; the enactment or enforcement of restrictions on begging; police "sweeps" to remove
homeless people from specific parts of town; and the selective enforcement against homeless people of generally applicable
laws such as prohibitions on loitering, obstruction of sidewalks, or public intoxication. 2 Some cities have pursued
comprehensive policies with the stated purpose of driving homeless people out of sight.
35
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Criminalization Advantage
The government criminalizes homelessness by making the homeless’ daily actions against the law.
Maria Foscarinis. 1999. Columbia University. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Out of
Sight-Out of Mind? The Continuing trend toward the criminalization of Homelessness, pg 147-148.
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/geojpovlp6&div=14&size=2&rot=0&type
=image
Given the social context in which they have arisen, these policies are an inappropriate response to the problems they seek to
address. Based on current estimates, over 700,000 people in the United States are homeless on any given
night. 3 Many cities across the country have an insufficient number of emergency shelter beds or
transitional housing slots to accommodate their homeless residents. Moreover, there is a shortage of affordable
housing for low-income residents. Based on federal affordability guidelines, 4 many people cannot afford the fair-market rent
for a studio/efficiency apartment in their metropolitan area. Nor can individuals earning the minimum wage or subsisting on
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) 5 or benefits provided under state or county general assistance programs, afford the fairmarket rent.
Despite these circumstances, city governments have enacted and enforced various prohibitions on the use of
public spaces against homeless people. For instance, many cities have ordinances which restrict or prohibit
begging, sleeping or "camping," sitting, lying down, loitering, or obstructing pedestrian traffic in public
places, or impose restrictions on being in particular public areas during certain hours. This
criminalization of homelessness is not only ineffective public policy, it is often counterproductive, and
at times inhumane. Such policies of criminalization have the potential to expose cities to burdensome
litigation and legal liability for violations of the rights of homeless individuals.
The reason for such widespread homelessness is because of the blown up expense of rent.
Maria Foscarinis. 1999. Columbia University. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Out of
Sight-Out of Mind? The Continuing trend toward the criminalization of Homelessness, pg 149.
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/geojpovlp6&div=14&size=2&rot=0&type
=image
While some cities have continued to treat homeless people as criminals, the resources to shelter
homeless people or to allow them to become self-sufficient are woefully inadequate in these cities.
According to local estimates, the number of homeless residents greatly exceeds the number of emergency
shelter and transitional housing spaces in nearly every city surveyed.1" Moreover, the availability of affordable
housing for low-income individuals is insufficient to meet the needs in most cities. In each of the fifty cities surveyed , a
substantial percentage of individuals—ranging from a high of 37% to a low of 17%—are unable to afford the
fair-market rent for an efficiency apartment in their metropolitan area." While unemployment rates in many
cities have dropped, a person working forty hours per week at the minimum wage applicable to most employers
still cannot afford the fair-market rent for an efficiency apartment in any of the fifty cities analyzed. Furthermore,
the fair-market rents are simply not affordable for people subsisting on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or state or local
general assistance benefits."
36
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Criminalization Advantage
Laws directly prohibit the homeless from getting access to the shelter and help that they need.
Maria Foscarinis. 1999. Columbia University. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Out of
Sight-Out of Mind? The Continuing trend toward the criminalization of Homelessness, pg 151
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/geojpovlp6&div=14&size=2&rot=0&type
=image
Chicago and Tucson were selected for the uniqueness of their proposals/ methods of making their
community inhospitable to homeless people. The city of Chicago recently constructed fences on Lower
Wacker Drive, issuing permits to businesses for use of those areas, and thereby permitting the businesses to prevent
homeless people from living there.'" Tucson City Council members proposed looking into a plan to privatize
the sidewalks which would allow business owners to regulate homeless people's access to those areas .'2
In addition, some homeless people were released from jail with travel restrictions, in one case prohibiting
a homeless person from a two square mile area which included social services and voter registration
facilities."
Punishing and criminalizing the homeless is useless, ineffective, and diminish all possibilities of
effective solutions
Maria Foscarinis. 1999. Columbia University. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Out of
Sight-Out of Mind? The Continuing trend toward the criminalization of Homelessness, pg 155-156.
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/geojpovlp6&div=14&size=2&rot=0&type
=image
The adoption of laws and policies that attack homeless people rather than attacking the social and
economic issues at the root of homelessness is an ineffective strategy. The proposed justifications for
criminalizing homelessness fail to address the fact that penalizing people for engaging in activities such as
sleeping in public, sitting on public sidewalks, or begging, will not deter these activities or keep public
places clear of homeless people. People have no alternative place to sleep or sit. and no other means of subsistence.
Imposing punishment on people for something they cannot reasonably avoid is not only futile, it is
inhumane, and illogical. Government policies that attempt to "sweep" homeless people from public areas are quick-fix
measures offered by politicians in response to pressure from a vocal minority of businesses or residents to "do something"
about homelessness. Such actions effectively pit those city residents who are housed against those city residents who are
not. and thus serve to deepen division, encourage hostility, and undercut the possibility of achieving the
political consensus necessary for real solutions.
37
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Criminalization Advantage – AT: Their Dangerous
Homeless are not a threat to public safety, criminalization is unjustified.
Maria Foscarinis et al; A.B. 1977, Barnard College; M.A. 1978, J.D. 1981, Columbia University; 1999 Georgetown
Journal on Poverty Law & Policy6 Geo. J. Poverty Law & Pol'y 145FEATURE: Out of Sight -- Out of Mind?: The
Continuing Trend Toward the Criminalization of Homelessness; Lexis-Nexis
City officials often attempt to characterize restrictions on homeless people's use of public spaces as steps
taken to protect public health and safety -- either of the general public, of homeless persons themselves, or both. A
careful examination, however, reveals that the specific rationales offered to justify restricting homeless
persons' access to public spaces for the sake of public health or safety often prove to be specious . For
example, officials in Palo Alto, California proposed an ordinance that would prohibit sitting or lying down on a public
sidewalk during certain hours because such conduct could distract . . . pedestrians from their need to be alert for potential
tripping or slipping hazards in the sidewalk, to avoid other pedestrians and sidewalk utility poles, fire hydrants . . . and other
obstacles and be prepared to move along the sidewalk and across the street at intersections without interruption. 34
While homeless people's presence may be "unsightly" to some, and an unpleasant reminder of poverty in
our society, in most cases the presence of people sleeping, sitting, or lying down in public places or
peacefully soliciting alms cannot reasonably be deemed a direct threat to public health or safety. Even in
cases where an identified threat may be legitimate, such as the possibility that a particular individual
engaging in truly "aggressive" panhandling may cause fear or intimidation, the laws purportedly
designed to prevent such conduct are frequently overbroad and likely to result in discriminatory
enforcement. 35 Moreover, in many of these situations the behavior is already prohibited by existing criminal laws. 36
Anti-homeless policies are often counterproductive, creating artificial barriers for people on the path
toward self-sufficiency and undermining individual efforts to escape poverty. For example, one homeless man
in Atlanta, a seven-year employee at a restaurant, missed work while he spent seven days in jail for "urban camping" outside
the city's traffic court building. 37
38
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Neoliberalism Advantage Internals
Welfare reform is a neoliberal attempt to structure life around the market
Boyer, Kate ( 2002, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Reform and
Resistance:
A Consideration of Space, Scale
and Strategy in Legal Challenges
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118562122/PDFSTART, P. 4)
to Welfare Reform,
Welfare reform is part of a broader set of social policies that emerged in the 1990s in the US (and
elsewhere) which have sought to restructure social life around ‘‘market rule’’ at the expense of the
Keynesian welfare state: a process referred to as neoliberalism (Brenner and Theodore 2002; Isin 1998; Keil 2002;
MacLeod 2002; Peck 2001). As Brenner and Theodore note, neoliberalism has been marked by ‘‘assaults on
organized labor, the reduction of corporate taxes, the shrinking and/or privatization of public services, the dismantling of
welfare programs, the enhancement of international capital mobility, and the intensification of interlocality competition’’
(Brenner and Theodore 2002:350). Welfare reform can thus be seen as an inter-scalar mechanism connecting
low-income women and their children to a globalized policy regime aimed at dismantling the scope
and effectiveness of the social safety net. For the purposes of prefacing the kinds of legal challenges to welfare
reform I will review shortly, I would like to draw attention to two aspects of this policy: the new administrative scale
through which it operates, and its focus on individual responsibility.
39
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Privatization Bad—Neoliberalism I/L
Exclusionary policies are forms of gentrifying cities while favoring privatized consumerism,
furthering the socioeconomic distinction between rich and poor and even further reducing
homeless quality of life
Joe Doherty Centre for Housing Research, School of Geography and Geosciences,
University of St. Andrews, UK 3/6/08 [“Homelessness and Exclusion: Regulating public space in European Cities”
http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:lvxozcU8CjEJ:www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles5(3)/]
Among the possible explanations, the process of privatisation must figure strongly. The
shift in ‘ownership’ of public space from the local state with ostensible social and communal objectives, to private
ownership with commercial and profit making objectives, lies at the heart of the trend towards restrictive
practices. This process is of course itself but a reflection of wider social developments associated with the emergence of
neo-liberal economic and political programmes in all European countries. 12 Of specific and particular interest here
are the programmes for the regeneration of post-industrial European cities, a regeneration process which is
increasingly driven by a global agenda. Some of this is neatly captured by Pushpa Arabindoo: In order to
advance the position of the city economically … political actors are discovering the need for a symbolic assertion –
images of a place are crucial for attracting capital investment – and public spaces are turning out to be a
crucial ingredient of the new visual repertory that can speak in the name of the city to … potential investors and
transnational actors, as well as raise their international profile. (Arabindoo, 2005:2; emphasis added)
Arabindoo’s reflections bear a striking similarity to the analysis of Neil Smith who argues that the processes of urban
regeneration, so prominent in the cities of Europe and elsewhere, are in effect a generalisation of the
process of gentrification first manifest in the cities of the West during the 1960s. In making these arguments
Smith coins the concept of the ‘revanchist city’ whereby capital is attracted back into the city (following desertion
during an earlier deindustrialisation phase) to take advantage of what he terms a ‘rent-gap’ (the difference between the actual
rent yielded by a location and the potential rent to be had after redevelopment). In re-colonising the city, capital
displaces other incumbent activities and populations including the homeless and other marginal groups
(Smith, 1996 & 2002). Making due allowance for poetic licence in the use of the term ‘revanchist’ and for the problematic
application of a concept developed in the USA to the European context (see for example, Uitermark & Duyvendak, 2005),
Smith’s ideas have resonance and provide the basis for an understanding of the process of public space regulation in Europe
(Meert et al, 2006). He effectively demonstrates that the commodification of space, including public space, is a
pivotal process in the regeneration of urban places under conditions of globalisation . Public spaces are
being replaced, colonised or neglected in favour of the development of privately owned quasi-public
zones where consumption activity is privileged. Privately owned shopping malls and arcades, open only
to those with the power to consume, have replaced interactive public places open to all sections of
society: in this sense ‘commodity commerce’ has replaced ‘social commerce’ (Coleman, 2004). The
commodification of space and the associated processes of border control and discipline have thereby further
consolidated the division between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ in society. 14 The exclusion of
undesirables (including homeless people) from newly privatised public space is directly linked with the
presentation of ‘image’ in a highly competitive environment which pervades the global market place as
well as national, regional and local market places (Belina and Helms, 2003; Macleod, 2002). Coleman (2004:293)
extends this analysis in identifying, in these processes of public space enclosure and exclusion, a ‘social control
strategy’ which seeks ‘to hide the [negative] consequences of neo-liberalisation in creating a particular
ambience and exclusivity regarding ‘public’ spaces’; the proclivity of shoppers to consume is thereby
untroubled by the close juxtaposition of those who do not have the capacity to consume. Zygmunt Bauman
(1998) in his consideration of trends in modern western society draws a distinction between what he calls ‘vagabonds’ and
‘tourists’. Tourists are those who are embedded in society, articulating its values and behaviour norms in being productively
employed and conspicuous consumers. Vagabonds are the opposite, those who are excluded from society in that
40
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Privatization Bad—Neoliberalism I/L
they are neither workers nor (and for Bauman of equal importance) consumers. In our postmodern world of ‘liquid
modernity’ (Bauman, 2000), vagabonds are a redundant population, apparently surplus to the requirements of
functioning capitalism. Such a division is of course too starkly drawn in that the wall dividing vagabonds from tourists is
permeable, with, for example, immigrants as part of the international reserve army of labour recruited to fuel the burgeoning
economies of Europe and elsewhere frequently moving back and forth from one status to another. In the world of European
social policy, Bauman’s vagabonds are the socially excluded and among these homeless people are perhaps
the most socially excluded of all. With the increasing surveillance and regulation of public space a
further domain is added to the exclusionary experiences of the homeless. As a facet of social exclusion,
homelessness has always been more than a bricks and mortar issue; it is a multifaceted problem
involving social relations and personal welfare along side the material conditions of housing
circumstances. The regulation and surveillance of public space, however, further restricts the lifeworlds of
homeless people, squeezing their autonomy of action, impinging on their personal security and
diminishing their claims to dignity and respect.
41
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Privatization Bad—Neoliberalism I/L
Privatization and surveillance reduce access to public space through exclusion
Joe Doherty Centre for Housing Research, School of Geography and Geosciences,
University of St. Andrews, UK 3/6/08 [“Homelessness and Exclusion: Regulating public space in European Cities”
http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:lvxozcU8CjEJ:www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles5(3)/]
A new ‘phase of regulation’ (O’Sullivan, 2006; Body-Gendrot, 2000) of public space emerged with the shift from the
‘planned’ city to the ‘entrepreneurial’ city (Hall, 2002) - or to what others have labelled the ‘post industrial’ city - during the
last quarter of the 20 th century. The re-designation or re-defining (Sahlin, 2006) of ‘public’ space as ‘private’ or
‘semi-private’ or ‘quasi-public’ can be seen as part of a more general privatisation of the public realm .
The present phase of regulation is characterized to an unprecedented degree by surveillance effected through the
use of monitoring devices such as CCTV as well as by the patrolling of demarcated borders by security personnel
designed to deter access by unwanted ‘others’ (Graham and Marvin, 2001).
Control over access is also accomplished by the disciplining of behaviour; that is , access is assured only to those who
engage in permitted behaviours which, increasingly, are associated with consumption activities. The use of
national legislation and local by-laws figure strongly but unevenly in this process. The intensity with which these
controls on access to public space are exercised varies significantly from place to place. As McCahill (2002: 200) observes,
the way ‘new surveillance technologies’, ‘new modes of governance’ and ‘exclusionary practices’ are applied in practice
‘depends upon how they fit in with existing social relations, political practices and cultural traditions in different locales and
institutional settings.’
Quasi-Public spaces exclude homeless, denying them the ability to carry out quotidian functions
and have adequate housing
Joe Doherty Centre for Housing Research, School of Geography and Geosciences,
University of St. Andrews, UK 3/6/08 [“Homelessness and Exclusion: Regulating public space in European Cities”
http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:lvxozcU8CjEJ:www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles5(3)/]
The empirical focus of this paper is on what Meert et al (2006), following Carmona et al
(2003), call quasi-public spaces; that is spaces ‘that are legally private but are a part of the public domain,
such as shopping malls, campuses, sports grounds and … privatised transport facilities’ (p.3). Many of the
trends apparent in quasi-public spaces are, however, also apparent in what Meert and his colleagues label ‘external public
spaces’ - squares, streets and parks. Quasi-public spaces though privately owned are theoretically accessible to all.
While everyone supposedly has the right of admittance, access can be and is denied when a person is judged to
have violated specific ‘rules and regulations’ relating to actual or suspect behaviours . The recent significant
increase in the number of quasi-public spaces in the cities of Europe has had - as Jeremy Waldron (1993), among others
(e.g. Mitchell, 2003; Bromley, 2006), has argued - important implications for homeless people. Human beings, as
embodied entities, need a private and secure location in which to carry out necessary and quotidian
functions such as sleeping, washing, reproducing and socialising. In advanced industrial democracies,
such a location is typically secured by access to housing. Homeless people by definition are unable to access
adequate housing of their own, and societal property rules forbid access (without permission) to the private
property (houses) of others. The alternative location for homeless people, 3 for human functioning, is
public space (broadly defined).
42
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
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Privatization Bad—Neoliberalism I/L
Attempts at restricting access to public areas are intentional discriminatory practices used to
exclude “unproductive” individuals from membership in political communities.
Joe Doherty Centre for Housing Research, School of Geography and Geosciences,
University of St. Andrews, UK 3/6/08 [“Homelessness and Exclusion: Regulating public space in European Cities”
http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:lvxozcU8CjEJ:www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles5(3)/]
‘Deterrence by design’ is a common strategy increasingly employed throughout European cities.
The use of fencing to
restrict access to delimited spaces, the locking of park gates and the installation of secure door entry
systems to debar entrance to apartment block staircases and communal areas are recorded as common
occurrences in most European countries (for example see Korhonen (2006) on Finland and Karpuskiene (2006) on
Lithuania). Sahlin cites the example of a former open space in Gothenburg which was transformed from a public space with
multiple functions including respite for homeless people, into a privatised café space with access limited to café patrons. (See
also Damon, 2007, on similar developments in France). These interventions, though pervasive, are however relatively
low key compared to more extreme measures, such as ‘hot-washing’ and ‘de-canning’ employed in parts
of urban America. Deterrence techniques in Europe for the most part take on a rather softer character. Yet, there is
substantial European evidence of intermittent aggressive and violent behavior towards marginal populations including the
homeless (see Farrona’s 2007 account of the situation in Spain). In both Sweden and Germany, for instance, such
interventions include the uplifting and removal of homeless people from central city locations and their dumping on city
peripheries (Verbringungsgewahrsam in Germany); while in Italy the violent expulsion of homeless from the railway station
at Naples by private security personnel is on record. In this context Tosi and Petrillo (2006) raise concerns about the attitudes
and behaviour of private security agents (a little developed phenomenon in Italy) since they seem to be prone to more
aggressive behaviour towards marginal groups than the local and state police. A recent evaluation of the criminalisation of
homeless people in Rotterdam records similar developments in that city (Zuidam and Pols, 2007). As the control
measures designed to exclude ‘undesirable’ populations form public space in European cities take hold, the
spaces and places of traditional occupancy by Europe’s homeless become increasingly restricted and delimited,
imposing further hardship on an already disadvantaged group. It is a somewhat flawed argument that as
some public spaces close up others, such as derelict areas of former industrial sites and military
installations, become available. In conditions of economic growth and expansion such ‘redundant’ areas rarely
remain vacant for long, being converted into parks and office locations which are subject to discipline
and border control in the same way as older sites. Even those areas that do not immediately undergo
renovation are commonly fenced and subject to electronic surveillance and security patrols to ‘preserve’
them in anticipation of future commercialisation. The installation of ‘surveillance architecture’ (Monahan,
2006b) - what Davis calls the ‘conscious hardening of the city surface’ - is designed to make public facilities and
space as ‘unliveable’ as possible for the poor and homeless lest ‘the persistence of street people in the
vicinity of newly renovated shopping centres and refurbished transport nodes betrays the laboriously
constructed image of urban renaissance’ (Davis, 1990:232)
43
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Neoliberalism Bad Impacts
Neoliberalism is the most dangerous ideology – seeks to kill freedom and democracy
Giroux, Professor at Pennsylvania State University, 2002, [Henry, Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the
Promise of Higher Education: The University as a Democratic Public Sphere, Harvard Educational Review,
http://her.hepg.org/content/0515nr62324n71p1/fulltext.pdf]
As media theorists Edward Herman and Robert McChesney observe, such noncommodified public spheres have played an
invaluable role historically "as places and forums where issues of importance to a political community are discussed and
debated, and where information is presented that is essential to citizen participation in community life."9 Without these
critical public spheres, corporate power often goes unchecked and politics becomes dull, cynical, and
oppressive.10 But more importantly, in the absence of such public spheres it becomes more difficult for citizens to
challenge the neoliberal myth that citizens are merely consumers and that "wholly unregulated markets are the sole means by
which we can produce and distribute everything we care about, from durable goods to spiritual values, from capital
development to social justice, from profitability to sustainable environments, from private wealth to essential commonweal."12 As democratic values give way to commercial values, intellectual ambitions are often reduced to
an instrument of the entrepreneurial self and social visions are dismissed as hopelessly out of date .13
Public space is portrayed exclusively as an investment opportunity, and the public good increasingly
becomes a metaphor for public disorder. That is, any notion of die public — for example, public
schools, public transportation, or public parks — becomes synonymous with disrepair, danger,
and risk. Within this discourse, anyone who does not believe that rapacious capitalism is the only road to freedom [and the
good life is dismissed as a crank. Hence, it is not surprising that Joseph Kahn, writing in the New York Times, argues without
irony, 'These days, it seems, only wild-eyed anarchists and Third World dictators believe capitalism is not die
high road to a better life."14 Neoliberalism has become the most dangerous ideology of the current
historical moment.15 It assaults all things public, mystifies the basic contradiction between democratic
values and market fundamentalism, and weakens any viable notion of political agency by offering no
language capable of connecting private considerations to public issues. Similarly, as Jean and John Comaroff,
distinguished professors of anthropology at die University of Chicago, point out in "Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on
a Second Coming," neoliberalism works to "displace political sovereignty with the sovereignty of the
market,' as if the latter had a mind and morality of its own."16 Under the rule of neoliberalism, politics
are market driven and the claims of democratic citizenship are subordinated to market values.
What becomes troubling under such circumstances is not simply that ideas associated with freedom and
agency are defined through the prevailing ideology and principles of the market, but that neoliberalism
wraps itself in what appears to be an unassailable appeal to common sense. As Zygmunt Bauman notes, "What
. . . makes the neo-liberal world-view sharply different from other ideologies — indeed, a phenomenon of
a separate class — is precisely the absence of questioning; its surrender to what is seen as the implacable
and irreversible logic of social reality."17 Also lost is the very viability of politics itself.
44
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Neoliberalism Bad Impact
Neoliberalism is the most dangerous ideology as it seeks to kill freedom and political sovereignty.
Giroux, Professor at Pennsylvania State University, 2002, [Henry, Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the
Promise of Higher Education: The University as a Democratic Public Sphere, Harvard Educational Review,
http://her.hepg.org/content/0515nr62324n71p1/fulltext.pdf]
As media theorists Edward Herman and Robert McChesney observe, such noncommodified public spheres have played an
invaluable role historically "as places and forums where issues of importance to a political community are
discussed and debated, and where information is presented that is essential to citizen participation in
community life."9 Without these critical public spheres, corporate power often goes unchecked and
politics becomes dull, cynical, and oppressive.10 But more importantly, in the absence of such public spheres it
becomes more difficult for citizens to challenge the neoliberal myth that citizens are merely consumers and that "wholly
unregulated markets are the sole means by which we can produce and distribute everything we care about, from durable
goods to spiritual values, from capital development to social justice, from profitability to sustainable environments, from
private wealth to essential commonweal."12 As democratic values give way to commercial values, intellectual
ambitions are often reduced to an instrument of the entrepreneurial self and social visions are dismissed
as hopelessly out of date.13 Public space is portrayed exclusively as an investment opportunity, and the
public good increasingly becomes a metaphor for public disorder. That is, any notion of die public —
for example, public schools, public transportation, or public parks — becomes synonymous with
disrepair, danger, and risk. Within this discourse, anyone who does not believe that rapacious capitalism is the only road
to freedom [and the good life is dismissed as a crank. Hence, it is not surprising that Joseph Kahn, writing in the New York
Times, argues without irony, 'These days, it seems, only wild-eyed anarchists and Third World dictators believe
capitalism is not die high road to a better life."14 Neoliberalism has become the most dangerous
ideology of the current historical moment.15 It assaults all things public, mystifies the basic contradiction between
democratic values and market fundamentalism, and weakens any viable notion of political agency by offering no language
capable of connecting private considerations to public issues. Similarly, as Jean and John Comaroff, distinguished professors
of anthropology at die University of Chicago, point out in "Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming,"
neoliberalism works to "displace political sovereignty with the sovereignty of the market,' as if the latter
had a mind and morality of its own."16 Under the rule of neoliberalism, politics are market driven and the
claims of democratic citizenship are subordinated to market values. What becomes troubling under such
circumstances is not simply that ideas associated with freedom and agency are defined through the
prevailing ideology and principles of the market, but that neoliberalism wraps itself in what appears to
be an unassailable appeal to common sense. As Zygmunt Bauman notes, "What . . . makes the neo-liberal worldview sharply different from other ideologies — indeed, a phenomenon of a separate class — is precisely
the absence of questioning; its surrender to what is seen as the implacable and irreversible logic of social
reality."17 Also lost is the very viability of politics itself.
45
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Neoliberalism Bad Impact
Neoliberalism spells the death of politics as we know it in its quest for a privatized corporate
society.
Giroux, Professor at Pennsylvania State University, 2002, [Henry, Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the
Promise of Higher Education: The University as a Democratic Public Sphere, Harvard Educational Review,
http://her.hepg.org/content/0515nr62324n71p1/fulltext.pdf]
As the Comaroffs observe, "There is a strong argument to be made that neoliberal capitalism
in its
millennial moment portends the death of politics by hiding its own ideological underpinnings in the
dictates of economic efficiency."18 Defined as the paragon of all social relations by Friedrich von Hayek, Milton
Friedman, Robert Nozick, Francis Fukuyama, and other market fundamentalists, neoliberalism attempts to eliminate an
engaged critique about its most basic principles and social consequences by embracing the "market as the arbiter of social
destiny."19 In this instance, neoliberalism empties the public treasury, hollows out public services, and limits
the vocabulary and imagery available to recognize noncommercialized public space, antidemocratic
forms of power, and narrow models of individual agency. It also undermines the translating functions of any
viable democracy by undercutting the ability of individuals to engage in the continuous translation between public
considerations and the private interests by collapsing the public into the realm of the private. As Bauman observes, "It is no
longer true that the 'public* is set on colonizing the 'private.' The opposite is the case: it is the private that colonizes the
public space, squeezing out and chasing away everything which cannot be fully, without residue, translated into the
vocabulary of private interests and pursuits."20 Divested of its political possibilities and social underpinnings, freedom finds
few opportunities for translating private worries into public concerns or individual discontent into collective struggle. 21
Within neoliberalism's market-driven discourse, corporate culture becomes both the model for the good
life and the paradigmatic sphere for defining individual success and fulfillment. I use the term corporate
culture to refer to an ensemble of ideological and institutional forces that functions politically and pedagogically both to
govern organizational life through senior managerial control and to fashion compliant workers, depoliticized consumers, and
passive citizens.22 Within the language and images of corporate culture, citizenship is portrayed as an utterly
privatized affair whose aim is to produce competitive self-interested individuals wing for their own material and ideological gain.29 Reformulating social issues as strictly private concerns, corporate culture
functions largely to either cancel out or devalue social, class-specific, and racial injustices of the existing
social order by absorbing the democratic impulses and practices of civil society within narrow economic
relations. Corporate culture becomes an all-encompassing horizon for producing market identities,
values, and practices. The good life, in this discourse, "isconstrued in terms of our identities as consumers —we are what
we buy."24 The good life now means firing inside the world of corporate
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Neoliberalism Bad Impact
Neoliberalism makes democracy into a corporate state in which racial justice and ethics are put on
the back burner.
Giroux, Political Theorist, and Professor, 2005, [Henry, The Terror of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of
Cultural Politics, pg 8-9, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/college_literature/v032/32.1giroux.html]
With its debased belief that profit-making is the essence of democracy, and its definition of citizenship
as an energized plunge into consumerism, neoliberalism eliminates government regulation of market
forces, celebrates a ruthless competitive individualism, and places the commanding political, cultural,
and economic institutions of society in the hands of powerful corporate interests, the privileged, and
unrepentant religious bigots (Peters and Fitzsimons 2001). Neoliberal global policies also further the broader cultural
project of privatizing social services through appeals to "personal responsibility as the proper functions of the state are
narrowed, tax and wage costs in the economy are cut, and more social costs are absorbed by civil society and the family"
(Duggan 2003, 16). As I have mentioned, though it is worth repeating, the hard currency of human suffering
permeates the social order as health-care costs rise, one out of five children fall beneath the poverty line,
and 43 million Americans bear the burden of lacking any health insurance. As part of this larger cultural
project fashioned under the sovereignty of neoliberalism, human misery is largely defined as a function
of personal choices and human misfortune is viewed as the basis for criminalizing social problems.
Misbehaving children are now put in handcuffs and taken to police stations for violating dress codes. Mothers who test
positive for drugs in hospitals run the risk of having their children taken away by the police. Young, poor, black men who
lack employment are targeted by the criminal justice system and, instead of being educated or trained for a job, often end up
in jail. In fact, a report by United for a Fair Economy states that "One of out three Black males born in 2001 will be
imprisoned at some point in their lifetime if current trends continue [and that] in 2000, there were at least 13 states in which
there were more African-American men in prison than in college" (Muhammad, et. al. 2004, 20-21). Once released from
prison, these young people are consigned to a civic purgatory in which they are "denied the right to vote, parental rights,
drivers' licenses, student loans, and residency in public housing—the only housing that marginal, jobless people can afford"
(Staples 2004, 7). As stipulated in the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, if convicted on a single drug felony, these youth when
released are further punished by a lifetime ban on food stamps and welfare eligibility. Such policies are not only
unjust and morally reprehensible, they are symptomatic of a society that has relegated matters of
equality and racial justice to the back burner of social concerns. In a market society caught up in "the
greed cycle" (Cassidy 2002), addressing persistent injustices gets in the way of accumulating capital and
the neoliberal and neoconservative revolution aimed at transforming democracy into a one party,
corporate state.
Neoliberalism Creates a World where race and ethics do not matter, and the media exploits the
poor.
Giroux, Political Theorist, and Professor, 2005, [Henry, The Terror of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of
Cultural Politics, pg 8-9, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/college_literature/v032/32.1giroux.html]
Within the discourse of neoliberalism, democracy becomes synonymous with free markets, while issues
of equality, racial justice, and freedom are stripped of any substantive meaning and used to disparage
those who suffer systemic deprivation and chronic punishment. Individual misfortune, like democracy itself, is
now viewed as either excessive or in need of radical containment. The media, largely consolidated through
corporate power, routinely provide a platform for high profile right-wing pundits and politicians to
remind us either of how degenerate the poor have become or to reinforce the central neoliberal tenet that
all problems are private rather than social in nature. Conservative columnist Ann Coulter captures the latter
sentiment with her comment that "Instead of poor people with hope and possibility, we now have a permanent underclass of
aspiring criminals knifing one another between having illegitimate children and collecting welfare checks" (qtd. in Bean
2003, para.3). Radio talk show host Michael Savage, too, exemplifies the unabashed racism and fanaticism that
emerge under a neoliberal regime in which ethics and justice appear beside the point. For instance,
Savage routinely refers to non-white countries as "turd world nations," homosexuality as a "perversion" and young children
who are victims of gunfire as "ghetto slime" (qtd. in Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting 2003, para.2, 6, 5)
47
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Neoliberalism Bad Impact
Neoliberalism is one of the most dangerous ideologies, as it globalizes our society, putting
democracy on the back burner.
Giroux, political theorist and professor, 2008, [Henry, Challenging Neoliberalism's New World Order: The Promise
of Critical Pedagogy, pg 3, http://ciillibrary.org:8000/ciil/Fulltext/Cultural_Studies_Critical_Methodologies%20/2006/Vol_6_1_2006/Article_2.pdf
Neoliberalism has become one of the most pervasive and dangerous ideologies of the twenty-first
century. Its pervasiveness is evident not only by its unparalleled influence on the global economy but also in
its power to redefine the very nature of politics and sociality. Free market fundamentalism rather than
democratic idealism is now the driving force of economics and politics in most of the world. Its logic,
moreover, has insinuated itself into every social relationship, such that the specificity of relations between parents and children, doctors and patients,
teachers and students has been reduced to that of supplier and customer. It is a market ideology driven not just by profits but also by an ability to reproduce
Wedded to
the belief that the market should be the organizing principle for all political, social, and economic
decisions, neoliberalism wages an incessant attack on democracy, public goods, the welfare state, and
noncom-modified values. Under neoliberalism, everything is either for sale or is plundered for profit:
Public lands are looted by logging companies and corporate ranchers; politicians willingly hand the
public's airwaves over to powerful broadcasters and large corporate interests without a dime going into
the public trust; the environment is polluted and despoiled in the name of profit-making just as the
government passes legislation to make it easier for corporations to do so; what public services have survived
itself with such success that, to paraphrase Fred Jameson, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of neoliberal capitalism.
the Reagan-Bush era are gutted to lower the taxes of major corporations (or line their pockets through no-bid contracts, as in
the infamous case of Halliburton); schools more closely resemble either jails or high-end shopping malls, depending on their
clientele, and teachers are forced to get revenue for their school by hawking everything from hamburgers to pizza parties.
Neoliberalism diminishes democracy, while promoting cultural chauvinism and xenophonia
Giroux, political theorist and professor, 2008, [Henry, Challenging Neoliberalism's New World Order: The Promise
of Critical Pedagogy, pg 3, http://ciillibrary.org:8000/ciil/Fulltext/Cultural_Studies_Critical_Methodologies%20/2006/Vol_6_1_2006/Article_2.pdf
The liberal democratic lexicon of rights, entitlements, social provisions, community, social responsibility, living wage, job security, equality, and justice
seem oddly out of place in a country where the promise of democracy—and the institutions necessary for its survival over generations—have been gutted,
As corporate culture extends even
deeper into the basic institutions of civil and political society, buttressed daily by a culture industry in
the hands of a few media giants, free market ideology is reinforced even further by the pervasive fear
and insecurity of the public, who have little accessibility to countervailing ideas and believe that the
future holds nothing beyond a watered-down version of the present. As the prevailing discourse of
neoliberalism seizes the public imagination, there is no vocabulary for progressive social change,
democratically inspired visions, critical notions of social agency, or the kinds of institutions that expand
the meaning and purpose of democratic public life. In the vacuum left by diminishing democracy, a new
kind of authoritarianism steeped in religious zealotry, cultural chauvinism, xenophobia, and racism has
become the dominant trope of neoconservatives and other extremist groups eager to take advantage of
the growing insecurity, fear, and anxiety that result from increased joblessness, the war on terror, and the
unraveling of communities. As a result of the consolidated corporate attack on public life, the maintenance of democratic public spheres from
which to launch a moral vision or to engage in a viable struggle over institutions and political vision loses all credibility—as well as monetary support. As
the alleged wisdom and common sense of neoliberal ideology remains largely unchallenged within
dominant pseudo-public spheres, individual critique and collective political struggles become more
difficult.1 Dominated by extremists, the Bush administration is driven by an arrogance of power and inflated sense of moral righteousness mediated
replaced by casino capitalism, a winner-take-all philosophy suited to lotto players and day traders alike.
largely by a show of certitude and never ending posture of triumphal-ism. As George Soros (2004) points out, this rigid ideology driven by missionary zeal
"because we are stronger than others, we must know better and we must
have right on our side. This is where religious fundamentalism comes together with market
fundamentalism to form the ideology of American supremacy" (p. 1).
allows the Bush administration to believe that
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***Socialization Advantage***
49
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Regents Lab
Socialization Advantage Internal // AT– Housing Assistance CPs
Focus on housing assistance = inclusive exclusion***
Sanford Schram 2006 (Review Essay: Homelessness in the Ownership Society: An Inclusive Exclusion
http://ptx.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/34/1/132.pdf Teaches social theory and social policy in the Graduate School of
Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College P.132 )
Feldman uses Agamben, Hannah Arendt, William Connolly, and other theorists to rethink public discourse about
the homeless. He thoughtfully suggests that Agamben is too quick to move from specific figures, like the homeless
person, to the claim that contemporary politics is nothing but a politics of bare life. Feldman agrees with Arendt (and, I would
add, Agamben) that the “soft love” of humanitarian charity reinscribes the idea that one lacks the “right to have rights,” but
he resists Arendt’s banishment of household concerns from the polis. With Agamben, Feldman views this exclusion of
household concerns as a constitutive exclusion, which makes the public sphere the artificially bounded
space that it is. But Feldman goes further, making fine use of William Connolly’s call for an “agonistic democracy” and
an “ethic of critical responsiveness” that promotes more pluralized notions of
responsiveness is deftly applied to Arendt: The problem is not that we have
citizenship. Feldman’s own critical
weighed down the public sphere
with the dreary domestic concerns of bare life; instead, it is that the public discourse of “home
ownership” functions to restrict citizenship to those with a certain economic status. First-class
citizenship, with rights to entitlement, is increasingly contingent upon owning a home. Home
ownership becomes the primary way to demonstrate one’s deservingness as a self-sufficient, selfregulating, disciplined self.
Feldman goes on to show how the discourse of home ownership becomes complicit in producing
homelessness. As more policy effort is directed at home ownership, less is directed at assisting
those who cannot own their own home and even less is directed at those who cannot manage living
in a conventional home, regardless of whether it is rented or owned . Increasingly rigid notions of who is a
citizen and what is home conspire to marginalize the homeless as undeserving . On one hand,
household discourse today reinscribes the homeless as second-class citizens; on the other hand,
household discourse reduces the extent to which we actually do something to help the homeless.
The ownership society risks intensifying Agamben’s “inclusive exclusion,” which includes the
marginalized in the public sphere but in ways that reinforce their subordination.
50
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Socialization Advantage– Language Shapes Reality
Language shapes how we think about and act towards homelessness – creates power relationships
that can reinscribe or challenge power relations
Daly, Gerald. Professor in the faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Canada. He has worked with
housing agencies and non-profit groups and has published widely on housing, homelessness and comparative
planning. Author of Homeless: Policies, strategies and Lives on the Streets. 1996.. Pg 9.
Another thread woven throughout discourse on homelessness is the use of language and the ways in which
words, concepts, values, and beliefs shape our behavior and our views of others. By exercising our
power to name, we construct a social phenomenon, homelessness, the criteria used to define it, and a
stereotype of the people to whom it refers.
Language, as used here, is broadly construed. It includes media images, sound bites, and defamatory rhetoric, as
well as policies and programs which convey mainstream society's messages of power, influence, and
authority. These messages, which raise a number of ethical dilemmas, can become tools of manipulation.
Homeless individuals may be silenced by such power relationships, control mechanisms, and by
messages contained in popular media. Language is instrumental in how we construct reality. Certain
keywords have meanings, express values, and proclaim ideological positions such that they are
inextricably linked with the problems which they are used to discuss. Language is political. It is
revealing of how we look at social, economic, and political issues; and the ways we use language serve
to define relations of power.
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Socialization Advantage —Homeless are Bare Life
Homeless are the embodiment of bare life—the state keeps them in the position of being less than
‘citizens’ while subjecting them to normative social law
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 18-19)
because naked life is represented by whole groups of people, such as the poor (and refugees, and the
homeless), modem states seek political solutions to recover the fiction of "the people" as a unity, of bare life as
fully morphed into the citizen. Policies of exclusion and containment in relation (of the homeless are one
example of this process. Not only does the state (through laws and institutions of governance) carve out a
second class political status for homeless persons, but citizenship as full membership is constituted as
the exclusion of bare life, and homeless persons figure in legal and political discourse as the embodiments of
that bare life. In other words, the political exclusion of homeless persons is a constitutive exclusion. As a result,
But
one must be wary of thinking of homelessness as a problem that states and citizens stumble upon. One must be wary of
viewing the state, law, and the sphere of citizenship as somehow superstructural with respect to the problem of homelessness.
Abjection, ambivalence, social anxiety—none of these can fully explain the dualities of homeless representations and
policy responses. All of them treat homelessness as a problem of society rather than a problem of sovereign
state power. Agamben's account of the sovereign ban on bare life helps make sense of the peculiar polarities of the
homeless and homelessness in media representations and public policy. It is as they are held in the sovereign ban that
homeless persons appear as free and unfree, as sacred and profane. And it is as subjects of the ban on bare life that
homeless persons are subject to the various inclusive exclusions (public sleeping bans, stigmatizing
shelters) that constitute the typical range of policy responses to homelessness in contemporary urban America.
The dualities of homelessness—sacred or profane, unconstrained or helpless and the attendant policy responses are the
dualities of an inclusive exclusion and the fundamental ambivalence surrounding it.
52
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Socialization Advantage —Homeless are Bare Life
Only acceptance of the homeless as citizens the way they are allows an escape from bare life
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 21)
Agamben dismisses rhetorics of citizenship as being simply nostalgic when confronted by the modern saturation of bare life,
but his dismissal is too hasty. As saints and outlaws, as the emblems of the freedom of the open road and as the
signifiers of total helplessness and compulsion, the one thing that the homeless are not (recognized as) is
citizens. It is citizenship as a protective artifice (as Hannah Arendt puts it) that helps to overcome the bare life
reduction, and it is an ethic of robust pluralism that can promote the extension of this protective artifice to those most in need
of it. I take my cue from Arendt, whose Origins of Totalitarianism Agamben cites approvingly. In this text, Arendt displays a
keen concern for the predicament of people who were reduced to bare life—refugees whose predicament lay in
their status as abstract humanity, as being "nothing more than human," and subject to "humanitarian"
concern that looked suspiciously like the response of organizations dedicated to fighting cruelty of animals.
Arendt's response involves the articulation of "a right to have rights," and this right is not grounded in the
bare life rescued by humanitarianism but is emergent in political action.64 That the "right to have rights" might be
emergent in political action and not grounded in the image of a bare, sacred life indicates a way out of the bare-life
predicament: nurturing forms of political action that trouble and contest the citizenship/ bare life
opposition. In the context of homeless politics I propose as a response to the bare-life predicament as defense
of a pluralized citizenship that (a) recognizes the dangers of a strict separation between bare life and the
political (a distinction that must be endlessly maintained with violence), •(b) does not as a result give up on
traditional categories but instead (c) nurtures political practices that run across the distinction between
bare life and the political, refusing the isolation of bare life and reinvigorating democratic politics.
53
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Regents Lab
Socialization Advantage —Homeless are Bare Life
Homeless are trapped in the cycle of bare life—either they are entirely excluded from society, or
posses just enough agency to be responsible for their status and punished
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 68-69)
In the Love opinion, the liberal model of public and private agency is applied to the homeless, who are described as making
presumptively private "lifestyle" choices—agentic acts falling within the domain of personal autonomy. But the "choice"
to live one's life entirely in public space turns private voluntary acts into matters falling under public
jurisdiction: if excessive property accumulation by the homeless is potentially harmful to others, it becomes a public health
concern. The liberal model of privacy (as the jurisdiction of individual choice) is applied to the homeless
while the classical model of privacy that is its precondition (the private sphere as institutional domain
'housing' bare life) forms the invisible substratum that enables the conversion of homeless lifestyle
choices into abject, deviant outlaw behavior. So the homeless are granted the status of the private
individual as chooser, but by "choosing to live on city property rent-free" they are seen as threatening
the public-as-victirn.23 Yet the lack of a private space makes the homeless person's agency by definition a
matter of public concern. Rather than acknowledging that the lack of a space of withdrawal makes the liberal model of
public and private agency unworkable in the case of homelessness, the court sticks to the liberal model as if it had no
spatial prerequisites, thereby turning the homeless into responsible, criminal, outlaw choosers and
accumulators. If homelessness is a condition of freedom, a lifestyle choice, but the legitimate exercise of
this private agency extends no further than the most minimal possessions that maintain biological life,
then the freedom of the homeless lifestyle chooser is profane freedom: the freedom of bare life that is already
caught within the sovereign ban. To choose homelessness within the liberal model of public and private is to choose
to approach the vanishing point of possessive individualism. In the Love court's despatialized approach to public
and private, the homeless are caught in a trap: private individuals without private spaces making "lifestyle choices" that
create public harms. To "choose homelessness" is to choose to renounce the enabling structures that render
(private) choices legally recognizable in the first place. The very existence of homeless persons is
legally suspect, and whatever personal property the homeless have is, in a sense, always already trash, to be
confiscated.24 So, although the Love court attributes agency to the homeless as lifestyle choosers, it turns this choice into the
choice of outlawed bare life: the only way for the homeless to remain secure in themselves and in their
possessions is to limit their extension into the world to an absolute bare minimum . In the reasoning of the
opinion the homeless, by choosing to live in public space, have chosen a life full of risks, including the risk that the public
authority will confiscate their property. The homeless have chosen to be outlaws and as such—rhetorics of
voluntarism and lifestyle notwithstanding—are caught within the sovereign ban and its reduction of the citizen
to bare life. So the choice to live in public is the choice to have the bare minimum of personal property
necessary for survival— the choice to possess only a sleeping bag and several blankets. The choice to be homeless, if it
is to remain recognized as legitimately private and not entering the domain of public authority (by harming
the public), is the choice to limit one's spatial extension into the world to the absolute bare minimum.
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Regents Lab
Socialization Advantage —Excluded from Public Space
Development of the privatized public sphere owned by the consuming citizens act as hubs of
purification for the government to regulate the homeless into spaces outside society
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 37-38)
From a Foucauldian perspective, Nikolas Rose's picture of "advanced liberal" societies in his Powers of Freedom places
consumption at the heart of the project of governance. Whereas the governance of conduct once occurred primarily through
bureaucracies and expert interventions into the held of the social, neoliberal reforms, the rollback of the welfare state and the
extension of market logics have led to new forms of advanced liberal governance: "Individuals are now to be linked into
a society through acts of socially sanctioned consumption and responsible choice, through the shaping of
a lifestyle according to grammars of living that are widely disseminated yet do not depend upon political
calculations and strategies for their rationales or their techniques." In Baudrillard's view, aids to consumption, such as
credit and the ideology of consumptive pleasure, are the most recent disciplinary mechanisms of
capitalism, "the equivalent and the extension, in the twentieth century, of the great indoctrination of rural populations into
industrial labor which occurred throughout the nineteenth century."30 In Rose's view, consumptive technologies have
more recently come to a regulatory void created by the rollback of the social state. As individuals center
their identities on an ideology of choice, the need for governmental projects of normalization is less
acute, at least for the mainstream public of consuming and desiring selves: "As these mechanisms of
regulation through desire, consumption and the market . . . come to extend their sway over larger and
larger sectors of the population, earlier bureaucratic and governmental mechanisms of self-formation
and self regulation begin to be dismantled and refocused upon marginalized individuals who through ill
will, incompetence, or misfortune arc outside these webs for 'consuming civility."' Rose points, then, to a
bifurcation in governance strategies and projects: r egulation through consumption and desire "in the name of
identity and lifestyle" for most of us, and a focusing of explicitly political, state-sponsored regulatory
regimes on the marginal, dispossessed, otherized populations.31 These strategies arc realized in particular
kinds of spaces, spaces that perfectly dramatize the bifurcation in social control strategies that Rose discusses.
Postindustrial redevelopment of urban public spaces is centered on consumptive and leisure activities,
and many critics note that the result is "pseudo-public space" or "privatized public space." Shopping
malls that seek to evoke the ambiance of the agora while maintaining sharp restrictions on expression
and assembly, privately owned plazas and parks constructed adjacent to office towers in exchange for "increased density
allowances" from city zoners, the transformation of airports and train stations into spaces of shopping and entertainment,
business improvement districts that create forms of private governance and fund private security guards to keep tourists and
shoppers secure and homeless street dwellers in perpetual movement 32—all of these developments, alongside the
public-space ordinances discussed below, help constitute what Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt call the
"privately owned public sphere, in which 'the public' is defined as a mass of consumers and spectators."33
This consumptive public sphere is the space in which consumer identities arc formed and at the same
time the space where intensified police powers are deployed against excluded others, such as the
homeless. These developments, writes Susan Bickford, "work not simply to privatize formerly public
spaces, but to purify both public and private space—especially to purify them of fear, discomfort, or
uncertainty."34
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Socialization Advantage —Excluded from Public Space
Absence of protected private sphere or ‘home’ makes homeless addressless to society as anything
but threats to the proper citizens
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 90-91)
Not only do the causes of homelessness appear to many scholars to be economic, but the resulting injustices would appear to
be socioeconomic. The homeless do not generally suffer from exploitation. Nevertheless, homelessness as a condition
is marked by economic marginalization and the deprivation of certain essential goods: shelter, privacy, warmth,
withdrawal and a protected domestic space for the performance of such life sustaining bodily functions as
eating, sleeping, and defecating, a space within which one is granted the (socially recognized and enforced}
right to exclude others—in short, the multitude of basic and not-so-basic goods sustained collectively under
the signifier and institution "home."22 I argue, however, that the homeless, deprived of basic and essential goods and
subject to economic marginalization, also face misrecognition through stigmatization and invisibility. The extent
to which homelessness is an injustice of both distribution and recognition is manifest strikingly in the
double meaning attached to the word "address," which indicates both a spatial location and a mode of
intersubjective recognition. To have an address means to have a place of residence, and to be addressed means to be spoken
to, recognized as a human subject in dialogue. To be homeless is to risk being addressless in both senses .
First, it is to lack a socially recognized and legally protected place in the world from which one has the
right to exclude others. Second, in media discourse, in legal discourse, and in encounters on the street, the homeless
are often simply not addressed but ignored, treated as objects blocking the free movement of the proper
public citizen, denied identification in media reports.
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Socialization Advantage —Protection vs. the Other
Controlling ‘public’ spaces through anti-homeless ordinances lets citizens feel secure in the face of
the other
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 3-4)
Scholars of homelessness investigating this turn to punitive policies have dug beneath the concepts of compassion and
compassion fatigue that circulate in media discourses in order to understand the broader ideological and cultural significance
of the new punitive approach. Commentators have noted the ways in which a proprietary and exclusionary
conception of public space is reflected in and constituted by anti-homeless ordinances and the more general
war against the homeless of which they are a part.10 An ideology of public space as "owned" by a
normatively enshrined "we" of home dwelling citizens is both cause and effect of the punitive homeless
policies, which, these scholars note, beyond simply targeting the problem of homelessness or street disorder,
become part of a broader pattern of hegemonic identity constitution. This scholarship is valuable in rejecting the
instrumentalist view of homelessness as a discrete social problem to be solved by a public that happens upon it. Studies in
geography,'1 sociology,12 culture,13 political communication,14 and architecture,15 have developed a dialectical and
constitutive approach to the phenomenon of "homelessness." Rather than seeing it as an isolated problem to be solved by the
public and a positive fact to be explained by the researcher, they investigate the complex, co-constitutive relationship
between culturally contingent categories of "homeless," and "housed," between "street person" and "public citizen." For
instance, April Veness argues that homelessness cannot he seen only as an economic or psychological
problem to be solved "by corrections in the distribution of resources or moral fortitude.” Rather, confronting
homelessness requires "a detailed analysis of the cultural context of home as promulgated by middle of the
road policy makers and middle class reformers."10 Some of this work develops poststructuralist insights concerning the
role of a constitutive antagonism in structuring social relations.17 As Samira Kjvvash puts it, "The aim of the vengeful
homeless policies of the last decade is not limited to the immediate goal of solving the problem of homelessness by
eliminating the homeless. This "war on the homeless” must also be seen as a mechanism for constituting
and securing a public, establishing the boundaries of inclusion, and producing an abject body against
which the proper, public body of the citizen can stand. The picture of homeless politics that emerges
reveals a complex and dialectical process involving culturally contingent understandings of home and
homelessness, postindustrial redevelopment of urban spaces, and processes of abjection in constituting a
public identity against a "dirty" and "improper" homeless other.
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Socialization Advantage—Homelessness is Resistence
Homlessness is a form of resistance—only a society that accepts homlessness can experience true
justice and freedom
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 7-8)
As Kathleen Arnold argues, leftist scholars who celebrate resistant sub cultures (in my terminology, the homeless as
free and spiritual heroes of the open road) echo their conservative opponents who see in the homeless a
dangerous form of rebellion (the homeless as profane and unconstrained outlaws of contemporary public space).29
Homelessness as a form of freedom may thus be invested with a romanticized longing for the open road, or it may be a
receptacle for the resentments of a domesticated citizen. Homelessness as freedom is given a positive
valuation by political theorist Thomas Dumm who seeks to embrace a form of "spiritual homelessness."
Identifying the homeless with the spirit of the nomad, Dumm argues that a just society would be one in which
homelessness is enabled. Thus, Dumm argues that we should move toward a society in which
"homelessness is supported and made possible." He suggests that the homeless are resisting the
"containment fields" of modern life and identities contemporary homeless persons with traditional hoboes. Thus,
homelessness is a form of oppositional freedom and resistance to the disciplinary institutions of
contemporary U.S. society: "This old-time hobo . . . and anyone who has sought to take to the open road,... anyone who
has imagined the possibility of getting lost, disappearing from the constraints of containment ... could almost be said to be
homeless by choice. The circumstances that govern organized, normalized life are oppressive to such
people, they seek out alternatives, they seek to live outside the containment fields that govern modern
experience.
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Transformation of spaces from public to consumptive causes anti-homeless ordinances aimed at
criminalizing and excluding the poor because they embody the inability of society to achieve
absolute productivity and homogeneity.
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 40-41)
The consumptive public sphere is nonpluralistic insofar as it ascribes to public space a single, natural, pre-given
purpose: the circulation and movement of goods and persons. Hollowing the analysis of Bell, Baudrillard, and
Rose, it signals a shift in normalizing strategy, ideology, and spatial organization from production to
consumption. As Bickford argues, "The space in malls and renovated downtown shopping complexes is policed in part by
asserting an unambiguous and singular function: consumption. The policing of function is a way of determining
what kind of public is present."43 A vision of public space as not itself marked by contestation or dispute
is the vision expressed by defenders of public-space restrictions on the homeless, whom they view as
intruders from the outside, interfering with and disrupting the fulfillment of public space's proper
purpose. As Deutsche puts it, "When public space is represented as an organic unity that the homeless
person is seen to disrupt from the outside, the homeless person becomes a positive embodiment of the
clement that prevents society from achieving closure."44 Extending this line of analysis, Andrew Mair argues that
the displacement of the poor is not incidental but necessary to postindustrial redevelopment: "The very
nature of the post industrial city demands the removal of the homeless." Postindustrial space is marked by
the absence of production and poverty, a space where office workers live, work, consume, and are
entertained, and "the very presence of the homeless provokes a significant crisis in the ideological security
of the post-industrial space." Reclaiming public spaces as middle class consumptive spaces, postindustrial
redevelopment seeks to create "a space which is internally homogeneous, . . . separated from the sites of
industry and poverty which continue to exist." The homeless become a threat to this meaningful space,
Mair argues, because of what the homeless signify to the status seeking.
middle-class gentrifiers the homeless
appear to "deviate from virtually all of the social norms associated with status-seeking society," such as
norms about work, family, and public behavior.45 Attempts to remove the homeless from the
postindustrial city include the eviction of shelters from the gentrifying neighborhoods that Mair discusses; the
criminalization of panhandling near key sites of consumptive activity (ATM machines, outdoor eating
establishments, queues of "five or more persons waiting to gain admission to a place or vehicle"); 46 urban camping
ordinances criminalizing public sleeping; the redesignation of public trash receptacles as government
property, off limits to the homeless; and street sweeps that confiscate the property of homeless persons,
redesignating it as trash. Ordinances against aggressive panhandling in places such as Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and
Baltimore map the postindustrial city; in constructing new fields of illegalities these ordinances seek to
construct a danger- and anxiety-free zone around the pleasures and pathways of consumptive space and
its legitimate middle-class users.47 Postindustrial redevelopment surrounds urban space by new walls
that divide consumptive pleasure and choice from poverty and homelessness.
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Homeless represent obstructions to free movement of goods and services in the public sphere
challenging the ideology of the capital system that governs mass society
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 43-44)
The city of Seattle, defending the ordinance, presented in its memorandum to the court the testimony of a business leader
who stressed this problem of obstruction: "Walking down the Ave can feel like running a gauntlet. Pedestrians have to dodge
aggressive panhandling, lewd and derogatory comments, and the residue of urine, alcohol and worse. They also have to step
over people individually or in groups on our sidewalks." 55 In all these comments, what Richard Sennett terms the
"mechanics of movement" triumphs over "the visceral experience of freedom." Public space is not to be
constructed so as to "arouse the body ... by accepting impurity, difficulty, and obstruction as part of the
very experience of liberty."56 Public space is not to be constructed so as to facilitate encounters with
difference, exposures to otherness. Rather, public spaces become instrumental to the free circulation of
goods, consumers, and workers.57 The homeless, described by Sidran as "lounging on busy sidewalks," are
obstacles the upstanding citizen/worker/consumer must "step over."58 A vision of the "upstanding"
citizen is established in opposition to the bare life of the homeless street dweller and panhandler, who
are viewed as physical blockages preventing the achievement of a unified public space in which consumer goods and consumers move unobstructed. To sit in public space is to resist the social discipline of
the body that demands efficient and purposeful movement. The (homeless) body, at rest, not only
obstructs other citizens on the go but also threatens the ideology of the disciplined, upright, body-in
motion.
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Discourse opposing social services is rooted in an otherizing body of thought, thereby otherizing
the homeless through deconstructing homeless people’s moral integrity and implying that
homeless brought homelessness upon themselves through “undesirable” personal qualities, such as
laziness, a tendency towards self-indulgence, and work-shyness
Rodney Fopp School of International Studies, University of South Australia 05 May 20 09 [“Metaphors in Homelessness
Discourse
and
Research:
Exploring
“Pathways”,
“Careers”
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a910973697&fulltext=713240928]
and
“Safety
Nets””
Lakoff's article (1995) entitled “Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, Or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals in the Dust”
explicates some particular uses of metaphors which are relevant to this current examination of metaphors in the discourse of
homelessness. Particularly germane to this article is Lakoff's probing analysis of the figures of speech which combine to
become a “system” of conservative worldviews. In this way, different but related metaphors are more than a cluster of
figures of speech about the same topic; they coalesce to represent a particular social worldview and a normative
social model of how society should operate (Lakoff 1995:211). In this way they perform a social function:
they serve particular social interests.
Lakoff demonstrates this by using the example of what he calls “keeping the moral books” which use “moral
accounting schemes” (Lakoff 1995:178-179). In this conservative worldview Lakoff is diagnosing, morality is
likened to a financial transaction so that there is a “moral imperative not only to pay one's financial debts
but also one's moral debts” (Lakoff 1995:179). He notes that morality is judged by keeping a record, a tally,
which adopts the language of “gain” and “loss” or, we might add, credit and debit, in order that the
moral books are “balanced”.
Lakoff also demonstrates that moral accounting is based on the premise that to be rich is better than to
be poor. “Well being is wealth” (Lakoff 1995:183). Furthermore, strength and weakness, and health and
illness, are also counterparts used in the language of actions that are socially normative, which in turn,
highlight those that are not. It is better to be strong than weak. So moral actions are undertaken by those
who possess moral strength and immoral actions are regarded as weakness. Moral persons are strong;
immoral persons are weak. Moral persons are healthy; immoral persons are sick or, as some might say,
pathological (Lakoff 1995:183).
The metaphors of “strength-weakness” and “health-illness” are also combined so that moral action
attests to strength and the health to remain “upright” while moral weakness and illness are characterized
as in a state of “fall”, or of falling, or “being low” (Lakoff 1995:185). So, according to this worldview, moral
action involves standing up to evil while immoral action leads to the conclusion that perpetrators are
weak, feeble, inadequately disciplined and insufficiently resilient in the sense of being unable to
withstand what are regarded as negative forces. The traits of personal weakness are themselves regarded
as negative or evil or immoral forces (Lakoff 1995:186). In this worldview, morality is essentially personal
behaviour, and “deviations” reside in the individual person.
the consequences of this worldview and model of the social realm follow ineluctably.
Those who are moral are strong, healthy, resistant, resilient; those who do not have “moral strength” will
“fall” for any temptation. Moral strength necessitates discipline and denial, otherwise a moral
“flabbiness” results (Lakoff 1995:187). Policies are required which develop and reward such discipline and
prevent such flabbiness. But to the “conservative” mind to which Lakoff is referring, moral action is a
matter of acquiring the strength to resist, to be more disciplined and self reliant (Lakoff 1995:187).
To its adherents,
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conservatives Lakoff investigated are opposed to policies which support or
provide services for people who are seen to need them because of their alleged weakness, or lack of selfdiscipline or self-reliance. Accordingly, the protagonists of “moral strength” are opposed to providing
condoms to high school students, or clean needles to those who use them, because it panders to the morally weak.
They should have the strength to be able to “Just say No” (Lakoff 1995:187).
The policy implications are clear: the
Lakoff also notes the social consequences of the use of metaphors which expose a moral world view and normative model of
social organization. The first is that moral strength “imposes a strict us-them dichotomy” (Lakoff 1995:186). This
allows for the target groups to be diagnosed and remediating policies to be easily identified . A second
consequence is that “giving highest priority to the metaphor of “moral strength” is that it rules out any
explanations in terms of social forces or social class (Lakoff 1995:187). Lakoff (1995:187) continues:
If it is always possible to muster the discipline to just say no to drugs or sex and support yourself in this land
of opportunity, failure to do so is laziness, and social class and social forces cannot explain your poverty
or your drug habit or your illegitimate children. And if you lack such discipline, then by the metaphor of
Moral Strength, you are immoral and deserve any punishment you get.
the “moral strength” metaphor provides the explanation for social
problems which putatively reside in the individual person, rather than in alternative explanations which
might include the social hierarchies and structures that unevenly distribute wealth and other services to
citizens.
In more traditional sociological terms,
metaphors such as “moral strength” are “both conceptual in nature and deep in the
sense that they are largely unnoticed, that they have enormous social consequences, and that they shape
our very understanding of the everyday world” (Lakoff 1995:210; emphasis added). By contrast, “superficial
metaphors” (Lakoff 1995:210-211) are those which “rely on much deeper and less obvious metaphors for their
power” (Lakoff 1995:21). Nonetheless, the power of the latter “consists in evoking a worldview beyond
itself” (Lakoff 1995:21). The example Lakoff uses to illustrate the more superficial metaphors which depend on deeper and
less obvious metaphors for their power is “safety net” (Lakoff 1995:210-211), which as identified previously, is a well
known metaphor in the dominant discourses of homelessness. An understanding of Lakoff's approach here is
According to Lakoff,
instructive as it not only provides an analysis of “safety net” but the metaphors in homelessness discourse.
Policy as a "Safety Net"
In Australia, SAAP is almost universally referred to as a safety net. The influential National Evaluation refers to the SAAP
“safety net” as a “last resort … for those who number amongst the most powerless and marginalized”. It provides “vital
support for homeless people” and, officially, is part of a “broader safety net designed to prevent disadvantage in the
community” (Erebus Consulting 2004:2, 10, 98). According to this usage, the metaphor may seem rather neutral apropos how
it regards people who are homeless. It may even mean that people who are homeless are regarded as “deserving” of SAAP
support and that SAAP is a point below which no Australian should fall. Undoubtedly, it is used in official documentation in
this way.
Yet as Lakoff notes, the
“safety net” metaphor popular in the United States may also bring to mind a person
walking on a tightrope which, as a figure of speech, conjures up “a straight and narrow path - a moral
path” (Lakoff 1995:210). However, as is well known , people fall from tightropes with serious and lifethreatening results. In Lakoff's analysis, “walking the tightrope” refers to a straight and narrow path; the
safety net then becomes some form of income and other support for otherwise independent, hardworking citizens when they have fallen off as, for example, when they become unemployed. They are citizens
who have moral strength. They are not indolent, are usually on the straight and narrow path and so they
merit government support while they are unemployed.
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Now it may be that a safety net also has a connection with the creativity and danger of the spectacular circus trapeze which
has nothing to do with a straight and narrow road3. Likewise, it might be a “dead” metaphor in the sense that it is so much
part of the language that its metaphorical origins and flexibility have been lost over time (such as with “arm” of a chair).
However, in the United States and Australia, “safety net” is a popular metaphor which represents a worldview
with certain connotations which can, in turn, be converted into related but more socially draconian and
punitive associations.
For example, Lakoff analyses the perspective by which the safety net is juxtaposed with a hammock. He quotes from a US
Senator who claimed that the “the social safety net erected by government by the New Deal and the Great Society
had become a 'hammock' that is robbing the country of freedom and virtue” (Lakoff 1995:210). According to
Lakoff, the transition from “safety net” to “hammock” is not only “replacing one metaphor with another
that looks similar”, “it is imposing another worldview”. “Changing metaphors means changing
prototypes” (Lakoff 1995:211). The person in the hammock is relaxing as one might do on a vacation or
during recreation leave. Instead of looking for work the person on the hammock is regarded as indolent,
self-indulgent, work shy, “bludging off”, and benefiting from, the taxes of those who are employed.
It is interesting to note that the same language has been used in the discussion of unemployment in Australia and to justify the
policy response known as “Mutual Obligation” (Parker & Fopp 2004a, 2005). According to one previous government
minister responsible for social security, the “official compassion” of unemployment benefits has caused
“welfare dependence”. This dependence is like an “addiction” to unemployment.4 The “safety net” of income
support by the Federal Government has meant that “for many people working has become more trouble than it is worth”
(Parker & Fopp 2004a:262). A “glass floor” supports the unemployed resulting in a disincentive to work; “guaranteeing the
wherewithal for life [via income support] can easily remove the motivation to work” (Parker & Fopp 2004a:263). According
to this view, the “safety net” is exploited by some; the safety net has induced a “hammock mentality” or an
“entrenched entitlement mentality” (Parker & Fopp 2004a:263).
This transfer of the “safety net” to the “hammock” mentality can be seen as reinforcing the safety net as
a policy which is justified when things go awry. The safety net is intended for the deserving when
adverse circumstances strike. Yet the mixing of metaphors (“safety net” and “hammock”) can also be interpreted as
buttressing some of the expectations and norms of people who are disadvantaged in the labour and housing markets. These
norms converge with what those politicians and policy makers have in mind when they use the claim that SAAP is a safety
net.
It might be countered that the “hammock” metaphor used in the labour market sector has not been
applied to homelessness. While true, the last influential National Evaluation (Erebus Consulting 2004:156)
recommended forging even closer links between SAAP and the labour market with its Mutual Obligation expectations of
activity tests, fortnightly completion of an application for payment form, a job seeker diary and employment contact
certificates, and significant loss of income for breaches of the above regulations. As they are largely unemployed , people
who are homeless are potential targets of such expectations and the pejorative language identified above
(two paragraphs above). In this way, the “safety net” acts and operates socially and politically. It is not merely
a metaphor which sees homeless people as “deserving” and thus makes homelessness less stigmatizing
or degrading.5 It may have such connotations. The diversity of meaning and interpretation is not denied. But if there are
other contrary interpretations of metaphors these can also be identified and their social function and prominence can be
analysed and evaluated.
Lakoff's analysis is also applicable to SAAP. We have established that SAAP is known as a safety net. According to the
dominant discourse in research and policy documents about homelessness it is intended for those people who have walked
the tightrope, who have been self-disciplined and independent, walked the straight and narrow path, shown moral strength,
but who have fallen. Several points are noteworthy here. Firstly, Lakoff's point about the more superficial, or we might say
simpler, metaphor deriving its force from a broader and deeper conceptual scheme can be applied here. In this instance the
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safety net is the simpler metaphor which derives its metaphorical and social and political force from the metaphors of “moral
accounting”, “moral strength” and “moral health”. In this context, then, the safety net not only conveys the idea of
“falling” into homelessness but highlights the qualities of the person who was on the tightrope and thus for
whom SAAP is intended. In other words, the metaphor not only identifies SAAP as the policy response to homelessness but
identifies the target group.
Secondly, because it
depends on the deeper conceptual metaphor of moral strength, the safety net metaphor
makes judgements about the qualities of those who “fall” and, thus, who should be eligible for the
program. In this usage, the “safety net” is not merely a descriptive or neutral metaphor. SAAP is not for
everyone who “falls” but those who behave in a certain way, who were on the tightrope and deserve or merit the safety net.
Notions of “deserving” and “undeserving” are also inherent here and would help explain the media attention to homelessness
among young people (who allegedly leave home because of family tiffs) and the counselling and parent-child mediation
services within SAAP which are aimed at reconciling young people and their parents.
Thirdly, while the metaphor is not neutral it presents as more benign, and may even appear to be more sympathetic to people
who have become homeless than I have suggested (“a policy has been provided for them”). But the metaphor provides
little space for debate or contestation about the precursors of homelessness other than it occurs to
individual persons who have “fallen”. While the metaphor could be interpreted to include the notion of
being “pushed” into homelessness (a sudden wind caught the person on the tightrope and they fell, or the
tightrope collapsed) the safety net focuses on the actions of the individual person; it draws attention to
“fall” rather than “was pushed”. In this focus on personal attributes and, thus, on the residual accounts of
homelessness, the safety net metaphor skews any debate in a certain direction.
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City architecture is being designed in order to restrict the homeless from basic actions such as
sleeping on public property.
Amster 2008 (Randall, Amster teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College and is the Executive Director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Association. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for the Contemporary Justice Review and
the Peace Studies Journal. "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of Homelessness"
p. 23)
"The Downtown Tempe Community, an association formed to promote business and quality of life in
Tempe, put up spiked fences around the Salvation Army last week to prevent homeless people
camping out, a move that has Salvation Army officials crying foul. The action stems from pressure
by nearby businesses, which are frustrated by the presence of transients in and around their shops, said
Rod Keeling, executive director of the DTC. The spiked fences were installed on sitting areas that surround
planters in front of the Salvation Army Center. It is normally crowded with homeless people but was
completely deserted Sunday…’if we’re going to have a homeless service center, we need one that is
well manged,’ Keeling said. ‘the Salvation Army has not managed the population, and to give them the
enviroment where they are enabled to be there, I think, is wrong.’” Were the spectacle of wrought iron
spikes aimed directly at homeless not so graphically poignant in itself (see Davis "vicious out-turned spikes;"
and Wacholz 005 on 'prickly space’ that is designed to "make people feel unwelcome "), it might a be cynical to
suggest that the timing here was equally revealing in that DTC asserted its corporate might vis-a-vis the
‘homeless problem’ as the city council was poised to consider approval of a downtown day resource
center, which by far would have been the most significant non-punitive step Tempe had taken in
response to the homelessness issue. And indeed, in short order, a matter of mere days s in fact the spikes were
removed, to headlines proclaiming "Homeless Gripe. ( it, Fences Fall' (Navarro 2000) and 'Temnpe Takes Down lenuac'
(Zawicki 2000d). Apparently, the 'point' (pun intended) had sufficiently been made. And in the coining months, the I) It
would in fact install spiked, rounded, horned, and otherwise discomfiting architectural amendments to
most of the places (e.g., planters, benches) available for sitting anywhere in the downtown area (except of
course restaurant sidewalk patios). Fittingly. a website called ['h e Anti-sit Archives' has documented in a comprehensive
visual manner the range of creative architectural disincentives employed across the country.
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Redevelopment and change of the layout of cities is a reflection on the ongoing social processes.
The architectures of cities have dramatically changed to exclude homeless people. This is
representative of the general negative view of the homeless.
Amster 2008 (Randall, Amster teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College and is the Executive Director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Association. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for the Contemporary Justice Review and
the Peace Studies Journal. "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of Homelessness"
p. 46)
The idea that at all of this is intimately tied to processes of gentrification and redevelopment is
certainly not a revelation, nor is the notion that such mechanisms reflect the desire of business entities
to have control over determining "the type of people who are desired" in the spaces of the city (see Can
et at. 1992:149), "thus protecting the inalienable right of the well-to-do to spend their money without having to rub
shoulders with the 'dangerous classes" (Lofland 1973:76). Mitchell (l997a:322-4) similarly expounds on the
'aesthetics' of public space as a "landscape in which the propertied classes express 'possession' of the
land, and their control over the social relations within it." In this sense, and as the foregoing will
amplify, we begin to perceive the reflexive, ideological nature of space and the manner in which it
simultaneously is: (i) a reflection of social processes, (ii) the location of their occurrence, and (iii) a
primary factor in the production (Lloyd & Auld 2003:344). Thus, it is without a trace of shame that the headline of the
November 2000 issue of The Downtowner blared: 'Downtown Tempe IS Fantasy land!' (DTC 2000c). Intended as a
celebration and not a critique, the headline inadvertently captures the unfortunate reality that
redevelopment has wrought on the city. Drawing upon events in Tempe as the basis for a grounded
case this chapter describes and documents how economic changes in the city (and cities in general) have
contributed to processes of exclusion amid containment, both materially in terms of spatial
control and homeless bodies, as well as ideologically in terms of 'theming' and elitism. Along the way,
we'll encounter yuppies, BIDs, and the panopticon- skipping merrily toward that magical kingdom where none nc
need confront the horrors of poverty while out consuming conspicuously both on Tempe's Mill Avenue and on city streets
die world over.
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Shifts to privatization cause elitism that excludes the homeless.
Amster 2008 (Randall, Amster teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College and is the Executive Director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Association. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for the Contemporary Justice Review and
the Peace Studies Journal. "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of Homelessness"
p. 59)
In addition to a blatant form of elitism that would give a certain class of people ownership of and
entitlement to the city, another disturbing and related trend that had begun to take form in the
earlier stages is the concept of shadow privatization, described by Lofland (1998:211) as: "public-private
partnerships [and] numerous odd arrangements whereby (1) publicly owned space is transferred
to private or semiprivate control with the understanding that the space is 'sort of public or (2) in
exchange for one or another consideration from government, privately owned space is declared to be
'sort of" public." One example of this is a 1995 licensing agreement in which Tempe merchants ceded to the DTC the
power of "modification of pedestrian walkways in order to preserve a clean and pleasant environment" (Zawicki 2000c) a
power that was invoked most starkly with the installation of fence spikes at the Salvation Army described in the previous
chapter, which Keeling claimed was done "to create more public space for pedestrians" (in Zawicki 2000c). The groundwork
for such agreements was laid the year before when Development Services director Dave Fackler was quoted (in Petrie
1994a) as saying that "the City is interested in having the DTC take over sidewalk activities" - to\ which a Republic
editorial (1998a) belatedly responded, "The sidewalks belong to the public, and the last time we checked, the
First Amendment was still in effect." Under similarly dubious authority, in May 2001 the DTC endorsed many of the
planters on Mill Avenue being made 'homeless-proof' with an arched concrete ridge that makes sitting for any length of
time extremely uncomfortable. Mike Davis (1990:233) likewise describes "bumproof benches" as offering
"a minimal surface for uncomfortable sitting, while making sleeping utterly impossible," and Wright
(1997:108) similarly notes the use of "homeless-proof benches or uninviting wall alcoves," constituting
what one scholar has referred to as "prickly space" (Wachholz 2005).
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Benefit restrictions aim to acculturate low-income persons into an “ideal” middle class – this
renders inequality invisible and denies societal responsibility.
Boyer, Kate ( 2002, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Reform and
Resistance:
A Consideration of Space, Scale
and Strategy in Legal Challenges
to Welfare Reform,
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118562122/PDFSTART, P. 7-8)
The new welfare focuses on the body as the appropriate scale of reform. Assaults on the poor body include the
withdrawal of benefits (including food stamps) for missed meetings; full-family sanctions (the
withdrawal of benefits for children as punishment for failing to comply with program rules on the part
of the mother); and efforts to ‘‘acculturate’’ clients to middle-class expectations about dress and
self- presentation in the workplace (Cope 2001; Peck 2001). As these examples of corporeal discipline and
punishment suggest, even in a system in which the state is supposedly ‘‘hollowed out’’, for those reliant on benefits the state
is still a formidable agent capable of yielding considerable power. This attention on the body as the scale for
attention and correction can also be interpreted as a way of negating structural factors which shape
who applies for welfare in the first place. As Nancy Naples has observed, ‘‘contemporary strategies to fight
poverty emphasize behavioral measures such as workfare and render invisible the economic
factors that contribute to poverty in America’’ (Naples 1998:189). Welfare reform thus constructs
poverty as a personal rather than a systemic problem through a tactics of scale: by linking
unemployment solely to the actions or inactions of the individual, while leaving questions of racism,
the functioning of labor market, or the gendered relations of work and care work which define
mothering as non-work, beyond view.
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Socialization Impact – Value to Life
Exclusions create a social death – makes life not worth living
Daly, Gerald. Professor in the faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Canada. He has worked with
housing agencies and non-profit groups and has published widely on housing, homelessness and comparative
planning. Author of Homeless: Policies, strategies and Lives on the Streets. 1996. Pg 12.
The concept of "social death" is occasionally employed as a way of explaining homelessness in terms of
isolation, invisibility, powerlessness, and alienation. Giamo refers to "this whole feeling of death, both the
physical threat of death and kind of a lingering social death and a sense of disillusionment and despair"
(Giamo and Grunberg 1992: 138). Lifton (1992) believes that homeless people are victimized by being treated as
outcasts. Society relegates them, symbolically at least, to the living dead.
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Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Socialization Advantage – Being
Homeless people don’t get to live freely or be, simply because they don’t have places to perform
their daily functions without being harshly criminalized.
Nicholas K. Blomley, 2001, professor of geography at Simon Fraser University.
The Legal Geographies Reader, pg 10-12.
the condition of being homeless in capitalist
societies is most simply the condition of having no place to call one's own. "One way of describing the plight
of a homeless individual might be to say that there is no place governed by a private property rule where he is
allowed to be" (Waldron, 1991:299). Homeless people can only be on private property - in someone's house, in a
restaurant bathroom - by the express permission of the owner of that property. While that is also true for the rest
of us, the rest of us nonetheless have at least one place in which we are (largely) sovereign. We do not need
to ask permission to use the toilet or shower or to sleep in a bed. Conversely, the only place homeless
people may have even the possibility of sovereignty in their own actions is on common or public
property. As Waldron explains, in a "libertarian paradise" where all property is privately held, a homeless
person simply could not be. "Our society saves the homeless from this catastrophe only by virtue of the fact that some
of its territory is held as collective property and made available for common use.'The homeless are allowed to be
provided they are on the streets, in the parks, or under bridges" (Waldron. 1991:300)…In other words, we are
creating a world in which a whole class of people simply cannot be, entirely because they have no place
to be. As troublesome as it may be to contemplate the necessity of creating "safe havens" for homeless
people in the public space of cities, it is even more troublesome to contemplate a world without them.
The sorts of actions we are outlawing - sitting on sidewalks, sleeping in parks, loitering on benches,
asking for donations, peeing - are not themselves subject to total societal sanction. Indeed they are all actions
we regularly and even necessarily engage in. What is at question is where these actions are done. For most of us, a
Arguing from first principles in a brilliant essay, Waldron shows that
prohibition against asking for a donation on a street is of no concern; we can sit in our studies and compose begging letters
for charities. So too do rules against defecating in public seem reasonable. When one of us the housed find ourselves
unexpectedly in the grips of diarrhea, for example, the question is only one of timing, not at all of having no place to take
care of our needs. Not so for the homeless, of course: a homeless person with diarrhea is entirely at the mercy of properly
owners, or must find a place on public property on which to relieve him or herself. Similarly, the pleasure (for me) of dozing
in the sun on the grass of a public park is something I can, quite literally, live without, but only because I have a place where
I can sleep whenever I choose. We are not speaking of murder or assault here, in which there are (near) total societal bans.
Rather we are speaking, in the most fundamental sense, of geography, of a geography in which a local prohibition (against
sleeping in public, say) becomes a total prohibition for some people. That is why Jeremy Waldron (1991) understands the
promulgation of anti-homeless laws as fundamentally an issue of freedom: they destroy whatever freedom
homeless people have, as people, not just to live under conditions at least partially of their own
choosing, but to live at all. And that is why what we understand public space to be, and how we regulate it, is so essential to the kind of society we make. The annihilation of space by law is, unavoidably (if still only potentially) the
annihilation of people.
70
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Homelessness Affirmative
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Socialization Advantage – Invisibility
The ‘annihilation of space by law’ erases the homeless’ spaces and criminalizes their actions.
Through this, homeless people are being effectively abolished.
Nicholas K. Blomley, 2001, professor of geography at Simon Fraser University
The Legal Geographies Reader, pg 7.
For many cities in the United States, the answer to this question, quite perversely, has led to a further "annihilation of space"
this time not at the scale of the globe and driven by technological change, but quite locally and driven by changes in law. In
city after city concerned with "livability," with, in other words, making urban centers attractive to both
footloose capital and to the footloose middle classes, politicians and managers of the new economy in
the late 1980s and early 1990s have turned to what could be called "the annihilation of space by law."
That is, they have turned to a legal remedy that seeks to cleanse the streets of those left behind by
globalization and other secular changes in the economy by simply erasing the spaces in which they must live by
creating a legal fiction in which the rights of the wealthy, of the successful in the global economy, arc sufficient for all the
rest. Neil Smith (1996:45) calls this the "revanchist city" because of what he sees as a horrible "vengefulness" - by the
bourgeoisie against the poor that has become the "script for the urban future." Whatever the accuracy of this dystopian image
(and it seems quite an acute reading to me), cities seem to have taken Anatole France at his word, ignoring the clear irony in
his declaration that the law, in all of its magisterial impartiality, understands that the rich have no more right to sleep under
bridges than do the poor. Such irony can only be so easily ignored if we somehow also agree, in the "impartial" manner of the
law, that the poor have no greater need to sleep under bridges - or to defecate in alleys, panhandle on streets, or sit for any
length of time on park benches. For this is what the new legal regime in American cities is outlawing: just
those behaviors that poor people, and the homeless in particular, must do in the public spaces of the city. And
this regime does it by legally (if in some ways figuratively) annihilating the only spaces the homeless have
left. The anti-homeless laws being passed in city after city in the United States work in a pernicious way: by
redefining what is acceptable behavior in public space, by in effect annihilating the spaces in which the
homeless must live, these laws seek simply to annihilate homeless people themselves, all in the name of
recreating the city as a playground for a seemingly global capital which is ever ready to do an even
better job of the annihilation of space.
71
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Socialization Advantage – Space
The homeless remind us daily that even under collapse, places and environments still have use
value. We take these chances to exploit the homeless and return public spaces to their original
consumption driven characteristics.
Nicholas K. Blomley, 2001, professor of geography at Simon Fraser University.
The Legal Geographies Reader, pg 14-15.
Regulating the homeless takes on a certain urgency. "Refusing to conform to the dictates of new urban
realities, homeless people daily remind us of the vagaries of the contemporary political economy. By
lying in our way on the sidewalks, they require us to confront the possibility that what the collapse of time and
space so celebrated in laudatory accounts of the new economy leaves in its wake is certainly not a collapse of
material space: the spaces of the city still exist in all their complexity. Kirsch's (1995:529} question is worth
asking again: "What happens to space after its collapse?" Seemingly, it gets filled by homeless people. For law-makers
the immediate thing that happens after the collapse of space is that control over span- within cities is
seemingly lost; the long-term solution is thus to re-regulate those spaces, annihilate the homeless, and
allow the city to once again become a place of order, pleasure, consumption and accumulation. The
implications of such policies - such means of regulation -seem clear enough for homeless people. As Waldron '1991 so
clearly shows, "what we are dealing with here is not just the problem of homelessness' but a million or more people whose
activity and dignity and freedom are at stake." But so too are we creating, through these laws and the discourses that surround
them, a public sphere for all of us that is just as brutal as the economy with which it articulates.
72
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Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
****Agency Advantage****
73
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Agency Advantage—Eligibility I/L
Conditions utilized by social service programs seek to exclude the homeless from true consumer
identity and citizenship in order to protect the uniformity of society
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 42-43)
response of cities seeking to protect the aesthetic appearance and economic vitality of prime
spaces is to create a "secure" border around the spaces and activities of normative consumptive activity.
But everyone must consume: consumption is essential to the life process. Homeless people must eat and drink, and
if they live their lives on the street, they must accumulate and maintain some amount of personal property
without the security of a place governed by a private-property right of exclusion. Yet not only do
panhandling and anti-sleeping laws seek to exclude the homeless from consumptive spaces, but
programs aimed at helping the homeless also seek to delegitimate their claims to be consumers. And this
exclusion of the homeless from consumer identity is not incidental; it is a constitutive exclusion, marking
out the boundaries of consumptive space and consumer identity. Programs have been instituted in various cities
to encourage the non homeless to give homeless panhandlers not money but tokens redeemable for
shelter or food, to prevent convenience stores in skid row neighborhoods from selling fortified alcohol, and to confiscate
and redefine street-dwellers property, as trash that produces a public health hazard (sec the discussion of Love v.
Chicago in chapter 2). What Kawash calls "processes of containment, constriction, and compression" include
the attempt to restrict the consumption of the homeless. She argues that anxiety over consumption by the
homeless is part of a larger anxiety.50 It emerges when the fantasized wholeness of a disembodied,
abstract public subject confronts the abjected homeless body that is its product, its constitutive outside,
and its threatening other: The public view of the homeless as "filth" marks the danger of this body as body
to the homogeneity and wholeness of the public. The desire or ambition for such wholeness thus faces an obstacle
that may be ideologically disavowed but that always returns as an irreducibly materialist challenge. The solution to this
impasse appears as die ultimate aim of the "homeless wars": to exert such pressures against this body
that will reduce it to nothing, to squeeze it until it is so small that it disappears, such that the circle of the
social will again appear closed.51 The fantasy at work behind anti homeless policies is the fantasy of so
constricting and displacing this homeless body that it will "go away." In other words, it is the fantasy of
eliminating bare life, of recovering an "uncontaminated" public citizen. But it is a fantasy that is doomed to
The punitive
repetition and failure and more repetition, since the very identity of the public consumer citizen is formed through the
constitutive exclusion of bare life. The new public-space ordinances regulating panhandling and prohibiting
sidewalk sitting and sleeping or camping in public parks are thus die punitive underside of the
consumptive public sphere. Whereas vagrancy statutes stressed the need to incorporate the idle into the civilization of
productivity, panhandling and sidewalk-sitting laws seek to exclude abject poverty from "prime" consumptive
spaces. Rather than incorporate (through coercion) the idle into a world of work and discipline, contemporary
anti-homeless laws protect a consumptive public (which they constitute) from threats to its security and
enjoyment.
74
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Agency Advantage—Eligibility I/L
Conditions upon social services for the homeless devalue and isolate the recipients from society by
requiring submission in order for citizenship and acceptance
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 46-47)
aimed at criminalization and exclusion are complemented by "compassionate"
alternatives that work through the logic of assimilation, not criminalization.67 Yet strategies of assimilation,
seeking to reintegrate homeless persons (considered as damaged or incomplete subjects) into full citizenship as
economic actors, actually produce a similar division between the upstanding citizen and the homeless.
For instance, charitable groups, business improvement distnets, and neighborhood associations have established
voucher and referral programs whereby citizen consumers can give non-monetary aid to panhandlers in
shopping districts, thus ensuring that they will not be funding drug or alcohol use. Although the voucher
programs do not display the same logic of literal exclusion (excluding the homeless from valued consumer
spaces through the force of legislation on panhandling, sidewalk sitting, and public sleeping), their ultimate goal may be to
drive panhandlers away by closing the spigots of liberal guilt. Furthermore, these programs symbolically mark off
the homeless from the status of consumer (and legitimate occupant of the consumptive public sphere), reinforcing
the link between homeless people and non-market providers of social services. For instance, the "Helping
These punitive policies
Hands Panhandling Cards" program sponsored by a business association in Durham, North Carolina, provides citizen
consumers with cards listing social service referral information. The campaign, as Kawash points out, addresses
citizen-consumers as the "we," instructed in how to avoid giving "them" cash.68A more elaborate
program has been developed in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, where "Community Coupons" give more
than just referrals; vouchers distributed by neighborhood residents to pan handlers are redeemable for
services and cash at a homeless resource center. To redeem the coupons, however, a person must enroll in
the resource center's "Step Program" of rehabilitation: "If the citizen declines enrollment within the North Beach
Citizens Step Program, they will be unable to use the coupon. On the positive side, that means our resource center retains full
face value of the coupon, plus, the homeless person has been informed of our outreach efforts and existence." The
Community Coupons program makes distinctions, first, between home-dwelling citizens and homeless
clients who need help and, second, between (deserving) homeless clients who belong to the neighborhood
and (undeserving) "transients" who do not: "As awareness grows within the community, declining a coupon will also
be a quick way to determine if this is a local citizen that needs help, or a transient person that is not aware of our community's
proactive campaign for change." In other words, the North Beach Citizens association conflates the distinction between "local
citizen" and "transient person" with the distinction between submissive and resistant. The program turns the local
homeless citizen who resists the disciplinary strings of the Community Coupons into an outsider who is
just passing through. An assimilative project turns out to have its own exclusionary force in converting
the resistant subject into the outsider. Accepting a coupon and enrolling in the Step Program leads to
"database enrollment as a Citizen of North Beach" and a photo identification. For a home-dweller, of course,
"citizenship" in North Beach proceeds from physical residence. For a street dweller, on the other hand,
neighborhood membership is contingent upon his or her agreement to enter into a social worker-client
relationship as a damaged subject in need of rehabilitation.
75
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Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Agency Advantage—Eligibility I/L
Status gained through social services is disingenuous due to the conditions placed upon citizenship
for the homeless that are inherent rights of the homeowner
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 47-48)
The Step Program in which a Community Coupons client must enroll entails a heavy dose of normalizing
assimilation supplemented by meager supplies: a blanket, clothing, and meals in step one; counseling, meetings, bus
tokens, and laundry in step two. In what can only be described as a jarring combination of therapeutic
normalizing discourse and pseudorespect for the homeless as "citizens," the North Beach Citizens website
describes the transition from step one to step two as follows: "As pride, trust, and receptiveness to change develop, citizens
arc inspired to make the progression to the next level of services."70 But the language of citizenship here is
disingenuous: as the program makes clear, homeless citizenship is not an entitlement of birth or
residence but rather a contingent and subordinate status premised upon one's willing subjection to a
hierarchically structured program of normalization. Thus, the separation of the homeless panhandler
from the consumptive public sphere is effected not only through the force of legal exclusion and police
but also through the compassionate efforts of "civil society" to assimilate homeless persons into the
status of normal subject. Home-dwelling citizens, the legitimate occupants of the consumptive public sphere,
are thereby enlisted in the project. The homeless are excluded from the market and the money economy, becoming
clients with needs, subjects of a bureaucratic social service apparatus.
76
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Agency Advantage—Eligibility I/L
Eligibility restrictions on social services are designed to exclude the homeless from inclusion in the
social on any terms other than as agencyless victims.
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 92-93)
prevailing themes in the misrecognition of the homeless.26 the first is a form of complete
nonrecognition—the homeless as non-persons whom domiciled citizens "see right through" and seek to
remove from valued urban spaces. The homeless here are separated out from the categories of person hood
and citizenship and aligned with the abject—dirt, feces, smell, disheveled clothes. The second is a conservative
individualist image of disruptive subjects responsible for their plight—unconstrained, profane outlaws of
public space. This form of misrecognition involves greater attention to the causes and consequences of
homelessness and includes the analogy between the panhandler and the broken window of an abandoned building (see
chapter 1). The third is a "compassionate" yet ultimately degrading construal of the homeless as helpless
victims—in what Hannah Arendt referred to as the "abstract nakedness of humanity"—to be sheltered and kept
alive with a bed, a blanket, and some soup. The homeless are unfree, noncitizens, but also sacralized in their
suffering; although full personhood is denied them, charity in the face of their suffering is emphasized.
The fourth is a therapeutic vision of clients with pathologies, who, through appropriate classification,
surveillance, and intervention, can be reintegrated into society. This vision treats the homeless not as
nonpersons but as "persons in the making" who must be isolated from their pathologizing circumstances in
order to achieve the status of the normalized), home-dwelling citizen-subjects.2? Following Patchen Marked, I
consider these practices of nonrecognition and somatization to be "misrecognition" in two senses. First, misrecognition is,
cognitively, a kind of mistake; an injustice that involves the failure to respect a person "as he or she really is."
Second, misrecognition is, constructively, the production of stigma, actively constituting a class of per sons
subordinate to die category of the normal citizen.28 Furthermore, misrecognition operates on two levels. First,
I trace out four
stereotypical and degrading portrayals of the homeless in the news media and in fictional presentations may shape domiciled
citizens' views and appropriate policy responses.29 Second, certain practices of misrecognition—particularly the
face to face reactions or nonreactions of domiciled citizens, the manner of treatment by agents of the
welfare state and charitable groups, and the institutionalized patterns of meaning and value embedded in
the rules governing shelters, job training programs, and housing programs—may negatively shape the
self conceptions of homeless persons. All the forms of nonrecognition and stigmatization outlined above are presented
in a series of contexts, institutions, and spaces—in media and legal discourses about homelessness, in day-to-day encounters
between homeless and non homeless citizens in public space, and in welfare state policies of shelter provision.
77
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Regents Lab
Agency Advantage—Eligibility I/L
Social services that require homeless to meet conditions of being ‘productive’ members of society
are aimed at eliminating their agency with the threat of continued exclusion
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 48)
Placing the transition from a producer public to a consumer public in the context of neoliberal reform of
the welfare state makes it clear that concerns about idleness and productivity do not disappear. Indeed, concern about
idleness remains prominent in welfare-to-work programs and the various forms of disciplinary and
normalizing incorporation (job training, transitional housing, "life skills" classes, and addiction treatment) aimed at
making homeless persons "productive members of society." But as Robert Desjarlais argues, these concerns may
best be seen as traces of an older order. Desjarlais, describing social control in and around a Boston homeless shelter,
theorizes a transition from a productive/disciplinary society to contemporary society, which contains only vestiges of that
tradition: "The age of discipline, taking 'humanity as its measure,' celebrated the positive benefits of
human activity and encouraged the detailed organization of human thought and agency. The present age,
taking government budgets as its measure, upholds vestiges of this tradition. . . . [N]ow, not all people are
needed as productive forces. It is no longer necessary or important to work the entire population of society into a positive
economy of bodily discipline."72 Still, those "vestiges" of an older tradition of discipline do remain. Sanford Schram, for
instance, views the welfare-to-work reforms of the 1990s as an attempt to prop up a vision of a fading industrial order in the
fare of postindustrial realities/3 It would thus be fair to say that the homeless are targeted both through
exclusionary, punitive policies aimed at securing a postindustrial consumptive public space and through
disciplinary incorporation into the world of work.
78
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Agency Advantage Internal
Current conceptions of homeless people portray them as incapable of choice. This strips them of
their agency and denies them their basic rights.
Amster 2008 (Randall, Amster teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College and is the Executive Director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Association. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for the Contemporary Justice Review and
the Peace Studies Journal. "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of Homelessness"
p. 7)
sociological standard as well. As one writer opines, "more often than not, the homeless are studied as a sociological problem
and the dynamics of power on their part ... are not studied" (Arnold 1998:14). In this lexicon, homelessness is generally
considered a pathological condition at worst and a state 9f victimization at best (see generally Wagner 1997; Ropers 1988).
At one extreme is the conservative, cartoon-like definition of 'streetpeople' as "an almost
unclassifiable mix of the sick, the desperately poor, the untreated mentally ill, drug and alcohol addicts,
runaways, and aggressive ne'er-do-wells" (Conner 1999; cf. Ellickson 1996; Teir 1998). At the other end is the
more liberal view of homelessness as mainly a structural phenomenon bound up with unemployment
rates, housing markets, mental health clinic overcrowding, and lack of treatment options for substance
addictions (e.g., Ropers 1988; Marcuse 1988; Hopper, et al. 1985; Hafetz 2003; Baron 2004). Indeed, it is clear that
the dominant perception of the homeless as presented by the media, merchants, law enforcement, city
officials, and sometimes even social workers and sociologists, is one of abjection, pathology, and/or
victimization in other words, the homeless are generally viewed as a problem in need of a solution.
And undoubtedly, homelessness as a social issue is problematic. Rates of people considered to be homeless
(defined as lacking a fixed residence for some specified period of time) continue to rise, with more vulnerable populations
such as children and families showing rapid increases (see, e.g., Harter, et al. 2005:306: Eaton-Robb 2007. Still, what is
generally lacking in these formulations is any regard for ro in relation to actual homeless individuals and communities (cf.
Ruddick 1996; Hill & Bessant 1999; Arnold 1998, 2004; Waidron 1991). In this sense, portraying the homeless as
either defective units to be repaired or removed, or as unwitting victims of social circumstance,
both accomplish the result of stripping homeless individuals of rights of agency and autonomy (Barak
1991; Ruddick 1996; Mitchell 2003). Homeless people may indeed at times be constrained to choose
from among a limited and unappealing range of options, but to deny their capacity to exercise choice
and construct their identities is to deny them status as full human agents
79
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Agency Advantage—Citizenship I/L
Restrictions on homelessness attempt to uphold the normative definition of the ‘public’ or
‘citizens’ which are challenged by the performance of private actions in the public sphere
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 44-45)
In this discourse of mobility and obstruction, public space serves only an instrumental function—facilitating the
movement of goods and people from one space (of consumption, residence, labor, or leisure) to another. To sit in
public space is to bring behavior proper to another sphere (the home, office, or recreational park) into public,
commercial space. As Don Mitchell argues, "By being out of place, by doing private things in public space,
homeless people threaten not just the space itself, but also the very ideals upon which we have
constructed our rather fragile notions of legitimate citizenship.... [They threaten the ideological construction
which declares that publicity ... must be voluntary." 60 The discourse of unimpeded motion, then, is one way in which
public space has become, in Michael Shapiro's term, "sanctified."61 Public space assumes a "natural"
function, so self-evident as to be manifest in the very term "side-walk." But of course, this "natural" and
"obvious" meaning of public space is politically produced by a judicial decision that is thoroughly enmeshed in a conflict
over space. In this discourse of motion, commerce, and consumption the homeless street-dweller becomes
the constitutive outside of the consumptive public sphere, a blockage—both physical and ideological—
to the free movement of goods and consumers but a blockage that simultaneously constitutes the boundaries of public
space. As Kawash argues, "The increasingly violent forms of exclusion of the homeless from public spaces
correspond to a rigorously normative definition of the public." As a constitutive exclusion, the "'war on the
homeless' must also be seen as a mechanism for constituting and securing a public, establishing the
boundaries of inclusion, and producing an abject body against which the proper, public body of the
citizen can stand."62
80
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Agency Advantage – Exclusion
Homeless people are denied even the most basic right of using the restroom. Continued exclusion
of homeless people furthers panhandeling, drug deals, and prostitution because they need to make
a living. This endless cycle furthers some of society’s most menacing problems.
Amster 2008 (Randall, Amster teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College and is the Executive Director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Association. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for the Contemporary Justice Review and
the Peace Studies Journal. "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of Homelessness"
p. 16-17)
One of the more excruciating areas of investigation concerns the implications of the "unavailability of
toilets open to the public" in many urban spaces (see Smith 1994:n.29); as Mike Davis (1992:163) notes,
"public toilets have become the real frontline of the city's war on the homeless." It is apparent that,
where the homeless are concerned, “few communities provide enough toilets" (VanderStaay 1992:2), and
that “public toilets with unrestricted access have all but disappeared from the urban landscape" (Kawash
1998:332). Of course, as the chapter entitled 'When You Gotta Go' in Mitchell Duneier’s quirky sidewalk (1999) implies, and
as Sandra Kawash (l99 .3331) confirms, "because of the virtual absence of toilets, street dwellers are often
forced to relieve themselves any way they can. Elimination becomes. a crucial focus of street
dwellers' activities." As some analyses have pointed 'iii, C' the weight of crime and punishment is not
dissuasive when it comes to such basic bodily functions (see Smith 1994; Fose,irinis; I Vachholz 2005), since
there can be no deterrent effect in criminalizing basic survival (see Davis 1992:166). In a classic 'double bind'
scenario (Arnold 1998:208; 2004), it appears that both the voluntary and involuntary acts of homeless people generate
equivalent antipathy from the larger society, leaving them without viable domains of personhood . Another basic aspect
of survival, even (or perhaps mote aptly. especially) for street people, is work, or more broadly, the method
of maintaining one's material existence. For obvious reasons, homeless people often subsist by way of
'shadow work.' which includes day labor, panhandling, scavenging, peddling, selling plasma.
dealing drugs, theft, prostitution, and 'dumpster-diving' (see Snow & Anderson 1993:145-170; Snow, et al.
1996; Fitzpatrick & LaGurs 201)0 113. Ferrell 2006; l3orchard 2005:134; cf. Hopper, et al. 1985:211-14. on
the "underground economy"). Other resources reported include social security, veteran's benefits, unemployment, welfare,
and food stamps. Of course, resort to more institutional forms of income generation carry greater risks, perhaps explaining
why surveys conducted by Snow et al. (1996:90) reveal that nearly 60% ot'their homeless informants
report engaging in some form of shadow work within a month. This parallels the suspicion street
people often hold for shelters, drop-in centers, and other institutional sources for social services, at
times viewing such options as involving "humiliating degradation rituals," and sometimes refusing
any involvement with systemic services altogether (Wagner 1993:64; Wagner 1995:138); as Talmadge Wright
(1997:221) similarly observes, "for many homeless, using social services ... involved a humiliating
process." In this light, Wagner (1993:64) perceives that even among the homeless willing to rely in part
on social service agencies, they were mainly "involved in a complex pattern of resistance.”
81
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Regents Lab
Agency Advantage—Numbing Impact
The homeless are in a state of perpetual pain, comparable to the holocaust. Our every day
interactions with the homeless make us feel inherently uncomfortable an therefore force us to
numb ourselves th their pain. This further allows us to lower them on the priority list.
Robert J. Lifton 1992 (Psychology at Harvard. Ed by Giamo and Grunberg. "Beyond Homelessness: Frames of
Reference" p. 130-131)
suffering is relative. There are different degrees of suffering. But it all hurts; it's all
painful, and the homeless seem to me very far along the scale of suffering. I was thinking, in
anticipating this dialogue today, that most of the people I've studied have been victimized by a specific
event: the Nazi camps, Hiroshima survivors, even people affected by the Chinese thought reform movement; or
victims of smaller disasters, relatively smaller, such as Three Mile Island or Buffalo Creek . When I and others studied
these victims, we would find ourselves pained by the exposure to them. I remember when studving
Buffalo Creek we would be verv relieved at leaving that area of West Virginia when we finished our
particular visit, because it was so painful to spend even a day or two in and among a community of
people who were undergoing grief and pain.
Anyhow, the homeless seem to me to be sort of perpetual victims now, rather than the consequence of a
particular event of victimization. They have quickly become perpetual victims. They're here in our city
and in other cities and without that entity that couldn't be more primal—a home. And for most of them it's
Robert Jay Lifton: No,
perpetual in that there is so little relief. I know there are programs that help but it must feel perpetual for most of the
homeless. So, to answer your first question, there is something very primal about their suffering and you could
compare it in various ways with, the suffering of Hiroshima survivors and death camp survivors , though 1
hardly care to. They are victims and survivors. But they're even deprived for the most part of the one source of
vitality you covet in that setting—some meaning structure in relation to the survival that can enable
survivors I've worked with, or some of them, to reconstitute themselves, get back on their feet, find
significance in their survival, and even make constructive use of it—a survivor mission. There are some
among the homeless who do that. But one has the feeling that there are precious few of them, and that
most of the survivor attributes or sources of revitalization.
I'm struck very immediately by how the homeless draw us into their plight, because they're here, they're
around, and many people say in different ways that we can't avoid them. Even the Hiroshima survivors and the
survivors of Nazi genocide could be avoided to some extent. They're out there. But you could call forth some
numbing, as 1 call it, and it wouldn't take much to go on with your life and not be much aware of them.
Of course, we do that with the homeless, but we have to look at them. They thrust their homelessness right before us and they
ask us for money or for some attention—at least a number of them do—and they're instrumental for making life in New York
City more unpleasant. When people talk about why the quality of life in New York City has become worse, radically worse
in the last few years, I think it has much to do with the homeless and beggars. (They're not exactly synonymous, but they're
close as anything else.) What that means essentially is that it becomes much harder to numb yourself to the
plight of people who are hurting in New York. There've always been many of them, but they've been out
of sight. They aren't now. Therefore, it's painrin tor people with any sensitivity at all to simply walk
about and live in New York. And I speak personally here because I share in their pain. To cam that
further in relation to the kinds of work I've done, it really means that all ot us have to cope with more
numbing, more dissociation, in order to live in an everyday way in New York City. And that's a very
profound matter because it really means we have to become increasingly dissociated as human beings,
as a society, as people who live in American cities and who like to live in the cities.
82
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****Eligibility Requirements Bad****
83
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Restrictions Create Exclusion – Bureaucratic Disentitlement
Work requirements and work obligations were created under the WIN and JOBS programs, with
the option of terminating all benefits if a member of the family didn’t meet their requirements.
Vicki Lens. J D. Ph.D. Assistant professor (Columbia University School of Social Work). Spring 2005. Georgetown
Journal on Poverty Law & Policy Volume XII, Number 1; Bureaucratic Disentitlement after Welfare Reform: Are
Fair Hearings the Cure? Page 20-21.
Paralleling the introduction of the legal model was a shift in policy goals from providing income assistance to encouraging
self-sufficiency.*4 In 1967, work requirements were introduced for the first time with the implementation of
the Work Incentive Program (WIN).4* Clients without preschool children were required to register with
WIN, which operated in conjunction with state employment offices and provided job placement and
other services. WIN was quickly absorbed into the rule-bound culture of welfare offices. It became a paperprocessing program with a goal of completing WIN registration forms rather than finding an actual job. 46 In the 1980s,
more serious efforts at helping clients achieve self-sufficiency were attempted. Under waivers from the federal
government, states began experimenting with resource-intensive we I fare-to-work programs that provided
supportive services, such as child care and transportation, along with a mix of employment activities,
training, and education.41 The waiver programs also allowed states to do something previously
prohibited under federal law— terminate benefits to an entire household when a parent failed to comply
with work requirements.48 The passage of the Family Support Act in 1988 codified this change into law, building in the
option to coerce, not just encourage, clients to work. The Act created the Job Opportunity and Basic Skills
Program (JOBS), a large-scale work and training program that permitted states to simultaneously prod
and reward clients by offering training, education, and support services while also allowing sanctions for
not participating. JOBS was the first attempt to implement work requirements and sanctions on a widespread basis.
Welfare was framed as a contract of mutual obligation between the client and the state, or as Senator
Moynihan, the architect of the Family Support Act, stated, "Society owed single mothers support while they acquired the
means of self-sufficiency; mothers owed the society the effort to become self-sufficient."State waiver programs, and later
JOBS programs, altered the relationship between clients and caseworkers. In contrast to WIN, these programs expected far
more from both. Clients had to do more than just register for employment services. They had to take part in a range of
activities, including conducting job searches, attending job readiness classes, and participating in job skills training or
educational activities." Caseworkers had to assess educational and training needs and provide services that would lead to selfsufficiency. They had to determine who was ready for employment and who was not and match the needs of clients with
available services. Along with the power to sanction families came the power to decide whether obstacles
such as illness, lack of day care, or family emergencies gave clients "good cause" for not complying
with work rules.
84
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Restrictions Create Exclusion – Bureaucratic Disentitlement
Work requirements and bureaucratic disentitlements make it impossible for persons to get help
unless they sacrifice their lives to the being productive and in debt to the state.
Vicki Lens. J D. Ph.D. Assistant professor (Columbia University School of Social Work). Spring 2005. Georgetown
Journal on Poverty Law & Policy Volume XII, Number 1; Bureaucratic Disentitlement after Welfare Reform: Are
Fair Hearings the Cure? Page 23-24.
the failure to comply with work requirements was less about one's willingness
to comply than the ability to, with clients reporting, according to state surveys and case files, that they did not
feel well enough to work or were caring for sick family members. Clients also perceived the new work
requirements as ill-suited to their needs because they wanted to continue in an unqualified activity, such
as college or beauty school, or thought community service jobs paid too low wages.64 Others reported
that they had other means of income or wanted to stay home with their children.65 In short, JOBS' work
requirements often ignored clients' needs or capabilities, creating fertile ground for bureaucratic
disentitlement. The JOBS experience revealed a system unable to avoid the worst excesses of the legal model and thus
generated new forms of bureaucratic disentitlement through the erroneous application of sanctions. JOBS
From the client's perspective,
also became a testing ground for a return to the social work model, with some JOBS programs using specially trained
caseworkers to help clients achieve self-sufficiency. Overall, though, the impact of JOBS was minimal. Cash-strapped stales
during the recession of the early 1990s failed 10 fully fund the program,66 and by 1994. JOBS reached only 13% of
recipients.67 JOBS, though, served as a harbinger of what was to come. The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families
program (TANF), passed in 1996 as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
(PRWORA), required an even greater commitment by the states to move clients from welfare to work and to punish clients
for not complying with work rules.69
85
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Restrictions Create Exclusion – Bureaucratic Disentitlement
Bureaucratic disentitlement has made it so that the government can conduct operations while
avoiding accountability and keeping all action away from the public eye.
Nancy Morawetz. Assistant Professor of Clinical Law, New York University. A.B., Princeton University, 1976; J.D.,
New York University School of Law, 1981. 19 89. Welfare Litigation to Prevent Homelessness, New York University
Review of Law & Social Change 16 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change (1987-1988), page 593.
But entirely apart from the changes accomplished in the open through normal legislative and administrative channels, a much
more insidious form of retrenchment has occurred: bureaucratic disentitlement. In his seminal article, Michael
Lipsky described the phenomenon as follows: In bureaucratic disentitlement, obligations to social welfare
beneficiaries are reduced and circumscribed through largely obscure "bureaucratic" actions and inactions
of public authorities. . . . Bureaucratic disentitlement takes place in the hidden recesses of routine or
obscure decision making, or the unobtrusive non-decisions of policymakers. Therefore, it tends to allocate
entitlement without the accountability that normally restrains government excesses or allows full
discussion of critical distributive issues. Thus, although conservative political forces might be unable openly to
reduce aid to poor children, precisely the same results can be accomplished by what appear to be neutral operations within the
administering bureaucracy. Many of these neutral operations are conducted under the guise of "quality control."14 As a result, the contradiction between statutory mandate and bureaucratic disincentives is not faced directly but
submerged in the recesses of large agencies — hidden from public view and judicial scrutiny.
86
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Restrictions Create Exclusion – Bureaucratic Disentitlement
The welfare application process intentionally excludes the homeless through stringent rules in
order to save money and preserve the bureaucracy.
Nancy Morawetz. Assistant Professor of Clinical Law, New York University. A.B., Princeton University, 1976; J.D.,
New York University School of Law, 1981. 19 89. Welfare Litigation to Prevent Homelessness, New York University
Review of Law & Social Change 16 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change (1987-1988), page 594-596
Bureaucratic disentitlement is best understood by way of a concrete example: in this case, from the General
Relief program in Los Angeles County, California.15 General Relief is similar to general assistance programs in
states across the country. It is the last and lowest level of the "social safety net," the one program to which people
ineligible for any other form of assistance are, in theory, eligible. In any month, nearly ten thousand
people apply for aid, of whom about two-thirds are not only destitute but homeless as well.17 Pending action on
their applications, homeless applicants are provided with vouchers which can be exchanged for lodging in one of
dozens of hotels and motels with which the County has made arrangements.1" Those who successfully complete the
application process receive a stipend of $312 per month, which is intended to cover all their needs. In
exchange, recipients who are able must work at County work projects.19 On paper, General Relief is the program
which one expects would provide for the subsistence needs of the very poor. But reality belies theory. For example, despite
the availability of lodging vouchers through this program, Los Angeles County has perhaps the largest
number of homeless people of any American city.20 This contradiction cannot be understood merely by looking at
the statute which mandates the existence of the General Relief program or the eligibility regulations by which it is
implemented. In 1983, public interest advocates interviewed dozens of homeless applicants for General Relief in welfare
office waiting rooms. The interviewers learned that hundreds of homeless people were being denied assistance
because they lacked documentary identification, such as a birth certificate or a driver's license.11
Interviews with welfare workers revealed that the stringency of the documentary identification requirement
varied with the demand for services and was used to control the programs costs by limiting the flow of
homeless persons into General Relief.22 When a temporary restraining order prevented the welfare bureaucracy from
interposing the documentary identification requirement, the hundreds of vacancies in the voucher hotel system were filled in
a matter of days." If a benevolent, or even a neutral bureaucracy, administered the General Relief program, the temporary
restraining order would have lowered the barriers standing between homeless indigents and emergency shelter. Subsequent
litigation, however, has revealed that the identification requirement was only one weapon in an extensive
arsenal available to an efficient bureaucracy following orders from an extremely conservative political
body, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.24 Joel Handler has described in detail elsewhere the experiences of one
homeless and developmentally disabled client who attempted to obtain emergency shelter from the General Relief program.25
Even with an experienced advocate who spent more than one hundred hours helping him negotiate a bizarre maze of
paperwork and procedures, the applicant was repeatedly denied the assistance to which the program's regulations plainly
entitled him.26 What happened to this individual is not atypical of the difficulties faced by homeless persons seeking help
from General Relief,27 nor are these difficulties the inexorable consequence of the operations of a large bureaucracy.
Rather, they are the product of careful strategic planning on the part of the managers of the General Relief
system. A high-ranking welfare bureaucrat made the underlying strategy quite clear when he publicly admitted that " the
welfare application process…was designed to be rough. It is designed quite frankly to be exclusionary."28
87
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Eligibility Restrictions Bad—Churning
Churning has taken over the welfare systems, making eligibility standards more strict.
David J. Kennedy; Public Interest Law Fellow and Staff Attorney, Alliance for Justice, Washington D.C. B.A.,
Harvard College; J.D., Yale 1998 Law School Brooklyn Law Review; 64 Brooklyn L. Rev. 231 DUE PROCESS IN A
PRIVATIZED WELFARE SYSTEM *
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=349fcbf55289d8e24ef5fc1bf91b5137&_docnum=25&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVk&_md5=8fc3ef6dbdb0e5c1fbfb22922f773ff2&taggedDocs=Z4,1Z59
One consequence of the rise of impersonal, mechanical benefit systems is the phenomenon known as
"churning," the effort to reduce welfare rolls through burdensome or repetitive administrative eligibility
procedures. 37 This process attempts to weed out current [*242] or potential welfare recipients by
placing administrative hoops and hurdles in the way of a successful application. Many claimants either
become discouraged and decide it is not worth their while to apply, or they inevitably run afoul of some
requirement or another, causing them to become ineligible. 38 Of course, policymakers do not expressly
state that their aim is to wear down recipients through administrative attrition; instead, churning
procedures are justified in terms of evaluating eligibility, insuring that only "deserving" candidates
receive welfare, and preventing fraud. 39 Whatever the specific justification, the depersonalized,
document-based system of welfare eligibility determination expanded the role for "bureaucratic
disentitlement." 40 Welfare recipients and applicants could be denied for their failure to satisfy any one
of innumerable verification and documentation requirements. 41 Such disentitlement is the result of
management procedures and efficiency concerns, rather than determinations of need or desert. 42
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Churning is unabated in the status quo--Federal courts have failed to take action.
David J. Kennedy; Public Interest Law Fellow and Staff Attorney, Alliance for Justice, Washington D.C. B.A.,
Harvard College; J.D., Yale 1998 Law School Brooklyn Law Review; 64 Brooklyn L. Rev. 231 DUE PROCESS IN A
PRIVATIZED WELFARE SYSTEM *
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=349fcbf55289d8e24ef5fc1bf91b5137&_docnum=25&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVk&_md5=8fc3ef6dbdb0e5c1fbfb22922f773ff2&taggedDocs=Z4,1Z59
The courts have proven largely unreceptive to the claim that churning violates due process or equal
protection. In Boddie v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court noted that there may be a case where
administrative action would be "the equivalent of denying individuals an opportunity to be heard upon
their claimed right . . . , and, in the absence of a sufficient countervailing justification for the State's
action, a denial of due process." 48 However, the lower courts have applied Boddie largely in the
context of court filing fees, rather than broadening the scope of this prohibition to include churning by
welfare agencies. For example, litigants attacked several churning mechanisms in the 1976 case Perez v.
Lavine: first, prescreening applicants based on criteria that were never made known to them; second, the
long lines that poor staffing and management produced outside the welfare center; third, the practice of
closing the doors of the center once staff had met their daily quotas; and fourth, accepting applications
only after a formal interview. 49 These hoops and hurdles to completing a mere application for benefits
suggests that the agency was at the very least involved in a passive form of application dissuasion. The
court, however, dismissed these claims, 50 concluding that,
A minimum of compassion and the slightest penchant for efficiency would lead one to deplore the
onerous conditions existing at many of the welfare centers, but this alone is insufficient for the Court to
conclude that the congestion itself is such a deterrence to interested individuals as to amount to a denial
of their opportunity to apply for public assistance . . . . 51
In short, even the most limited opportunity to apply for benefits will suffice. The failure of the federal
courts to monitor agency churning practices allows welfare officials to deny relief on an arbitrary basis.
[*245]
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Churning only stigmatizes recipients.
David J. Kennedy; Public Interest Law Fellow and Staff Attorney, Alliance for Justice, Washington D.C. B.A.,
Harvard College; J.D., Yale 1998 Law School Brooklyn Law Review; 64 Brooklyn L. Rev. 231 DUE PROCESS IN A
PRIVATIZED WELFARE SYSTEM *
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=349fcbf55289d8e24ef5fc1bf91b5137&_docnum=25&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVk&_md5=8fc3ef6dbdb0e5c1fbfb22922f773ff2&taggedDocs=Z4,1Z59
A final reason why churning is counterproductive is that it stigmatizes recipients even while other
welfare policies seek to integrate benefit recipients into the social mainstream. 79 The government takes
a far greater risk on graduate student loans, for example, than on any welfare recipient. 80 In light of this
risk, "[welfare fraud] is not too different from the 'fraud' committed by those collecting unemployment
insurance who fail to report occasional income, or those who 'forget' to report earnings on their income
tax forms." 81 The argument that it is essential to impose additional "an [*250] ti-fraud" requirements
on welfare recipients is particularly galling as terminally sloppy welfare agencies barely try to combat
fraud, with the information they already have, such as names and social security numbers. 82
Even apart from churning policies that have a patina of criminal law enforcement, the arbitrary and
erratic enforcement of even mundane administrative welfare regulations places the poor outside the
realm of due process. One analyst describes the logic behind bureaucratic disentitlement as follows:
"'Besiege the families with red tape. Find and use every opportunity to tell the parents, especially the
mothers, that they are inferior human beings . . . . Change the rules several times a year. Keep the rule
changes complex and quasi-secret, so they can't 'comply' . . . . Wonder why they don't like you.'" 83
Practices that humiliate and discourage those in need work at cross-purposes with other, more laudable
welfare policies which seek to enable the poor to improve their situation. If a public agency fails to serve
the needs of the poor, even though its mandate is to do so, it would be naive to expect more of a private
corporation whose primary duty is to its shareholders. [*251]
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Eligibility Requirements – Laundry List
Welfare reform has restricted access to a variety of social service programs
Boyer, Kate ( 2002, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Reform and
Resistance:
A Consideration of Space, Scale
and Strategy in Legal Challenges
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118562122/PDFSTART, P. 6-7)
to Welfare Reform,
One may ask, ‘‘was the old system better?’’ Many agreed that the program preceding welfare reform (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) needed
changing (including many Democrats); and at the time of its passage, welfare reform did not elicit substantial criticism from the Left. As a result of welfare
reform’s strict requirements about case closures and work participation rates, welfare caseloads declined dramatically in the latter half of the 1990s; and, in
concerns remain
about how well the most disadvantaged citizens have been served by welfare reform. This policy
change has had the effect of restricting access not only to cash assistance, but also—sometimes out of
confu-sion over how eligibility for these various programs differ—to benefits such as Medicaid and
Food Stamps. Welfare clients are no longer allowed to pursue post-secondary education to increase their skill- base and earning potential, and many
clients find themselves needing to work two or even three jobs in order to survive. Welfare reform has also set strict limits on aid
for legal benefits, who were initially barred from assistance of any kind (Fix and Zimmerman 2000; Ku and Blaney
the context of an historically strong national economy, poverty rates did go down nationally over this time. Nevertheless,
2000). Further, despite the strength of the economy overall in the late 1990s, women in the lowest earnings bracket nationally were in deeper poverty in
2002 than they were in 1996; and the percentage of families who experienced a critical hardship (including going without food, shelter or medical care)
With its emphasis sanctions, time limits, and
inducements for states to shed welfare cases whether there are jobs to shift into or not, welfare reform
is structured so as to make survival more difficult for low- income women with children.
after leaving welfare for work increased between 1997 and 1999 (Boushey 2002).
91
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Eligibility Requirements – Administrative Hurdles
Administrative hurdles exclude the homeless from social services
Susan D. Bennett June, 1995, ("No Relief But Upon the Terms of Coming into the House," - Controlled Spaces,
Invisible
Disentitlements,
and
Homelessness
in
an
Urban
Shelter
System
http://www.lexisnexis.com:80/us/lnacademic/search/journalssubmitForm.do Professor of Law and Director of the
Public Interest Law Clinic of the Washington College of Law of the American University)
"Verification extremism" hurts all applicants for public benefits; notarization requirements and multiple
appointments are features of all public benefits systems. n47 But the administrative imposition of financial
hardship and geographical dislocation affects homeless persons most severely, for they have no home base
from which to collect documentation, set out on errands, and receive mail. While federal legislation has
eliminated the previously widespread regulatory requirement that applicants submit proof of conventional residence in order
to be eligible for public benefits, n48 nothing has addressed [*2171] the problem that applicants and recipients
virtually need a home office -- let alone a home -- to maintain the records demanded for verification of
eligibility.
92
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Eligibility Requirements – Administrative Hurdles
Bureaucratic disentitlement decreases social services for the poor
DeVerteuil, Lee and Wolch in 2002 (Geoffrey, Department of Geography, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg MB
R3T 2N2, Canada, Woobae, Kyeongnam Development Institute, 101–1 Shinwol-Dong, Changwon, Kyeongnam,
Korea, Jennifer, Department of Geography, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA,
http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/914244_770849120_713780690.pdf, no date)
Far from being exceptional, these bureaucratic disentitlements often become routinized over time,
deflecting bureaucrats from direct accountability and decreasing bureaucratic flexibility. In this light, we
must see these strategies as intentional. Strategies that ‘subvert predictability, antagonize or neglect
clients, or sow confusion and uncertainty…are generally functional for the agency. They limit
client demands and the number of clients in a context where the agency has no dearth of responsibilities’
(Lipsky 1980: 101 Bureaucratic disentitlement causes a decrease in those that are able to fall under
their program. Reconstruct of these projects allowed them to become more productive and allow more people for health
care., the American federal welfare responded to pressures to streamline itself within a competitive
globalized world system by employing a full range of direct strategies—devolution, privatization,
selective dismantlement and workfare (Kodras 1997; Wolch 1990). Devolution is an internal transformation
that shifts responsibility for public assistance programmes to lower levels of government. Privatization
transfers traditional government functions to external commercial or non-profit entities. Dismantlement
of the national welfare state involves the selective reduction in or withdrawal of federal funding, or
alteration of programme guidelines, significantly transforming existing government programmes at all
levels. Finally, workfare imposes work requirements in return for benefits. All strategies are inherently
spatial, changing both the scale and scope of government action (Kodras 1997: 79).
Welfare departments have created restrictions in an attempt to ration services
DeVerteuil, Lee and Wolch in 2002 (Geoffrey, Department of Geography, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg
MB R3T 2N2, Canada, Woobae, Kyeongnam Development Institute, 101–1 Shinwol-Dong, Changwon, Kyeongnam,
Korea, Jennifer, Department of Geography, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA,
http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/914244_770849120_713780690.pdf, no date)
Lipsky’s (1980, 1984) street-level bureaucracy concept represents an early effort to understand how the local welfare state
administers its own programmes under severely constrained circumstances. Street-level bureaucracies are broadly defined as
those public services, such as welfare departments, courts and the police, ‘whose workers interact with and have wide
discretion over the dispensation of benefits’ (Lipsky 1980: xi). Rather than mere transmitting of higher-tier policies, Lipsky
conceived these bureaucracies as having some autonomous discretion, acting as potential reservoirs of support for clients.
Beginning in the late 1960s, however, pressures mounted on street-level bureaucrats to maintain programmes despite
‘chronically inadequate resources in circumstances where the demand [would] always increase to meet the supply of
services’ (Lipsky 1980: 81). Unable to dismantle programmes outright, street-level bureaucracies resorted to low-level
strategies that kept budgets down while also streamlining operations in politically acceptable ways. In effect, street-level
bureaucrats devised a series of strategies designed to ration services and depress demand. They did so by
imposing indirect costs on obtaining services through inconspicuous ‘bureaucratic disentitlements’ that
‘take place through obscure and routine actions [and inactions] of public authorities’ (Lipsky 1984: 3).
Although leaving the service shell superficially intact, these strategies articulated the overall goal of
retrenchment, cloaked in terms of efficiency, spending reductions, decreased individual discretion and
increasing accountability (Lipsky 1984: 6).
93
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Eligibility Requirements – Welfare to Work
WRA restricts public benefits, forcing rapid entry into the workfore
Boyer, Kate ( 2002, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Reform and
Resistance:
A Consideration of Space, Scale
and Strategy in Legal Challenges
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118562122/PDFSTART, P. 3)
to Welfare Reform,
The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 replaced a 60-year understanding of welfare as an entitlement of last
resort with an understanding of benefits conditioned on attachment to the labor market, sanctions
for clients who failed to follow procedures, a 60-month lifetime limit on direct federal assistance,
and a requirement for states to reduce the number of people on their welfare rolls. Welfare reform
was not designed with the goal of poverty alleviation, but rather as a way to reduce the size of the
welfare caseload. It emphasizes rapid entry into the workforce, and does not allow clients to receive benefits
if they are pursing higher education. Although states have worked most aggressively to meet case-closure rates and ‘‘workfirst’’ goals, the Act also calls for programs which promote marriage and reduce out-of-wedlock births, and some activity
has also occurred in these areas. The effects of welfare reform track the geography of poverty in the US
generally, and thus are most evident in areas of concentrated poverty in inner-city neighborhoods (Keil
2002; MacLeod 2002; Smith 1996, 1998) as well as chronically poor rural regions such as Appalachia and the Mississippi
delta (Plein 2001).
The Welfare Reform Act conditioned public benefits on employment status
Boyer, Kate 2002, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Reform and
Resistance:
A Consideration of Space, Scale
and Strategy in Legal Challenges
to Welfare Reform,
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118562122/PDFSTART, P. 1-2
In recent years, social welfare policy in the US has become a site of debate about where governmental responsibility ends
and that of private citizens begins. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (the
Welfare Reform Act) has led to broad-scale changes in the degree and kind of social services provided
by the State. These changes have included the imposition of lifetime limits on assistance, sanctions,
benefits conditioned on work, and a shift in the responsibility to provide and administer services away
from public institutions, and toward private organizations. As the language of the act suggests, welfare reform
heavily emphasizes the ‘‘responsibility’’ of low-income single mothers to engage in waged labor. Within this
framework, the responsibility to secure the opportunities and resources necessary to find and keep
employment is considered to be a personal one.
94
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Eligibility Requirements Bad
Homeless are most vulnerable to sanctions because of missing documentation.
The New York Times December 29, 1999 Section A; Page 1; Column 6; Metropolitan Desk Giuliani Proclaims
Success On Pledge To Curb Welfarenina Bernstein
Mr. Giuliani demanded more than the federal welfare overhaul of 1996, which set limits on benefits but did not require all
adult recipients to work. But in arriving at his target population in July 1998, the mayor discounted the vast majority of
recipients -- who now number 630,000, two-thirds of them children. About 52,000 of the adults on the shrinking caseload
were exempt by federal law from working, including those over 60, mothers of infants under 3 months and people with
AIDS.
Another 66,000 were indefinitely or temporarily incapacitated because of poor health or disabilities, while 123,000 were
classified as already working or in "work-related activities," and 41,000 had been cited for missing appointments or failing to
follow welfare rules.
By Mr. Turner's count, that left the target population of 48,141 -- people who had not been assigned by the city to any of a
variety of programs combining job search, work, education or treatment in what is supposed to simulate a 35-hour work
week.
Complicating the task was that people are constantly moving on and off the rolls, Mr. Turner noted.
One of the mayor's main strategies for further shrinking welfare was to transform welfare centers to "job centers" where
applicants were turned away and told to seek work or charity instead. But the plan was halted earlier this year when a federal
court found that welfare workers had violated the law by denying Medicaid and food stamps to those entitled to them.
Though a higher percentage of people applying for assistance continued to be rejected this year than under previous
administrations, tougher procedures also resulted in a sharp drop in recipients classified as temporarily unfit to work for
health reasons. That number fell from 39,000 in July 1998 to 6,824 in the week of Aug. 24, 1999, before reaching a plateau
of about 7,500.
In late August, with time running out, Mr. Turner by his own count was still 24,000 recipients from the goal. One group of
people not counted as available to work by Mr. Turner's definition were those under sanction for missing appointments or
breaking other welfare rules, a figure that had risen modestly from 15,704, when the mayor made his pledge, to 17,306 more
than a year later.
But in less than four months, between late August and mid-December, as the pressure to reach zero intensified, that number
jumped 32 percent, by more than 5,700 people, to 23,000 parents. Also no longer counted were another 34,000 adults cited
for failing to follow the rules, but not yet penalized.
Critics of Mr. Giuliani's policies on welfare say that the homeless and the mentally ill are especially vulnerable to sanctions
for missing notices or failing to supply documentation. The sanctions include loss of all benefits for adults without
children, and loss of a parent's portion of the grant for families. And for the homeless, new policies under legal challenge
make those under sanction ineligible for shelter.
Since the city's own figures show an average of only 41,000 recipients in workfare assignments, the critics ask what is being done by the rest of the 137,542
recipients classified by the mayor as "engaged" -- up from 123,254 in July 1998.
Mr. Turner said 32,000 work at private jobs paying too little to disqualify them from aid, and 69,000 are in work-related activities, the rest in treatment or
referral stages.
"He's been under the gun," said Liz Krueger, director of the Community Food Resource Center. "You either get them in 35 hours' work, or you get them off
welfare. One person at H.R.A. joked to me, 'If we tell you to ride the subways for 35 hours a week and look at the posters, we call them engaged, so the
mayor can have his state of the city address and say, 'Eureka, I did it.' "
Asked about the spike in welfare sanctions, Mr. Turner described them as a necessary tool to push people into helpful programs, including new contracted
services aimed at training the more disabled and troubled population left on public assistance in a strong economy.
"It's naive to think otherwise," he said, adding that sanctions were bound to increase. "We had 48,000 who were sitting on the sidelines, and by definition
could not be subject to being sanctioned, because they were doing nothing."
Mr. Turner said last summer that he was trying to set a "float" -- a number of people who could be discounted -- because they were so new to the system that
it was unrealistic to expect them to be evaluated, let alone working.
But by Dec. 17, reviewing his progress with four aides, Mr. Turner said the definitions had been readjusted to eliminate the need for such a category, and a
new level of management scrutiny had been applied to the target group, which had been whittled to 304 by Dec. 12.
The pressure became so intense that his staff worked weekends to find and contact the last 72 on the list before Dec. 20. But during those eight days
alone, city numbers show, another 169 recipients were also discounted because of new punishments that docked their
benefits, usually by a third to half the normal grant.
"It all comes down to creating bureaucratic opportunities for closing cases," said Richard Blum, a lawyer at the Legal Aid
Society.
95
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Eligibility Restrictions Bad
Current approach on relief for the poor is inefficient.
Larry Cata Backer, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Tulsa College of Law; 1993 Boston College Law
School; 34 B.C. L. Rev 997; Of Handouts and Worthless Promises: Understanding the Conceptual Limitations of
American Systems of Poor Relief
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=349fcbf55289d8e24ef5fc1bf91b5137&_docnum=20&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVk&_md5=b3d8d6b519b5934f6884a478e0202080&taggedDocs=Z4,1Z59
I use Part I of this essay to place the nature of my inquiry in context. The bulk of Part II discusses the
social context in which the problems of the poor exist. Part III sets out the parameters of the static
paradigm. The paradigm provides the (mostly unconscious) postulates and critical assumptions which
govern the fundamental ordering of systems of institutional poor relief in the United States. Underlying
our conceptions of poor relief are the notions (in the nature of cultural mores) that current social and
economic systems are substantially immutable and unchallengeable, that income inequality must be
preserved and that the basic conditions giving rise to the need to aid some members of society are not
subject to successful manipulation. To give the paradigm some historical context, I briefly examine two
archetypal static systems -- Canon Law poor relief and the Elizabethan Poor Law. From the paradigm
and archetypes, I briefly describe a general theory of poor relief in the United States. 4 This theory
provides the basis for the derivation, in Part IV, of the system of specific rules limiting the range of
conceivable models for reforming institutional poor relief within the conceptual universe of the static
paradigm. I would also call attention to an additional theme running through this essay -- that the
hortatory provisions of many modern versions of poor relief amount to little more than sophisticated
means by which legislators comply with the wishes of an electorate desperate to be told what it wants to
hear. The result: modern legislation speaks the language of self-sufficiency; but modern approaches to
poor relief, as well as our fundamental conceptions of poverty and poor law, continue to speak the
ancient language of maintenance, of alleviating short term poverty by feeding the hungry and clothing
the naked. Our poor relief systems thus appear to strive for a dynamism that belies [*1001] their origins
and purposes. Advertising systems of poor relief as "new" and "improved," especially to the poor, does a
disservice to the recipients of aid, whose expectations are raised and then dashed, 9 and to taxpayers
whose assessment of the efficacy of the systems becomes quite negative, and who wind up blaming the
poor for the failure of such systems to live up to their billing. 10
Who are "they," or these "people" or the "poor" who so vex generations of social tinkerers? Simply
stated, they are those whom people who write about them label as "poor;" they can be whomever one
wishes them to be. Not surprisingly, then, definitions tend to vary with the society 17 and the times. 18
The starting reference point in the [*1004] United States has tended to be income qualifications, the socalled "poverty-line." 19 Of course, even in the United States, the definition of poverty might well vary
depending on the political agenda of the definer. 20
96
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Eligibility Restrictions Bad
Government offers help only to those who are considered “worthy”
Larry Cata Backer, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Tulsa College of Law; 1993 Boston College Law
School; 34 B.C. L. Rev 997; Of Handouts and Worthless Promises: Understanding the Conceptual Limitations of
American Systems of Poor Relief
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=349fcbf55289d8e24ef5fc1bf91b5137&_docnum=20&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVk&_md5=b3d8d6b519b5934f6884a478e0202080&taggedDocs=Z4,1Z59
As a minimalist and discriminatory system, the static model would dictate different treatment of the various categories of
potential recipients of aid. 191 Since stasis assumes that the poverty of the able-bodied reflects voluntary lifestyle choice, it
follows that poor relief to the able-bodied should be extremely troublesome, at least to the extent that such aid is perceived as
a reward for the decision not to work. As a consequence, aid to the able-bodied will be kept to a minimum, and likely will be
limited to the provision of minimally necessary food and shelter. In many jurisdictions, governmental aid to the able-bodied
without minor children may approach nothing. For example, Arizona, 192 [*1045] Delaware, 193 Hawaii, 194 Louisiana,
195 Massachusetts, 196 New Mexico, 197 North Carolina, 198 Ohio, 199 Oregon, 200 South Carolina, 201 Tennessee, 202
Washington, 203 West Virginia, 204 Wyoming 205 and the District of Columbia 206 do not provide significant aid of any
kind to people who are not otherwise worthy. Worthiness is likely measured as a function of ability to qualify for any one of
the federal categories entitling a person to federal assistance. The recent concern about the homeless [*1046] will not
change the nature of the response of state and federal governments, even with respect to the destitute able-bodied who lack
minor children to support. 207
Since work is "good" and unemployment is "bad," static systems tend to implement programs that make the provision of aid
for unemployed able-bodied recipients as unpleasant as possible. 208 Since the core societal imperative under a static regime
is to work, we should also expect static poor relief systems to require the able-bodied poor to labor for whatever aid is
provided. 209 Those able-bodied poor who refuse to work for their keep, whether it be provided by the state or otherwise,
will be punished. This punishment would consist of criminalizing acts of vagrancy or otherwise assessing penalties on those
who earn their living without the benefit of gainful, honest employment. 210 [*1047] Another form of punishment might
involve conditioning the amount of benefits received on the conduct of the recipients.
Further, insinuated into new eradicative goals is the ancient static notion that since unemployment is a vicious lifestyle
choice, the eradication of poverty, if it is to be achieved, must derive largely from efforts to change the habits of the poor. In
effect, the new goals permit productive members of society to indulge the static fantasy that the poor are America's noble
savages, frightening, burdensome, lazy and ignorant. 294 If only they were more like the rest of the working population.
Eradicative efforts, then, are mostly characterized by static notions [*1067] of "obligation," that is, the "right" to work.
These take the form of provisions for mandatory 295 or optional 296 job training programs, job referral programs 297 and
general education programs. 298 At the federal level, a number of programs exist for the purpose of forcing those who take
other people's money to begin to act more like the people from whom they take (notice here how static notions inhere in the
way we characterize the "transaction!") by getting married, getting a job, and becoming "responsible" citizens. 299 None of
these programs, however, focus the efforts of eradication outside of the population to be "treated" for the disease of laziness,
incompetence or ineptitude. Among the most publicized, and fairly typical of the lot, are proposed changes to the AFDC
provisions of several states, under which benefits will be terminated after a number of years, 300 or will be denied for
children born to a recipient of aid, 301 or will be reduced if the recipient or his or her children fail to attend school, 302 or
will be reduced to new residents. 303 From the static perspective, these programs can be characterized as little more than
more subtle and sophisticated versions of [*1068] the Statute of Laborers 304 or other ordinances commanding the
unemployed to work. 305
Consequently, United States society has not rid itself of poverty nor of the poor. It has no intention of doing so. General
assistance provisions are not administered to "encourage self-respect, self-reliance, and the desire to be a good citizen, useful
to society." 306 Such programs do not assist those without the means to meet the costs of necessary maintenance "to attain or
retain their capabilities for independence, self-care, and self-support," 307 nor do they encourage the needy "to achieve
economic independence and self-sufficiency." 308 These programs fail because "economic and demographic changes have
created rapid increases in the number of needy persons who are homeless or without other necessities of basic existence." 309
Perhaps they are meant to fail, at least in the sense of fulfilling the expectations they might raise among the poor. That, too, is
quintessentially static: "the options being put before the nation are to continue present relief arrangements, perhaps modified
by measures to shift the local fiscal burden to the federal government, or to adopt the age-old approach to relief explosions -namely, the introduction of work-enforcing measures. It is a poor choice to be sure, but it is the politically real choice
nevertheless." 310
97
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Eligibility Restrictions Bad
Static governmental systems are not able to provide basic needs.
Larry Cata Backer, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Tulsa College of Law; 1993 Boston College Law
School; 34 B.C. L. Rev 997; Of Handouts and Worthless Promises: Understanding the Conceptual Limitations of
American Systems of Poor Relief
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=349fcbf55289d8e24ef5fc1bf91b5137&_docnum=20&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVk&_md5=b3d8d6b519b5934f6884a478e0202080&taggedDocs=Z4,1Z59
[*1069] This result should come as no surprise. The static paradigm would indicate that such systems
are capable of only limited function. Recall that, at most, these limited functions include the sustaining,
feeding, clothing, and housing of the poor. Recall further that, in many static systems, the institutional
aid provided to the able-bodied is substantially more limited than this. 311 And yet, these new goals
purport to set a new course for institutional relief, that of eradicating poverty. This new course is
supposed to be navigated by a system which is only reasonably efficient at delivering material things to
those in need. Charles Murray has described this legislative response to the problem of poverty
"escapism," explaining that "those who legislate and administer and write about social policy can
tolerate any increase in actual suffering as long as the system in place does not explicitly permit it." 312
Perhaps legislators are best able to respond to perceived desires of the population by telling them what
they want to hear, without the bother of actually having to do what they say they have done. In this
sense, the new eradicative purposes of our poor relief statutes can be best understood as (an empty)
political gesture. They are the words that hide the inattention to programs left substantially unaltered.
313
I have argued that this divergence between dynamic goals and static systems, the one rooted in change,
and the other rooted in immutability, could help to explain why such reoriented systems did not seem to
"work," that is, to eliminate poverty. 314 Contrary to the common view that these systems do not work
well, the theory helps explain that they work quite well. What they work well at, however, is the
provision of the bare necessities to the qualified poor, not the eradication of poverty nor the creation of a
self-sustaining class of poor. As long as legislatures are content to change the purpose of ancient
provisions, without adjusting the provisions themselves to meet the changes in purpose, such measures
will continue to function as they [*1070] always have, the newer purpose ignored, and the
determination made, sooner or later, that the statute fails to meet its new goals. 315
The theory I have been developing can also help us to understand why poor law reforms seem to take a
static turn, even when the stated purposes of the reforms are not static. The theory can tell us at least two
things. First, it can help us to understand the limits of the vision of the static system builders and, in that
manner, explain why "reforms" tend to take a particular path. Second, contextualizing any such
"reforms" within a governing paradigm helps explain the divergence between stated purpose and actual
goals of such "reforms." 316 Testing the utility of the theory merely by examining the rhetoric of welfare reform, which
I did in Part A, has provided a glimpse of the manner in which stasis insinuates itself into reform. I believe it is also useful to
examine the theory's potential as a basis for understanding the limits of political and legislative rhetoric and reforms by
examining a concrete attempt at reform. Reform unadulterated by compromise and expediency can provide us with a clear
view of the manner in which reform operates in a static poor relief context. For this purpose, I have chosen the representative
set of provisions contained in a recent California voter initiative, Proposition 165, 317 the Government Accountability and
Taxpayer Protection Act of 1992 ("GATPA").
98
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Eligibility Requirements Bad
High-level bureaucrats set difficult requirement for the needy to get welfare.
David J. Kennedy; Public Interest Law Fellow and Staff Attorney, Alliance for Justice, Washington D.C. B.A.,
Harvard College; J.D., Yale 1998 Law School Brooklyn Law Review; 64 Brooklyn L. Rev. 231 DUE PROCESS IN A
PRIVATIZED WELFARE SYSTEM *
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Churning consists not only of front-line welfare officials engaged in verification extremism, but also
high-level bureaucrats setting policy goals whose utility is far outweighed by their churning potential.
While feeding the needy may seem an unquestionably valid goal of welfare policy, federal policymakers
have frequently intervened to make it difficult to get Food Stamps. For example, Monthly Reporting and
Retrospective Budgeting ("MRRB") procedures were a mandatory feature of federal Food Stamp policy
from 1981 through 1988. 43 Under MRRB, recipients had to visit the lo [*243] cal welfare office every
month to go over their household budgets. 44 Needless to say, monthly budget reporting makes
compliance with Food Stamp regulations extremely difficult: even if recipients manage to attend every
single meeting, itself an onerous task, the failure to provide documentation of any minor change in their
life circumstances could lead to loss of benefits. 45 While the putative purpose of MRRB was to insure
the accuracy of budgetary information, MRRB failed to save money in terms of program costs. 46
Instead, it increased administrative closings and caused otherwise eligible recipients to be cut off, a
classic feature of churning. 47 In this harsh post-PRWORA climate, it would be quite easy for the state
to return to the days of the MRRB and require Food Stamp recipients to arrange a visit to the welfare
office, endure interminable delays and reschedulings, arrange for child care for these eventualities, and
change their work program schedules to be recer [*244] tified each month. With each additional
administrative requirement comes another possibility that that recipient will fail to meet some
requirement or another, or the caseworker will make an error, and benefits will be terminated for reasons
unrelated to need.
99
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Eligibility Requirements Bad
The welfare system has lost its purpose to help the needy.
David J. Kennedy; Public Interest Law Fellow and Staff Attorney, Alliance for Justice, Washington D.C. B.A.,
Harvard College; J.D., Yale 1998 Law School Brooklyn Law Review; 64 Brooklyn L. Rev. 231 DUE PROCESS IN A
PRIVATIZED WELFARE SYSTEM *
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=349fcbf55289d8e24ef5fc1bf91b5137&_docnum=25&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVk&_md5=8fc3ef6dbdb0e5c1fbfb22922f773ff2&taggedDocs=Z4,1Z59
Churning applicants is not merely an unfortunate side effect of the welfare system: it is one of its
primary goals. As one Los Angeles County welfare official declared: "'The welfare application process .
. . was designed to be rough. It is designed quite frankly to be exclusionary.'" 74 Policymakers
implement churning procedures to force exclusion among eligible recipients. 75 It could be argued that
all welfare policies cause some amount of exclusion: no matter how valid or reasonable the requirement,
somebody will always drop out rather than comply. Yet whether welfare recipients should be compelled
to get jobs, to have fewer children, or to attend training sessions are all value questions; these questions
all merit debate and discussion. There are few values inherent to churning, however, apart from costeffectiveness 76 and ensuring that only those who [*249] illogically persevere receive assistance.
Churning policies often reward recipients whose skills consist of managing to attend meetings and
playing the system rather than endeavoring to lift themselves out of poverty. Satisfying the vast number
of administrative obligations imposed by EVR, for example, seems to require a life of leisure. Such
policies may have the paradoxical effect of hindering recipients' search for employment or efforts to take
care of their children. Similarly, work requirements are selection devices of questionable validity when
there are few employment opportunities. 77 In a critique of the Food Stamp program, one study noted
that churning policies had the effect of screening out those traditionally considered most "deserving" of
assistance: bureaucratic burdens fell especially hard on elderly recipients, who found it difficult to make
all the required appointments. 78 If the aim of public assistance is to assist the neediest or those most
committed to improving their situation, churning policies fail to satisfy these goals.
100
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Eligibility Requirements Bad—Now Key
Current eligibility restrictions lock in the cycle of poverty—now is the key time to act.
The Boston Globe February 28, 2009 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR; Pg. A8Urgency indeed for shelter reform
Lexis-Nexis
proposed changes to eligibility for emergency shelter are part of a
comprehensive response to provide housing and stabilization services to homeless families. A recent Globe
THE PATRICK-MURRAY administration's
editorial ("More than homes for homeless," Feb. 19) asks, why the rush to implement changes to the state's emergency shelter
system? With nearly 2,600 families in shelter across the state, and with more and more families losing their homes to
foreclosure and with finite, dwindling public resources, the question should be, if not now, when? There is an immediate,
urgent need to act efficiently and fairly to ensure that we protect residents having the greatest difficulty
meeting their basic needs. Clarifying existing regulations that set eligibility criteria for the emergency
shelter system along with a separate proposal to merge shelter services with the housing delivery system
are part of a multi-pronged reform package by the Patrick-Murray administration.Clearly one size does not fit all.
Families having the greatest difficulty meeting their basic needs will require intensive services and skills training. The
Department of Transitional Assistance and the Department of Housing and Community Development are committed to
working together to administer programs that link employment and housing supports. It is critical to provide families
with access to education, training, and work supports so that they are better equipped to sustain their
permanent housing. The need is urgent; the time to act is now.
101
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Eligibility Requirements Bad—EVR
The EVR program has made acquiring welfare nearly impossible for the needy.
David J. Kennedy; Public Interest Law Fellow and Staff Attorney, Alliance for Justice, Washington D.C. B.A.,
Harvard College; J.D., Yale 1998 Law School Brooklyn Law Review; 64 Brooklyn L. Rev. 231 DUE PROCESS IN A
PRIVATIZED WELFARE SYSTEM *
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=349fcbf55289d8e24ef5fc1bf91b5137&_docnum=25&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVk&_md5=8fc3ef6dbdb0e5c1fbfb22922f773ff2&taggedDocs=Z4,1Z59
In 1995, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani introduced a dramatic effort to reduce welfare rolls
known as eligibility verification review, or EVR. 52 One legal services lawyer called EVR "'the most
aggressive effort to deny public assistance I've seen in my 20 years in this business.'" 53 In addition to
the systemic barriers of five-hour waits, undersupplied offices, and unresponsive personnel, 54 the EVR
process imposed two additional hurdles upon the receipt of welfare. First, all applicants, regardless of
their borough of residence, were required to report to a special center in Brooklyn for an additional
eligibility interview. The second step to EVR was an unannounced home visit to confirm that the
applicant had provided correct information as to residence and family composition. 55 The home visits
followed preexisting, but irregularly used, verification procedures titled "Front End Detection Service."
56 [*246] Hence investigators, calling themselves "FEDS," 57 would show up at the recipient's home
and interrogate landlords and neighbors if the recipient was not there.
Those interviewed by EVR workers stated that the workers were "'belligerent'" and "'intimidating.'" 58
The interviewers wore badges even though they were not police officers. 59 One applicant reported that
his address book was pulled from his hands by an EVR worker when he could not provide an address.
The applicant was forced to sign a form in English even though he only spoke Spanish; later it turned
out he had unwittingly signed a form withdrawing his application for relief. 60
The home visit stage saw further abuses even apart from caseworkers posing as the "Feds." Cases were
frequently closed simply because there was nobody at home to answer the questions, 61 or because the
forms slipped under the door by EVR investigators failed to give instructions in any language but
English. 62 In one incident, an individual's case was closed because she was not present when the EVR
investigators dropped by her house; she was out at the work program assigned to her by the very same
welfare agency. 63
102
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Eligibility Requirements Bad—EVR
EVR has failed its purpose and only prevents the needy from receiving welfare.
David J. Kennedy; Public Interest Law Fellow and Staff Attorney, Alliance for Justice, Washington D.C. B.A.,
Harvard College; J.D., Yale 1998 Law School Brooklyn Law Review; 64 Brooklyn L. Rev. 231 DUE PROCESS IN A
PRIVATIZED WELFARE SYSTEM *
http://web.lexisnexis.com/scholastic/document?_m=349fcbf55289d8e24ef5fc1bf91b5137&_docnum=25&wchp=dGLbVlbzSkVk&_md5=8fc3ef6dbdb0e5c1fbfb22922f773ff2&taggedDocs=Z4,1Z59
Although the asserted justification for EVR is fraud prevention, the number of proven cases of fraud
paled in comparison to the number of cases of administrative harassment and frustration. 64 Robert
Marquez, the Queens administrator for Catholic Charities, explained: "'There are more and more delays
for people applying for public benefits. You see a three, four, five-month delay.'" 65 [*247]
Bureaucratic inconsistency, arbitrariness, and cruelty were rampant. One reporter found an applicant
with two contradictory documents, one cutting her benefits off for missing an EVR interview and a
second verifying that she had in fact made the interview. 66 AIDS patients who missed their EVR
appointments had their benefits canceled even though the only reason they had missed their
appointments was because they had been hospitalized. 67
The protests of city officials notwithstanding, it was not difficult to discern the motivation for New York
City's harsh new approach to welfare policy: the City sought to impose administrative hoops and hurdles
to reduce the number of individuals on welfare. As one applicant, a flood victim seeking an emergency
grant, complained, "'It's the running around that gets to you.'" 68 A report by the City's Public Advocate
found that "improper and illegal treatment of applicants and recipients was commonplace" in the rush to
close cases. 69 Opponents of the policy leaked a memo written by a Human Resources Administration
official that baldly declared that the program was "designed to alleviate the budget gap." 70 An
extensive report on EVR a year and a half after its implementation found that its overly rigorous
procedures denied thousands of eligible people the benefits to which they were entitled. 71
To some degree, EVR has reduced the number of welfare recipients. In its first year, the number of
Home Relief recipients in New York City dropped from 244,000 to 179,000, 72 and other states seem
interested in following Mayor Giuliani's lead. 73 However, the [*248] use of criteria wholly unrelated
to need is an ominous development in the context of increased state discretion to run their own relief
systems. Moreover, private corporations have a strong interest in churning policies; not only does
churning allow the private provider to claim that it has processed a high number of cases, but the
putatively neutral churning criteria also screen out deserving claimants and thereby maximize private
profits.
103
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
****Solvency****
104
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Solvency—Eligibility Restrictions—1AC (?)
Jonathan L. Hafetz; March, 2003; J.D., Yale Law School, 1999; M. Phil., Oxford University, 1992; B.A., Amherst
College, 1990. The Author was formerly a staff attorney at The Partnership for the Homeless in New York City; 2003
Fordham University School of Law Fordham Urban Law Journal; 30 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1215, Homeless Legal
Advocacy: New Challenges And Directions For The Future, Lexis-Nexis.
Because federal
welfare programs have traditionally been limited to families with children, single adults have
been forced to rely on state general assistance programs that provide significantly lower benefit rates , if
they exist at all. Single adults still make up a majority of the homeless population, though the proportion of
families with children has been rising steadily. 233 Many homeless single adults suffer from mental illness. For this
population, it is important, where possible, to obtain benefits under the SSI program, 234 the federal means-tested program
for low-income persons who are elderly (sixty-five and older), blind, or disabled. 235 Indeed, [*1251] for non-elderly,
mentally ill single adults - who are ineligible for TANF funds and unable to work - accessing SSI represents perhaps the best
chance to gain the financial means to escape homelessness. Many homeless people meet the Social Security disability
standard 236 because they have chronic health problems, which being homeless often exacerbates. 237 Yet, many eligible
homeless people are not receiving SSI benefits, 238 as the Social Security Administration ("SSA") itself has
recognized. 239 The problem may partly be explained by the lack of information about SSI, the lack of
assistance in filing for benefits, and the length and complexity of the application process itself. 240 The
SSA, however, has made some attempt to increase outreach efforts aimed at homeless people. 241
Given the often inappropriate denial of disability claims by homeless people, 242 and the high rates of
reversal at the administrative hearing level where such denials are challenged, 243 legal advocacy can
make a significant difference. 244 This is particularly true for individuals who suffer from alcohol or substance abuse in
light of a 1997 change to eligibility criteria that prevents receipt of SSI benefits if drug or alcohol "is a contributing factor
material to [*1252] the determination of disability," 245 and thus face greater difficulty establishing disability.
Further advocacy is also needed around regulations that directly impact homeless people, such as those
governing residence in public institutions such as homeless shelters, jails, and hospitals. 246 Regulations
preclude receipt of SSI benefits by individuals who remain in public homeless shelters for six months
within a nine-month period. 247 Even though the regulations require that an individual remain in the shelter for the
entire month for that month to count in terms of the restriction, 248 SSA often incorrectly counts months against recipients in
which they were absent for part of that month. Also, SSI benefits are suspended when an individual enters other public
institutions, such as jails. Under the pre-release program, individuals in such public institutions may either file new SSI
applications or seek to reactivate previously open cases prior to their release so that, if approved, they will receive benefits
upon release. 249 Many public institutions, however, have not complied with the pre-release program. 250
While SSI benefit rates may, in many cases, still be insufficient for homeless people to obtain permanent housing at market
rates, 251 they provide a critical source of income, particularly for single adults 252 who must otherwise rely solely on
meager state general assistance funds to survive. Indeed, obtaining SSI benefits may open the door to new housing
opportunities, including subsidized housing programs run by not-for-profit organizations in the community.
105
Berkeley 2009
Homelessness Affirmative
Regents Lab
Solvency – Social Services Key
[
] Social services are key to solving the issues of social exclusion, marginalization, and
disenfranchisement that face homeless people
The Social Exclusion Unit 2003 [September 2003 “MENTAL HEALTH AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION”
http://www.crisis.org.uk/pdf/CrisisResponseToseu.pdf]
Social exclusion is a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of
linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime
environments, bad health and family breakdown1. Poor mental health and social exclusion are at the heart of
the experience for individuals who are homeless, with mental illness affecting between 30 and 50% of homeless
individuals2. Mainstream goals -- such as acquiring and maintaining a home or securing ongoing employment – are likely to
be severely compromised by the compounding effects of homelessness, social exclusion, and poor mental health. This is
especially true for individuals who are categorised as ‘non-statutory’ or single homeless3. Single
homelessness is characterised by extreme poverty and marginalisation, aggravated by experiences of
social exclusion4 5. There is a clear need to address the issues of mental health and social exclusion amongst
single homeless individuals, whose needs remain largely unrecognised by local authorities. We believe that
social inclusion is the key to resolving issues related to homelessness within our society. Efforts toward
greater social and economic inclusion, and meaningful mental health promotion are welcomed. We support the governments’
desire to enhance the social integration and the promotion of greater self-sufficiency amongst individuals who are dealing
with issues of mental illness and social exclusion. However, there is a need to identify and acknowledge the
barriers that exist to this goal, and a need to work towards a more complex understanding of the intersections between
mental illness and social exclusion. With this comes a need for a more comprehensive definition of social inclusion – to
recognize the complexities and variability of human needs6, to reconsider how we measure those needs, and what constitutes
meaningful choice in reaching those goals. We believe that there are some fundamental ways to address the
issues of social exclusion and mental health problems amongst the homeless: improve access to
mainstream housing and social services; improve access to primary and secondary mental health services; promote
innovative programmes that offer a wider understanding of meaningful life activities; and finally, create an atmosphere of
inclusion through the promotion of consumer led initiatives.
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Solvency—Federal Government Key
Federal policies function best to address social services—only federal reforms can change deepseated flaws in America’s social and economic institutions.
Heidi Sommer; January 22, 2001; UC Berkeley Alumni House Homelessness in Urban America: A Review of the
Literature Institute of Governmental; Studies Press University
http://igs.berkeley.edu/events/homeless/NewHomelessnessBook1.pdf
of
California,
Berkeley
2000;
That homelessness surged during the early 1980s would not have seemed extraordinary considering the nation was in the
midst of a recession. But the increased visibility of the least fortunate, and then persisting presence even after the economy
began to rebound, suggested something new about homelessness. Over the course of the 1980s, it became accepted that
increases in homelessness were a new social problem, distinct from patterns of homelessness in the past, that is. a problem no
longer necessarily tied to economic cycles. A continuous stream of re-search made the homeless one of the most-studied
groups in the population, and the findings of these undertakings came to guide the response. Details of homeless
characteristics and behaviors provided the justification for the local provision of services and the treatment of individual
disabilities. Later, causal theories emphasized larger societal and economic factors best addressed through
federal policies. Increasingly, money was devoted to solutions by all sectors and at all levels of government. But when the
magnitude of the problem failed to decrease, or even hold constant, many began to call into question the effectiveness of the
nation's response to the problem. As Christopher Jencks wrote. " On a political level, the spread of homelessness
suggests that something has gone fundamentally wrong with America's economic or social institutions"
(Jencks 1994. v).
Prior to the 1980s, homelessness had historically been viewed as the responsibility of the localities, with religious and other
nonprofits providing the primary response. Since the late 1980s, the federal role in combating homelessness has
increased steadily. The degree to which certain types of homeless intervention have been pursued in the United States has
shifted over time, as the following review will show. Tertiary or emergency programs dominated the responses to
homelessness at all levels of governments and by all sectors, particularly in the 1980s. More recently, changes in political
administrations, the increased availability of federal resources, and improved understanding of homeless
populations and programs have been accompanied by a growing emphasis on transitional or secondary
services.
107
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Solvency – Federal Government Key – A2 – Actor CPs
[
] Only the federal government can redistribute social services – local and state
governments and the private sector fail
Lois M. Takahashi Department of Urban and Regional Planning, School of Social Ecology, UC Irvine 19 97 [“The sociospatial stigmatization of homelessness and HIV/AIDS: Toward an explanation of the NIMBY syndrome”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBF-3SX0KCVC&_user=4420&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=941623473&_rerunOrigin
=scholar.google&_acct=C000059607&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=4420&md5=7338194bbdd74d7e64b79fd4cb8ef
c7f]
Demographic shifts, economic restructuring, and ongoing welfare state reorganization have all
contributed to the growth in the U.S. homeless population. Particularly important demographic shifts have
included the aging of the baby boom generation, dynamic (ira)migration patterns, and changing family structure (due to
domestic violence and divorce) (Wolch et al., 1988). Global economic shifts have also been widely argued to have
contributed to the contemporary homelessness crisis. The deindustrialization resulting from global economic
restructuring, and the increasing mobility of firms, has created a varied geography of employment and
production at the national, regional, and intraregional levels (Hanson and Pratt, 1995; Massey, 1984). The
fallout of this varied geography of employment and production has been a further marginalization of
those with already limited household resources: Stigmatization an increasingly bimodal distribution of
income, a rise in contractual and part-time employment opportunities at the expense of job security and
employment benefits such as health insurance, a decline in real wages, and a waning influence by labor
unions (Harrison and Bluestone, 1988; Phillips, 1990).
But while these trends have intensified the need for intervention, public sector shifts have chronicled a
retreat of the welfare state from human service and welfare provision. At the federal level,
reorganization of the U.S. welfare state has been realized through national strategies of privatization,
cutbacks in programs and funding, and changes in eligibility requirements for receiving benefits. The
overall result of these strategies has been a transfer of program and funding responsibilities to the state
and municipal levels, described as "new federalism" policies largely associated with the Reagan-Bush
administrations (Palmer and Sawhill, 1982). State and municipal governments have largely been unable, and
unwilling, to compensate for federal welfare state contraction. Local governments, especially in large
cities, have been overwhelmed by the demand for human services. The expanding population of persons
in need has frequently been drawn to existing networks of services, which through historical and policy
circumstances have tended to locate in skid row areas of large cities (Dear and Wolch, 1987). The uneven distribution of
human services, the expansion in the service-dependent population, and developing fiscal crises at
municipal and state levels of government have all contributed to the inability of local government to
compensate for federal welfare state reorganization.
The private market has also been unable or unwilling to address the growing demand for affordable and
low-cost housing. Although social and economic stresses have created a growing demand for adequate and affordable
housing units, such units have consistently been in under-supply (Burt, 1992; Myers et al., 1996). The reasons for the
shrinking number and rising cost of housing units include: gentrification and urban renewal, demolition
of single-room occupancy hotels, and the conversion of low-rent units into luxury apartments and
condominiums (Baer, 1986; Hoch, 1991).
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Solvency—Legal Change—AT: Kritiks of Law
Removing legal constraints on the homeless is key to societal change—only the affirmative can
achieve a meaningful coalitional politics.
Maria Foscarinis; Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; A.B. Barnard College
(1977); M.A. Columbia University (1978); J.D. Columbia University (1981); 2000 Saint Louis University School of
Law; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; 19 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 327; Symposium: Homelessness And
Human Rights: Towards An Integrated Strategy
Lawyers and legal advocacy have played a crucial role in addressing homelessness since it became a major
social problem in the United States in the 1980s. Lawyers have sought to bring the power, influence and strategies of the law
and legal profession to bear in bringing about solutions to homelessness. This advocacy has resulted in important
gains: it has raised public awareness, informed policy and decision makers, and provided concrete aid that
has alleviated suffering and helped people move out of homelessness.
At the same time, however, legal advocacy has been circumscribed by the traditional parameters and
constraints of the US legal system. The most [*328] important elements of solutions - long-term and immediate - to
homelessness are housing, jobs and medical care. 1 But there is little or no constitutional basis for protecting or creating
access to these necessities; nor are there broad statutory guarantees of access to them. Statutory schemes have been
restricted to particular categories of persons in need, limited by funding levels significantly lower than need, or both. 2
Indeed, our legal system is commonly described as one that protects civil and political rights, but not
economic or social rights. 3 As a result, legal advocacy to address and redress homelessness proceeds on a somewhat
ambiguous foundation. In some important ways, there is an imperfect fit between the problem and the legal tools currently
available to address it.
In the face of this disconnect, lawyers have been creative in devising legal strategies to effectively pursue solutions.
Litigation, legislative advocacy and regulatory advocacy have all been successful in bringing some relief. Through such
strategies, lawyers have also engaged in efforts to overcome or compensate for the limitations of current
law by pressing for new laws, by establishing the political rights that might create the constituency to
support them, and by advocating for access to larger systems of aid and the broader coalitions of
political support they carry. But the limitations of these strategies have also resulted in some paradoxical remedies,
misguided legal and policy debates, and unclear directions for the future.
109
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Solvency – Legislation / Neolib
Legislation must recognize structural conditions of power and privilege – challenging welfare
reform creates new sites of resistance to neoliberalism
Boyer, Kate 2002, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Reform and
Resistance:
A Consideration of Space, Scale
and Strategy in Legal Challenges
to Welfare Reform,
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118562122/PDFSTART, P. 13-14
Scale provides a useful frame through which to understand both revan- chist social policy and efforts to challenge it.
Welfare reform operates through a tactics of scale which seeks to ‘‘push responsibility down’’. On the
one hand, responsibility for policy creation has devolved down from the federal, to the state and
sometimes even local level. This change in state–federal relations has created an array of new
systems—including sanctions and time limits; and spaces—including the workfare work- place—
which differ in important ways from what came before. Welfare reform pushes responsibility even
farther down by positing poverty itself as an individual choice unrelated to broader systems of
power or privilege: thus putting one of societies’ most disenfranchised groups—low-income single
mothers, a disproportionate number of whom are non-white—under increasing pressure to marshal the
resources necessary to survive on their own. While in some ways devolution represents a ‘‘hollowing out’’ of the state (after Jessop), I submit
that the state continues to hold salience in the policy process, not only for the low-income women on the receiving end of increasingly punitive policies, but also as a scale for
As the advocacy community continues to adapt to changes in the
policy landscape, legal forms represent an important means for resisting neoliberal social policies
by activating new sales of resistance.
challenging the more oppressive aspects of social policy.
110
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Solvency—Food Stamps
The plan’s reinstatement of automatic eligibility for Food Stamps significantly increases access to
food for homeless who cannot present documentation.
Jonathan L. Hafetz; March, 2003; J.D., Yale Law School, 1999; M. Phil., Oxford University, 1992; B.A., Amherst
College, 1990. The Author was formerly a staff attorney at The Partnership for the Homeless in New York City; 2003
Fordham University School of Law Fordham Urban Law Journal; 30 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1215, Homeless Legal
Advocacy: New Challenges And Directions For The Future, Lexis-Nexis.
Hunger and malnutrition are important problems confronting homeless people, particularly those who do not
eat at shelters or soup kitchens. 253 Participation rates for the homeless population in [*1253] the federal
food stamp program is even lower than that for low-income people generally, even though almost all
homeless people are eligible. 254 The barriers to homeless people's participation in the food stamp program include the lack
of information about the program and its procedures and the lack of enforcement of favorable statutory and regulatory
measures. 255 Homeless people often do not have the documents necessary to verify eligibility for food
stamps and have difficulty obtaining or replacing documents. 256 Meanwhile, agencies frequently fail to
adhere to requirements that they assist individuals in obtaining the necessary documents rather than simply
denying their claim. 257
While the entitlement to food stamps survived the 1996 welfare reform act, 258 eligibility issues have
grown more thorny in places where food stamps are administered through local welfare centers because
the act has increased the discretion of caseworkers and the use of diversionary practices. 259 One local
practice, for example, has allegedly misinformed people that they are no longer entitled to food stamps once
they receive SSI benefits. 260 In addition, able-bodied food stamps recipients between the ages of eighteen and
sixty, and without dependent children, must comply with strict work requirements to receive benefits. 261
Furthermore, the 1996 welfare reform act eliminated automatic eligibility for expedited [*1254] food stamps
- an important provision to assist individuals waiting for their applications to be processed. 262
111
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Solvency—Kritik of the Home
Only rethinking conceptions of ‘home’ and resisting social services that make demands on the
homeless fights social control and loss of agency
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 136-137)
Third, although having a household does form the basis of civic involvement, democratic pluralization nurtures multiple,
differing connections between home and politics: not only those of Veiller's citizen-stakeholder (whose domestic
preoccupations integrate him into the housekeeping state) but also renters' rights movements and campaigns to protect SROs
(in which people develop a posture of critical citizenship towards housing policies as a result of their domestic situations).
And homeless encampments provide a direct link between home dwelling and civic involvement not only
by making dwelling spaces into an experiment in collective self-governance but also by making this
form of housing a very public act of witnessing, a dramatization of housing inequalities in American
society. Making housing diversity central to democratic pluralization does not, however, mean that
"anything goes," that whatever someone is willing to call "home" should receive societal recognition, or
that any attempt to call certain housing forms inadequate should be considered an imperialistic projection of a middle-class
home ideal.s6 This is an important caution, but it misses the central point (worth repeating) that a nonpluralistic conception of home, far from providing homes to all, has worked rather to polarize society into
normative home-dwellers, on the one hand, and the needy, dependent bare life of urban shelters and public
spaces, on the other hand. As emergency shelters attempt to fill the gap left by the destruction of residential hotels,
dependent shelterized subjects—objects of either pity or scorn—replace the less visible individuals and communities of
residential hotels. As networks of caregivers, professional social workers, and substance-abuse counselors
draw the street homeless and the shelter home less into an increasingly thick web of social control and
relations of dependency, the possibility that values such as autonomy, privacy, nonpossessive
individualism and urban sociability can be realized in nonnormative forms of dwelling should not be
forgotten.
112
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Solvency—Kritik of the Home
Must rethink conceptions of the homelessness to enable true agency and meaningful citizenship
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 78-79)
cases concerning the rights of the homeless suggests is that their agency and
victimization need to be rethought in ways that do not trap them in the double bind of bare life that is
cither punished or confined. In the conclusion I suggest one way in which such a rethinking can occur: by thinking
through the ways in which we all inhabit public space and arc as a result all potential outlaws in the
context of public-space bans. Here, however, I want to explore possible ways of respecting and enabling the
agency of homeless persons within the law: that is to say, resisting the reduction of the homeless to
helplessness and physical necessity (as in Johnson) without construing their agency as the agency of an
outlaw (as in Love). Examples of such an alternative way of thinking include Jeremy Waldron's exploration of
homelessness as an issue of freedom. Waldron wants to redescribe basic needs in terms of the freedom (and
the spatial preconditions of freedom) to fulfill those needs precisely so as to redirect us from a fixation
on necessity that reduces the homeless citizen to passivity, as in the Johnson case. "When a person is needy,"
What this reading of
Waldron says, "he does not cease to be preoccupied with freedom; rather, his preoccupation tends to focus on freedom to
perform certain actions in particular." By thinking of freedom and need together, Waldron avoids the trap of thinking of
homeless agency cither as an outlaw lifestyle choice or as Thomas Dumm's romanticized spiritual freedom of the open road.
A respect for homeless agency should entail respect for the agency of a citizen, not the agency of cither
a profane or a spiritual outlaw.
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Solvency—Reclaiming Space
Reclaiming of public spaces as dwelling areas allows homeless to challenge injustices of bare life
and redefine themselves as citizens
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 103)
If public sleeping bans are an injustice of political exclusion, a form of the sovereign ban on bare life, what, if anything,
constitutes political inclusion for the homeless? Shelters, I have argued, are not promising in this regard; they persist in
isolating and containing the homeless as bare life, to be kept alive, while stigmatizing them as helpless victims and damaged
subjects. In response partly to state actions that turn the homeless into outlaws, however, homeless
encampments have sometimes managed to politicize issues of housing and poverty, with resulting
changes in the misrecognition effects of some shelter policies, and (albeit modest) improvements in the
availability of needed resources. Scholarly research on homeless encampments points to their key role in
resisting the recognition and redistribution injustices of homelessness. But more fundamentally, these
encampments have enabled homeless persons to contest their outlaw status and to remake themselves as
citizens. Only by contesting political exclusion by establishing, as Arendt puts it, "a place in the world
which makes. . . action effective,,—can home less persons challenge as citizens the injustices of
maldistribution and misrecognition. Encampments in places as far apart as Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon,
have succeeded in asserting (temporary) control over a public space. Establishing a space relatively free of police
harassment and nonstate violence, homeless persons resisted the political exclusion of the ban and
engaged in "placemaking" that fostered nonstigmatized identities and paved the way for collective
action. In other words, having established (precarious) control of physical spaces and resignified those spaces
as dwelling spaces, they moved beyond the defense of the camp to make demands as citizens concerning
the cultural and economic injustices of homelessness more broadly.
114
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Solvency—Spillover
A radical changes in welfare leads to a fundamental changes in the system
Sanford Schram 2003 (The practice of Poor People’s Movements: Strategy and Theory in Dissensus Politics,
Symposium, p 716 Teaches social theory and social policy in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research
at Bryn Mawr)
The welfare rights case study was one in which Piven and Cloward had firsthand experience as
scholar/activists, and it best represents the way they were producing situated knowledge tied to a
specific political struggle. The politics of disruption in this case was energized by Cloward and Piven’s paper “A
Strategy to End Poverty.” This widely circulated paper appeared in 1966 in The Nation and later in various other
publications.10 Thousands of welfare activists were drawn into the strategy. The paper used recent research by
Piven and Cloward indicating that about one out of every two families eligible for welfare was not
receiving it. Using this issue as the basis of strategy, the authors proposed mobilizing the poor to sign up
for welfare so as to overload the system, underscore its inability to meet legitimate need, and thereby force a
crisis that would lead to replacing the inadequate welfare system with a guaranteed income. This approach
came to be called the “crisis strategy,” and it almost worked when the guaranteed income was seriously
considered by the Nixon administration and Congress.
The crisis strategy was what its name says it was: strategy—not theory—using a politics of disruption as
a critical but contingent tool for creating political change. To highlight the contingent character of such a
resource, Piven and Cloward famously wrote at the conclusion of their first book: “A placid poor get nothing, but a
turbulent poor sometimes get something.”11 Years later, the all-pervasive reality of political contingency became
clear. In the face of the 1990s welfare retrenchment, Cloward was asked whether their crisis strategy had
backfired, and he responded: “We knew that trouble was coming. Our view is the poor don’t win much, and they
only win it episodically. You get what you can when you can get it—and then you hold onto your hat.”12 I call this
orientation “radical incrementalism,” where activism pushes for fundamental changes by forcing
concessions from those in power, taking what incremental gains can be had and using them to build a
better future.13 The crisis strategy did just that, effectively combining a “politics of survival” with a
“politics of social change.”14
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Solvency—State Action Key
Our call on the state is key to combat the seeming inevitability of global neoliberalism
Amster 2008 (Randall, Amster teaches Peace Studies at Prescott College and is the Executive Director of the Peace
& Justice Studies Association. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for the Contemporary Justice Review and
the Peace Studies Journal. "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban Ecology of Homelessness"
p. 211-212)
In a world that seemingly accepts the constitutive and hegemonic inevitability of global capital and
neoliberalism (cf. Massey 2000:281-3), it often appears that movements fail to accomplish meaningful
transformation because they “tend to focus on restricted issue spaces rather tha more comprehensive
programs of dissent” (Brown 1997:256). Such movements might instead seek to engage the system both
locally and globally, particularly and universally, from within and without- the belief that “the universal
and particular are not only juxtaposed but interwoven and implicated in each other,” yielding an
inescapable and potentially transformative “global-local nexus” (Slater 1997:258). Immanuel Wallerstein (in
AMin, et al. 1990:47,53) likewise makes the point that “it is not the case that some movements are ‘univeralistic’ and other
‘particularistic.’ All existing movements are in some ‘ghetto,’” yet are simultaneously framed by a “world
order” that requires a “global strategy.” As David Harvey (1990:238-39) further observes, all resistance
movements, “no matter how well articulated,” are still “subject t o the power of capital over the
coordination of universal fragmented space and the march of capitalism’s global historical time that lies
outside of the purview of any one of them.” Todd May (1994:25) similarly notes that for Horkheimer and Adorno,
“every resistance is effectively stifled: not by being suppressed, but by being rendered yet another
specatcale in the parade of culture. Resistance that cannot be appropriated is merely left outside the
system, a testament of its own absurdity." Finally. Magnusson (1996:92): "Capitalism tends to reshape resistances to
fit the spaces it provides for them;" and Massey (2000:281): "Every attempt at radical otherness [is] so quickly
commercialized and sold or used to sell." However you choose to say it, there is a strong sense that any attempt
at resistance must first come up against processes of cooptation (Ferrell & Sanders 1995:16) and our
individual lifelines of reliance on the very - system being challenged (cf. GuaUari 1996), with the
awareness that we are all parts of and pawns in the same totalizing 'reality.'
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****AT: Neg Arguments****
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AT: Topicality
Silencing is the most form effective of propaganda. Thus, attempts at avoiding the discussion of
homeless or arguments that distract from it is no better than propaganda used to silenced true
reformers.
Thomas Huckin of the University of Utah 2002 [“Textual silence and the discourse of homelessness”
http://das.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/347]
‘The
greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by
refraining from doing. Great is truth, but greater still, from a practical standpoint, is silence about truth. By simply not
mentioning certain subjects, . . . propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they
could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals.’ These
comments by Aldous Huxley in his 1946 foreword to Brave New World underscore the power of silence to affect
communication. Traditionally, discourse analysts have tended to ignore such silences, preferring instead to
focus on the words, phrases, clauses and other linguistic elements that constitute the surface of text and
talk. Brown and Yule’s (1983) definition of discourse analysis is illustrative: ‘We examine how humans use language to
communicate and, in particular, how addressers construct linguistic messages for addressees and how addressees work on
linguistic messages in order to interpret them’ (1983: ix, emphasis added). Yet any practicing discourse analyst will
readily acknowledge that communication involves more than just the linguistic markers used to encode
it – that often what is not said or written can be as important, if not more so, than what is. As Stuart Hall
(1985) has noted, ‘Positively marked terms “signify” because of their position in relation to what is absent, unmarked, the
unspoken, the unsayable. Meaning is relational within an ideological system of presences and absences’.
118
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A2 – Welfare Reform Act Good
The success of welfare reform was not based on facts.
Sanford F. Schram and Joe Soss 2001(Teaches social theory and social policy in the Graduate School of Social
Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science
The, http://ann.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/577/1/49.pdf )
Our goal in this article is to question the prevailing consensus on welfare reform by showing how TANF’s
status as a policy success may be viewed as a political construction (M. Edelman 1988). Evaluations of public
policy inevitably require political choices regarding which facts will be valued as indicators of success and which
interpretations of facts will serve as a basis for judgment (Stone 1997; Cobb and Ross 1997). Welfare reform is now
widely viewed as a success not because of the facts uncovered by researchers (which paint a murky picture)
but because of a political climate that privileges some facts and interpretations over others.
119
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AT: Kritiks—Permutation Solvency
Permutation solves—only interrogation of both identity politics and pragmatic action can
breakdown the root cause of homlessness
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 5)
If ameliorative and punitive approaches both reinforce the separation of the homeless population from a
normative public of home dwelling citizens and if punitive policies are justified by neoconservatives as an element
of compassionate aid, then one must pause before simply reasserting the desirability of compassionate
policies over and against a punitive approach. As the left critique of welfare makes clear, one should not
assume that whatever is not explicitly punitive (emergency shelters, drug treatment programs, etc. is an
ideologically distinct alternative to be bolstered and shielded from critical examination.24 Yet it is also a mistake
simply to dismiss compassion and welfare efforts as nothing more than punitive, disciplinary social
control measures in disguise. Although sympathetic to this critique, I believe it moves too quickly toward finding a
hidden unity of the two approaches Explaining such unity in terms of an economic functionality (the
requirements of urban reinvestment, the needs of capitalism), or a cultural logic (the ever present dynamic of identity
/difference) leaves unanswered the question of why the homeless need to be contained, enclosed,
disciplined, or excluded. Furthermore, it fails to appreciate that whatever similar goals may orient welfare and
punishment, and however much neoconservatives may try to justify punishment as a form of welfare, there arc real
ideological differences. In other words, both the differences between sanctuary and discipline and the
underlying logics that connect them need to be examined.
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AT: Kritiks—Permutation Solvency
Perm- we must work both inside and outside the system to make any true change.
Sanford F. Schram 2006 (Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance, and
Globalization
http://www.questia.com/read/113460889?title=Welfare%20Discipline%3a%20%20Discourse%2c%20Gover
nance%2c%20and%20Globalization# Teaches social theory and social policy in the Graduate School of Social
Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr P. 179)
A politics of loving therefore actually values the role of conflict and antagonism . Antagonism need not involve
we must learn to work both within
and outside the system simultaneously. This means pushing for more legal right to entitlements even as
we work within the system to make it more likely to allow for acts of compassion that compensate
people right now within a system of entitlements that leaves them unable to meet their basic needs. We
must work to make incremental reforms possible now in the short run even as we work to produce
structural reforms in the long run. While the continuing struggle for a basic income for all is imperative, this needs to
violence and need not insist on only working for a total overhaul of the existing judicial order. Instead,
be supplemented with building in more compassionate and more generous assistance to those who are currently excluded
from the entitlement system. This would be a politics of compassion worth fighting for.
Such a politics of compassion would work within liberal institutions to humanize them while at the same
time plotting to transform them beyond the limits of liberal capitalism. It would practice harm reduction,
offering aid without passing judgment, working to incrementally make things better for people even as it
planned to overcome the systemic sources that marginalized and oppressed those who did not conform
to the standards of deservingness in a society that insisted on particularly narrow understanding of who was a
personally responsible, self-sufficient member of that society. This politics of compassion would not be anything like the
compassionate conservatism that has been promoted in recent years. It would not be a compassion that can be used
to rationalize the substitution of entitlement rights with the disciplinary practices of the new forms of
governance that work through civil society to regiment people into the emerging social order. It would
instead be a politics that recaptures compassion from those who seek to exploit it to justify painting the welfare state as cold,
heartless, uncaring, and not worth fighting for. It would do that in the name of rebuilding the welfare state. And in an era of
globalization, this is the most urgent task.
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Governmental action must be taken to address the root cause of homelessness instead of inefficient
quick fixes.
Jonathan L. Hafetz; March, 2003; J.D., Yale Law School, 1999; M. Phil., Oxford University, 1992; B.A., Amherst
College, 1990. The Author was formerly a staff attorney at The Partnership for the Homeless in New York City; 2003
Fordham University School of Law Fordham Urban Law Journal; 30 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1215, Homeless Legal
Advocacy: New Challenges And Directions For The Future, Lexis-Nexis.
leading homeless
civil rights groups themselves recognize that anti-criminalization lawsuits, while invaluable, do not
create affordable housing or accessible services. 170 Litigation is initiated in response to the real and
immediate needs of homeless clients and to the government's failure to implement and sustain an
effective anti-poverty policy. When a homeless person is arrested for sleeping on a park bench, her lawyer's first
response is not to address the underlying causes of homelessness, but to respond to a concrete injustice. Indeed,
prohibitions on begging or sleeping in the park do not threaten some abstract notion of liberty, but rather strike at the
ability of men and women to survive. 171 [*1240] In short, litigation has played an important part in
challenging aggressive, anti-homeless law enforcement policies. Decisions like Pottinger have helped overcome
Yet, it is unfair to blame advocates for misdirecting efforts away from long-term solutions. Indeed,
- or at least mitigate the effects of - attempts to use criminal law to deny society's poorest and most vulnerable members the
basic means of survival. 172 Legal advocacy also has fostered effective organizing approaches, raising awareness of and
sympathy for homeless people (and helping mobilize public sentiment against anti-homeless ordinances). 173 While such
litigation may establish only negative rights, 174 it has helped lead some governments to initiate programs
designed to assist homeless people. 175 Thus, while resisting attempts to criminalize homelessness represents an
integral part of homeless legal advocacy, it must be part of a broader strategy that attempts to address
homelessness' root causes. The following Part outlines some elements of this broader strategy.
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Their disad reinscribes the logic of neoliberalism by sidelining social justice out of fear– makes
war inevitable
Henry A. Giroux 2005 (The Terror of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Significance of Cultural Politics
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25115243.pdf Henry A. Giroux holds the
Communications at McMaster in Hp.13-14)
Global TV Network Chair in
We live at a time when the conflation of private interests, empire build ing, and evangelical
fundamentalism brings into question the very nature, if not the existence, of the democratic process .
Under the reign of neoliberal ism, capital and wealth have been largely distributed upwards, while civic virtue has been
undermined by a slavish celebration of the free market as the model for organizing all facets of everyday life (Henwood
2003). Political culture has been increasingly depoliticized as collective life is organized around the modalities of
privatization, deregulation, and commercialization. When the alleged champions of neoliberalism invoke
politics, they substitute "ideological certainty for reasonable doubt," and deplete "the national reserves of
political intelligence" just as they endorse "the illusion that the future can be bought instead of earned" (Lapham 2004a,
9,11). Under attack is the social contract with its emphasis on enlarging the public good and
expanding social provisions such as access to adequate health care, housing, employment, public
transportation, and education which provided both a safety net and a set of conditions upon which
democracy could be experienced and critical citizenship engaged. Politics has been further
depoliticized by a policy of anti-terrorism practiced by the Bush administration that mimics the very terrorism
it wishes to eliminate. Not only does a policy of all embracing anti-terrorism exhausts itself in a discourse of
moral absolutes and public acts of denunciation that remove politics from the realm of state power, it
also strips community of democratic values by defining it almost exclusively through attempts to stamp out what
Michael Leeden, a former counter-terror expert in the Reagan administration, calls "corrupt habits of mind that are still
lingering around, somewhere"(qtd. in Valentine 2001, para.33). The appeal to moral absolutes and the constant
mobilization of emergency time coded as a culture of fear configures politics in religious terms,
hiding its entanglement with particular ideologies and diverse rela tions of power. Politics becomes
empty as it is reduced to following orders, shaming those who make power accountable, and
shutting down legitimate modes of dissent (Giroux 2004). The militarizing of public space at home
contributes to the narrowing of community, the increasing suppression of dissent, and as Anthony Lewis argues,
a growing escalation of concentrated, unaccountable political power that threatens the very foundation
of democracy in the United States (2002, A15). Authoritarianism marches forward just as political
culture is being replaced with a notion of national security based on fear, surveillance, and control
rather than a vibrant culture of shared responsibility and critical ques tioning . Militarization is no
longer simply the driving force of foreign policy, it has become a defining principle for social changes
at home. Catherine Lutz captures the multiple registers and complex processes of militarization that has extensively shaped
social life during the 20t*1 century. She is worth quoting at length: By militarization, I mean ... an intensification of the labor
and resources allocated to military purposes, including the shaping of other institutions in synchrony with military goals.
Militarization is simultaneously a discursive process, involving a shift in general societal beliefs and
values in ways nec essary to legitimate the use of force, the organization of large standing armies and
their leaders, and the higher taxes or tribute used to pay for them. Militarization is intimately connected not only
to the obvious increase in the size of armies and resurgence of militant nationalisms and militant fundamentalisms but also to
the less visible deformation of human potentials into the hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and to the shaping
of national histories in ways that glorify and legitimate military action. (Lutz 2002, 723) Lutz s definition of militarization is
inclusive, attentive to its discursive, ideo logical, and material relations of power in the service of war and violence. But
militarization is also a powerful cultural politics that works its way through everyday life spawning
particular notions of masculinity, sanctioning war as a spectacle, and fear as a central formative
component in mobilizing an affective investment in militarization.
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the politics of mili tarization, with its emphasis on "social processes in which society
organizes itself for the production of violence or the threat thereof" (Kraska 1999,208), has produced
a pervasive culture of militarization, which as Kevin Baker insists, "inject[s] a constant military presence in our
lives"(2003, 40). As the culture of profit and militarization dominate or seek to eliminate democrat ic
public spheres, self-reflection and collective empowerment are reduced to self-promotion and selfinterest, legitimated by a new and ruthless social Darwinism played out nightly on network television as
a metaphor for the "naturalness" of downsizing, the celebration of hyper-masculinity, and the promotion
of a war of all against all over even the most limited notions of solidarity and collective struggle
In other words,
(Bourdieu
1998).
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The language of their disad is productive of the type of social relations which ensure the
marginalization and ultimate elimination of those not considered to be valuable and productive
citizens.
Gerald Daly 1998 (Professor in the faculty of environmental studies at York University, Canada. Worked with housing
agencies and non-profit groups and has published widely on housing, homelessness, and comparative planning.
“Homlessness and the Street” in Nicholas Fyfe’s book “Images of the Street” p. 125)
The desire for self-protection and its corollary, the need to exclude the odious 'other', is expressed in law, in
social relations, in architecture, planning and urban design, and in language. Language is instrumental in
the social construction of reality. Language is political. It is revealing of how we look at social, economic
and political issues; and the ways we use language serve to convey society's messages of power, influence
and authority. Homeless individuals may be silenced by such power relationships and associated control
mechanisms. These processes serve not only to define social order and to set the political agenda, but
also to marginalize, to devalue, and to hold at arm's length. In social, economic and political discourse
the life stories of homeless people habitually are devalued, shunted aside or unconsciously limited. Social
service and health professionals, sympathetic bureaucrats and politicians, as well as many representatives of voluntary
agencies, all involved in dealing with homelessness, also have constructed an image of the homeless
individual — a patronizing view of one who needs them to speak for him , to design his programmes, to assist
him continuously, as if he were unable to help himself. A formerly homeless man in Oregon observed ruefully that
'too often people experiencing homelessness and poverty are given programmes rather than given the opportunity to design
the programmes' (Daly, 1996: 250). In recent times, however, homeless individuals have begun to wrest control of the agenda
that governs their lives. In Figure 8.3, occupants of Bed and Breakfasts in Bayswater, London, demonstrate against
homelessness, the conditions in temporary accommodation, and the inadequacies of the state response to these problems.
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It is the logic of their DA which perpetuates the invisibility of the homeless, sacrificing them for an
poorly conceived greater good—our entire 1AC is a straight turn to their method of decision
calculus.
Daly, Gerald. Professor in the faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Canada. He has worked with
housing agencies and non-profit groups and has published widely on housing, homelessness and comparative
planning. Author of Homeless: Policies, strategies and Lives on the Streets. 1996.. Pg 9-10.
To the extent that it is visible and audible, the agenda of the political debate is set by public officials and experts
(academics, consultants, and representatives of voluntary agencies), while typically excluding the presumed
beneficiaries. Because they lack a collective voice and are not organized, individuals on the street are represented
by proxies whose interests may be self-serving. These relationships may constitute a control system
based on a charity model and on naive assumptions about the need to dictate terms to the recipient
population. A self-perpetuating network, characterized by common interests, mutual dependencies and benefits, it has
fashioned a web of interdependent communities based on self-interest. It includes government agencies and bureaucrats, notfor-profit and voluntary organizations, professional care-givers and shelter operators. While most are well-intentioned
they, nevertheless, are motivated by a desire to exercise power and a need for control: the power of the purse
strings, the ability to set policy, to allocate resources, to plan and design programs, to decide who will be helped and
who will not, to determine whose interests will be represented, and to sanction or condemn certain
practices, values, or beliefs.
A separate, but related sphere includes the business community and the larger public, whose views on
homelessness and charity help to define or constrain the roles of government and the voluntary sector and to
determine the nature of opportunity/exploitation affecting the prospects of homeless individuals. Economic interests employ
the language of competitiveness, laissez-faire, and the free market to describe their preference for a "level playing field." This
field, however, is readily accessible only to members of the team. For others, who do not enjoy the advantages
and resources of team members, the field is strewn with barriers and obstacles. The participants in this debate
represent two dissimilar cultures, based on unequal power relationships with discordant values, beliefs,
and languages. By describing how their worlds intersect I will try to clarify the nature of the bureaucratic and institutional
contexts in which policy is formed and the arenas in which political and power dynamics play themselves out. Context is
centrally important. It shapes the terms and tone of the debate over homelessness and helps to define the issues. It determines
what gets discussed in the public domain as well as what gets suppressed or excluded from the agenda.
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Focusing on the impacts of the DA reverts to crisis based politics which undermines systemic
impacts.
Cuomo 1996 (Chris, Cuomo is a Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, and Director of the Institute for
Women's Studies at the Univerity of Georgia, “War Is Not Just an Event: Reflections on the Significance of Everyday
Violence” p. 31)
crisis-based ethics
and politics are problematic because they distract attention from the need for sustained resistance to the
enmeshed, omnipresent systems of domination and oppression that so often function as givens in
most people's lives. Neglecting the omnipresence of militarism allows the false belief that the absence of declared
For any feminism that aims to resist oppression and create alternative social and political options,
armed conflicts is peace, the polar opposite of war. It is particularly easy for those whose lives are shaped by the safety of
privilege, and who do not regularly encounter the realities of militarism, to maintain this false belief. The belief that
militarism is an ethical, political concern only regarding armed conflict, creates forms of resistance to
militarism that are merely exercises in crisis control. Antiwar resistance is then mobilized when the
"real" violence finally occurs, or when the stability of privilege is directly threatened, and at that point it
is difficult not to respond in ways that make resisters drop all other political priorities. Crisis-driven
attention to declara- tions of war might actually keep resisters complacent about and complicitoups in
the general presence of global militarism. Seeing war as necessarily embed- ded in constant military presence draws
attention to the fact that horrific, state-sponsored violence is happening nearly all over, all of the time, and that it is
perpetrated by military institutions and other militaristic agents of the state. Moving away from crisis-driven
politics and ontologies concerning war and military violence also enables consideration of relationships
among seemingly disparate phenomena, and therefore can shape more nuanced theoretical
and practical forms of resistance. For example, investigating the ways in which war is part of a presence allows
consideration of the relationships among the events of war and the following: how militarism is a foundational trope in the
social and political imagination; how the pervasive presence and symbolism of soldiers/warriors/patriots shape meanings
of gender; the ways in which threats of state-sponsored violence are a sometimes invisible/sometimes bold agent of racism,
nationalism, and corporate interests; the fact that vast numbers of communities, cities, and nations are currently in the midst
of excruciatingly violent circumstances. It also provides a lens for considering the relationships among the
various kinds of violence that get labeled "war." Given current American obsessions with nationalism,
guns, and militias, and growing hunger for the death penalty, prisons, and a more powerful police state,
one cannot underestimate the need for philosophical and political attention to connec- tions among
phenomena like the "war on drugs," the "war on crime," and other state-funded militaristic campaigns.
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The disad’s privileging of economic calculation precludes forming ethical relations with Others—
this dualistic thinking guarantees inevitable environmental and social crises which make their
impacts inevitable—only voting affirmative can solve.
Chris Cuomo 2003 (Associate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Cincinnati, current
Visiting Fellows at Cornell University Society for Humanities and author of numerous feminist theory texts. “Review:
Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason” http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=1059)
Readers of Val Plumwood’s Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (Routledge 1993) will find that the bulk of Environmental
Culture consists of a more nuanced and thorough presentation of the critical arguments found in that earlier work.
Plumwood’s basic position is that the ecological crises we currently face are the result of arrogant cultures (based
in arrogant philosophical views) that deny the fact that humans are dependent on nature, men are dependent on
women, and those with economic and decision-making power are dependent on disempowerment of
others. Cultures built on the legacies of Platonic dualism (which posits reason as separate from and superior to
nature, or matter) and empiricism (which admits that nature is relevant to knowledge, but debases it nonetheless) fail to
acknowledge the existence and importance of “the Other”—nature, women, indigenous people, and anyone
identified with the less powerful side of the reason/matter dualism. They therefore allow for and encourage
mindsets and practices that harm those “others” on which the privileged at the center of reality depend.
For Plumwood, arrogance is philosophically deep. It is enabled by metaphysics that describe ultimate being as that which is
the absolute opposite of nature or matter. It is bolstered by epistemologies that take knowledge to be rightly dominating,
disembodied, and singular in form. It is justified by ethics that see detached autonomy as a moral goal and that consider
humans the paradigm of moral considerability. It is encouraged by political systems where privileged elites are
able to maintain severe remoteness from the social and ecological consequences of their decisions. And it is
presupposed by science that is driven by the dictates of economic rationalism and that interprets “impartiality” as “for sale to
the highest bidder.”
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Our advantage turns the DA—Criminalization only exacerbates the economic downturn because
of the funding required to sweep the streets.
Maria Foscarinis et al; A.B. 1977, Barnard College; M.A. 1978, J.D. 1981, Columbia University; 1999 Georgetown
Journal on Poverty Law & Policy6 Geo. J. Poverty Law & Pol'y 145FEATURE: Out of Sight -- Out of Mind?: The
Continuing Trend Toward the Criminalization of Homelessness; Lexis-Nexis
Advocates of criminalization also cite the need to preserve the economic vitality of urban business districts and the
promotion of tourism as justifications for anti-homeless policies. They claim that the presence of homeless people
sleeping, sitting, or begging will deter customers from patronizing local businesses and will decrease
tourism, ultimately causing businesses to leave the area and resulting in urban decay. 48 However,
homelessness is not the cause of such economic decline; rather, such downturns are due to more complex economic factors.
49 In fact, homelessness is more likely a result of such economic declines than a cause of them. 50 On a
larger scale, criminalization is unlikely to solve these largely economic problems . In the absence of alternatives,
homeless people forced to move from one area will simply move into another, while the underlying economic issues are
ignored.
Addressing these concerns through the criminal justice system rather than providing housing and services not
only fails to provide any long-term benefits for homeless people, or to create lasting solutions to conflicts over the use of
public spaces, but it is also likely to cost significantly more than implementing constructive alternatives .
The costs of police time and resources used in detaining individuals is likely to be much higher than the
combined cost of providing basic shelter and necessary services. In 1993, the average cost of detaining one
person for one day in jail in the U.S. was over $ 40, excluding the police resources utilized in the arrest process. 51
According to HUD figures obtained in an evaluation of its Supportive Housing Demonstration Program, the cost of providing
transitional housing, which includes not only housing and food but also transportation and counseling services was
approximately $ 30.90 per person per day. 52
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Do not be beholden to political expediency—it is type of decision-making which attempts to
eradicate the homeless in order to curry political favor—only voting aff can stop this cycle of
exclusionary violence.
Randall Amster, Professor of Peace Studies at Prescott College in northern Arizona, holds a J.D. from Brooklyn
Law School and a Ph.D. in Justice Studies from Arizona State University. Co-editor of Lives in the Balance:
Perspectives on Global Injustice and Inequality (Brill 1997), Published recent articles in Social Justice, Peace Review,
and Contemporary Justice Review. Author of Patterns of Exclusion: Sanitizing Space, Criminalizing Homelessness.
March 22, 2003. http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-3159714/Patterns-of-exclusion-sanitizing-space.html
In political terms, the pervasiveness of the disease image in connection with the homeless serves
simultaneously to empower officials and merchants to assume the mantle of speaking for "the
community" in devising and implementing schemes to remove the perceived threat, and to disempower
the homeless from having effective domains of self-presentation and resistance. As Wright (1997: 39)
concludes, "living with 'spoiled identities,' the very poor are categorized, inspected, dissected, and rendered
mute in the public discourse about their future by those who have the power to enforce [such]
categorical distinctions." Tempe's "Piper" (interview, 2000), a 20-year-old self-described "gutter punk," waxes
philosophically about the whole state of affairs: "They think their lives would be so much better if they didn't have to see the
'slime' and the 'scum' that lives on the street, but you know what? This is fucking real life, this is here, a diverse amount of
things--in this world you never know what you're gonna see, so why try to hide it? Their kids are gonna find out about it
anyway." Lyn Lofland (1998: 190) also notes this eventual permeation of homeless identity, despite attempts at regulation:
"If regulation alone could achieve the purification of the public realm, we would all currently live in a
world from which ... the homeless ... had completely disappeared." Nonetheless, despite their lack of full
realization in the present, it is apparent, as Ferrell (2001: 175) explains, that such efforts "promote a type of spatial
cleansing whereby unwanted populations are removed, by the force of law and money, from particular
locations and situations. But this spatial cleansing is at the same time a cultural cleansing; as economic,
political, and legal authorities work to recapture and redesign the public spaces of the city, they work to
control public identity and public perception as well, to remove from new spaces of consumption and development
images of alternative identity."8
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Plan doesn’t link to politics – it’ll be spun
Giamo and Grunberg 1992 (Benedict and Jeffrey, Giamo is a Professor of American Studies at the University of
Notre Dame. Grunberg is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University. "Beyond Homelessness: Frames
of Reference" p. 165)
Well, earlier I gave you an example of a piece of social distress :
in effect, the way the members of Congress,
although they were not the perpetrators as it were, created the means to produce the problem of this
tremendous amount of money that the American public is going to have to pay off. And they did it in a
way that I think outrages most people. They are saying that we have to pay a bunch of hoodlums who
went into the saving and loan business knowing full well that there was no risk because they were
setting it up to get bailed out by the government. They walked out the back door with the money, and now we're
going to have to give the people back the money who were insured by the government. That's institutionalizing distress
financially, socially, ana politically, and to the point of absurdity and to the point where it could break
the backs of the social structures and the people who hold them up. That's the meaning of social distress.
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Their refusal to confront vested political interests creates serial policy failure
SANFORD E SCHRAM 1993 (Department of Political Science, Macalester College, St. Paul, MN 55105 and LaFollette
Institute of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706. Postmodern policy analysis: Discourse and identity
in welfare policy http://www.springerlink.com/content/l3427712m43r7411/fulltext.pdf p. 253)
A postmodern orientation allows for the possibility that welfare policy discourse and the
practices of the
welfare state are actually constitutive forces, contributing to the conditions of poverty which are
supposedly addressed by such public policies. Stone (1988) argues that implied policy solutions animate policy
discourse and unavoidably get insinuated into the representation of policy problems. Edelman (1988) emphasizes the
political limitations which constrain the state so that the policy solutions that prefigure the political representations of
problems are necessarily self-serving and politically conservative. He argues that the state has a vested interest in
ensuring its own legitimacy and therefore cannot actually solve its problems by attacking their systemic
causes. Necessarily committed to not rocking the political boat, it must content itself with
managing problems and keeping them within politically acceptable limits. The net result is policy
which cannot eliminate problems, but is instead partly a contributor to their perpetuation. Policy,
therefore, as an ensemble of discursive practices, does not just create its own politics and does not just
become its own cause, but contributes to making up the reality it confronts.
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The devolution of welfare reform has exacerbated social and economic inequalities – states race to
the bottom to deny homeless persons public benefits** - 1ac?
Boyer, Kate ( 2002, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Reform and
Resistance:
A Consideration of Space, Scale
and Strategy in Legal Challenges
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118562122/PDFSTART, P. 5)
to Welfare Reform,
In spite of the benefits devolution might offer as a ‘‘laboratory for policy innovation’’ at the state level,
there are concerns about the potential for the downward transfer of decision-making power to
intensify inequality of access to opportunity between different places (Cashin 1999; Karger 1991).
Benefit levels vary widely between states, and are not calibrated to cost-of-living differences
between states or between different areas within a state. We also find considerable unevenness in
what it means to be on welfare from state to state. As research from the Applied Research Center suggests, as
of 2001 welfare recipients in Minnesota were allowed to earn wages to supplement cash benefits, while
clients in California were sanctioned and even imprisoned for doing the same (Gordon 2001). In this sense
devolution is of a piece with neoliberal polices and practices which work to ‘‘fix’’ disenfranchised
peoples in place to their detriment. According to Andrew Herod and Melissa Wright, such policies: localize poor
peoples at a supposed time of growing planetary spatial integration of capital flows, goods and services, information, and
wealthy people. Apparently, despite the one-world rhetoric of neoliberalism, some people face tremendous obstacles in
linking their worlds and becoming fully-fledged citizens of the ‘‘global village’’ about which we hear so much (Herod and
Wright 2002:12) These critiques suggest that devolution has the potential to exacerbate, rather than redress,
gendered, racialized, and place-based disparities in access to social and economic opportunity.
Only federal legislation prevents identity-based discrimination – state action doesn’t spillover
Boyer, Kate 2002, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Reform and
Resistance:
A Consideration of Space, Scale
and Strategy in Legal Challenges
to Welfare Reform,
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118562122/PDFSTART, P. 3
I argue that as social policy has re-scaled, so have the means for resisting its more oppressive aspects. As
the cases considered here suggest, legal advocates are working at multiple scales at once to challenge welfare reform. On the
one hand devolution has increased attention to the local level, and we find a variety of legal challenges working within the
new devolved policy scale. On the other hand, however, legal advocates have also experimented with scaling up to
national-level laws, in particular by invoking Civil Rights legislation passed in the 1960s to guard against identitybased discrimination in the operation of government programs. In so doing, advocates are seeking to ‘‘rescale responsibility’’ from that of single mothers to submit to wage labor in order to survive, to the government’s
responsibility to protect its citizens against identity-based discrimination.
After providing a brief overview of the
policy changes activated by welfare reform, I examine the scale politics of legal challenges to this policy through a selection of cases
heard in New York City between the late 1990s and early 2000. I suggest that while cases based on local law demonstrate
creativity in the face of a constrained policy context, the effects of such cases are limited by municipal
and state juridical boundaries. Although more difficult to mount, cases based on national-level Civil Rights
legislation offer the potential for more far-reaching effects.
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States fail at distributing welfare benefits – only the federal government can effectively implement
reform
Evelyn Z. Brodkin; Bureaucracy Redux: Management Reformism and the Welfare State; Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory: J-PART, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 2007), pp. 1-17; Oxford University Press on
behalf of the Public Management Research Association
Although welfare administration had long been a shared
federal-state responsibility, states chafed under
the regulatory obligations associated with federal funding of social programs. Subunits of government
began to receive federal approval to experiment with different approaches to welfare delivery, ultimately aimed at moving
recipients of public assistance into paid work. These reforms selectively interposed so-called new public management (NPM)
techniques (Lynn 1998) into social welfare provision. Consistent with familiar NPM Brodkin Bureaucracy Redux 5 themes,
state governors promoting experimentation invoked the promise of flexibility and innovation through devolution.2 In the
true fashion of a dialectic, the new reformers castigated public welfare agencies for bureaucratic standardization, which
had been introduced in the previous wave of reform. These agencies now were caricatured as ‘‘eligibility and
compliance’’ systems that ‘‘everybody hates’’ (Bane and Ellwood 1994, 19). The solution, remarkably, was to
bring discretion back in.3 Although the discretionary social work bureaucracy of the 1960s and 1970s remained in disrepute,
the ideal of discretion, when reintroduced in the quasi-NPM terms of devolution and flexibility, had great appeal. The
federal government gave states flexibility to experiment with different approaches to assistance aimed at
promoting paid work in lieu of cash aid, including giving agencies more leeway to use discretion to promote work. Overall,
experimental welfare-to-work programs operated by state- and county-level governments achieved mixed results (ranging
from negative to modestly positive), which could have been used to highlight either the drawbacks or the potential of these
strategies. However, for the most part, the experiments were interpreted as indicating the promise of
reconstructing welfare agencies into quasi–labor market intermediaries (Brodkin and Kaufman 2000; O’Connor 2001;
Rogers-Dillon 2004). They laid the political foundation for a broader national reform program, giving states expanded
management authority to reorganize their public assistance programs and transform caseworkers into promoters and enforcers
of work.
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States cant expand social services – don’t have the money
Monica Fennell, Fordham University School of Law journal writer, 1993 (Fordham University School
of Law Journal, fall 1993, 21 Fordham Urb., L.J. 127, “why the homeless need food stamp advocacy and
how to pay for it”, LexisNexis Academic page 9)
A. Targeting the Homeless Because state budgets for social services are being cut, using federal money to
create a hybrid homeless assistance/food stamp program could be popular with states and non-profit groups
alike. n141 The program could be run by a non-profit group, and state food stamp offices could contract out to
these groups to provide outreach and advocacy. n142 The best way to get federal money is to design a
food stamp outreach and advocacy program that is specifically tailored to the homeless. A program tailored
to the homeless is likely to get preference in obtaining the fifty percent matching funds for food stamp outreach and advocacy
- despite the USDA's limited interpretations - as well as funds under the McKinney Act or the Food Stamp Act's
demonstration projects. n143
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Counterplan cant solve the case—not in my backyard.
Giamo and Grunberg 1992 (Benedict and Jeffrey, Giamo is a Professor of American Studies at the University of
Notre Dame. Grunberg is a Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University. "Beyond Homelessness: Frames
of Reference" p. 99)
We spoke to Herb Pardes about the mental health aspects of homelessness and he was quick to point out that, at the time this
social policy was being debated, psychiatrists themselves were divided. Many didn't think it was a good idea, many
did. And Richard Lamb, who recently wrote a piece on deinstitutionalization, blamed the naivete of
psychiatrists for their inability to get funding they thought would be there, and for their failure to
anticipate and understand the extent to which NIMBY [not in my backyard] would reoccur to frustrate
community mental health efforts. It's kind of surprising to think that there could be such naivete. Was it naivete?
Dumpson: I don't call it naivete. We don't have the political will to deal with NIMBY today. Just this
afternoon the mayor of the City of New York [David Dinkins] talked to a group of us about a health center
that needed to be relocated. And the commissioner of health said he was having some problems in
finding a location. In fact, he had word from some council members that they didn't want this health
center where he was planning to put it. The mayor said that he would like to follow through with the
original plan, since the commissioner told him that it was the best place for that health center. The mayor
then went on to say, "1 want to tell those council unless they come up with sorr be unpopular, but we aren't policy of this
administration.”
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State cannot handle the federal responsibility, they only hope for a national reform program.
Evelyn Z. Brodkin; Bureaucracy Redux: Management Reformism and the Welfare State; Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory: J-PART, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 2007), pp. 1-17; Oxford University Press on
behalf of the Public Management Research Association
welfare administration had long been a shared federal-state responsibility, states chafed under
the regulatory obligations associated with federal funding of social programs. Subunits of government began
Although
to receive federal approval to experiment with different approaches to welfare delivery, ultimately aimed at moving recipients
of public assistance into paid work. These reforms selectively interposed so-called new public management (NPM)
techniques (Lynn 1998) into social welfare provision. Consistent with familiar NPM Brodkin Bureaucracy Redux 5 themes,
state governors promoting experimentation invoked the promise of flexibility and innovation through devolution.2 In the
true fashion of a dialectic, the new reformers castigated public welfare agencies for bureaucratic standardization, which
had been introduced in the previous wave of reform. These agencies now were caricatured as ‘‘eligibility and
compliance’’ systems that ‘‘everybody hates’’ (Bane and Ellwood 1994, 19). The solution, remarkably, was to
bring discretion back in.3 Although the discretionary social work bureaucracy of the 1960s and 1970s remained in disrepute,
the ideal of discretion, when reintroduced in the quasi-NPM terms of devolution and flexibility, had great appeal. The
federal government gave states flexibility to experiment with different approaches to assistance aimed at
promoting paid work in lieu of cash aid, including giving agencies more leeway to use discretion to promote work. Overall,
experimental welfare-to-work programs operated by state- and county-level governments achieved mixed results (ranging
from negative to modestly positive), which could have been used to highlight either the drawbacks or the potential of these
strategies. However, for the most part, the experiments were interpreted as indicating the promise of
reconstructing welfare agencies into quasi–labor market intermediaries (Brodkin and Kaufman 2000; O’Connor 2001;
Rogers-Dillon 2004). They laid the political foundation for a broader national reform program, giving states expanded
management authority to reorganize their public assistance programs and transform caseworkers into promoters and enforcers
of work.
States abuse power given to them by the federal government, over restricting social service access.
Lisa R. Metsch and Harold A. Pollack; Welfare Reform and Substance Abuse; The Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 83,
No. 1 (2005), pp. 65-100; Blackwell Publishing on behalf of Milbank Memorial Fund
PRWORA converted the financing of public aid from an entitlement to a system of block grants that
shifts many financial incentives and risks from the federal government to the 50 states and, in many cases,
ultimately to the recipients themselves. TANF block grants accord states broad discretion to determine who is
eligible for TANF and for how long.
States are given broad discretion to sanction recipients who do not comply with program rules (Edelman
1997). As long as the states comply with due process requirements, they are free to impose a wide range
of penalties, ranging from small and temporary benefit reductions to the removal of recipient families
from the TANF rolls. Such sanctions are widely applied. A study by the General Accounting Office found that the
benefits of an average of 113,000 families per month (4.5% of TANF recipients) were reduced because of sanctions. Equally
significant, in 1999 seven states reported that sanctions accounted for at least 20 percent of their case closures (Goldberg and
Schott 2000; Pavetti and Bloom 2001).
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Only federal action can solve the issues confronting homeless today-it has the resources to allow
real change to occur amidst the foreclosure crisis
National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty 2009 [2/2009 “Without a Just Cause”
http://www.nlchp.org/content/pubs/Without_Just_Cause2.pdf]
As the foreclosure crisis continues and intensifies, more and more renters are being evicted— often without notice.
Moreover, as documented in this report, in the vast majority of states there is little in the law to protect tenants'
legitimate interests. To help stem the rising tide of homelessness nationally, and remedy this injustice, NLCHP and
NLIHC recommend that the federal government take immediate action to protect tenants in foreclosures.
Federal action is needed to ensure help nationally, and to bring the resources of the federal government
to bear to assist financially strapped states and communities. However, these recommendations are also
applicable at the state level. Fair notice to tenants. Tenants who are current in their rent should not be evicted without notice,
as now frequently happens. A minimum of 90 days' notice to tenants should be required. Preserve existing tenancies. With
limited exceptions, bona fide tenancies should be protected through the end of the lease term. Exceptions would include
instances where the tenancy is not bona fide, or where the purchaser will use the property as a primary residence. Tenancies
should be considered bona fide as long as the tenant is not the mortgagor, the lease was the result of an arms length
negotiation, and the lease payment is not substantially less than the fair market rent for the property. Tenants living in
federally assisted housing should also be protected. When foreclosed properties have tenants who are being assisted with
subsidies under the United States Housing Act of 1937, vacating the property for sale purposes should not be considered
good cause for breaking the tenants' existing lease. Legal assistance. According to reports from around the country, legal aid
offices are being overwhelmed with requests for legal assistance from people facing foreclosure and eviction. Few persons
who become homeless as a result appear to have had access to any legal assistance that might have helped them avoid the
loss of their home. Further, many legal aid lawyers as well as persons facing loss of their homes are unfamiliar with the law
or lack the ability to enforce it. Access to legal assistance can make the difference between maintaining and losing housing,
and funding for such legal assistance, including training and information on rights, must be increased.
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AT: Private Actor CP
] The private sector alone cannot solve – federal support is key
Michael Lipsky Steven professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1989 [“Nonprofit
[
Organizations, Government, and the Welfare State” http://www.jstor.org/stable/2151102?seq=1]
Nonprofit organizations invoke the images of community, voluntarism, civic dependability, and neighbor-helping-neighbor
that have always exerted a powerful impression on American public consciousness.1 However, largely as a result of this
expanded role in providing services for government, these images are at variance with the contemporary reality of nonprofit
service organizations. Rather than depending mostly on private charity and volunteers, most nonprofit service
organizations depend on government for over half of their revenues; for many small agencies,
government support comprises their entire budget. In contrast to the traditional relationship of two independent
sectors, the new relationship between government and nonprofits amounts to one of mutual dependence
that is financial as well as technical; increasingly, the lines between public and private are blurred . For
instance, a recent survey of the Child Welfare League of America concluded that government support comprised, on average,
59 percent of their member agency revenue in 1986.2 On the other hand, government relies on nonprofits to provide social
services. In 1988, fifteen Massachusetts state agencies were budgeted to spend over $750 million, about 7 percent of the state
budget, to purchase from over 1,200 contractors such services as alcoholism rehabilitation, family crisis intervention,
English-as-a-second-language, and daycare. Overall, the state recognizes 200 distinct types of social services in its purchaseof-service system.3 Until recently, our understanding of the development of the welfare state in advanced
industrial countries assumed that the hallmark of a progressive welfare state was a large public sector
that relegated the private sector to a small residual role. In this view, the United States with its smaller
public sector and larger private nonprofit sector compared unfavorably. The expansion of government
contracting with nonprofit agencies calls the prevailing view into question. In the recent period, government
has used nonprofit agencies to expand the boundaries of the welfare state in the United States in a host
of service categories—from child abuse to domestic violence to homelessness. The result is a welfare state that is more
expansive than would be the case if policy makers relied solely on the public sector.
It is also a welfare state that has compromised some of the values that the private voluntary sector contributes to social
welfare provision. These values include the variety, independence, and legitimacy of community-based agencies, and the
capacity of such agencies to pursue distribution policies that tolerate responsiveness to clients over equity among clients if
the two values conflict.
Broadly speaking, we reach the following conclusions about the effects of government spending in nonprofit organizations
and public policy. As government funding of nonprofit organizations grows, the pressures on government
officials to maintain accountability over public funds increases as well. Over time, government officials respond
to increased reliance on private agencies by instituting new regulations, changing contract requirements, and increasing
administrative oversight. The effect is to shift the organizational norms of nonprofit agencies from their historical emphasis
on being responsive to the individual to focusing more on treating all clients alike, an orientation that bears resemblance to
that of government service agencies. This shift is particularly noticeable in the areas of staffing, client selection and
treatment, and physical plant. Thus, government may require non¬profit agencies to hire professional staff as a condition of
receiving a contract. Or government may force a contract agency to accept only client referrals from government bureaus,
rather than allowing contract agencies to have the flexibility to respond to all clients in need who present themselves to the
agency. Government may also require a contract agency to modify its physical plant in order to meet official standards on
public safety and health. We will argue that government funding of nonprofit agencies transforms the management of
contract agencies and the politics surrounding social service expenditure.
In sum, government spending of nonprofit agencies should not be viewed simply as "privatization," if this
term means reducing or minimizing government involvement in policy matters by turning over
responsibility to private agencies and providing them with additional funds. Rather, the new public-private
funding arrangement means increased government intrusion into the affairs of nonprofit agencies, thereby altering the
character of social policy and the American welfare state.
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Housing insufficient—need to break down the idea of the home to disrupt current model of
identity politics that marginalizes the homeless
Sanford Schram 2006 (professor of social theory and social policy in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social
Research at Bryn Mawr College. He earned his PhD in political science from the University of Albany. “Review Essay:
Homelessness in the Ownership Society: An Inclusive Exclusion” http://ptx.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/34/1/132.pdf)
the discourse of home ownership becomes complicit in producing
homelessness. As more policy effort is directed at home ownership, less is directed at assisting those
who cannot own their own home and even less is directed at those who cannot manage living in a conventional
home, regardless of whether it is rented or owned. Increasingly rigid notions of who is a citizen and what is home
conspire to marginalize the homeless as undeserving. On one hand, household discourse today reinscribes the
Feldman goes on to show how
homeless as second-class citizens; on the other hand, household discourse reduces the extent to which we actually do
something to help the homeless. The ownership society risks intensifying Agamben’s “inclusive exclusion,” which
includes the marginalized in the public sphere but in ways that reinforce their subordination. Feldman builds
on Nancy Fraser’s work on the identity politics of recognition (versus the economic politics of redistribution) to show that the
disenfranchisement of the homeless results from their identification as people incapable of home
ownership. A politics of recognition and a politics of redistribution are imbricated in each other in ways that work to
disadvantage the homeless. Using MaxWeber, Feldman argues that the marginalization of the homeless is not just of problem
of status (i.e., identity politics), nor is it simply a problem of class (redistribution politics), but is a problem that combines
them in power. For Feldman, therefore, one must attend to how private identities affect the distribution of public resources.
Critical of Michael Walzer’s notion of separate spheres, he shows how justice for the homeless involves questioning what
gets constructed as public and private. Until we pluralize the idea of home, the homeless will continue to be
constituted as second-class citizens, each time affirming both their subordination and the first-class
citizenry of their more disciplined betters. If Feldman stopped there, we would have a devastating critique of the
“ownership society” as articulated by the current occupant of the White House. Yet, the book is much more. It is also an
effective demonstration of how implied notions of who the homeless are get insinuated into law, policy, and
politics. Both advocates and opponents of punitive homeless policy risk reinscribing the subordination of
the homeless as a subclinical citizenry in need of either soft or tough love. Both are practicing an insufficiently
critical form of identity politics that continues to reinforce the infantilizing of the homeless . For Feldman,
as for Arnold, until we pluralize the notion of home and relax the strictures of household discourse as it is articulated
today, we will continue to create the homeless as a necessary byproduct of the ownership society.
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Misc—K of “The Homeless”
Calling homeless persons “the homeless” creates an us/them distinction that facilitates their
marginalization – the impact is the aff
Daly, Gerald. Professor in the faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, Canada. He has worked with
housing agencies and non-profit groups and has published widely on housing, homelessness and comparative
planning. Author of Homeless: Policies, strategies and Lives on the Streets. 1996. Pg 8.
Researchers are now beginning to address the way society categorizes and responds to homeless individuals. Rather than talk
about homeless people as being "disaffiliated," some suggest that it is more appropriate to examine the notion of dissociation
as it is applied to homeless people, victims of disasters, and poor inner city residents. These individuals are consigned
to the periphery of public consciousness because by failing to conform they violate social norms and
offend public sensibilities. We deal with them by dissociation, distancing ourselves to minimize or
displace feelings of resentment, fear, contempt, guilt, shame, or conflict. In doing so a cycle of
disinterest and disaffection is generated, allowing us to shun collective responsibility. We
compartmentalize and place barriers between "us" and "them." We tend to see some things and to ignore
others. As a dehumanizing process, the extent of this dualistic dissociation is manifest in the
terminology used to describe homeless individuals. Common use of the term "the homeless" instead
of "homeless persons" or "people without houses" facilitates the distancing process. "They" become
an amorphous, remote, alien mass lacking individuality or even humanity. A sense of community is
lost. Definitions and descriptions of "the homeless" expose our personal values and beliefs, especially
when homelessness is characterized by what it is not. Our egos yearn "to be free of complexity and of change, of
relation, and of needing to know the irksome other" (Keller 1986: 174).
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****Neg****
142
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****Case****
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Socialization Advantage Answers
Criticism of privatizing public space is caught up in the same problematic logic of those who
construct the idealized spaces
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 38-39)
In describing this vision of consumptive space under the term "consumptive public sphere," I differ slightly from some
analysts who denote the consumptive spaces of redeveloped urban centers, shopping malls, and business
improvement districts as "pseudo-public spaces" and "nonpublic urban" or "post-public" space.35 Although
these terms helpfully point toward the purifying, heavily policed, exclusionary, and depoliticized nature of
such spaces,36 the terms fail to incorporate a recognition of the fact that these consumer spaces are
defended as public spaces, designed to re-create an idealized vision of a "lost" public space, and constitute
a particular (consuming) subject as a member of "the public." Thus, when left critics attack the privatization of
public space, or the loss of public space, they echo the very discourses of urban nostalgia they are
attempting to confront. As Rosalyn Deutsche argues, "Within this idealizing perspective, departures from
established arrangements inevitably signal the 'end of public space.' Edge cities, shopping malls, mass
media, electronic space . . . become tantamount to democracy's demise." In describing the loss of public space,
the critic, Deutsche argues, becomes an unwitting bedfellow of designers of nostalgic re-creations of public space in urban
redevelopment projects.
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Criminalization Answers
Public space restrictions do not criminalize the homeless—they’re a necessary social barrier
Leonard C. Feldman, 2004 (Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. BA at Yale University,
PhD at the University of Washington with research interests in contemporary the politics and law of necessity, Giorgio
Agamben, Hannah Arendt, the politics of homelessness and public space, and the role of the state in constituting identities.
“Citizens Without Shelter” Cornell Press 2004, p. 8-9)
Homelessness as freedom is given a negative valuation by legal scholar Robert Tier. Sacred, positive freedom
("resistance to the containment fields of modernity") becomes profane license ("rebellious threat to the social order"). Tier is
one of the leading legal defenders of public-space restrictions and "broken windows" policing (see chapter 1). Tier dislikes
the term "homeless," preferring the older categories of vagrant and vagrancy. Furthermore, he argues that cities make a
mistake when they view vagrants as helpless victims "of economic dislocation or ... an inevitable feature of
market capitalism." Rather, the visible homeless in urban public spaces are a "troubled population" that, due
to substance abuse problems and mental illness "engage in social and disorderly conduct ."32 Tier's
language works relentlessly to stereotype and demean homeless persons, yet he manages to claim that it is the legal defenders
of the rights of the homeless who "promote the most pernicious stereotypes about poverty in America." They do this, he
claims, by identifying street homelessness with poverty instead of with antisocial disorder. Tier quotes expert court testimony
to make the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor: " Poor people in America do not live on the
streets, under bridges, or in parks, do not carry all of their belongings in shopping carts or plastic bags, wear layers of
tattered clothing, pass out or sleep in doorways, urinate or defecate in public places, sleep in their cars or in
encampments, do not harass or intimidate others, ask for money on the streets, physically attack city workers and
residents, and do not wander the streets shouting at visions and voices." Although he acknowledges mental illness
and addiction, Tier's purpose is not to accept a vision of the homeless as helpless and unfree (by virtue of a
condition or illness) but rather to deepen the pathologization of homelessness and to posit them as
individuals who can be held accountable for their (freely chosen and disorderly) behaviors. The abject
images (tattered clothing, urine) that appear in his argument promote not sympathy but disgust, maintained by emphasizing
the agentic dimension of the "disorderly" behavior that arouses the disgust. For instance, public urination is not an indication
that cities have made their public spaces incredibly inhospitable to persons without a private space of their own; rather, it is a
freely chosen disorderly behavior. Public-space restrictions do not criminalize homelessness; they are simply
evidence that "communities have decided to cease tolerating everything that any deviant wants to do."
Bad choices have made homeless street dwellers a dangerous threat to the vitality of urban public
spaces, but laws prohibiting urban camping, aggressive panhandling, and the like will help turn homeless people
from disorderly and rebellious outlaws to upstanding citizens who "are capable of being good citizens
and are capable of obeying these new laws.
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Solvency – Can’t Solve Homelessness
No Solvency - You cannot solve homelessness with some governmental plan
Jonathan L. Hafetz, March 30, 2003, Fordham Urb. L.J. 1215, ARTICLE: HOMELESS LEGAL ADVOCACY:
NEW CHALLENGES AND DIRECTIONS FOR THE FUTURE
"You cannot legislate homelessness away." Through the mid-1980s, most programs to address the problems
associated with homelessness were created, funded, and administered at the grassroots level. In the view of the Reagan
Administration, state and local governments were better equipped than the federal government to handle
their own homeless problems. A federal task force on homelessness was created in 1983 to provide
information to local governments and interested parties on how to obtain surplus federal property. n16
However, pressure was growing to address the problems of homelessness in a tangible way from the top
down, with the federal government as an active participant in addressing the needs of homeless people.
In 1986, Congress passed a few small parts of the Homeless Persons' Survival Act. Later that same year, legislation
containing Title I of the Homeless Persons' Survival Act - emergency relief provisions for shelter, food, mobile
health care, and transitional housing - was introduced as the Urgent Relief for the Homeless Act. After an intensive
advocacy campaign, the Urgent Relief for the Homeless Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1987 was passed by large
bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, and President Reagan reluctantly signed it into law on July 22, 1987. n17
The Act was renamed the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act after the death of its chief sponsor, the
Republican Representative from Connecticut, Stewart B. McKinney. For the first time, Congress acknowledged that
homelessness was "an [*346] immediate and unprecedented crisis due to the lack of shelter for a growing number of
individuals and families" in the United States. n18 By passing the McKinney Act, Congress established that the federal
government had "a clear responsibility and an existing capacity to fulfill a more effective and responsible role to meet the
basic human needs and to engender respect for the human dignity of the homeless." n19 Recognizing that there are many
complex causes of homelessness that, if left unchecked, would dramatically worsen the problem, Congress attempted to
define the problem and create a framework for solutions. The McKinney Act defined a homeless person as "an individual
who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence." n20 The very lack of residence, which Congress acknowledges
to be a national crisis, has also been a major barrier for people when it comes to voting. Although the McKinney Act
represents a victory for advocates to end homelessness, "we still have a long way to go," says Sister Mary
Scullion, Executive Director of Project H.O.M.E. n21 "You can't just legislate homelessness out of existence." n22
To solve homelessness you must address the root cause, which is drugs
Vincent Brown December 8, 1989, Opinion, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/08/opinion/l-bushplan-misses-root-cause-of-homelessness-063389.html
How can the President describe his $7 billion program as ''comprehensive'' when he fails to address the
root cause of homelessness: addiction to alcohol and other drugs? Yes, some of the people I live with are here
because they can't find affordable housing, and a small number are here because they have mental problems. But eight out
of 10 are here because they are actively addicted to alcohol, crack or some other drug. Most experts blame
today's housing crisis on the Reagan budget cuts. Undoubtedly Ronald Reagan's insensitivity and lack of
funding have compounded the problem. But the Reagan budget cuts are not the primary cause of
homelessness.
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Solvency – Can’t Solve Homelessness
The aff’s welfare reform isn’t extensive enough – doesn’t adequately increase benefits
Joel Berg Executive Director, New York City Coalition Against Hunger. B.A. Columbia University
10/14/06 (The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice, 11 J. Gender Race & Just. 47, LexisNexis page 1011)
As I indicated in the introduction, for welfare reform to work we must do more than end hunger. We must
simul-taneously enable large numbers of welfare recipients to move into living-wage jobs, "make work
pay," and to provide all Americans with the equal opportunity to earn and save their way out of poverty.
Any welfare reform and anti-poverty plan must be extensive and include concrete ways to make quality
health care, child care, nutritious food, safe neighborhoods, livable housing, effective public schools, job
training, and post-secondary education more afford-able and accessible for low-income Americans. It
must be noted that more federal spending is needed to achieve these goals. Mayor Bloomberg repeated the standard right-wing distortion that "long experience has taught us that simply throwing dollars at poverty does not make
it go away," in a report of an antipoverty commission. In fact, when the federal government did significantly increase its
anti-poverty funding - with the Great Society programs and other efforts started in the 1960s - the U.S. poverty rate was cut
in half. I believe that history will clearly show that the reason that poverty increased again in the late 1970s, 1980s, and again
in the last few years was that the federal government slashed anti-poverty funding in order to pay for in-creased military
expenditures, additional corporate welfare, and ever-greater tax cuts for the nation's wealthiest. Surely, spending more money
on poverty is not the only way to decrease it. But given that poverty is the absence of sufficient money, we
cannot dramatically reduce it without significant new expenditures. As noted before, when it comes to other
matters, such as preventing an investment from moving a few blocks, politicians clearly understand that significant
public resources are necessary to obtain results. Trying to reduce poverty without increasing the money available to
low-income families is like trying to reduce drought without increasing the availability of water.
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Solvency – Homeless Will Reject Services
Exclusions inevitable – homeless persons reject social services
Wagner, David. Associate professor of social work and sociology at the University of Southern Maine. He is the
author of Checkerboard Square: Culture And Resistance In A Homeless Community (Westview, 1993), winner of the
1993 C. Wright Mills Award. Pg 17.
The "success" of the advocates' campaigns for the homeless is often lost on the homeless themselves,
who see the huge shelters built to house them as vehicles to strip them of individuality and dignity. They
resent rigid controls over their behavior and the personal surveillance necessary just to receive bed and
board. Whether it is in the form of shelter, food, welfare benefits, counseling, or other services, state aid to the poor is
conditioned on behavioral controls. Unlike advocates, many poor people, including the subjects of this book, are
antibureaucratic, and they resist the intrusion of the state into their lives. Rather than be stigmatized and
submit to "degradation rituals," they often avoid shelters, child welfare agencies, welfare offices, and
mental health offices.
The dilemma of state intervention raises the question of whether paternalism and social control built into
the government can solve a social welfare problem (for a good discussion, see Gaylin, Glasser, Marcus, &
Rothman, 1981). If people demand a "solution" to homelessness (or drug use or teenage pregnancy), despite the
rhetoric of good intentions, they are not demanding that the "clients" be consulted or that the affected
people have self-determination. Rather the "state as parent" is licensed to control the "clients,"
presumably for "their own good" (Gaylin et al., 1981).
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A2 – Solvency Mechanism – Food Stamps
Eligibility restrictions aren’t responsible for low participation in food stamp programs
Monica Fennell, Fordham University School of Law journal writer, 1993 (Fordham
University School of Law Journal, fall 1993, 21 Fordham Urb., L.J. 127, “why the homeless
need food stamp advocacy and how to pay for it”, LexisNexis Academic page 3)
B. Eligibility for Food Stamps According to the Urban Institute's calculations, approximately ninety-five percent of the
homeless would be eligi-ble for food stamps if they applied. n42 Thus, the low participation rate of the
homeless in federal food stamp programs is not due to ineligibility, instead it is due to the many barriers
the homeless encounter in gaining access to these pro-grams. The Urban Institute's calculations can be verified
using the following analysis. In general, an eligible household must have a monthly net income below the
poverty line - roughly, less than $ 1,058 per month - and total resources un-der $ 2,000. n43 The term net
income is used because there are deductions for items such as child care, medical care, and work expenses. n44 Resources
include such items as cash, stocks, bonds, and cars worth over $ 4,500. n45 The av-erage homeless person has a low
enough income and little enough assets to meet these eligibility requirements. The [*134] Urban Institute
found that the average monthly income for the homeless was $ 137, n46 and Rossi estimated it at $ 164. n47 Both studies
found that at least 17% of the homeless have no cash income at all. n48 In sum, using the food stamp statutory and
regulatory eligibility criteria and the income and resource estimates of the Urban Institute and Rossi, at least half of the
homeless population have an income of one-seventh of the maximum income for eligibility. The vast
majority of the rest of the homeless have income and resources below the maximum. Thus, non-participation in the
federal food stamp program must be due to other factors. Because the food stamp program is an
entitlement program, n49 the receipt of food stamps is as-of-right for ap-plicants who qualify. n50
Additionally, the food stamp program would be the easiest of the food programs in which to enroll the homeless and to
monitor compliance. As one commentator observed, food stamps can help those who fall through the gaps, n51 because
eligibility is not restricted to families or to recipients of other government benefits. n52 [*135]
149
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Solvency Turn – Victimization
Providing services to the homeless constructs them as victims – creating worse stigmatization
Susan Ruddick. Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles (1992). M.A. McGill University, (1979). B.E.S.
University of Waterloo (1976). 19 96. Local Places in the Age of the Global City: From the Politics of Homelessness to
the Politics of the Homeless. Page 168-169.
What ground we have gained by establishing structural victimization of homeless people, we confuse notions of structural
victimization with those of personal, and by extension, political incapacities. In fact, many of the earlier studies of the
homeless by advocates, however well meaning, have reinforced their social death with the use of
concepts such as "service dependent population" and the like. (The service dependent are those who
according to this definition cluster in the inner city to take advantage of support services —including
outpatients, those in half way houses and the like).8 However, if we reflect a little on the concept of service dependence we
might cast a much wider net to include much of the homed community, like those who to rent an apartment because it is "just
steps to the TTC" and "close to good schools." In attempting to draw a line between "homeless by choice" and
"homeless as victims" we have risked the drawing of a second line, between those who are capable of
political action and those who are not. This insistence on the image of homeless as victim has policy
consequences that are perhaps more difficult to confront than embellishment of cardboard boxes by those
aesthetically enlightened radicals so feared by David Harvey. These consequences include the conflation of the
homeless with the social pathologies that have in a sense "produced them" as is argued in a very eloquent
analysis by Nancy Fraser of changes in the women's shelter movement in the United States over the past twenty years. Fraser
notes that the response of women's shelters has moved away from wider political connection with the feminist movement,
away from linking the need for women's shelters with wider systemic structures of sexism and patriarchy, and confining the
shelter industry—not with the intent to blame the victim, but rather with the intent of treating the victim, rehabilitating her to
be able to return to what is considered a "normal and functioning (read homed) society."*
150
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Solvency Turn – De-politicization
Their depiction of homeless persons as service dependent depoliticizes them, further entrenching
their exclusion
Susan Ruddick. Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles (1992). M.A. McGill University, (1979). B.E.S.
University of Waterloo (1976). 19 96. Local Places in the Age of the Global City: From the Politics of Homelessness to
the Politics of the Homeless. Page 169-170.
Homeless can be politically active now, once recieveing welfare and social service aren’t thought of as politically active
To trace the effects of this social death in the representation of the homeless as de-politicized, we need
only to look at the more recent divisions that have been drawn between the working class, the working
poor and those on social assistance. In spite of activism and evidence to the contrary, welfare recipients
continue to be thought of as service dependent, passive, and incapable of political action. I recently came
across an analysis of the housing struggles around Treffan Court which occurred here in Toronto some twenty years ago and
it was noteworthy the way the same divisions I have alluded here were then reproduced in splits between
welfare recipients and the working poor, splits often reinforced by academics and middle class liberals
who intended to "help" those on social assistance. As Marjaleena Reepo observed: Academics and professionals,
among them middle class liberals, tend to be removed from the average working man and woman in society—the contacts
they make and the ones they reproduce in their political actions tend to be with the most downtrodden of society and do so in
a way that tends to reinforce rather than transcend their alienation from working people: the people they deal with are the
"clients," the "patients," the "cases" of various state and private social agencies. They are the ones who are being
"caseworked," and "rehabilitated," and "treated." 10 The type of help often extended by academics and
professionals to these individuals in the form of social assistance serves to reproduce this social death
rather than transcend it. This analysis of the social death suffered by welfare recipients nearly twenty
years ago bears a startling resemblance to the assumptions we make today in the lines we draw between
homed and homeless, between politically active and politically passive, between those capable of some
form of revolution or real political struggle and those in need of some form of rehabilitation. Work
which addresses the homeless as active, creative and thinking political agents is work which attempts to
erase this division, to build a new vision of the homeless not as people we must organize for, but as
people we might organize with.
151
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Solvency Turn – Agency
Expanding government programs for homeless persons denies them agency, reifying the case
harms
Susan Ruddick. Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles (1992). M.A. McGill University, (1979). B.E.S.
University of Waterloo (1976). 1996. Local Places in the Age of the Global City: From the Politics of Homelessness to
the Politics of the Homeless. Page 166-167.
While many advocates for the homeless have undertaken research to establish them as victims of larger structural forces,
there has also been a second strand of research by advocates, often working within a post modern or post
structuralist framework, that has attempted to establish the role of the homeless as agents, by examining
the way that the homeless, through their own acts, have attempted to confront their victimization, the
ways they challenge received notions about who they are. Much of the work focusing on the homeless as agents
looks at the way they contest this social death through a range of personal and political practices. These
practices may take the form of demonstrative personal actions—such as the attempts of a homeless mother to
reinforce her role as a caregiver by brushing the hair of her child in public, or in the relationship another homeless woman
established with a homed but illiterate man by helping him write letters to his granddaughter. But they also have taken
the form of larger more organized political actions , such as the attempts of Ted Hayes in Los Angeles to organize a
collective camp of homeless people, or the nationally organized march of the homeless in Washington a few years ago to
protest their condition.
152
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Solvency Turn – Dependence
Welfare locks in a cycle of despair- turns the case
Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, 7/7/94 (“Ending welfare as
we know it”, Cato policy analysis no. 212, cato institute, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-212.html)
President Clinton deserves credit for bringing this issue back to the forefront of the public policy debate. Yet both liberals
and conservatives seem unable to understand the fundamental structural failure of welfare. Liberals continue to believe that
throwing more money at current (or new) programs will make them work. Conservatives search for a paternalistic set of
"incentives," such as "workfare"and "LEARNfare." Neither of those approaches is likely to solve the problems of the
American social welfare system. It is time to recognize that welfare cannot be reformed. It should be ended.
There may be relatively little that can be done for people already on welfare. The key issue is to avoid bringing more
people into the cycle of welfare, illegitimacy, fatherlessness, crime, more illegitimacy, and more
welfare. The only way to prevent new people from entering the failed system is to abolish programs that
insulate individuals from the consequences of their actions.
Those on welfare become too dependant and never escape poverty.
Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the Cato Institute, 7/7/94 (“Ending welfare as
we know it”, Cato policy analysis no. 212, cato institute, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-212.html)
What has America received in exchange for the massive anti-poverty spending? Primarily, more
poverty. As Figure 1 shows, the greatest strides in reducing poverty in America occurred before the advent of the social
welfare state. Indeed, since 1973, poverty has actually increased, despite the continued growth in social
welfare spending. Figure 1 Social Welfare Spending and Poverty
Source: Robert Rector, "Rethinking Welfare after the
L.A. Riots,"
Youth Policy, December 1992.
(Graph Omitted) There is evidence that welfare itself may prevent
people from moving out of poverty. Richard Vedder and Lowell Galloway, for example, found that only 18.3
percent of poor people receiving welfare benefits in 1987 moved out of poverty, while 45 percent of
poor people who never received welfare escaped poverty.(15) Vedder and Galloway suggest that while initial
welfare benefits may indeed improve the standard of living for recipients--lifting them out of poverty--there eventually comes
a point at which benefit levels begin to breed the types of disincentives and destructive behavior that trap recipients in
poverty.(16) That conclusion is supported by a second, more detailed study by Vedder and Galloway of poverty and welfare
benefits in six midwestern states. That study found a 12 percent increase in the number of people living in
poverty, which the authors attributed to high levels of welfare benefits.(17) Welfare dependence is
increasingly multigenerational. Although the majority of children raised in AFDC households will not receive AFDC
themselves, the rate of AFDC dependence for children raised on AFDC is far higher than for their non-AFDC
counterparts.(18) For example, nearly 20 percent of daughters from families that were "highly dependent" on welfare became
"highly dependent" themselves, whereas only 3 percent of daughters from non-AFDC households became "highly dependent"
on welfare.(19)
153
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Solvency Turn – Eligibility Restrictions Good – Independence
Eligibility restrictions are key to encouraging independence – that’s the only way homeless
persons can truly be part of community
Turner and Rector in 2003 (Robert E., Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Visiting Fellow in Welfare Policy, Jason, Senior
Research Fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, Under Senate Bill, Welfare Recipients Who Refuse
to Work Would Still Get Cash Benefits, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1669.cfm, July 21)
As noted, reciprocal obligation--requiring welfare recipients to participate in work or other activities in
exchange for assistance--is a core principle of welfare reform. The importance of giving something back
through work activities while receiving benefits extends beyond its important social and moral
dimension. Requiring TANF recipients to engage in work and other constructive activities is the chief
tool the states have with which to help recipients move to responsibility and self-sufficiency. For these
and other reasons, the 1996 PRWORA law incorporated explicit work requirements for those receiving
assistance. If reciprocal work obligations are to be meaningful, cash welfare benefits must be linked to
the recipients' completion of work or other constructive activity, much like a real job. However, more
than half of all TANF recipients live in states where the welfare agency has no practical way of
enforcing the requirement that adults participate in their assigned activities. In these states, welfare
recipients who choose to remain in idle dependence continue to receive the vast majority of their welfare
benefits. Where there is only a weak link between the receipt of benefits and attendance at welfare-towork activities, agencies have little or no constructive leverage with which to draw unwilling recipients
into programs intended to help them become independent.
154
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****Counterplans****
155
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States CP Solvency / Federalism Link
Welfare reform has been devolved to the states
Boyer, Kate 2002, Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Reform and
Resistance:
A Consideration of Space, Scale
and Strategy in Legal Challenges
to Welfare Reform,
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118562122/PDFSTART, P. 2
Welfare reform has been achieved through the spatio-juridical rescaling of welfare policy down from the
federal, to the state and sometimes local level: a process called devolution (Gais et al 2001; Nathan and Gais
1999; Staeheli, Kondras and Flint 1997). However, as geographers rightly note, federal to state policy transfer is not the
only scalar operation at work in welfare reform. Rather, this policy entails tight behavioral discipline at the level of
the body (including procreative behavior) (Cope 2001; Peck 2001), while at the same time expressing the goals of a
more extensive policy offensive, under the sign of neoliberalism, that is international in scale (Peck 2001;
Peck and Tickell 2002; von Mahs 2001).
156
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Courts CP Solvency – Eighth Amendment
The Court can rule on 8th Amendment grounds to strike down eligibility restrictions
Nancy Wright, Not in Anyone's Backyard: Ending the "Contest of Nonresponsibility" and Implementing LongTerm Solutions to Homelessness, 2 Geo. J. on Fighting Poverty 163, 174 ( 1995)
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/geojpovlp2&div=23&size=2&rot=0&type
=image
The escalating problems of homeless people also acts as a catalyst for the spread of compassion fatigue
to the wel-fare poor. Instead of helping those on the poverty continuum as they have in the past, the
nation's more .diluent citizens now turn their backs and close their pocketbooks on society's less
fortunate members, which in turn exacerbates their risk of becoming homeless.26 The public hostility
toward the welfare poor is buttressed by myths that surround society's indigents.2' Perhaps in an effort to
belie their own vulnerabilitv in an unstable economic world,2* empathy burnout leads many members of
the public to blame the poor for their lot in life.29 In dealing with the problems of America's
impoverished citizens, a vicious cycle is created because compassion fatigue and intolerance for the
problems of homelessness and indigency leads to more poverty and homelessness.
Much of the public perceives that legislation establishing programs to help indigent people has failed,
and that spending more money will only increase the problem.10 Unfortunately, legislators are
responding to the public's dissatisfaction with legislation for the poor and concern with the country's
economic instability. Politicians at the federal, state, and local levels have in one way or another
tightened welfare requirements and decreased payments,31 reduced subsidized housing,32 prohibited
sleeping or resting in public places,33 forbade begging or pan-handling,34 and even criminalized
homelessness.35
These laws are not only ineffective and inhumane public policy but some of this repressive legislation
violates constitutional guarantees such as Due Process, free speech, cruel and unusual punishment,
Equal Protection, and the right to travel. Rather than enabling homeless and poor people to move along the poverty continuum and then
out of poverty, this legislation has caused America's indigents to move in the wrong direction and further into poverty. In an effort to survive in the face of
repressive legislation and "catch-all codes" criminalizing homelessness, indigent people have been forced lo depart from a particularly indigent-hostile city
even the most liberal
communities because those communities wish to avoid becoming magnets for America's throwaway
citizens.37
Homeless people are doomed by this cycle of compassion fatigue and legislative repression. Unless the
cycle can be broken, there is little hope that the problems of homelessness and indigency will be solved.
As Henry Cisneros said: "This fatigue in the battle against homelessness means that the nation's
leadership—in Washington, in our state capitals and in our local communities—has to ensure that in
their weariness, Americans do not turn this fight into a war on the homeless themselves."38 If
Americans are able to avoid facing poverty problems by pushing indigents from one community to
another, those on the poverty continuum will ultimately be denied the basic essentials of life. Carried
to its extreme, the "Not In My Backyard" phenomenon will become "Not In Anyone's Backyard."
Breaking the cycle of compassion fatigue and ending the contest of nonresponsibility involve
recognizing the many categories of poverty and responding with nationally-mandated assistance
programs tailored to the different needs of those on the poverty continuum. For those whose needs are primarily
or stale in search of a more indigent-friendly city or state.36 This migration has led to restrictive regulations in
economic, the solutions should provide decent, affordable, and permanent housing and other necessities of life by increasing the availability and the
adequacy of public assistance.39 At the same time, innovative programs must be developed to enable all able-bodied homeless individuals and welfare
recipients to move away from poverty toward economic independence.40 Ultimately, those who work should receive decent wages and be allowed to leave
the poverty ranks permanently.41
157
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Courts CP Solvency – Criminalization
Court can strike down regulations that criminalize the homeless
Nancy Wright, Not in Anyone's Backyard: Ending the "Contest of Nonresponsibility" and Implementing LongTerm Solutions to Homelessness, 2 Geo. J. on Fighting Poverty 163, 174 ( 1995)
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/geojpovlp2&div=23&size=2&rot=0&type
=image
For a significant percentage of the homeless, however, housing, financial, and employment assistance is
not enough because they may also have severe mental or physical problems that must be
comprehensively treated before they can become independent, functioning members of society.'12 Some
of the problems of the most severely disabled homeless may involve long-term treatment, or there may
just be no solution; nevertheless, a minimum standard of living—a roof over one's head, food, and health
care— should be the right of all Americans.
This article asserts that homelessness is a continuing problem that will not be alleviated unless cities,
slates, and the federal government are forced to lake some responsibility for homeless people and are
prevented from continuing to push them from one community to another in a never-ending contest of
nonresponsibility. Repressive legislation and catch-all codes that criminalize homelessness and allow the
contest to continue must be challenged. However, these legal challenges arc merely interim measures
and must be accompanied by the creation and implementation of long-term solutions designed lo at lack
and alleviate the sources of homelessness.
Part I of this article describes some of the complexities of understanding and dealing with the problems
of homelessness and indigency with the hope that we can replace compassion fatigue with
compassionate understanding and action. Pari I initially presents an overview of the escalating numbers
of the working poor, the welfare poor, and the homeless, and discusses their increased need for shelter,
food, and other necessities of life. Part I then describes the public's "Not In Anyone's Backyard"
response as well as the executive, legislative, and judicial responses to homelessness. Part II discusses
the "semantic" legal challenges that can be brought against anti-camping, anti-begging, and aggressive
panhandling ordinances on the grounds that ,aspects of I he regulations violate the Due Process or Equal
Protection Clauses of the Constitution. Part II next describes the more broadbascd "substantive" legal
challenges directed against catch-all codes criminalizing homelessness. These challenges are based on
the right to travel, free speech, the Fourth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment, and the Equal Protection
Clause. Finally, Part III details the many faces of the homeless and describes some enlightened
programs dealing with the sources of their multi-faceted problems. These programs provide homeless
people with temporary shelter, permanent affordable housing, treatment for mental and physical
disabilities, and opportunities for employment.
This article concludes with the hope that if these successful programs can be expanded nationwide, some
of the problems of homeless people will be alleviated, if not solved. I lowcver, this can only happen if
all communities are forced to confront homelessness rather than be allowed to continue the contest of
nonresponsibility by pushing their homeless citizens into someone else's backyard. This article suggests
that every community must face the problems presented by homelessness and work together to
implement effective and humane solutions. The- goal ot America's social policy should be to assist the
homeless and the poor To move along the poverty continuum from homelessness, towards the ultimate
goal of adequate, full-time employment and economic independence.
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Habitat Agenda CP 1NC
CP Solves the case—Habitat Agenda insures homeless people have access to social services, and
are not penalized for their status.
Maria Foscarinis; Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; A.B. Barnard College
(1977); M.A. Columbia University (1978); J.D. Columbia University (1981); 2000 Saint Louis University School of
Law; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; 19 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 327; Symposium: Homelessness And
Human Rights: Towards An Integrated Strategy
The Habitat Agenda contains provisions specifically focused on the very poor and homeless, in no small
part due to the active participation of non-governmental organizations in drafting the document. In addition to direct
assistance to disadvantaged and vulnerable groups - including homeless persons 70 - it specifically
commits governments to promote supportive services for homeless and other vulnerable groups, to
ensure that homeless persons are not penalized for their status, and to give "special attention" to the
"circumstances and needs of people living in poverty, people who are homeless...and those belonging to
vulnerable and disadvantaged groups" in implementing all of the document's commitments. In addition,
it includes commitments to "promot[e] shelter and support[] basic services and facilities for education
and health for the homeless" and to address "the specific needs and circumstances of children,
particularly street children." 71
The document also includes a provision that homeless persons not be penalized for their status. This
latter provision was sponsored and successfully promoted by the US delegation, at the request of US NGOs,
to address the trend towards the "criminalization" of homelessness in many US cities. It was inserted in the
section addressing "forced evictions," on the theory that the current "sweeps" of homeless encampments are the US
counterpart to the forced evictions of squatters living in tent cities in other parts of the world.
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Habitat Agenda CP—Solvency
The Agenda calls for increased access to Social Services to the homeless.
Maria Foscarinis; Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; A.B. Barnard College
(1977); M.A. Columbia University (1978); J.D. Columbia University (1981); 2000 Saint Louis University School of
Law; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; 19 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 327; Symposium: Homelessness And
Human Rights: Towards An Integrated Strategy
[*345] The Agenda embeds the provisions on homelessness and adequate housing in a broader policy
and legal framework. It defines the concept of adequacy broadly to include proximity to work,
social services and transportation. Placing housing in the larger context of economic and community development it
emphasizes the need for links between housing and jobs. The document also makes clear, consistent with developing
international jurisprudence, that government recognition of the right to housing is not tantamount to government obligation to
provide a home free of charge to everyone. 72 Rather, the obligation of government is to pursue and promote
policies that are will promote housing rights through a mix of market and government forces. 73
The human rights documents create a balanced conceptual framework for rights and responsibilities and
for integrating individual with societal needs. For example, the Universal Declaration recognizes basic rights to
housing, food, medical care; but it also incorporates the responsibility of the individual: assistance is foreseen only when
needed due to disability or other circumstances beyond the individual's control. 74
The Agenda incorporates and promotes openness ("transparency") and community participation,
especially by those most immediately affected, in carrying out these policies. It also adopts and
incorporates an "enabling" approach, in which the national government brings together and "enables"
the collaboration of different actors, including the private sector, non-profit organizations, local
governments and labor unions. However, within this approach, the Agenda imposes a special responsibility on
governments to protect members of disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. 75
The Habitat Agenda is the most recent and comprehensive elaboration on the meaning of the human right to housing in the
contemporary world. While not a treaty, the Agenda was agreed to and the Istanbul Declaration was
signed by 171 countries, including the United States. 76
Human Rights approaches key to addressing homelessness in the US.
Maria Foscarinis; Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; A.B. Barnard College
(1977); M.A. Columbia University (1978); J.D. Columbia University (1981); 2000 Saint Louis University School of
Law; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; 19 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 327; Symposium: Homelessness And
Human Rights: Towards An Integrated Strategy
Using human rights in the US: approaches and limitations. Substantively, each of the documents
described above is highly relevant to addressing [*346] homelessness in the United States. However,
legally their applicability in the domestic context is by no means clear. Moreover, the status of each document is not the
same.
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Habitat Agenda CP—Solvency
The Habitat Agenda can be enacted as a US law if passed through Congress.
Maria Foscarinis; Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; A.B. Barnard College
(1977); M.A. Columbia University (1978); J.D. Columbia University (1981); 2000 Saint Louis University School of
Law; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; 19 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 327; Symposium: Homelessness And
Human Rights: Towards An Integrated Strategy
The UDHR is not a treaty, but rather a declaration; as such, it is arguably not binding law. 77 Nevertheless,
many scholars
believe that as a result of consistent practice of states and the international community, the UDHR has
become part of "customary international law," and has thus become binding international law. 78
Moreover, some argue that even though it may not be sufficiently accepted to be binding customary law , it is binding by
virtue of states' adoption of the UN Charter. 79
Numerous subsequent treaties and conventions, which are binding international law, recognize and elaborate on the right to
housing as well as other related economic rights. The most detailed and relevant to housing rights, the ICESCR, was been
signed by the United States in 1972 but has not yet been ratified. 80 The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which
includes recognition of children's right to housing, has been ratified by 191 nations, but not by the U.S. However, the
Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination, which includes at least an acknowledgement of the
right to housing, has been signed and ratified by the U.S. Likewise, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
has been signed and ratified by the U.S. 81
In any case, ratification of a treaty does not automatically incorporate it into US law. While the U.S.
Constitution accords treaties the same status as federal statutes, 82 they have typically been ratified with
reservations that provide that they are not "self-executing," 83 and courts have upheld such reservations.
84 Not self-executing means that the treaty provisions are not judicially enforceable in the U.S. absent
passage of implementing legislation by Congress. 85
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Habitat Agenda CP—Solvency—International Law
International Law- Human rights key
Maria Foscarinis; Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; A.B. Barnard College
(1977); M.A. Columbia University (1978); J.D. Columbia University (1981); 2000 Saint Louis University School of
Law; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; 19 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 327; Symposium: Homelessness And
Human Rights: Towards An Integrated Strategy
Thus, despite significant limitations, international human rights law can be a useful supplement to legal
advocacy on homelessness. First, it can serve as an interpretive tool in litigation where federal or state
law is unclear. Second, it can serve a "standard setting" function in policy advocacy. And third, it can help
reframe and re-conceptualize advocacy, placing it on a firmer foundation: away from charity and
dependence and towards justice and interdependence. Moreover, such a redefining of the issues may also help
broaden the advocacy constituency: human rights are universal; as such, their assertion benefits all, not merely
those in need. This section looks at some of these potential uses; rather than a comprehensive discussion, it is an outline
meant to stimulate thought, discussion and, potentially, action.
Human rights law as an interpretive guide. According to established Supreme Court precedent, "an act of congress
ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations, if any other possible construction remains." 87 Indeed, according to
later court decisions and commentators, courts must interpret ambiguous domestic law in general so that it is consistent with
binding international law, whether derived from treaty or custom. Moreover, courts in their discretion may rely on nonbinding international law - such as declarations, treaties that have not been ratified, and practices that have not become
customary law - to interpret ambiguous domestic law. 88
The Supreme Court has looked to international law as well as the laws and practices of other nations in
analyzing whether a particular punishment offended civilized standards of decency, and was thus "cruel
and unusual" under Supreme Court the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 89 [*348] Similar
analyses have been used by the Court in applying the Due Process Clause. 90 However, more recent signs from the Court are
less than clear. In a 1988 death penalty case, a four-Justice plurality cited human rights treaties and international comparative
information in applying Eighth Amendment analysis. 91 The following year, in another death penalty case, the plurality was
reversed, and rejected the argument that other countries' practices are relevant to that analysis. 92
Nonetheless, in a 1997 decision concerning the constitutionality of a state law banning assisted suicide, Justice Rehnquist,
writing for the Court, cited the practices of other countries (in particular, "Western democracies"). 93 The Supreme Court's
views on the status of human rights law and international comparative information may thus be somewhat unclear - and in
particular, may depend on the nature of the case at issue. Currently, at least, it is difficult to consider human rights law and
comparative analysis a reliable basis for argument. However, at the same time, it is clear that both remain significant and
potentially relevant. 94
A number of lower court decisions, federal and state, have referred to or cited human rights law in
potentially relevant contexts. Two cases in the Second Circuit relied in part on international documents in analyzing
prison conditions under the Eighth Amendment; 95 in another case, a federal district court cited human rights law
in ruling that the children of illegal aliens had a right to an education under the Equal Protection Clause.
96 A state court relied in part on international law in protecting the right to travel within a state; 97 and
another state court cited the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in [*349] interpreting a state
statute setting a minimum subsistence standards for welfare benefits. 98
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Supreme court can use the international law to insure than federal rights meet international
standards, especially relating to Criminalization of the homeless.
Maria Foscarinis; Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; A.B. Barnard College
(1977); M.A. Columbia University (1978); J.D. Columbia University (1981); 2000 Saint Louis University School of
Law; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; 19 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 327; Symposium: Homelessness And
Human Rights: Towards An Integrated Strategy
It is a potentially powerful argument to say to a court that a right which is guaranteed by an American
constitutional provision, state or federal law, surely does not fall short of a standard adopted by other
civilized nations. It is a much more difficult, and riskier, argument to tell a court that it must displace some law of a state
or of the United States, with an external international standard. 99
This approach has potential applications in legal advocacy on behalf of homeless persons in various
areas. For example, challenges to "criminalization" laws and policies sometimes rely on a right to intrastate
travel, which has not been explicitly recognized as a constitutionally protected right by the Supreme
Court, or a right to "freedom of movement" under the Due Process Clause, which is not always clearly
articulated. The ICCPR, however, guarantees the "right to liberty of movement," and freedom to choose one's residence
"within the territory of a state." 100 Similarly, while education is not recognized as a fundamental right in the federal
constitution, a number of state constitutions protect it; international law on children's right to an education may be relevant to
interpreting such provisions. 101 Perhaps most importantly, while a right to housing seems difficult to construct in the U.S.
constitutional context, some movement in that direction may be possible. 102
Standard setting. Even if they do not create binding legal rights, international documents create standards
that nations endorse and to which they may be held. By adopting the Universal Declaration, for example, the US
publicly committed itself in the world community to abide by the norms it articulates. Regardless of whether or not the
Declaration constitutes binding international law, it defines and sets a standard that the US has recognized and adopted.
Similarly, while the Habitat Agenda - or Istanbul Declaration - is not a binding treaty, it is at a minimum a
statement of understanding as to internationally accepted norms and standards. By its terms, it is a
commitment made to and before the international community to carry out a series of steps to abide by
and conform to those standards.
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Complying with Agenda reflects the US’s position on homeless treatment in the international
community.
Maria Foscarinis; Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; A.B. Barnard College
(1977); M.A. Columbia University (1978); J.D. Columbia University (1981); 2000 Saint Louis University School of
Law; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; 19 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 327; Symposium: Homelessness And
Human Rights: Towards An Integrated Strategy
The UN Commission on Human Settlements ("UNCHS" or "Habitat"), the UN body responsible for the implementation and
oversight of the Agenda, has developed a set of both "indicators" and "qualitative data" for measuring
implementation outcomes. "Indicators" designed to measure implementation of the 20 key provisions of
the Habitat Agenda by the states-signatories. These indicators identify key elements of the commitments that are
measurable, and [*351] seek quantifiable data relevant to them. The major Habitat II commitments covered by
these indicators include the following, of particular relevance to US advocates on homelessness and
housing. 108
Provide security of tenure. The two indicators designed to measure compliance with this commitment concern tenure types
and evictions. With respect to tenure types, the relevant data is: "percentages of woman and man-headed households in the
following tenure categories: (a) owned; (purchasing); (c) private rental; (d) social housing; (e) sub-tenancy; (f) rent free; (g)
squatter no rent; (h) squatter rent paid; (i) other, including homelessness. With respect to evictions, the relevant data - for
developed countries - focuses on evictions for non-payment of rent; however, it also includes evictions during large public
works projects [presumably from public places]. 109 Significantly, in the section on forced evictions, the Habitat Agenda
specifically states that homeless persons are not to be penalized for their status. 110
Promote the right to adequate housing. Within this area, UNCHS identifies a qualitative data set, including "yes/no"questions
regarding whether the constitution or national law promotes housing rights, and protects against eviction. This area also
includes an indicator focused on the housing price to income ratio. 111
Promote social integration and support disadvantaged groups. The indicator measures numbers of poor households, according
to the poverty line.
While these indicators are quite general, they can be used by advocates both locally and nationally to place the US
in an international context and to place homelessness and housing in human rights context. For example,
advocates can incorporate these concepts in their advocacy to local city councils, using for instance the Habitat Agenda
language on forced evictions, which specifically admonishes against penalizing homeless persons for their status as part of
their argument against sweeps. The indicators system, and the monitoring and oversight mechanisms it is tied to, allows
advocates to argue that cities pursuing such policies are violating the Habitat II commitments, lessening
US compliance with this international norm.
Some US cities have adopted resolutions identifying themselves as human rights cities. In particular, three
California cities - San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland - have passed resolutions affirming the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
and pledging to oppose any legislation or actions that infringes [*352] on those rights. 112 Though
these resolutions are non-binding, they can give particular meaning to monitoring efforts in those
particular cities: a city that has adopted such a resolution has a particular obligation to respect the human
rights of homeless people. 113
The Habitat Agenda provides that indicators may be modified as appropriate to a nation's particular
circumstances, and this may be useful for US advocates as well. Developing minimum standards that
cities must follow with regard to their homeless residents, within the Habitat context could create a
specific objective against which cities are measured and which they work to meet. For example, meeting
minimum human rights criteria on homelessness in the criminalization context could mean no sweeps
without adequate indoor spaces.
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Habitat Agenda helps reframe the attitude towards the homeless.
Maria Foscarinis; Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; A.B. Barnard College
(1977); M.A. Columbia University (1978); J.D. Columbia University (1981); 2000 Saint Louis University School of
Law; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; 19 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 327; Symposium: Homelessness And
Human Rights: Towards An Integrated Strategy
international human rights approach offers an
opportunity to reframe the underlying policy analysis and public debate. This reframing is critical,
especially given hostile and punitive assumptions about poor and homeless people that are pervasive in
current policy and discussion, and that drive and underlie much policy and law. 114 Reframing can also provide a context
Reframing. In addition to litigation and policy advocacy tools, an
for lawyers working on behalf of homeless people, and on behalf of solutions to homelessness, that motivates and gives
meaning to their effort. 115 Analyzing homelessness within a human rights framework offers several
possibilities for reframing the issue.
First, human rights are universal. These are not rights granted only to the poor or needy; they are not welfare benefits or
even entitlements granted out of the largesse of the more fortunate, or associated with a particular political party. Rather,
they are rights inherent in all human beings by virtue of their status as such. In this sense, they are
inclusive and unifying. 116 While homeless people and other "vulnerable groups" are accorded special
protection, this is done within a wide context: these are groups excluded from the normal housing
markets. This articulates a basis for this protection rooted in circumstance. As such, it suggests at least a
possibility for seeing that [*353] protection as part of a larger scheme of structural dynamics that may not allow all
members of a society to engage actively or successfully in the market economy. Human rights provide the basis of a safety
net to fall back on in the event of such exclusion - for all.
This universal approach is more consistent with a view oriented towards justice rather than charity. If these rights belong to
all, then their denial should be a concern of all: the phrase "it could happen to anyone" takes on some real meaning. The
denial of some type of right to anyone is a real, not simply theoretical possibility. 117 The protection of
these rights thus should be of concern to all; it should not be left to happenstance or to the vagaries of
individual conscience and charity. 118 At the same time, however, human right principles include the notion of
individual responsibility as well as rights, and this too is more consistent with justice rather than charity. These principles
provide that those who are able to will work, and concern themselves with the availability of jobs and the adequacy of wages.
But they also provide that those unable to work due to circumstance beyond their control will not be left destitute and
homeless. Thus, this approach focuses attention on issues such as job availability and wage adequacy rather than on issues
such as dependency, laziness and "cultural" inadequacies.
Second, and relatedly, the human rights approach injects a different sort of authority into debate about
poverty and homelessness. On one level, the appeal to international norms places debate outside the US
and current political climates. By invoking the world stage, it appeals to US policymakers to consider a
bigger perspective. How will the US be perceived? How are its national policies affecting its international
standing? How can homelessness and dire poverty be tolerated in a country with our resources? At international perspective
encourages us to look at the US reality from a stranger's perspective, one in which these questions may appear more starkly.
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International approach allows for assessing “worthiness” of the homeless.
Maria Foscarinis; Executive Director, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty; A.B. Barnard College
(1977); M.A. Columbia University (1978); J.D. Columbia University (1981); 2000 Saint Louis University School of
Law; Saint Louis University Public Law Review; 19 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 327; Symposium: Homelessness And
Human Rights: Towards An Integrated Strategy
On another level, the appeal to human rights as a higher, or more fundamental, authority may allow for a different type of
discussion: By [*354] assuming the inherent value and worthiness for all individuals, it may obviate
debate over the worthiness - or lack thereof - of particular recipients of aid, while at the same time also
assuming their complementary obligation to reciprocate. At a time when national debate has focused
much attention on the responsibilities of the poor and homeless, human rights analysis provides a
framework that has a built in balance between rights and responsibilities, as well as grounding in
external realities.
For example, welfare reform has required work, and sanctions failure to comply with myriad requirements designed to
instill a sense of responsibility. But it does not address the issue of job availability or adequacy (wage,
transportation or child care) or indeed protect the right to work at a living wage. Thus, to the extent that advocacy
simply focuses on opposing the punitive aspects of the policies it risks advocating for dependency: a welfare check, not a job.
Similarly, efforts to impose "quality of life" laws that in effect criminalize homelessness argue that
homeless people should be subject to the same standards of behavior as everyone else. To argue otherwise,
they say, is to "enable" bad behavior. Advocates opposing these efforts risk appearing to advocate for a right to sleep on the
street. A human rights approach can place the issue in larger context: the lack of alternatives, in particular
the gross violation of the right to housing which requires people to live in public places and invariably
accompanies concerted efforts to punish homeless people for being in public.
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****Disad Business****
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Spending Link
Removing eligibility restrictions would cost lots of money
Katherine Bradley and Robert Rector 6/19/2009 (Katherine is a Visiting Fellow in the DeVos Center for Religion &
Civic Society at The Heritage Foundation, focusing on welfare reform, while Robert is a leading national authority on
poverty, the U.S.welfare system and immigration and is a Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow. “Stronger Welfare
Work Requirements Can Help Ailing State Budgets” http://www.heritage.org/Research/welfare/wm2496.cfm)
Although the elimination of a state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program would not have the
disastrous effect that some might expect--TANF cash benefits account for only 5 percent of total means-tested aid to poor
families with children--there are other less controversial ways for states to save substantial funds within their welfare
programs. Strengthening work requirements, limiting benefits to non-citizens, and clamping down on
waste, fraud, and abuse within state welfare programs would generate a healthy saving of taxpayer dollars.
History of Welfare Reform It is important to understand the basic history and success of welfare reform before states move to
cut certain elements of the program. Prior to the 1996 welfare reform, recipients spent an average of 13 years on the rolls.
Roughly one child in seven was enrolled in the program. Then in 1996, the welfare reform bill put in place work
requirements of 20-30 hours a week and a five-year time limit on the receipt of benefits. State welfare agencies were
transformed overnight into job placement centers. Social workers helped recipients find child care, housing, transportation, or
whatever other work support was necessary to move people into jobs and self-sufficiency. Welfare caseloads shrunk by more
than half from 4.4 million to 1.7 million families over a 10-year period--2.7 million fewer families receiving a welfare check.
As the welfare caseload fell, employment of single mothers surged upward, and their poverty rate dropped dramatically.
Good welfare-to-work programs actually save taxpayers money by moving many people off the rolls
and into employment. The 1996 reforms allow a state to keep excess federal funds if their caseloads
shrink, and those monies can be spent on a variety of other related programs, thereby freeing up more
state dollars for other purposes. The savings in federal TANF dollars to a state are fungible enough to be used
to pay for other services such as child care, transportation for the poor, job training, vocational education, marriage and
fatherhood programming, and more. Services that states fund with their own dollars could be paid for instead
with excess TANF dollars. Therefore, it makes little sense to eliminate the welfare-to-work portion of a
state's welfare budget. Instead, states should strengthen welfare-to-work programs as a means of saving
billions of dollars.
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Must Weigh Consequences
Have to weigh comparative risks
Alinsky, ‘73
(Saul D., Activist, Professor, and Social Organizer with International Fame, Founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation,
http://osdir.com/ml/politics.marxism.analysis/2002-04/msg00178.html)
I present here a series of rules pertaining to the ethics of means and ends: first, that *one's concern with
the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's personal interest in the issue.* When we are not
directly concerned our morality overflows; as La Rochefoucauld put it, "We all have strength enough to
endure the misfortunes of others." Accompanying this rule is the parallel one that *one's concern with
the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one's distance from the scene of conflict.*
*The second rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the judgment of the ethics of means is
dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment.* If you actively opposed the Nazi
occupation and joined the underground Resistance, then you adopted the means of assassination, terror,
property destruction, the bombing of tunnels and trains, kidnapping, and the willingness to sacrifice
innocent hostages to the end of defeating the Nazis. Those who opposed the Nazi conquerors regarded
the Resistance as a secret army of selfless, patriotic idealists, courageous beyond expectation and willing
to sacrifice their lives to their moral convictions. To the occupation authorities, however, these people
were lawless terrorists, murderers, saboteurs, assassins, who believed that the end justified the means,
and were utterly unethical according to the mystical rules of war. Any foreign occupation would so
ethically judge its opposition. However, in such conflict, neither protragonist is concerned with any
value except victory. It is life or death.
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Nuke War Outweighs
Nuclear war outweighs
Sissela Bok, Professor of Philosophy, Brandeis, Applied Ethics and Ethical Theory, Ed. David Rosenthal and Fudlou
Shehadi, 1988
The same argument can be made for Kant’s other formulations of the Categorical Imperative: “So act as to use humanity,
both in your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never simply as a means”; and
“So act as if you were always through your actions a law-making member in a universal Kingdom of Ends.” No one with a
concern for humanity could consistently will to risk eliminating humanity in the person of himself and
every other, or to risk the death of all members in a universal Kingdom of Ends for the sake of justice .
To risk their collective death for the sake of following one’s conscience would be, as Rawls said,
“irrational, crazy.” And to say that one did not intend such a catastrophe, but that one merely failed to stop
other persons from bringing it about would be beside the point when the end of the world as at stake. For while it
is true that we cannot be held responsible for most of the wrongs that others commit, the Latin maxim presents a case where
we would have to take such responsibility seriously – perhaps to the point of deceiving, bribing, even
killing an innocent person in order that the world not perish.
Catastrophic scenarios demand an escape clause in absolute morality
Charles Fried, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Absolutism and Its Consequentialist Critics, ed. Joram
Graf Haber, 1993, p. 76
Even within such boundaries we can imagine extreme cases where killing an innocent person may save a
whole nation. In such cases it seems fanatical to maintain the absoluteness of the judgment, to do right even if the heavens
will in fact fall. And so the catastrophic may cause the absoluteness of right and wrong to yield, but even
then it would be a non sequitur to argue (as consequentialists are fond of doing) that this proves that
judgments of right and wrong are always a matter of degree, depending on the relative goods to be
attained and harms to be avoided. I believe, on the contrary, that the concept of the catastrophic is a distinct
concept just because it identifies the extreme situations in which the usual categories of judgment
(including the category of right and wrong) no longer apply. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the concept of the
trivial, the de minimis where the absolute categories do not yet apply. And the trivial also does not prove that right and wrong
are really only a matter of degree. It is because of these complexities and because the term absolute is really
only suggestive of a more complex structure, that I also refer to the norms of right and wrong not as
absolute but as categorical.*
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A2 – Our Impacts Are Systemic
Prefer high magnitude, low probability scenarios – their arguments don’t assume the high risk of
our disad
Chirp, November 06, 2006, Pandemic Plan The Next flu is approaching. What’s your plan?, Background: journalism,
marketing communications. (http://reports.typepad.com/pandemic_plan/2006/11/low_probability.html)
"Low probability" does not mean "never happens" One thing I'm sure of: "low probability" does not mean "never
happens." In the overall, long-term context, "low probability" simply means "it doesn't happen very often."
But what about now? How close are we to the day it does happen? And the day an event does happen, it
no longer matters what its probability is. It is, in fact, happening. It's still a low-probability, doesn'thappen-very-often event. So it likely won't happen again for a while (if ever). But at that moment, it IS
happening. What if it's the day before a low-probability event occurs? Statistically, it may still be a lowprobability event. But you're about to experience it. That's what we don't know with respect to the next flu
pandemic. It's a low-probability phenomenon. It doesn't happen very often. But are we on the verge of the next time it does
happen? Others have thought this through Why are federal and local governments, hospitals, major corporations, and others
so busy making pandemic plans and preparations? I would suggest that these entities have thought about "low
probability, high impact" ... have looked at the characteristics of current strains of the H5N1 virus ... have
thought about the chances of successfully containing any H5N1 pandemic virus that might emerge ... have thought about
how high a "high impact" might be ... and have decided that - even if the probability of a pandemic
occurring is low - the potential loss demands mitigating action. So they're acting. Should you follow their
lead? That's a subjective, personal decision you must make. We have to make many subjective judgments about the threat of
a flu pandemic. There are many risks, rewards, and trade-offs to consider. The task is compounded because there's much we
don't know about flu viruses in general and the influenza A (H5N1) virus in particular. My plea is simply that you not
dismiss the possibility because the probability is low. Because the impact would be high - perhaps very
high.
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***Kritiks***
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Foucault Link
Plan is another example of the state exerting its control. The welfare system allows the
government to expands its jurisdiction and dominate the lives of its citizens.
Hewitt 1983 (Martin, Hewitt is a writer for the Theory Culture Society, Theory, Culture & Society, “Bio-Politics
and Social Policy: Foucault’s Account of Welfare “)
Broadly, two histories are written about social policy which share a common sense of origins.
First, in some accounts
the origins of modern welfare are set in the central government reforms of the 1830's and 40's in particular,
In the Poor Law amendment, the Factory Acts and the public health reforms (Bruce 1968; Fraser 1973; Roberts
1960). Secondly, in others the significance of these reforms is said to lie less in their welfare Impact -
seen as relatively Ineffective and endowed with non-welfare objectives - and more in the part they
played In the genesis of the modern state, in providing economic regulation and central governance
(Clark 1967; Gilbert 1966; RIchards 1980). Whatever the significance and effectiveness of these measures, the two histories
share In common a notion of the conjunction between state and welfare which was conceived in the 1830's and determined
developments thereafter. The roots of public welfare lie In those formative acts where the state Intervenes with varying
effects in the issues associated with destitution, sickness and squalor. Though its tentative beginnings go back to Elizabeth
I and beyond, social policy's firm beginnings are fixed at around the 1830's when, for the first time, centrally administered,
professionally staffed and informed health and welfare systems were introduced by the state. By locating the advent of
social policy at this juncture these historical narratives pre-suppose a break between welfare's pre-history and its
substantive history. The subject of social policy is conceived as coterminous with the modern industrial
state, presupposing a functional relationship between welfare and the state. Prior to the emergence of
the modern state, welfare had no clearly Identifiable existence.
This functionalist presupposition (whereby the state provides welfare with an Institutional and governmental site; and the
state achieves its identity, in part, through Intervening in problems of destitution, sickness and squalor) figures generally
In accounts of social policy history and Is articulated in the following ways (3). First, because this conjunction
occurs at the height of industrial capitalism, the characterisation of the state - as an institution relying
on centrailsed government and operating In the public domain - gives welfare its particular Institutional
form. In Fabian accounts especially welfare comes into its own when it acquires a centrallsed and public apparatus (Webb
and Webb 1963, pp 3-5 and pp 404.5). Early forms of welfare are relegated to a residual status 'enclosing little besides poor
relief, sanitation and public nuisance' (Tltmuss 1963, p 40). Secondly, the presupposition governing the
conjunction between state and welfare is articulated in political as well as institutional terms.
The state Is vouched increasing jurisdiction from the 1830's onwards In determining the objectives
and forms of welfare. During welfare's pre-history social provisions are largely independent of the
state; thereafter they are drawn Increasingly under Its tutelage. Thirdly, In mainly Marxist accounts that
attempt to address more closely the state's role in the management of capitalism, the tasks of
reproducing labour and maintaining unproductive dependents are conferred on welfare - a more specific
role In supporting the state's general functions in the accumulation of capital. Fourthly, the
functionalist presupposition
further
predisposes
descriptions
of
welfare's
functions
towards characterisations that rely heavily on binary terminology. Social policies are cast In a mould of either
care or control, public or private, universal or selective, etc. Such characterisations of welfare inscribe its objectives with
uniformity, overlook Its modulatory functions in maintaining social cohesion, and obscure the multitude of alliances, each
with varying purposes, amongst welfare's components and between welfare and the state. Though these four formulations
offer important insights In understanding the social, political and economic functions of social policy within the capitalist
state, their value is limited to comparatively recent developments in social policy's history and to rather sweeping
characterisations of Its functions Informed by a global conception of the state.
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Plan allows the state to exert its bipolitical objectives by dominating the homeless and preventing
them from escaping subordination.
Hewitt 1983 (Martin, Hewitt is a writer for the Theory Culture Society, Theory, Culture & Society, “Bio-Politics
and Social Policy: Foucault’s Account of Welfare “)
Foucault and others locate the origins of bio.power in the local administration of 'policing', together
with other technologies of discipline, that began in the fifteenth century and became fully-fledged by
the eighteenth. 'Policing' was understood as more than a specific form of repression. It represented a range of
Interventions In the governance of the body during the advent of capitalism and the state. Foucault
defines policing as 'the ensemble of mechanisms serving to ensure order, the properly channelled
growth of wealth and the conditions of preservation of health "in general" (1980, 170). The problems which
policing addressed concerned the administration of the body and the population - new objects of analysis and intervention
that occupied the energies of governments during the transition to capitalism and subsequently.
These characteristically bio-political objectives were evident in the extensive discourse that engaged
writers throughout Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In one proposal, dating from
1608 and quoted by Pasquino, three tasks were Identified: Information, conceived as a statistical table
bearing on all the capacities and resources of the population and territory; a set of measures serving to
augment the wealth of the population and enrich the coffers of the state; and lastly 'public happiness',
the business of maintaining the general well-being of the population. The targets of policing
included, Inter alia religion, customs, highways, public order, commerce, health, subsistence, and the poor (1978,
pp 44-5). Bentham also recommended eight police departments, including police for the prevention of offences, calamities
and endemic diseases, police for charity, and police for collecting statistical information of all kinds (Henriques 1979, p
269, n 8; cf. Corrigan and Corrlgan 1979). Moreover, to Adam Smith it meant 'the regulation of the inferior parts of
government, viz. cleanliness, security and cheapness or plenty', though he considered such matters too demeaning to
examine in his 'Wealth of Nations' (quoted in Henriques 1979, p 269, n 9). The 'science of policing' subsumed aspects of
economics, health and welfare, religion and law and order within a body of discourse which, by means of various
institutions and regulations, affected diverse areas of life. By 1834 the Poor Law Commissioners saw their task as
organising 'a measure of social police' which would encourage the development of a free market for labour (Briggs 1959, p
280).
Yet both policing and welfare remained largely hidden discourses over-shadowed by the key
intellectual themes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, concerning the accumulation of wealth
and the limits to state intervention (Pasquino 1978). For example, the target of welfare, ie poverty, appears
as the dark side of wealth, 'in as much as it is the territory of unfulfilled needs, or of those not yet
invented' (Procacci 1978, p 58). The ever present threat of poverty to labour is posed in nineteenth century thought in
one sense negatively, in diverting resources from the accumulation of capital and in breaching the limits of state action,
and yet in another sense positively, in acting as an incentive to produce wealth. Policing and welfare played a
necessary role in effecting this fine balance without which capital and state could not exist - a balance
that involved not a choice between welfare and capital, care and control, life and death, etc, but a
modulation of these exigencies via the technologies of bio-power. With the advent of welfare new
normalising agents from doctors to social workers emerged with these technologies to modulate
degrees of compliance between the state and its dependents This development obviated the necessity
for absolute choices and permitted adjustments around the norm.
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The welfare system allows for the homeless to produce only as much as the state allows for. This
permanently subordinates them and makes it impossible for case to solve.
Hewitt 1983 (Martin, Hewitt is a writer for the Theory Culture Society, Theory, Culture & Society, “Bio-Politics
and Social Policy: Foucault’s Account of Welfare “)
Foucault's work provides an account of welfare and its functioning in society that is especially
challenging to the political economy of welfare. It Is Foucault's somewhat sweeping contention that
functionalist and economistic features are endemic in the 'sovereign' theory of power in Marxism. In
attempting to assess this contention (which has not been applied specifically to Marxist studies of welfare) It Is necessary to
develop an elaboration of Marxist studies to show where his critique applies and where not.
Political economy sees the capitalist state, its nature, structure and role, including its welfare functions, in Gough's words, as
"constrained by the mode of production and nature of exploitation in that society". The welfare state is seen as a "constituent
feature of modern capitalist societies, situated within the economy and Its attendant reiations"(1979, p 19 and p3). This
characterisation forms a radically different conception of welfare from earlier ones. However, the
characterisation of welfare as constrained by the mode of production and as a constituent feature of
capitalism posits a relation of domination-subordination between welfare and the economy of a
functionalist and economlstic kind. The welfare state Is born of surplus value and is functional to
capital accumulation. Writers emphasise different aspects of these two major functions:
welfare produces use-values that capital cannot or will not provide (Ginsberg 1979); It sociallses some
expenses of capitalist production (O'Connor 1973); It reproduces labour power (O'Connor 1973; Gough 1979); it maintains
the surplus or non-working population (O'Connor 1973; Gough 1979).
The first three functions contribute indirectly towards surplus value and further accumulation; whilst
the last controls those outside the production process under the guise of meeting their dependent needs.
This 'caring' function contributes towards the egitimacy of the state which has the interests of all at
heart. These different functions specify complementary aspects of welfare's role in capital accumulation and legitimation.
However, the political economy of welfare recognises a growing crisis between these two processes. Increasingly the the
state's preference for capital over labour becomes blatant, its impartiality and legitimation threatened, and its
welfare provisions reduced as the surplus population, especially the unemployed, increases. The functional relations
between welfare and capital grow shaky.
Yet the functional propositions that characterise the political economy of welfare are less problematic than the explanations
that underpin them. As Marxist accounts they are concerned with the structural relations that arise between both economic
and social relations. Yet these structural connections - eg between, on the one hand, welfare's production
of use-value and, indirectly, surplus value; and, on the other, the management of the non-working
population and the historical emergence of class-struggle over the provisions of welfare - are
insufficiently demonstrated. The explanations of the functions of welfare are provided more within one
of these two domains than the other, and not, in the main, between the two. These accounts are
functionalist because what is stated as the functions of one domain remains no more than an assertion
of what is explained in the other. There are exceptions. Ginsberg's (1979, pp 126.137) account of the role of
Building Societies, for example, within British capitalism and the Welfare State demonstrates the manifold processes that
function, among other things, to increase profits, promote the wider interests of the bourgeois class and attract state
support. Such an account largely succeeds in integrating analyses of capital accumulation, its distribution and
consumption, the formation of social class struggle, and the development of state intervention, as they determine social
policy. A structural account is provided of the economic, social and political relations that inform social policy
(cf. Tayior.Gooby and Dale 1981; ch 4).
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Social work expands governmentality
Nigel Parton. Professor in Child Care Studies at the University of Keele, author of Governing the Family: Child
Care, Child Protection and the State (Macmillan, 1991). 19 94. 'Problematics of Government', (Post) Modernity and
Social Work, Page 8-9.
The emergence of philanthropy and subsequently social work during this period has provided a particular set
of policies and practices which have both refined and complicated discipline together with the modern
rationalities and technologies of government. More particularly it has provided a particular dimension of
and contribution to what Jacques Donzelot (1980) has referred to as the 'social'. The emergence of the 'social' and social
work in particular is associated with the transformations that took place from the mid-nineteenth century onwards around an
increasing grid of intersecting and interrelated concerns and anxieties about the family and the community more generally.
The 'social' discourse developed as a hybrid in the space identified between the private and the public
spheres. It produced and was reproduced by new relations between the law, administration, medicine,
the school, and the family. Central to its emergence was the incorporation of a range of philanthropists into the judicial
process in respect of children and young people, and the emergence of psychiatry as a specialism which informed not only
judicial decisions but the practice of the successors to the philanthropists-social workers. The subsequent growth and
establishment of social work and its increasing centrality to the state in Britain, culminating in the Seebohm reforms in
the late 1960s and early 1970s, was driven by a variety of anxieties associated with the care of and neglect and cruelty to
children, and the potential threat young people might pose in terms of their actual or potential
delinquent/criminal behavior or other forms of anti-social behavior in later life. The emergence of the 'social'
and the practices of social workers, who were its primary technologists, was a positive solution to a major problem posed for
the liberal state (Hirst, 1981). Namely, how can the state establish the health, development and, hence, rights of individual
family members who are weak and dependent, particularly children, while promoting the family as the 'natural' sphere for
caring for those individuals, and thus not intervening in all families, which would destroy the autonomy of the private
sphere? Philanthropy, and subsequently social work, developed at a midway point between individual
initiative and the all-encompassing state. It provided a compromise between the liberal vision of
unhindered private philanthropy and the socialist vision of the all-pervasive and all-encompassing state
which would take responsibility for everyone's needs and hence undermine the responsibility and role of
the family.
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Social work is disciplinary
Nigel Parton. Professor in Child Care Studies at the University of Keele, author of Governing the Family: Child
Care, Child Protection and the State (Macmillan, 1991). 1994. 'Problematics of Government', (Post) Modernity and
Social Work, Page 10-11.
The goal of much social work is to go beyond the 'dividing practices'— the normal and deviant—
implied by discipline, to the processes which were of central concern to Foucault in his later work, whereby
human beings turn themselves into subjects (Foucault, 1979). Social work alludes 'to the underlying
character, the hidden depths, the essential good, the authentic and the unalienated' (Philp, 1979, p. 99). In
doing so, the social worker produces a picture of the individual client as a subject which is not immediately visible to the
doctor, the courts or the social security officer, but which exists as s/he 'really' or potentially 'is'. The concern with
discipline shifts towards that of regulation. If discipline is modeled on the gaze and based on the
examination, the normalizing judgment and hierarchical observation, regulation operates through
interioration, the confession and talking whereby individuals both take on and express themselves as
subjects. While discipline produces knowledge by constituting individuals as objects of scientific
discourse, regulation provides knowledge of subjects in their subjectivity. Whereas the former relies on experts
drawing on more traditional, objectivized, positivistic science, the latter relies on experts who draw upon interpretive
knowledge and use themselves and their insights and understanding of relationships as their primary technologies of practice.
Social work draws people into the government through subjectivity, enabling government
regulation and control from a distance.
Nigel Parton. Professor in Child Care Studies at the University of Keele, author of Governing the Family: Child
Care, Child Protection and the State (Macmillan, 1991). 1994. 'Problematics of Government', (Post) Modernity and
Social Work, Page 11-12.
While the sphere of government is wide-ranging and complex and social
within it, none the less, they are a crucial part of the process which
work strategies form only a small element
draws individuals and families into the
sphere of government. This is done not essentially through repression 'but through the promotion of
subjectivity, through investments in individual lives, and the forging of alignments between the personal
projects of citizens and the images of social order' (Miller and Rose, 1988, p. 172). Social work provides an
important, but ambiguous, strategy to enable 'government at a distance', or indirect methods of social
regulation, to take place. It is important if the liberal ideal of maintaining autonomous free individuals who are at the same time governed is to
be realized. For social work to operate quietly and in an uncontested way it requires a supportive social mandate together with an internal professional
confidence and coherence. The latter, particularly in the period following the Second World War, was provided primarily by a body of knowledge borrowed
from neo-Freudianism and ego-psychology, while the professional aspirations veered towards medicine and psychiatry. Similarly, the growth of social work
from the late nineteenth century onwards ran in parallel with and was interrelated with the development of social interventions associated with the
the growth of
'welfarism' is best understood not simply in terms of the growth of the interventionist state but as a
particular form of government through which a variety of political forces 'seek to secure social and
economic objectives by linking up a plethora of networks with aspirations to know, programme and
transform the social field' (p. 192). The key innovations of 'welfarism' lay in the attempts to link the fiscal, calculative
establishment of the welfare state in the post-war period—what Rose and Miller refer to as 'welfarism'. For Rose and Miller (1992)
and bureaucratic capacities of the apparatus of the state to the government of social life. As a political rationality
'welfarism' was structured by the wish to encourage national growth and wellbeing through the
promotion of social responsibility and the mutuality of social risk, and is premised on notions of social
solidarity (Donzelot, 1988). Both the rationality and central technologies of 'welfarism' were given particular articulation
via the twin and closely interrelated approaches developed around the work of John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge.
The emergence of 'welfarism' rested on twin pillars— one Keynesian and the other Beveridgian.
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[
] The ideology underlying helping homeless is altruist thought, leading to total devaluation
of the self and contingently of mankind. This is the body of thought under which the worst
atrocities have been committed. Our alternative is to embrace the self under the Objectivist school
of thought in order to affirm our humanity and to reject their discourse of altruism.
Ayn
Rand
1964[“The
Virtue
of
Selfishness:
A
New
Concept
of
http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:JiQQiroNOZ0J:aymen.execude.googlepages.com/AynRandTheVirtueofSelfishness.pdf+ayn+rand]
Egoism”
The title of this book may evoke the kind of question that I hear once in a while: “ Why do you use the word ‘selfishness’
to denote virtuous qualities of character, when that word antagonizes so many people to whom it does not mean
the things you mean?” To those who ask it, my answer is: “For the reason that makes you afraid of it.” But there are
others, who would not ask that question, sensing the moral cowardice it implies, yet who are unable to formulate my actual
reason or to identify the profound moral issue involved. It is to them that I will give a more explicit answer. It is not a
mere semantic issue nor a matter of arbitrary choice. The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word
“selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is
responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind. In
popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute
who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but
the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment. Yet the exact meaning and dictionary
definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests. This concept does not include a
moral evaluation; it does not tell us whether concern with one’s own interests is good or evil; nor does it
tell us what constitutes man’s actual interests. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions. The ethics
of altruism has created the image of the brute, as its answer, in order to make men accept two inhuman
tenets: (a) that any concern with one’s own interests is evil, regardless of what these interests might be,
and (b) that the brute’s activities are in fact to one’s own interest (which altruism enjoins man to renounce for
the sake of his neighbors). For a view of the nature of altruism, its consequences and the enormity of the moral corruption it
perpetrates, I shall refer you to Atlas Shrugged—or to any of today’s newspaper headlines. What concerns us here is
altruism’s default in the field of ethical theory. There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into
one “package-deal”: (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for
the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral
guidance. Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken
for one’s own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value—and
so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes. Hence the appalling
immorality, the chronic injustice, the grotesque double standards, the insoluble conflicts and
contradictions that have characterized human relationships and human societies throughout history,
under all the variants of the altruist ethics. Observe the indecency of what passes for moral judgments today. An
industrialist who produces a fortune, and a gangster who robs a bank are regarded as equally immoral,
since they both sought wealth for their own “selfish” benefit. A young man who gives up his career in
order to support his parents and never rises beyond the rank of grocery clerk is regarded as morally
superior to the young man who endures an excruciating struggle and achieves his personal ambition. A
dictator is regarded as moral, since the unspeakable atrocities he committed were intended to benefit
“the people,” not himself.
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Observe what this beneficiary-criterion of morality does to a man’s life. The first thing he learns is that morality is his
enemy; he has nothing to gain from it, he can only lose; self-inflicted loss, self-inflicted pain and the
gray, debilitating pall of an incomprehensible duty is all that he can expect. He may hope that others
might occasionally sacrifice themselves for his benefit, as he grudgingly sacrifices himself for theirs, but
he knows that the relationship will bring mutual resentment, not pleasure—and that, morally, their
pursuit of values will be like an exchange of unwanted, unchosen Christmas presents, which neither is
morally permitted to buy for himself. Apart from such times as he manages to perform some act of selfsacrifice, he possesses no moral significance: morality takes no cognizance of him and has nothing to
say to him for guidance in the crucial issues of his life; it is only his own personal, private, “selfish” life
and, as such, it is regarded either as evil or, at best, amoral. Since nature does not provide man with an automatic
form of survival, since he has to support his life by his own effort, the doctrine that concern with one’s own
interests is evil means that man’s desire to live is evil—that man’s life, as such, is evil. No doctrine could be
more evil than that. Yet that is the meaning of altruism, implicit in such examples as the equation of an industrialist with a
robber. There is a fundamental moral difference between a man who sees his self-interest in production
and a man who sees it in robbery. The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own
interests, but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in
what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in the fact that he wants to live on a
subhuman level (see “The Objectivist Ethics”). If it is true that what I mean by “selfishness” is not what is meant
conventionally, then this is one of the worst indictments of altruism: it means that altruism permits no concept of a
self-respecting, self-supporting man—a man who supports his life by his own effort and neither
sacrifices himself nor others. It means that altruism permits no view of men except as sacrificial animals
and profiteers-on-sacrifice, as victims and parasites—that it permits no concept of a benevolent coexistence among men—that it permits no concept of justice. If you wonder about the reasons behind the ugly
mixture of cynicism and guilt in which most men spend their lives, these are the reasons: cynicism, because they neither
practice nor accept the altruist morality—guilt, because they dare not reject it. To rebel against so devastating an evil,
one has to rebel against its basic premise. To redeem both man and morality, it is the concept of “selfishness”
that one has to redeem. The first step is to assert man’s right to a moral existence—that is: to recognize his need of a
moral code to guide the course and the fulfillment of his own life. For a brief outline of the nature and the
validation of a rational morality, see my lecture on “The Objectivist Ethics” which follows. The reasons why man needs a
moral code will tell you that the purpose of morality is to define man’s proper values and interests, that concern with his own
interests is the essence of a moral existence, and that man must be the beneficiary of his own moral actions. Since all values
have to be gained and/or kept by men’s actions, any breach between actor and beneficiary necessitates an
injustice: the sacrifice of some men to others, of the actors to the nonactors, of the moral to the immoral.
Nothing could ever justify such a breach, and no one ever has. The choice of the beneficiary of moral values is
merely a preliminary or introductory issue in the field of morality. It is not a substitute for morality nor a criterion of moral
value, as altruism has made it. Neither is it a moral primary: it has to be derived from and validated by the fundamental
premises of a moral system. The Objectivist ethics holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of his
action and that man must act for his own rational self-interest. But his right to do so is derived from his
nature as man and from the function of moral values in human life—and, therefore, is applicable only in
the context of a rational, objectively demonstrated and validated code of moral principles which define
and determine his actual self-interest. It is not a license “to do as he pleases” and it is not applicable to
the altruists’ image of a “selfish” brute nor to any man motivated by irrational emotions, feelings, urges,
wishes or whims.
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This
is said as a warning against the kind of “Nietzschean egoists” who, in fact, are a product of the
altruist morality and represent the other side of the altruist coin: the men who believe that any action,
regardless of its nature, is good if it is intended for one’s own benefit. Just as the satisfaction of the irrational
desires of others is not a criterion of moral value, neither is the satisfaction of one’s own irrational desires. Morality is not
a contest of whims. (See Mr. Branden’s articles “Counterfeit Individualism” and “Isn’t Everyone Selfish?” which
follow.) A similar type of error is committed by the man who declares that since man must be guided by his own independent
judgment, any action he chooses to take is moral if he chooses it. One’s own independent judgment is the means by which
one must choose one’s actions, but it is not a moral criterion nor a moral validation: only reference to a demonstrable
principle can validate one’s choices. Just as man cannot survive by any random means, but must discover and practice the
principles which his survival requires, so man’s self-interest cannot be determined by blind desires or random whims, but
must be discovered and achieved by the guidance of rational principles. This is why the Objectivist ethics is a morality of
rational self- interest—or of rational selfishness. Since selfishness is “concern with one’s own interests,” the Objectivist
ethics uses that concept in its exact and purest sense. It is not a concept that one can surrender to man’s enemies, nor to the
unthinking misconceptions, distortions, prejudices and fears of the ignorant and the irrational. The attack on
“selfishness” is an attack on man’s self-esteem; to surrender one, is to surrender the other.
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[
] The aff’s blind acceptance of altruism leads to the destruction of every individual’s
humanity. This turns the case.
Ayn
Rand
1964[“The
Virtue
of
Selfishness:
A
New
Concept
of
Egoism”
http://66.102.1.104/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:JiQQiroNOZ0J:aymen.execude.googlepages.com/AynRandTheVirtueofSelfishness.pdf+ayn+rand]
Certain questions, which one frequently hears, are not philosophical queries, but psychological confessions. This is
particularly true in the field of ethics. It is especially in discussions of ethics that one must check one’s
premises (or remember them), and more: one must learn to check the premises of one’s adversaries. For instance,
Objectivists will often hear a question such as: “What will be done about the poor or the handicapped in a free
society?” The altruist-collectivist premise, implicit in that question, is that men are “their brothers’ keepers”
and that the misfortune of some is a mortgage on others. The questioner is ignoring or evading the basic premises
of Objectivist ethics and is attempting to switch the discussion onto his own collectivist base. Observe that he does not
ask: “Should anything be done?” but: “What will be done?”—as if the collectivist premise had been tacitly
accepted and all that remains is a discussion of the means to implement it. Once, when Barbara Branden was asked by a
student: “What will happen to the poor in an Objectivist society?”—she answered: “If you want to help them, you will
not be stopped.” This is the essence of the whole issue and a perfect example of how one refuses to accept an adversary’s
premises as the basis of discussion. Only individual men have the right to decide when or whether they wish to
help others; society—as an organized political system—has no rights in the matter at all. On the question of
when and under what conditions it is morally proper for an individual to help others, I refer you to Galt’s speech in Atlas
Shrugged. What concerns us here is the collectivist premise of regarding this issue as political, as the
problem or duty of “society as a whole.” Since nature does not guarantee automatic security, success and
survival to any human being, it is only the dictatorial presumptuousness and the moral cannibalism of
the altruist-collectivist code that permits a man to suppose (or idly to daydream) that he can somehow guarantee
such security to some men at the expense of others. If a man speculates on what “society” should do for the poor,
he accepts thereby the collectivist premise that men’s lives belong to society and that he, as a member of
society, has the right to dispose of them, to set their goals or to plan the “distribution” of their efforts . This is
the psychological confession implied in such questions and in many issues of the same kind. At best, it reveals a man’s
psycho-epistemological chaos; it reveals a fallacy which may be termed “the fallacy of the frozen abstraction” and
which consists of substituting some one particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs—in this case,
substituting a specific ethics (altruism) for the wider abstraction of “ethics.” Thus, a man may reject the
theory of altruism and assert that he has accepted a rational code—but, failing to integrate his ideas, he
continues unthinkingly to approach ethical questions in terms established by altruism. More often, however,
that psychological confession reveals a deeper evil: it reveals the enormity of the extent to which
altruism erodes men’s capacity to grasp the concept of rights or the value of an individual life; it reveals
a mind from which the reality of a human being has been wiped out. Humility and presumptuousness are
always two sides of the same premise, and always share the task of filling the space vacated by self-esteem in a
collectivized mentality. The man who is willing to serve as the means to the ends of others, will
necessarily regard others as the means to his ends. The more neurotic he is or the more conscientious in the practice of altruism (and these two
aspects of his psychology will act reciprocally to reinforce each other), the more he will tend to devise schemes “for the good of mankind” or of “society” or of “the public” or of
“future generations”—or of anything except actual human beings. Hence the appalling recklessness with which men propose, discuss and accept “humanitarian” projects which are
to be imposed by political means, that is, by force, on an unlimited number of human beings. If, according to collectivist caricatures, the greedy rich indulged in profligate material
the social progress brought by today’s collectivized mentalities consists of
indulging in altruistic political planning, on the premise of “human lives no object.” The hallmark of such
luxury, on the premise of “price no object”—then
mentalities is the advocacy of some grand scale public goal, without regard to context, costs or means. Out of context, such a
goal can usually be shown to be desirable; it has to be public, because the costs are not to be earned, but to be expropriated;
and a dense patch of venomous fog has to shroud the issue of means—because the means are to be human lives.
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No ethical obligation to provide for the homeless
Steven R. Paisner, Compassion, Politics, and the Problems Lying on Our Sidewalks: A Legislative Approach for
Cities to Address Homelessness, 67 Temp. L. Rev. 1259, 1271-73 (1994)
However, the extent of a city's ethical obligation to the homeless beyond the provision of shelter is
unclear. Homelessness is a national problem; the macroeconomic trends that contribute to homelessness are national
in scope, and the transience of homeless people speaks to the fact that the problem cuts across geographic boundaries. n135
Put another way, the fact that cities are where most homeless people are, and where most homeless
people go, should not create an ethical duty upon cities to pay for the full range of services that those
people may require. Similarly, a city has no ethical obligation to provide shelter to nonresidents. If a
family in a middle-class suburb loses its home and travels to the [*1277] nearby city, which
municipality should pay for their shelter: the suburb with a large per capita tax base or the city with the
smaller one? Furthermore, in crafting a solution, the city must consider not only its obligation to the homeless, but its obligation to all of its residents
to eliminate the problems that diminish the quality of city living. n136 The city, therefore, has an ethical duty to attempt to eliminate the attendant problems
of homelessness. The fact that the city seeks to address these attendant problems does not necessarily mean that it has forsaken its ethical obligation to
provide shelter to resident homeless. As part V will discuss, the city's interest in eliminating the attendant problems is not necessarily inconsistent with
compassion and help for the homeless. n137 In attacking the attendant problems of homelessness, city leaders immediately confront a crucial question: In the
face of the human suffering that characterizes homelessness, can problems such as the city's image be legitimate concerns? The answer must be yes.
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Their single issue focus is coopted—increasing welfare is only an excuse for extending networks of
social control.
Sanford Schram 2003 (The practice of Poor People’s Movements: Strategy and Theory in Dissensus Politics,
Symposium, p 716-7 Teaches social theory and social policy in the Graduate School of Social Work and Social
Research at Bryn Mawr)
John Gilliom addresses a contemporary issue at the other end of the organizing spectrum. He details a welfare
system that so thoroughly regulates the lives of welfare recipients that the issue is not whether they will
be organized too much but whether they will remain isolated. Welfare has been “reformed” into an
invasive system of monitoring and surveillance under the guise of a more therapeutic approach to the
problem of “dependency.” The single mothers on welfare that Gilliom’s researchers talked to dissent, but their
politics is limited in the face of the all-encompassing bureaucratic oppressiveness of the new welfare
regime.31 At best, recipients can undertake everyday acts of resistance and employ what James Scott has called
the “weapons of the weak.”32Welfare recipients today face obstacles of isolation and individuation that make
difficult even the fluid protest politics of PPM.
The pervasiveness of surveillance in the newly medicalized regime of reformed welfare antiquates the very idea
of mass action in the public sphere. The public sphere as a realm of freedom and political expression is
imperiled when publicity becomes nothing more than a prerequisite for monitoring and control.33 When
public action is anticipated, dissected, and suppressed, mass organizing becomes even more questionable and
organized social groupings of marginal persons are at greater risk of being assimilated into the disciplinary
practices of the welfare state.34
Under these conditions, can a “politics of survival”—where people cope individually with their own
oppression—ever promote a “politics of social change” dedicated to transforming the systemic roots of
society’s inequities? The public, collective politics of protest risks collapsing into fragmented, private
forms of everyday resistance. These may provide some relief to oppression in individual circumstances
but do not lead to the structural transformations needed to further achievement of any particular social
justice agenda. A poor people’s movement that only helps individuals extract immediate
concessions may actually become its own form of cooptation, preventing the poor from mobilizing
on behalf of more dramatic collective action and more substantive changes. Ultimately, what good
is a politics of dissent if it only encourages resistance that is not informed by a positive program for
change?
183