Inclusion and Community: ‘Thinking Through the Wrong of Homelessness’
An unhoused individual sleeps on a park bench under an American flag blanket in New York City. Source for photo: Spencer Platt with Getty images
On a recent trip to the nation’s capital, walking the dozen or so blocks to the campus of George Washington University, I passed a number of unhoused individuals taking shelter between bushes and buildings, some even sleeping in tents on the sidewalk. There was an unsettling juxtaposition between these encampments and the Washington Monument towering in the distance, as if mockingly giving the middle finger to this confusing sight. The irony was also not lost on me that the research I was to present was on the state of economic inequality in the rich and developed world.
While it is difficult to ascertain the true number of unhoused persons in the United States, recent estimates place the number at over half a million individuals, and families with children make up 30 percent of that population. As housing prices have hit all-time highs in recent decades and the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated ongoing social problems, homelessness has reached full-blown crisis levels, drawing public and political attention. North Carolina in 2022, for example, saw a 36 percent increase from the previous year.
As homelessness certainly elicits moral concern and questions of justice, what exactly is at the heart of this “wrong of homelessness?” For many, being that housing – a necessary resource – is left to the free market like any other commodity, this system creates problems of inadequate distribution. For political philosopher Paul Schofield, however, the prevalence of homelessness is “something that cuts more deeply to the heart of our status as a liberal democracy,” not just a dilemma of distributive injustice.
Recently, Dr. Schofield gave a talk at UNC-Chapel Hill entitled, “Unhoused and Unrecognized: Thinking through the Wrong of Homelessness.” He proposed that housing is, for a variety of reasons, out of reach for many Americans. What is actually denied, however, is full social citizenship: “Homelessness amounts to a kind of exclusion wherein a person is denied social recognition necessary for social membership.” He went further, explaining, “this is not just about not getting certain resources, but about being excluded in a very deep sense from being a fully-fledged citizen.” In order to be a member of a community, one must be recognized along various dimensions, to which Dr. Schofield contends that our society refuses to extend to the unhoused in a sufficient manner.
Unhoused persons are repeatedly made to feel as if their relationship with society is different. Further, these feelings of exclusion have very real consequences for individuals and their ability to participate as members of a community. Many unhoused people report similar experiences that Dr. Schofield asserts “in combination, work together to generate all-out exclusion.”
Research shows that many who find themselves homeless have strained personal relationships which “evaporate in times of need.” In times of economic precarity, they are abandoned by friends and family and are excluded from the communal security of interpersonal relationships. In addition, while a large proportion of the homeless population does in fact have jobs, most are largely excluded from the same connection to employment as the rest of society. In fact, employment discrimination against the unhoused is perfectly legal in a majority of states in the country and, as a result, individuals without access to stable housing find it difficult to secure long-lasting employment. Employers are less likely to hire someone whom they believe is homeless. Also, the unhoused are less likely to stay at a job for long periods of time and usually find it difficult to find subsequent employment. There are many reasons for this struggle, but a primary factor is that individuals face understandable obstacles regarding transportation and prejudiced conceptions about “appearance, dress, and cleanliness.”
The actions from state bureaucracies, likewise, signal exclusion to the unhoused. Schofield explained that “eligibility review for housing assistance” is often structured in a complicated, regulatory way that would be difficult even for someone with stable living conditions. Individuals are required to provide extensive paperwork, which is hard to gather and maintain, as well as having to prove abandonment by their friends and family. This relationship with the state is further complicated by a tenuous relationship with the law and the police. In many municipalities, laws exist which prohibit individuals from feeding the homeless, panhandling, living in one’s car, and even sitting or lying on benches for extended periods of time, all of which effectively criminalize homelessness. Where the unhoused already feel emotionally unwelcomed, the police are then deployed to physically remove the unhoused. Dr. Schofield even went as far as to say that the police end up “working on behalf of those that are housed to make them feel more comfortable in the presence of homelessness.”
Many unhoused individuals often say that as people pass them on the street, people very rarely speak to them or look them in the eyes. There is a visceral denial of basic humanity in these dismissals. But what accounts for this? Do those that look away feel as though the unhoused are beneath them, or do they simply feel internalized guilt from the tension between their own privilege and the other’s hardship? Instead, Dr. Schofield contends that what is actually happening is a physical representation of their being excluded from society. They are not being seen as a full-fledged citizen, or even fully human in the same way – “We’ve trained people to do this, to not recognize people.”
Thinking through the “wrong of homelessness” certainly requires a conversation about the inequality of resources, but Dr. Schofield implores us to dig deeper: “Large unhoused populations are inconsistent with ourselves thinking about our status as a liberal democracy.” In such a society, no one is supposed to be excluded. While it is true that the United States has a long and difficult history with democratic inclusion, the experiences of the unhoused in America further implicate notions of community and inclusion.