The Manufacture of Dependency: Shelterization Revisited

Emergency shelters have been the most comprehensive and enduring response to homelessness in the United States, with New York City leading the way since the early 1980s. Shelters have emerged as a hybrid between a degraded type of public housing and a new form of institutionalization. The persistence of shelter dependency, or shelterization, is an intractable problem that frustrates policymakers and service providers. Popular among certain circles of professional pathologists is the view that shelterization is a form of adaptation to the violent, anomic, and generally antisocial environment of the shelter. This explanation of shelter dependency is theoretically flawed and intentionally leads to suspect practices because it inverts the causal connection between structural arrangements and individual behavior. Following Goffman, this article exposes the institutional origin of the pathologies that are usually attributed to homeless people as self-inflicted. The obstacles that prevent homeless people from rejoining the mainstream are the effects of a state of captivity, not the symptoms of a disease

Poverty and homelessness in Athens: governance and the rise of an emergency model of social crisis management

This paper presents findings from the study “Caring for the homeless and the poor in Greece: implications for the future of social protection and social inclusion”. First, we offer an overview on the types of existing provisions for the homeless and the poor in Athens. Second, a wider concern of this paper is to discuss whether changes in social and urban policies in Greece enhance or inhibit access of the poor to secure housing, employment, and good quality of care. We identify key elements of an ‘emergency’ model for managing the social crisis associated with the sovereign debt crisis and austerity, offer some interpretation about the processes of its formation, and highlight its criticisms and alternatives suggested by service providers and civil society organizations