Homelessness is often seen as a big-city issue, but mid-size cities are also facing a growing crisis. While homelessness has existed in these communities for decades, it has largely taken the form of hidden homelessness. Visible homelessness is new in many mid-sized cities, and residents are struggling to accept this reality. There is a disconnect between how residents see their city and how people actually live and move through it which is harmful for unhoused people and the community overall.
We examined this tension in a mid-size city in western Canada that we’ve named Aster Falls. This community has struggled to come to terms with the rise in visible homelessness, where many residents’ reaction is to blame and exclude unhoused people themselves. Our research found that efforts to push homelessness out of sight make the problem worse, reinforcing negative perceptions of both the people affected and the reputation of the city itself.
The research
We wanted to understand the perceptions of homelessness from different community members, first by prioritizing lived expert voices, and also hearing from service providers, community representatives (such as business owners and neighbourhood groups), and members of law enforcement. We used Loїc Wacquant’s concept of territorial stigmatization to unpack the situation in Aster Falls. Territorial stigmatization describes what happens when people in positions of power identify a neighbourhood as bad, dangerous, or undesirable, leading to neglect and exclusion of both the place and the people who live there. Over time, this can result in fewer resources, community divisions, and gentrification, where the space is transformed for the benefit of wealthier groups while pushing out existing residents. There are three steps to territorial stigmatization – below we describe them and how they relate to a mid-size city like Aster Falls.
1. Identify the perceived threat
Despite huge population growth and change over the last 30 years, many residents of Aster Falls hold onto the idea that they live in a small, tight-knit town. This sentiment that everyone knows and looks out for each other conflicts with the reality that homelessness exists in their city.
“Well, I think some people just want their small town back. They want their utopia, they want their picture of what a small town should be, and what a community should be, it should be very black and white and pristine. And maybe it wasn’t that.” – Service provider
To make sense of the loss of the small town feel and the increase in visible homelessness in the downtown core, many residents believe that unhoused people are ‘not from here’. The common perception is that people are being systematically bussed in from other communities or are travelling to Aster Falls to access their limited services. This perception is tied to the narrative that increasing numbers of marginalized people transform the community into a service hub that actively dissolves the small town into a mid-size city. This myth endures despite the city’s point-in-time count data, which shows that the overwhelming majority of unhoused people have lived in that city for more than five years, and many were born and raised in Aster Falls.
The other way that homelessness is positioned as a threat to the mid-size city is the stereotype that unhoused people are criminals. While participants across the groups we spoke with agreed that some people experiencing homelessness do engage in petty crime to survive, there was no evidence of harm or violence to the general public. Still, the idea that unhoused people are dangerous prevails.
2. Construct the threat
Once the community identified the homeless population as the reason they have lost their small-town feel, municipal leaders and some vocal housed residents began pushing the narrative that unhoused people are ‘taking over’ and ruining Aster Falls. To counteract this perceived threat, the community resists evidence-based solutions to homelessness, such as Housing First and harm reduction services for people who use substances under the premise that they don’t want to enable homelessness or encourage people to come to their mid-size city. Some residents have even used violence against unhoused people in an attempt to run them out of the city.
“You literally get shunned and shot at, right, and fire thrown over. They [community members] tried to burn the camp down, and the community is saying that the people in tent-city are harmful to the community. Meanwhile, it’s the community that’s throwing firesticks over the fence and pouring gasoline and shooting frozen paint balls and pellet guns” – Lived expert
3. Create stigma
Positioning homelessness as a threat and using responses that punish, rather than support people in need, produces the stigma the community is trying to avoid. For a mid-size city, this stigma affects the whole city, not a single neighbourhood, because the downtown acts as a main hub for both daily life and culture for all residents and is not a space exclusive to people experiencing homelessness.
“The problem in Aster Falls is that everything is within six blocks, so there’s no real separation between areas with issues and those without.” – Community member
Across local and national news coverage and social media posts from some residents, Aster Falls has developed a reputation for being unsympathetic and unkind to people who are homeless, silencing the crucial work being done by service providers, advocates, and people engaged in mutual aid. The energy some municipal actors, community members, and people in decision-making positions have put into ‘reclaiming’ the city from unhoused people is creating the stigma they were trying to avoid while harming people who are homeless.
A way forward
The fear and assumption that visible homelessness will stigmatize a mid-size city like Aster Falls has created the stigma itself. It has also made it difficult to have meaningful conversations that address concerns of housed and unhoused residents alike and leaves people who are homeless with limited resources and care. Some residents believe that because Aster Falls feels like a small town, homelessness shouldn’t exist there. Instead of using this mindset to exclude people, the community can apply its values of connection and support to find real solutions, address concerns, and build a city where everyone is cared for.
Read the full article here: https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/ijoh/article/view/17065