How Homelessness Does Not Become a Housing Problem

Abstract

This chapter explores how, if at all, housing and homelessness advocates made claims about both homelessness and housing problems together. Many advocates make fleeting claims about homelessness or homeless people. Yet they do not talk much about homelessness as a housing problem, even though it may seem like the most urgent one. Here is where investigating discursive fields and style can help. The chapter compares Tenants of South Los Angeles and Housing Justice coalition members' claims about homelessness with those of professional-led volunteer efforts organized to address homelessness as a problem in itself. The evidence suggests that in Los Angeles, cultural conditions conspired to make homelessness a marginal topic across different quarters of the housing advocacy world. And homeless service workers talked little, if at all, about affordable housing as a public issue.