Homelessness and Housing Advocacy

The Role of Red-Tape Warriors

Curtis Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000563054
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Travail social

Through compelling ethnography, Homelessness and Housing Advocacy: The Role of Red-Tape Warriors reveals the creative and ambitious methods that social service providers use to house their clients despite the conflictual conditions posed by the policies and institutions that govern the housing process.

Combining in-depth interviews, extensive fieldwork, and the author's own professional experience, this book considers the perspective of social service providers who work with people experiencing homelessness and chronicles the steps they take to navigate the housing process. With assertive methods of worker-client advocacy at the center of its focus, this book beckons attention to the many variables that affect professional attempts to house homeless populations. It conveys the challenges that social service providers encounter while fitting their clients into the criteria for housing eligibility, the opposition they receive, and the innovative approaches they ultimately take to optimize housing placements for their clients who are, or were formerly, experiencing homelessness.

Weaving as it does between issues of poverty, social inequality, and social policy, Homelessness and Housing Advocacy will appeal to courses in social work, sociology, and public policy and fill a void for early-career professionals in housing and community services.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003050872-1

Introduction: Getting the “Right” Worker to Help

When I teach undergraduate students on issues of poverty and homelessness, they often enter the class with a framework of ideas centered on how to motivate people who experience these hardships. After all, people experiencing homelessness are in every city around the world, so most people willing to learn about the issue have already seen, or even interacted with, someone experiencing homelessness or poverty. Like anything else, these experiences act as references and inform many assumptions on the matter. People might assume that entry into the service system is easy and point to agencies that offer support. However, perhaps most paramount is considering how broader social structures contribute to such issues, along with the inherent shortcomings and roadblocks that prevent access into the housing system. In short, the housing system can be so convoluted with bureaucracy that some researchers have described it as “particularly impenetrable paperwork” (Browne, Mackie, and England 2021: 1). For this reason, it is not a surprise that trying to navigate access into housing services can seem like an impossible process—that is, without the right help.

In my own work, I focus on how people interact with social service workers, how the service system is structured, and how workers implement service access with their clients who seek aid. My goal is to reframe how people approach the issue of homelessness, moving beyond traditional beliefs to view the situation from the perspective of social service workers, and to supplement this understanding with academic research.

To make things relatable, I typically follow each lesson in my classes by posing some version of the following question to my students: “Given what we have learned today, if you experienced homelessness tomorrow, what would you do?” I ask this so that readers consider what it must be like to go through the process themselves. With this approach in mind, I start by describing the theme of this book with an analogy on a similar issue that affected nearly everyone: the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Pandemic Analogy

Soon after COVID-19 began to plague the world in 2019, it became the most talked-about issue. In the United States, the health crisis highlighted a need to emphasize the streamlined implementation of service aid. When vaccines became available, everyday conversations became consumed with confusion about who qualified for the vaccine and how to get it. People questioned official health policy, but also sought answers regarding the technicalities of getting access to the vaccine. It soon became clear that many people who qualified for the vaccine had difficulties accessing services. For example, people who were eligible for the vaccine early on faced challenges with signing up online and accessing transportation to vaccine sites. After these problems became apparent, the issue of policy implementation became the forefront of vaccine distribution. Many people seeking vaccination could not access it on their own, so they needed to rely on others, which further complicated things. Some states offered vaccines, and even cash, to anyone who helped transport those who were elderly and high-risk to vaccine sites (Armus 2021). It was clear that many groups of people who were permitted by official policy to receive the vaccine needed to rely on some form of liaison in the implementation of the vaccine distribution, especially early on. The emphasis turned to the actions of front-line workers almost immediately.

In the first phases of vaccine rollouts, the U.S. government prioritized vaccination of people of older ages. But rules about who could receive the vaccine were vague in other ways, which granted some leeway for many people who felt desperate to be vaccinated. After all, the official sentiment was that getting vaccinated would save lives, and possibly even your own. The goal of the official policy was to get everyone vaccinated, eventually. However, those who sought vaccination experienced an arduous process where websites meant to schedule vaccination appointments were overwhelmed and left many people to spend hours refreshing their browsers in anticipation of an open slot for an appointment (Fowler 2021). Those seeking vaccination soon also became aware that many healthcare workers distributing the vaccine were not as stringent with formal policy as anticipated, which prompted some without medical vulnerabilities to wonder if they could also “sneak through” to be vaccinated (Mazzei 2021). For this reason, people thought they could technically qualify and be vaccinated, despite the perceived rigidity of official policy. In fact, it all depended on which healthcare workers people interacted with.

Additionally, official policy shifted over time, and people who sought vaccination had to keep abreast of such changes. The transition from Trump’s presidency to Biden’s in January 2021 brought stark and visible changes to official policy regarding the pandemic. The federal government began valuing recommendations by the Center for Disease Control and echoing the sentiments of the World Health Organization, implementing federal mandates instead of relying on state-level officials to make their own rules (Chappell 2021; White House 2021). Wearing masks became mandated in certain social spaces, such as federal buildings and airports. Still, how people interpreted the implementation of formal rules varied depending on the environment. From restaurants to schools, things were being done differently (CDC 2021; Education 2021; Thomas and Findell 2021). Depending on the social space and context, workers who were in authority positions could decide the level of rigidity (or lack thereof) for enforcing the rules (McAuliff et al. 2021; Pantaleo 2021). Some store owners had strict protocol in place for every patron to follow, while others had minimal, if any at all.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the topic of effective implementation of policy to the forefront of everyday dialogue. A few themes became apparent in the process of discerning how to operationalize policy, one of them being that those who help others in the implementation process are immensely valuable in alleviating challenges. Adhering to strict stipulations of rules can be confusing, and many people do not have the means to comply with official policies, even if they are part of the very group that the policy intends to help. Another theme is that despite official rules that prioritize certain populations, many others could also receive service depending on the discretion of health workers or those in charge. For example, some health workers decided to dispense COVID-19 vaccinations indiscriminately when snowy weather stopped them in a traffic jam (Salcedo 2021). They realized they would not make it to their destination in time before their Moderna vaccines expired, so, as one worker put it, “I decided to start going door-to-door, car-to-car, offering” vaccines to anyone who wanted to receive them (Salcedo 2021: 1). Evidently, although federal policies appear stringent in order to avoid any “mooching off” of the system in place, front-line workers can prioritize their own set of ethics when distributing the service at hand. They consider the greater good by focusing on the larger picture as opposed to being punitive and sticking to the “letter of the law.”

Finally, formal policy can actually limit services. Those who are in roles to help the recipients of services can still do so, despite the limitations of formal policy and the changes it goes through over time. In short, those who helped people receive vaccination with a heavily bureaucratized system in place have been critical in achieving vital public health goals. Many times, they do so lacking a general strategy for implementation. No matter what side of the political aisle that people are on, considering how people interacted beyond official policy was at the forefront of the issue and affected everyone’s daily lives.

Broader Significance

Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic is not the only example of a set of bureaucratic policies that frustrate their intended recipients in their implementation. Many social policies aim to provide services, but also have regulations in place to manage access to aid in an orderly way. Hospitals and healthcare systems, in general, are heavily bureaucratic with policies that many would argue are severe and actually prevent access for people who desperately need services (Carroll 2020). Additionally, these problems are not limited to the public sector. Applying for loans in banks and navigating the financial stipulations of buying a home can be an arduous regulatory process. Even for someone who has the money to afford these services and officially qualifies, proving so can be a maddening part of the process (Fontinelle and Cetera 2021; Saunders 2018). Anyone who has ever called customer service centers of large corporations, such as Comcast, Time Warner (now WarnerMedia), or Bank of America, also knows they offer little actual customer support (Hinchcliff and McCarthy 2010). Calls can result in being transferred from one department to another or becoming trapped in an endless loop within the automated phone system. Customers or clients often feel like it was all a big waste of time, powerless to accomplish even the simplest tasks with the company.

However, navigating such a complicated web of services with the right help from a knowledgeable worker can change the outcome dramatically. Helpful workers can change a frustrating situation of potential “lost business,” where a patron or client gives up and walks out altogether, into a beneficial experience where the service implementation unfolds either as the company intends or even better than expected for the client or patron. This detail can have the same effect in the realm of social services.

In each of the preceding examples, the recipients of services rely on experienced workers who understand how to go beyond the basic standards of their job in providing their intended services. This is because the details of implementation are important. Official policies often shift over time, yet the enduring efforts of helpful workers are what make such policies effective. In good times and bad, these are the workers who go the proverbial “extra mile” for the recipients of the service by saying, “let’s make this work.” A knowledgeable worker who is willing to help their client navigate a bureaucratic system, and even advocate for their needs, can seem like the only thing making the service work when the system itself seems to be working against clients.

We can see examples of this everywhere. In the movie Just Mercy (Cretton 2019), a lawyer decides to help someone navigate the treacherous bureaucracy of the criminal justice system because he believes that the defendant was treated poorly by the system. Doctors during the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s fought for the rights of their patients (Bayer and Oppenheimer 2002). In 2020, Georgia’s policies on voting began changing and have been met with aggressive resistance, as a result (Abrams et al. 2020; Impelli 2021). There are many different victims of the contemporary paradigm in which we find ourselves, but they are typically treated as an anomaly if they successfully persevere. For example, the movie Pursuit of Happiness, starring the actor Will Smith, is about one man’s experience of homelessness and his journey to eventually earn housing through his own perseverance. However, in this book, I show that successful transitions into housing by people experiencing homelessness happen much more often than readers might think. It is time we notice how successful social service workers are, despite traditionally having limited resources at their disposal.

Cornel West once described the regularity with which people of color overcome hardships by saying:

From my perspective, it’s just part of the normal order of things. … So that it’s not some sort of aberration, or anomaly to wrestle with catastrophe. … Catastrophe with which we must come to terms if in fact our societies are to survive and endure.

(Mendieta 2017: 145)

In a similar way, I question why we collectively favor the notion that overcoming homelessness is an anomaly when it is, in fact, happening every day. Many typically suppose that once someone experiences homelessness, then there is (supposedly) no return to normal society unless the person experiencing homelessness undergoes some sort of profound change in their personality. In reality, social service workers help many people experiencing homelessness access indoor living conditions. It is time to consider the workers who advocate on their clients’ behalf throughout their daily routines to successfully get their clients into housing. How do we understand these workers and what they do? This book offers a perspective on how social service workers meet the needs of their homeless clients through what I call “assertive advocacy,” despite imperfect and ever-changing housing policies. Here, I provide a case study in policy implementation and the adaptation of social service workers who work with their clients who experience homelessness. Additionally, the strategies offered here go beyond the issues of homelessness and can be applied to other social issues.

Focusing on Social Service Workers

Over the last century, a substantial body of ethnographic research focusing on the topic of homelessness has primarily studied the lived experiences of people experiencing homelessness. Examples of this include such well-known ethnographies as Nels Anderson’s The Hobo (1923), Samuel Wallace’s Skid Row as a Way of Life (1965), David Snow and Leon Anderson’s Down on Their Luck (1993), and Philippe Bourgois and Jeffrey Schonberg’s Righteous Dopefiend (2009), to mention but a few key studies. While notable ethnographic studies devoted to examining the experiences of people without a home continue to be pursued, my previous experiences as a homeless service provider offered a different direction for potential research—the activities of homeless social service workers. The decision to orient my research toward social service workers who work with people experiencing homelessness is consistent with work conducted by a handful of other ethnographic researchers, including Prashan Ranasinghe, who observed:

Despite emanating from a rich ethnographic tradition and offering sophisticated, detailed, and insightful analyses … most inquiries [focused on homelessness] are limited because they are largely one-sided. What they fail to explore and reveal is … the perspective of the personnel who work in these sites, that is, the service providers.

(2017: 5)

Like Ranasinghe, I observed a disconnect between what is typically referenced in literature on homelessness regarding existing policy and the common practices that unfold on the ground when working with people who experience homelessness. I also witnessed inconsistencies between official policy and how workers informally carried out the demands of their employment.

In his seminal book, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service, Michael Lipsky (1980) focused on the various strategies used by ground-level public service workers, or “street-level bureaucrats,” as they enact the complicated and often arduous tasks required of them in their jobs. Lipsky’s work provides an excellent theoretical framework for my research. The work of street-level bureaucrats entails considerable discretionary power because they often work in virtually unsupervised “front-line” settings, and social policies are often ambiguous or subject to different interpretations.

Lipsky emphasizes that issues of contested political nature are often especially vague because of continued disagreement among politicians and policy drafters. Complete structural control based on inviolable rules and criteria would render the worker a robotic cog in the bureaucratic wheel. However, when strategic discretionary power is granted to these workers, they can better respond to the individual circumstances of their clientele. Put simply, Lipsky’s approach to street-level bureaucracy seeks to answer the question, “How do ground-level social service workers adapt to imperfect social policies?” (Brodkin 2012).

I argue that this ability grants them the freedom to do their job successfully. Such discretion comes in the form of authorized and unauthorized choices during their workday, making street-level bureaucrats “virtual policy creators” on a case-by-case basis with the public that they serve (Lipsky 1980: 13). Rather than treat policy as a fixed entity and compliance as the subordinate act of a ground-level worker, Lipsky views the permitted and unpermitted daily decisions of street-level bureaucrats as part of the policymaking process in street-level bureaucracies.

Drawing on Lipsky, Evelyn Brodkin has elaborated on the separation between policy and implementation by street-level bureaucrats. In a series of articles on street-level social services, Brodkin (2008; 2012; 2017) has championed street-level ethnography focused on social service agencies. Governmental policy often blames victims who seek services and challenges the competency of ground-level workers who are meant to help them navigate the system. To dispute this, Brodkin’s scholarship addresses social service workers as essential street-level bureaucrats who employ a deeper recognition and appreciation for the needs of their individual clients in their efforts, which often align with formal policy aims.

Street-level bureaucrats a...