Reply #24: "collective misrecognition"

[Trillo]

A particular series of paragraphs jumped off the page from Without Housing (PDF) when I read it last night:

The influential sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, referred to mass social deceptions, somewhat similar to the one surrounding homelessness in the United States, as “collective misrecognition.”83 This deception involves misrecognition of reality which is so grand, and which encompasses so many people, that no specific individuals are responsible for intentionally creating the deception. Although the deception does serve to benefit some groups within society over others, it is not simply a conscious conspiracy. Rather, it is a deception so deep that it has seeped into the very core assumptions and paradigms through which people see and understand the world.

The overwhelming omission of systemic and structural causes of homelessness in public discussions and public policy responses to homelessness in the United States is a collective deception that has involved thousands of policymakers, poverty “experts,” researchers, charity foundation staff, and journalists. This deception has been reinforced time and again in the authoritative texts of government-initiated studies about homelessness, and has been corroborated by private and academic researchers on the government payroll. It has been found in the columns of newspapers, in the content of TV and radio news shows, and on the covers of both popular magazines and academic journals. This deception can be heard in the halls of legislative chambers, in policy conferences, in the planning meetings of local commissions, and in passing conversations in communities throughout the United States.

Certainly, if there's enough money for the Fed to grant $30,000,000,000 in emergency corporate welfare to give Bear Stearns' non-embodied corpse to JPMorgan, there's enough money to give the homeless land and sovereignty and/or housing and some food or stipends, today. TODAY. Why not tomorrow? Because tomorrow never comes (it turns into 25 years, etc), and homeless folks need to eat and sleep today, just like all the rest of us.

When the financial system gets the jitters, $30 Billion is seemingly created quickly, out of thin air (Federal Reserve), like a lightning strike, at least from the publicly released timeline of corporate reporting. Perhaps it was discussed at more length quietly behind closed doors, but how would we, the public, know that? Yet, for the poor and homeless, 25 years can pass and nothing substantial is effected to solve the underlying problem, but they are successfully labeled as deficient during these years by various agents, which has the side effect of SCARING the rest of us, by the "example" made of them, into working harder and longer for less.

We don't WANT to be so labeled by others! The homeless FEEL the same way, they're humans just like the rest of us, we're not particularly different from each other! A number of them have jobs and are working, but the pay is so low and housing costs so high that they must 'sleep on public land' wherever they can find such a place.

For just a financial comparison: using simple figures of 30B (said to be JPMorgan's recent corporate welfare) divided by the cost of a typical house (full retail) of ~$250,000 buys about 120,000 existing homes and yards! Building new housing, perhaps a different, less expensive kind than the 3 bedroom, 2 bath wood-frame standard, should be effected for that kind of money to avoid displacing existing housing's residents.

Homeless people are quite industrious (just like us!), reportedly they build encampments and make-do structures behind bamboo and bushes. Let me repeat that. They have built their own dwelling places, which when discovered, authorities then destroy. Sounds to me like if the government were to grant some "reservation lands" to the chronic homeless so inclined (to live where they could be 'left in peace' by the authorities) then they would likely start building their own little communities. Would they be poor dwellings? Likely so, but maybe some would find Nadir Kahlili's emergency shelter building techniques which are less costly to build, but aren't "poor" at all, quite the opposite (I've been inside them, they're nice!):

To build simple emergency and safe structures in our backyards, to give us maximum safety with minimum environmental impact, we must choose natural materials and, like nature itself, build with minimum materials to create maximum space, like a beehive or a sea shell. The strongest structures in nature which work in tune with gravity, friction, minimum exposure and maximum compression, are arches, domes and vault forms. And they can be easily learned and utilize the most available material on earth: Earth." - Nader Khalili

http://www.calearth.org.nyud.net:8090/EmergencyShelter/UNRefugeeCampMed.jpg
(see http://www.calearth.org/EmergencyShelter/eshelter.html) and, with enough legal sovereignty, they'd be allowed to build those on their own "reservation lands". Maybe some would figure out how to plant a small farm (if they have water supplies, which they would need) to grow some of their own food. Perhaps some bags of concrete and barbed wire (part of Nadir's construction technique) and "endless tube-type sandbags" could be part of a government stipend (From the semi-private Federal Reserve? They don't hesitate for a moment to help their wealthy buddies), land or earth has most of the rest of the structure's materials.

Or, new subsidized housing could be built for them in existing communities. This would create a lot of construction jobs, though there is certainly some fat there. Just like the fat given to JPMorgan. However, this fat would start circulating in local economies, hardware and building suppliers at first, but also grocery and clothing stores, and on and on....

Myself, I like the reservation land and limited sovereignty paradigm, because it's been done before, and because there are some chronic homeless who may accept.