Housing Movements and Mobilization

Houselessness emerged as a growing social problem in the 1980s, resulting in increased academic literature investigating the topic.

These studies were generally descriptive in nature, focusing on estimating population sizes, understanding the demographic breakdown of the population, and taking “head counts” across the country. Unhoused individuals were portrayed as passive victims who were politically disempowered and disabled. The assumption that the unhoused were incapable of organizing, however, was directly challenged when unhoused began to mobilize around housing right across the country. There were some major national events, such as a 1989 march on Washington, which had more than 250,000 unhoused supporters and unhoused themselves marching under a “Housing Now!” banner. However, local level collective action (including rallies, marches, housing takeovers, encampments, etc.) was even more widespread, making the movement primarily a city-level phenomenon. Such widespread mobilization, specifically of unhoused individuals—who were assumed to have little power and capability to mobilize—created an empirical puzzle for social movements scholars. This area of work has not been thoroughly revisited since the early 2000s. 

This line of research revisits the question of agency among the unhoused, urging sociologists to consider potential mobilizations at a time of heightened housing insecurity. My master’s thesis focuses specifically on the question of agency during the COVID-19 pandemic, asking the extent to which the unhoused, the housing insecure, and housing service providers were mobilizing in the face of threats to housing rights. My dissertation will focus on the re-emergence of large-scale encampments in major cities across the west coast and a growing movement to stop the sweeps of these encampments. I will undertake a comparative case study of the “Stop the Sweeps” Movement in two cities with large encampment populations on the West Coast, aiming to understand both the trajectory and success of the movement across these localities. In revisiting the question of agency, I urge sociologists to continue to consider the possibility of agency among the unhoused and the housing insecure, rather than falling back on the previous assumption that these populations lack the power and resources needed to mobilize.