| Course Description |
In what has become a near-throwaway line, millions of Americans face sustained residential instability.
At the extreme end are the street-dwelling homeless poor. Others are less dire: Growing numbers are
living cars and tents or other encampments, some of them officially “sanctioned” as surrogate homes.
Many more are doubling up. Nor is this a recent development: the pandemic may have thrown into sharp
relief the life-threatening consequences of losing one’s home, but the problem itself is decades old and
growing. The recent influx of migrants in NYC has provoked reconsideration of long-standing policy,
with an impact still be to be assessed. Increased attention to racial injustice has focused attention on both
the disproportionate racial impact of homelessness and its criminalization, especially with respect to the
overlap with psychiatric disorder. Popular perception to the contrary, mass homelessness has not always
been with us; nor has it ever shown the distinctive characteristics that it bears today. This course will examine modern homelessness from the early 1980s to the present, scrutinizing its
evolution from urgent humanitarian crisis to a seemingly permanent, and increasingly criminalized,
feature of American urban life. We will examine its causes, complicating factors, and actual/potential
solutions, including a focus on legal issues, strategies, and the role that lawyers have played and can play
in addressing this critical social problem. We will consider strategies including litigation and legislative,
regulatory, and human rights advocacy. Our approach will be interdisciplinary, integrating legal issues
with readings and approaches from anthropology and public health, among other disciplines. We will
briefly consider homelessness across the US but place particular emphasis on its distinctive history –
civic and legal – as it is unfolding in New York City. Readings will include court papers and cases, pending legislation/litigation (if any), ethnographic and
social science studies, research reports, and public health analyses, supplemented by video documentaries
and “field” exercises. Brief cameos by guest speakers – including advocates, people with lived experience
on the street, and veterans of proven service programs, usually by ZOOM – |
