ANTH 3368 Urban Life

"Weapons of the Weak, By the Weak, For the Weak:

Negotiating Power between and among Homeless Persons and Service Providers"

Julie Adkins

Southern Methodist University

(DRAFT:  Please do not circulate or cite without author’s prior permission.)

Call them clients, call them guests, call them customers, call them what you will; but I suspect that the homeless folks I spend time with are alternately amused and angered by the civic discourse that calls them “powerful.”  The stories I hear from them are mostly about helplessness and loss: arrest for sleeping on the sidewalk, confiscation or destruction of personal belongings in police sweeps, theft and assault committed by other homeless persons, hunger, domestic violence, police harassment in ostensibly public locations such as the city library and parks, shelter rules so rigid that a resident cannot maintain a job without violating curfew and/or other “program requirements” such as mandatory chapel attendance.  And yet, according to many civic leaders and downtown business owners, the homeless are in fact quite powerful.  They have the power, so it is claimed, to prevent the revitalization of downtown areas by frightening customers away from businesses.  Their presence, sitting or sleeping on city sidewalks, is believed to interfere with planners and developers’ ability to (re-)gentrify downtown with the sale and/or lease of expensive apartments, condos, and lofts.  In fact, their mere presence in certain sectors is said to depress property values.

These claims have of course been made in many cities (cf. Gibson 2004; Mitchell 2003; Valado 2005); Dallas, Texas may be one of the few in which local-level research has been conducted in order ostensibly to “prove” such assertions (Weinstein and Clower 2000, 2006).¹  Ninth-largest city in the U.S., with an estimated population of 1.2 million (according to the 2006 American Community Survey), Dallas is reluctant host to a homeless population estimated at 5,000-6,000.  Dallas’s homeless tend to be clustered in the center-city, and, as one would expect, most of the nonprofit and government-related agencies that serve them are located downtown as well.  (It remains a chicken-and-egg question whether the presence of those agencies has drawn the homeless into downtown, or whether the prior presence of poverty in the center-city drew such agencies to locate themselves there.)  Because of the clustering of these helping agencies, downtown Dallas also serves as a magnet for homeless and at-risk persons from the suburbs which surround the city on all sides.  In these respects, Dallas is hardly unique among large American cities.  Dallas, however, has burdened itself with an origin myth – the “city with no reason to exist,” created as a “monument to sheer determination” by early entrepreneurial pioneers (Hill 1996:xvi) and governed wisely by business leaders for the good of all – that has made it particularly difficult for the city to deal creatively or compassionately with poverty in its midst. If early settlers arrived with “nothing” and somehow created a world-class city on the plains, how can having “nothing” in the present possibly be an obstacle for any person already privileged enough to live in such a place?  The “power” of the homeless in Dallas is just this: their continued presence calls Dallas’s whole story of itself into question.  Ultimately, what the homeless cannot be forgiven is their failure to abide by the myth and, thus, their power to tarnish Dallas’s glittering image of itself (see, for example, Graff 2008; Hanson 2003; Hill 1996; Payne 1994). 

From within the large and complex urban space of the city of Dallas, I want to highlight and analyze power negotiations and the resulting ethical quandaries in just one microcosm:  the soup-kitchen, day shelter, and helping agency known as the Stewpot.²  Begun in 1975 by the First Presbyterian Church, the Stewpot garners widespread community support in the form of both financial contributions and volunteer labor.  The Stewpot serves a noon meal,³ provides a safe place for people to “hang out” during the day (and even to sleep, though it has to be at a table or stretched out on the floor), employs six case workers to assist clients with particular needs, and hosts a variety of other programs and agencies that are available on a weekly or monthly basis with a regular schedule.  I will say more about some of these as they become relevant to my analysis.

            For the past three years, my role at the Stewpot – in addition to being the onsite anthropologist and asking endless questions – has been that of an “intake volunteer.”  I sit at the front desk and “process” clients as they come through the line.  This can involve any number of activities: entering a client’s name on the list to see a caseworker; answering questions about where the nearest night shelter can be found and giving directions; and handing out various necessities as they are requested, such as soap, aspirin, writing paper, feminine hygiene products, condoms … or, apologizing when a requested item is no longer available.⁴  Each morning when the doors are unlocked at 8:00, there is already a long line of clients waiting outside, often extending from the Stewpot’s corner site to the far end of the city block. Clients hurry to re-form the line inside; there are rarely fewer than 100 people in line as the morning begins, and it continues to grow for at least the first half hour as folks trickle in after breakfast at a nearby shelter.  It is unusual for the intake staff and/or volunteers to reach the last person in line before 9:30 a.m., by which time the casework list for the morning is nearly always filled with as many appointments as the staff can hope to see by noon.  Clients continue to approach front-desk staff all morning, though, with various questions, requests, and demands; a normal morning involves anywhere from 200-300 separate staff-client interactions across the front counter.  The pattern repeats in similar fashion when the Stewpot re-opens at 1:00 p.m. after a one-hour lunch break, although there are normally fewer clients in the afternoon. 

As I have become more familiar with the Stewpot and its operations, and a trusted member of the volunteer “staff,” I have observed not only what I expected to see – imbalances and negotiations of power between agency staff or volunteers and the clients – but also intricate negotiations between homeless clients themselves, and between and among the staff and volunteers of the Stewpot.  In particular, the longer I have been observing, the more troubling the last of these has become.

Between Agency and Clients

I begin with the power issues that are best documented in the research thus far, those between clients and service providers (cf. Rowe 1999).⁵  At the Stewpot, these become apparent almost immediately as one enters the building on the ground floor.  In the first place, staff and volunteers enter the building through different doors than do the clients, most often through a parking garage protected by an automatic gate and staffed by a security guard.  The ground floor, although reasonably spacious in terms of the area available for clients to relax and/or wait, has clearly delineated areas where clients may not go unless invited or accompanied by a staff person (I will include volunteers under the rubric of “staff,” to save time repeating).  The so-called front desk where I sit to interact with clients as they first come in is behind a counter which stands nearly 48 inches high; a person in a wheelchair cannot begin to see over it.  Thus, by itself it defines a clear barrier not only between “us” and “them,” but also between “our” space and “their” space.  Very early in my work, I became so uncomfortable about sitting behind that high counter while talking with people who had to stand on the other side that I began standing as well, sensing that I needed to do something to bridge the distance.   

Obviously, even in my limited volunteer role, I have more power vis-à-vis the institution than do the clients.  However, all of the staff I have observed do what they can to place relationships on as equal – or at least, respectful – a footing as possible.  They make every effort to remember clients’ names, and to address them respectfully; in particular, new clients are most frequently addressed as “Mr. [Jones]” or “Ms [Smith],” with the use of first names coming only after acquaintance has been made.  Clients are invited to call caseworkers and other staff by their first names and often do so, though this is frequently modified, particularly by African-American clients, to include a title along with the first name; e.g., “I need to see Mr. Ronny.”  Caseworkers’ individual office spaces are arranged so that the client is always nearest the door and can choose to exit unobstructed.  Occasionally these “equalizing” efforts have unintended consequences: a recently-hired female caseworker received a little too much attention from some of her male clients who chose to interpret her friendliness toward them as sexual interest.  For a period of several weeks following her hire, she had clients who insisted on seeing her daily whether they had a particular need or not, and she complained of inappropriate or too-frequent attempts at physical touching by several of them.  Through coaching, she was able to distinguish between claiming her personal power in setting boundaries with clients while not making it an issue of the institution’s power over them.

            Even so, the balance of power clearly lies on the side of staff.  Clients who become abusive, whether physically or verbally, are directed to leave the building at once, and removed from the premises by a uniformed police officer if they fail to comply.  Those who continue to argue and/or fight with the officer may be banned for a certain period of time, and may even be subject to arrest.  Ejections and bans, temporary or permanent, may occur for other reasons as well: everything from repeatedly blowing a loud whistle for no purpose except to draw attention to oneself, to trying to start a fight with another client, to rolling a joint while seated at one of the tables in the waiting area.

But power is usually exercised in ways that are far more subtle, and are often invisible to the clients and even to other staff who do not observe the behavior.  Front-desk staff and volunteers, like most “street-level bureaucrats” (Lipsky 1980), actually have a tremendous amount of discretion within certain areas.  Front desk staff can, for example, add a client’s name to the caseworkers’ list even after it is “officially” full, if they perceive a need that is urgent or unusual.  The case workers will never know that the “maximum” has been exceeded unless one of them comes and counts the names, which they never do.  Staff may allow a client to use the phone at the front desk, even though it’s technically forbidden … or they may go “by the book” and refer the client to free phones at the nearby night shelter, or pay phones at the public library.    They may check a client’s mail before or after the usual hours for the mail station, or they may not.  They might take the time to look through the whole United Way directory of helping agencies to locate assistance for a client who needs something the Stewpot cannot provide … or they might not.  When a caseworker asks staff at the front desk to “call for the next client,” they are supposed to use the microphone to call the next name on the list … but on rare occasions, they will skip over names and call someone else first.  Knowing individual casework staff personalities as they do, front-desk workers may attempt to arrange that particular clients get seen by particular caseworkers … either because they need to see someone uniquely knowledgeable about given subjects (e.g., about veterans’ and VA issues), or someone particularly sympathetic, or someone particularly rigid about following rules.

There seem to be (at least) two patterns operating in these decisions to bend or break the rules, but neither is what I had expected to find.  That is, favors are not necessarily granted to those clients who are the most polite and articulate, or withheld from those who are aggressive or manipulative … although these behaviors may enter into the equation as an additional factor to be considered.  Rather, staff seem most often willing to exercise their unequal power on behalf of the clients they perceive as the most powerless.  For the most part, this does not appear to be a consciously-reasoned choice; it is rarely articulated and is certainly unwritten.  Yet I find myself – and I see caseworkers doing the same – more willing to bend the rules for, or take extra time with, a mother with a small child in her arms, an elderly client, a person who is newly homeless and clearly “lost” in the system, a young man who comes in dressed in jeans and T-shirt … and a pink sundress.  Those whom the staff perceive as most vulnerable and most at-risk on the streets are the ones on whose behalf they are most likely to exercise their discretionary and unequal power. 

The second pattern is that staff also seem willing to bend the rules for clients whom they perceive as needing only one more little push to get themselves off the streets.  For example, if a client states that he has a job interview later in the morning – and there is reason to believe he is telling the truth (perhaps he is more nicely dressed than usual) – the staff may try to slip his name higher on the list so that he can see his caseworker sooner rather than later. 

            Of course, staff and volunteers do not always exercise their institutional power in ways that would be perceived as helpful by the clients.  Though it is far from politically correct to say so, some of the homeless are difficult and unpleasant people.  And while there is widespread evidence indicating large-scale structural causes for homelessness in America (cf. Gans 1995; Hopper 2003; Lyon-Callo 2004; O’Flaherty 1996); it is equally true that many among the homeless – for a variety of reasons, not all of which they can control – act in ways that are not in their own best interest and that contribute to their status as outcasts.  From the point of view of the front-desk staff, the most irritating behavior by far (because of its frequency) is the “Did you call my name yet?” query, which also takes the alternate form of “How far down the list am I?”  There are a handful of clients who seem almost compelled to approach the front desk about once every ten minutes to ask, in one form or another, how much longer it will be until they are seen.  A few of these are so anxious about the answer that they will break into line – in front of people who have not yet had a chance to speak with staff at all – to demand a response.  To try to limit this behavior, several volunteers have begun a strategy of telling clients, on the third or fourth time they approach, that if they ask again their name will be moved to the bottom of the list.  Teresa, the paid staff person who supervises client intake and the relevant volunteers, will frequently respond to such queries with “I don’t know,” and the place the list on the counter so that the client has to locate his/her own name. Afterward, though, staff and volunteers guiltily debate among themselves about whether their irritation really stems from frustration with client behaviors that are problematic in their own right – imagine behaving in such a way while waiting for a job interview or a medical appointment – or whether it’s just that they are too easily annoyed when they should be more understanding.

            Though most power clearly lies on the side of staff and volunteers, there are some clients who have found ways to use language to try to increase their limited power vis-a-vis the agency.  Abusive or obscene language – which may work well in some settings – only serves to get clients kicked out of the Stewpot.  A subtler strategy is therefore needed.  Since the Stewpot is a faith-based institution, disgruntled clients often choose to utilize religious discourse to express unhappiness when they have not been given what they wanted.  One man, on being told that he would have to come up with half the fare for a bus ticket home, stalked out of the caseworker’s office with “I can’t believe you call yourselves Christians.”  Others offer “I’m going to pray for you!” as a parting shot, in such a tone that it is clearly meant as a threat rather than a promise.  And a few have mastered the art of saying “Bless you!” in such a tone of voice that it is clear that what they really mean is “F*** you!”

Between and Among Clients

            A second place in which I have often observed power negotiations taking place is between our homeless clients themselves.  In many instances this appears as a question of “rights” and one client’s perception that another is violating his rights.  The most common source of friction that I repeatedly observe has to do with a client’s perception that someone is trying to cut in line ahead of him/her.  Unfortunately, the setup of the room makes this inevitable several times a day: Clients enter the building through a door that is to the left of the front desk, but must then walk past the counter to get in line on the right-hand side of the desk/counter.  Newcomers almost always will come in the door and head straight for the front desk and its staff, not realizing that they must instead go to the end of line.  Fortunately, most “regulars” are patient with this kind of line-breaking: they know when someone is new and cannot be expected to know the rules, and while they do expect that staff will send that person to the end of the line (which they do), they do not shout and create a stir.  It is a different matter altogether, however, when someone who “ought to know better” ignores the line and approaches the desk because she wants something simple and doesn’t feel that she should have to stand in line with those who are waiting to be put on the list to see a caseworker.  However, whether that “something simple” is just asking a brief question, or requesting a vitamin or a bar of soap, these line-jumpers elicit loud protests from those already standing and waiting.  Tension also rises quickly when a person utilizes the voice-mail phone for longer than the posted four-minute limit.  Some clients will confront the offender themselves; the majority are more likely to complain to the staff to intervene on their behalf.  It is perhaps unsurprising that, among people whose rights are so frequently trampled by the larger society, there is great importance placed in this setting on each person’s behaving as though s/he is no better nor worse nor more important than anyone else.

            A second, far subtler and more beneficent, negotiation of power takes place in the relationships of reciprocity that become established between and among clients.  I have most often observed these in the form of generalized reciprocity (Sahlins 1972): “A” has been given food at some other location, and chooses to share it with B, C, and D; knowing that at a future date one of them will share a windfall with him (and he will have the “right” to claim it).  Reciprocity often also occurs in a kind of “pay it forward” form.  Those who have been homeless for a while and have learned how to negotiate the system often give advice and directions to newcomers, walk with them to the shelter they’re trying to locate, tell them where the best place is to find a phone or a shower, and so on. 

            Finally, there are occasional episodes where one of the clients will attempt to get the staff police officer to intervene in some kind of conflict occurring outside the building.  Different officers have varied opinions on whether they believe it is appropriate to intervene in such conflicts: although in uniform, they are officially “off duty” and some understand this to mean that their right and obligation to intervene ends at the outside door.  Nevertheless, it is not uncommon to have a client come in and ask the officer to come outside and deal with a person who just took their bundle of clothes … or to intervene in a fight between two people … or to arrest someone who is making threatening remarks.  In this way, they attempt to enlist to their cause someone who is perceived as having power, especially when they feel they are justified and in the right.

Within the Agency and Among Staff/Volunteers

            But what has been most interesting to me up to this point in my research, about which I see the least in the literature on homelessness and responses to it, is the power negotiation – both overt and covert – that constantly takes place between and among the (paid and volunteer) staff themselves (for exceptions, see Bridgman 2003, 2006.) While overall the agency operates smoothly and with little friction, there are frustrations and differences of both personality and opinion that occasionally manifest themselves in staff interactions with clients.  For example: in my second or third week “on the job,” the volunteer who was training me became upset at one of the caseworkers who refused to bend the usual rules in a particular instance: a young female client needed a Greyhound ticket to get out of town, but she did not have the one-half cost of the ticket that the Stewpot usually requires in order to pay for the remainder.  Ronny, the caseworker involved, had the authority to make an exception but chose not to.  Alan, the volunteer, and Marco, the security officer on that date, were both of the opinion that the client would be at high risk on the street because she was young, female, petite, and attractive; and they felt Ronny was being unreasonable.  Alan took $40.00 out of his own wallet and asked me to take the client to the back hallway where Ronny could not observe us, and give her the money.  With very little hesitation, I did so.

            A long-time – and only recently resolved – source of friction between front-line staff and behind-the-scenes policymaking staff had to do with the Stewpot ID cards.  These are photo ID cards which include the individual’s name, birth date, Social Security number, and signature; which the Stewpot created and began issuing many years ago at the request of the City of Dallas.⁶ Clients need only provide a Social Security printout with their number on it in order to have the ID made,⁷ and these are honored by city offices and the Texas Department of Public Safety as one of the documents required to obtain a state ID, a birth certificate, and so on.  Quite a few employers have been willing to accept them as a temporary measure until a person can arrange for permanent ID, and the various nighttime shelters in Dallas also accept them as proof of identity.  These ID cards are laminated in plastic and are quite sturdy … that is, until one is lost, stolen, or “disappeared” in a police sweep of homeless camps.  It had long been policy that, when a person’s Stewpot ID was lost or stolen, s/he could always have another made, but this second ID would be kept in the file at the Stewpot and the client would receive only a paper (Xerox) copy.  However, city and state agencies have been much more reluctant to accept the paper copy, particularly after 9/11.  In fact, whether or not the paper copy will be accepted depends entirely on which clerk happens to be staffing an agency at any particular moment – just as with Stewpot staff, some are more willing than others to bend the rules – and clients were understandably unhappy at the increasing difficulties they began to encounter.

            The Stewpot’s front desk staff were the first to learn of the City’s increasing unwillingness to accept the paper ID: clients would come in to pick up their Stewpot ID and then head straight for City Hall to obtain their birth certificate (which the Stewpot also helped to pay for), only to be turned away by a city staffer who insisted on the “original” ID.  Despite an increasing accumulation of anecdotal evidence, Karl, the director of the Stewpot, remained adamant for some time that the policy was not going to change.  It took several months of bringing up the issue again and again in staff meetings for a change of policy to result.  Now, those who want a second laminated Stewpot ID may pay $5.00 and receive one; they can still have a paper copy free of charge (and future copies as well, since the original will then remain in the Stewpot’s files).  The first Stewpot ID remains free for any person who needs or wants one.

            Many of the Stewpot’s staff have been working together for longer than a decade, so it is not surprising that conflicts occasionally arise among them.  In addition, a significant percentage of them are members of First Presbyterian Church, so their lives overlap in other places and at other times than work.  Their commitment to the institution helps them to overcome some of the friction that inevitably arises in such stressful work; it also appears to have the effect of keeping them committed to the Stewpot even though most of them could make much more money working elsewhere (even other nonprofits).  Even so, the longer I have been involved the more concerned I have become about some ongoing patterns of individual staff behavior and intra-staff conflict that seem to have a negative impact on work with the client population.

            Some conflicts are episodic and non-recurring: recently, a client arrived five minutes late for a class, having been on an errand given her by her caseworker, who told her it was okay for that reason to come in late.  Unfortunately, the senior caseworker was having a bad day, and chose this particular client to make an example of.  Although Molly had told the client to come to class as soon as she arrived back, Ronny refused to let her in.  My attempts at explanation on the client’s behalf were unsuccessful; in fact, Ronny was angry enough at Molly (who was teaching the class and therefore unavailable to receive his anger) that he would not even let me complete a sentence.  The client, caught between irresistible force and immovable object, was poorly served: having followed exactly the instructions she was given by one staff member, she was denied services by another.  She had to wait nearly two weeks before finally being able to complete the class.

            More troubling to me are ongoing feuds among the staff, most of which seem to involve Teresa and other staff members.  Teresa has worked at the Stewpot for almost twenty years, and, despite a gruff exterior, has deep compassion for the clients, many of whom call her “Mom.”  Her job description clearly involves client intake and the supervision of volunteers who assist in this process; it does not include casework with clients.  While Teresa has a great deal of “street sense,” she lacks any training for doing formal casework.  Yet she frequently oversteps her boundaries – in the eyes of other staff – by trying to assist clients on her own and/or arguing publicly with casework staff on behalf of particular clients.  Karl, the director, and Ronny, the senior caseworker, have both counseled with her about this in performance reviews, but behind their backs Teresa is adamant that she is “not going to stop helping clients.” 

            Over the years, Teresa has become skilled at using “weapons of the weak” (Scott 1985) to impose her will occasionally on staff who otherwise “outrank” her.  One example will have to suffice:  on a particular afternoon as closing time was approaching, she noticed that there were still five people on the list wanting to see a caseworker.  I assured her that, as these were all “standby” clients who had been placed on the list after it was officially closed, they had been informed at the time they checked in that I could not guarantee they would be seen that afternoon.  Nevertheless, at five minutes before closing, Teresa called all their names and had them come to wait at the table behind the front counter (i.e., in “our” space), thus “forcing” Ronny to attend to all of them before he could leave for the day.

            In retrospect, at least, that episode was amusing.  It had the added benefit of clearly siding with clients over and against the schedules and agendas of staff.  In contrast, most of the time, at least insofar as I have observed, client needs are regularly pushed aside in the interest of Teresa’s own agenda.  As noted above, the casework list is normally filled by 9:30 or 10:00 each morning, even though the Stewpot does not close for lunch until noon.  During the couple of hours remaining before noon, front-desk staff and volunteers are – or should be – available to answer questions, give out hygiene items, and encourage clients who come in late to return after lunch to see a caseworker.  On many mornings, however, when the last slot on the casework list has been filled, Teresa places a large “Closed” sign on the high counter at the front desk and either disappears for extended periods of time or greets those clients who dare to approach with “We’re closed!  What do you want?”  This does not appear to be official Stewpot policy (i.e., stating that the intake desk is closed even though the agency is officially open) – Teresa does not “close” the front desk when Karl is nearby – but rather a means by which Teresa seeks to exert some control over her work environment.  Clients are often difficult, their needs are overwhelming, and Teresa’s job description does not empower her to do very much on their behalf.  In this respect, it is perhaps understandable that she walks away from it, whether literally or figuratively.

            Even so, this is the one and only situation in which I as volunteer have lost my temper (publicly, anyway) in three years’ time.  One particular morning as I was busily writing my tallies and field notes, Teresa became frustrated with a difficult client and, as soon as he walked away, slammed the sign down on the counter and said, “That does it! We’re closed!”  Through gritted teeth, I fired back “It’s 10:00 a.m.  We are NOT closed!” and yanked the sign away.  This surprised me almost as much as it did her, as it occurred during a period when I was trying to limit my role to observing and not “working” as a volunteer.  I paid for my outburst by having to work for about the next 15 minutes, as Teresa stalked away while there were clients waiting to speak with one of us.  I am not certain what set me off on this particular day as opposed to others on which I have sat silent while she has done the same thing.  And I continue to struggle (see below) with what is appropriate in my role as an observer and/or a volunteer vis-à-vis an agency that has welcomed me into its midst but not solicited my opinions.

Conclusion

            Within the overall structures of a city such as Dallas, nonprofits that serve the homeless arguably have only slightly more power than the clients they serve.  Their resources are limited and never enough to meet the need; business interests seek to place limits on them in order to keep the homeless out of sight; elected officials concerned about the city’s “image” often perceive agencies like the Stewpot as being more a part of the problem than a part of the solution because they provide a place and an excuse for “undesirables” to congregate.  Within such a context, the small-scale negotiations for power I have outlined here take on a certain poignancy.  On the one hand, neither the Stewpot’s clients nor its staff and volunteers have a great deal of power to effect the kind of transformations that would help a large number of homeless to exit the streets permanently … or, keep them from ending up on the streets in the first place.  On the other hand, people’s lives are at stake.

            I often question my role within the mix.  Am I just one volunteer among many, who may choose simply to stop offering her time and energy if she becomes sufficiently frustrated with the staff with whom she must interact?  Either as volunteer or as social scientist, is it my “place” to draw supervisors’ attention to staff behavior that seems to be detrimental to the institution and to the population it serves?  The Stewpot has no mechanism in place by which to solicit input and feedback from volunteers, so it is not at all clear whether such an intervention would be welcomed.  Certainly, in my role as a researcher, I can and do ask “innocent” questions that have not-so-innocent subtexts; e.g., “I’m curious about the decision to ‘close’ the front desk at 10:30 or 11:00 … Tell me about how that decision was made, or how it frees up resources to do other tasks … ?”  On the other hand, given that the Stewpot does tremendous good in the community (which I do not dispute), is it better for me not to “perturb the system” (Cassell 2002) at all, but only to observe and report?

            There are additional reasons for which I feel the need to be extremely cautious in exercising or claiming power within the agency:  staff and volunteers know me to be not only an anthropologist, but also an ordained Presbyterian minister of more than twenty years’ experience.  Thus, although I am “only a volunteer” within the organizational structure of the Stewpot, I am also a colleague of Karl, the director; and therefore his equal in important respects.  In addition, the Dallas church which I served until its closure in 2008 gave a gift to the Stewpot of $97,000 from the final disbursal of its funds.  Thus, although for the purposes of research I might like to be considered “just” an observer and volunteer, my social location with relation both to the agency and to its “parent” church and staff makes this impossible.  It would be naïve for me to expect that my ideas, recommendations, or even offhand remarks would be given no more weight than those of any other long-term volunteer or even “expert” outsider.

            But the question remains: When is it time to stop observing and begin advocating?  Even at the micro-level – within one helping agency – the answers are not always clear.  Is it appropriate for me to claim my own power and to challenge a staff member who (it appears to me) is behaving inappropriately toward the client population?  Is it my role to chime in on policies (such as the Stewpot IDs) that need to be amended in order to serve clients better?  Should I take sides in staff disagreements when I have strong feelings about one side or the other?  If I answer these questions affirmatively, will my ability to do useful research in this setting be compromised?  (If so, will that change how I answer the questions?)  In this setting, or in any setting where we find ourselves, which is the greater goal in the present moment: to increase useful knowledge, or to make a positive impact on vulnerable lives?

            Scholars who work among and on behalf of the homeless find ourselves at differing places on the continuum between noninterference and advocacy.  It is perhaps not altogether different from the struggles faced by helping agencies to find a balance between charity and justice, between meeting immediate needs and seeking to change social structures in order to eliminate those needs.  I would argue simply that, wherever on the continuum we find ourselves at any given moment, it is incumbent upon us to be certain that we enlist our own power – whether it is the power to describe and analyze, or the power to bring about change, or some combination – in ways that will increase and not decrease the power of the populations we are studying … in this case, regardless of their power in relation to each other.

Notes

1.         My use of quotation marks around the verb “prove” is quite deliberate: these studies, though useful in some aspects – i.e., their survey of current efforts to assist the homeless in Dallas and other major cities – are laughable in terms of their research methodology.  The first (Weinstein and Clower 2000) establishes a negative correlation between (a) property values in Dallas’s southern downtown sector, which are considerably lower than those in the northern downtown sector, and (b) the presence of homeless people in the southern sector; and concludes from this the presence of homeless persons causes property values to be depressed.  The second (Weinstein and Clower 2006) is problematic in at least two ways. First, it asks only about business owners’ perceptions of whether customers are frightened away by the presence of the homeless; it makes no effort to survey customers who regularly shop downtown (or who avoid shopping downtown) to ask them whether this perception is true.  Second, and most egregious, its sole research method is to survey downtown business owners … the very group that funded the study in the first place.  Can we talk about “conflict of interest”?!

2.         The Stewpot and First Presbyterian Church are the actual names of the referenced institutions.  Given that the specific Dallas context is crucial to my ongoing work, it is pointless to try to disguise these.  However, the personal names given to all staff and volunteers are pseudonyms.

3.         During the time period of my research, the Stewpot moved its meal service location from the Stewpot’s own site to the new city-owned shelter located about four blocks to the south, and expanded from serving weekday lunches only to three meals a day, seven days a week.

4.         In creating the SPSS worksheet/database to track clients’ needs along with basic demographic information, I found that I needed more than sixty different “values” to account for the different tasks and/or information that a front desk staff person or volunteer must master in order to do the job effectively.  For example, it is not sufficient simply to say “The Stewpot cannot help you get a Social Security card.”  Staff are expected to know where the client can get that card, and to provide directions.

5.         Though it is unusual to find client-staff power imbalances as a major topic of analysis, the following have interesting depictions and discussions of shelter staff power and control over residents: Desjarlais 1997; Dordick 1997; Hopper 2003; Marvasti 2003; Wagner 1993.

6.         Without such a basic form of identification, the homeless are often caught in a Catch-22 when they try to obtain more official, government-issued forms of ID.  In order to get a copy of one’s birth certificate – at least, in the State of Texas – one must present a photo ID at the Bureau of Vital Statistics.  But, in order to get a state photo ID card or drivers license as proof of identity, a birth certificate is one of the forms of ID that is most commonly utilized because it is (relatively) easily obtained.

7.         IDs are also available for persons without Social Security numbers, such as undocumented immigrants; these will include the photo, name, and birth date.  Obviously these are of limited use for legal and bureaucratic purposes, but they are recognized for such needs as admittance to a shelter.

Works Cited

 Bridgman, Rae.  2003.  Safe Haven: The Story of a Shelter for Homeless Women.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

      2006.  StreetCities: Rehousing the Homeless.  Toronto: Broadview Press.

Cassell, Joan.  2002.  “Perturbing the System: ‘Hard Science,’ ‘Soft Science,’ and Social Science, the Anxiety and Madness of Method.” Human Organization 61(2):177-185.

Desjarlais, Robert.  1997.  Shelter Blues: Sanity and Selfhood among the Homeless.  Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Dordick, Gwendolyn.  1997.  Something Left to Lose: Personal Relations and Survival among New York’s Homeless.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Gans, Herbert.  1995. The War against the Poor: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy.  New York: Basic Books.

Gibson, Timothy A. 2004.  Securing the Spectacular City: The Politics of Revitalization and Homelessness in Downtown Seattle.  Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Graff, Harvey J. 2008.  The Dallas Myth: The Making and Unmaking of a Modern City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hanson, Royce.  2003.  Civic Culture and Urban Change: Governing Dallas.  Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Hill, Patricia Evridge.  1996.  Dallas: The Making of a Modern City. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Hopper, Kim.  2003.  Reckoning with Homelessness.  Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Lipsky, Michael. 1980.  Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Lyon-Callo, Vincent.  2004.  Inequality, Poverty, and Neoliberal Governance: Activist Ethnography in the Homeless Sheltering Industry.  Toronto: Broadview Press.

Marvasti, Amir B.  2003.  Being Homeless: Textual and Narrative Constructions. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Mitchell, Don.  2003.  The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space.  New York: The Guilford Press.

O’Flaherty, Brendan.  1996.  Making Room: The Economics of Homelessness.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Payne, Darwin.  1994.  Big D: Triumphs and Troubles of an American Supercity in the 20^th Century.  Dallas: Three Forks Press.

Rowe, Michael.  1999.  Crossing the Border: Encounters between Homeless People and Outreach Workers.  Berkeley: University of California Press.

Sahlins, Marshall D.  1972.  Stone Age Economics.  Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.

Scott, James. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Valado, Martha Trenna.  2005.  “Homeless Places or Consumer Spaces? Struggles over Urban Public Space.”  Paper presented at the Annual Meeting, Society for Applied Anthropology, Santa Fe, NM.

Wagner, David.  1993.  Checkerboard Square: Culture and Resistance in a Homeless Community.  Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Weinstein, Bernard L., and Terry L. Clower. 2000. “The Cost of Homelessness in Dallas: An Economic and Fiscal Perspective.” Report prepared for the Central Citizens Association. Denton, TX: Center for Economic Development and Research, University of North Texas.