This report, undertaken by the After Echo Park Lake research collective, was homework assigned by unhoused comrades, especially those who are part of UTACH, Unhoused Tenants Against Carceral Housing. While the stark reality of unhoused deaths has long been a matter of concern, the COVID-19 pandemic brought surprising new challenges. As the report shows, in addition to deaths on the street, there were also deaths in hotels and motels, including in the emergency housing program, Project Roomkey. A large proportion of hotel/motel deaths are attributed by the coroner to drug and alcohol overdoses, a finding in keeping with general trends in unhoused deaths. As the report argues, it is crucially important to understand such deaths as evidence of the dislocation and trauma caused by housing insecurity and displacement as well as by carceral isolation in shelter and emergency housing programs. Drawing on the organizing by UTACH, Unhoused Tenants Against Carceral Housing, the report amplifies the demand for unconditional and humane permanent housing.

Link to Report

Authored by the After Echo Park Lake research collective, this monograph analyzes processes of state-led displacement in Los Angeles. With a focus on the violent eviction of the unhoused community at Echo Park Lake, a public park in a gentrifying neighborhood of the city close to downtown, it draws attention to how political claims of housing placements legitimize such displacement but rarely result in housing outcomes. Through ethnographic research as well as analysis of homeless management data, it exposes this ruse of housing and draws attention to a condition of permanent displaceability for the city’s poor. A key finding of the monograph is that at a time of expanded housing resources underwritten by federal and state emergency and economic relief funds, there is a perverse investment of public funds in the criminalization of poverty and in the carceral containment of the unhoused. In sharp contrast to such carcerality are the infrastructures of community envisioned by unhoused organizers, including that which was built and sustained at Echo Park Lake.

Link to Monograph

As the rate of homelessness increases across urban centers in America, vast amounts of unhoused people are being criminalized and being subjected to forced displacement by state authorities. Most of the existing literature written on homelessness services focus on formalservices that take place in an office setting rather than on-the-ground outreach. These present insightful learnings, but they do not provide a clear understanding of the process of outreach nor unhoused individuals’ experiences. To address this gap, we conducted a qualitative analysis,collecting narratives about unhoused individuals’ lived experiences with formal and informal systems of outreach in Koreatown, Los Angeles. We sought to understand what forms of outreach made unhoused individuals feel supported. We conducted semi-structured conversational interviews with volunteers and engaged in participatory ethnography duringweekly outreach. We inquired about unhoused peoples’ experiences with formal and informaloutreach to understand how these systems differ, what potential improvements can be made, and which initiatives have been successful. We found that unhoused individuals were able to formmore trusting relationships with volunteers than with case-workers due to consistency,expectation management skills, and respect towards unhoused people. Given our findings, future recommendations include partnerships between the formal and informal sectors, further fundingfor formal outreach, and adhering to existing recommendations regarding formal outreach reform.

Link to Article