Annette Koh
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“The Polish philosopher Alfred Korzybski famously argued that the map does not represent the territory which it depicts; the map conveys instead a...”
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HAWAIIAN CONSCIENCISM with Linda Tuhiwai Smith on May 2, 2013 at UH Manoa. She spoke on activism, feminism, culture, difference,...
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After 666 comments, a friend of mine was kicked off Metafilter. That was ten years ago. He told me his old screennames over drinks a...
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The Cola Road (2013)
Filmed over the course of one winter in Portland, Oregon, American Winter presents an intimate and emotionally evocative snapshot of the state of our economy as it is playing out in many American families.
Working together with the nonprofit organization 211info in Portland, the filmmakers were given full access to monitor and record calls from distressed families who were calling 211’s emergency hotline in search of help. They then began following the stories of some of these callers in more depth over several months.
Where do you go when you lose your home? Living in a Ramada Hotel from week to week.
The Machine Is Unheimlich: Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Homeless Vehicle Project
Designed by Krzysztof Wodiczko, a New York artist, the vehicle was first exhibited in 1988. The prototype was constructed in consultation with homeless men and subsequently women; it was first tested in the streets of New York’s Lower East Side, then elsewhere in the city and in Philadelphia. An ongoing project, it has undergone continual revision and modification, and there are now four variants of the Homeless Vehicle. 
An appropriately extreme response to mass social eviction, the Homeless Vehicle neither is nor is meant to be a solution. It ‘is not a home but illegal real estate’, according to Papo Colo; it is an ‘architecture provoked by poverty, a missile, the indication of flight, of retreat, or invasion and attack’. With the appearance of a high-precision, military-industrial instrument, it expresses the social absurdity and obscenity of widespread homelessness…
(Neil Smith, 1993, “Homeless/global: Scaling places” in J. Bird et al Mapping the Futures: Local cultures, global change)
“For example, over the years, a steady stream of freshmen students have visited my concrete minimalist office in UC Berkeley’s Wurster Hall seeking advice on how to write papers on homelessness in the Third World. They are frustrated by the rarity of the terminology of homelessness as they journey beyond U.S. borders. And while never fully admitted, there is quite a bit of surprise and even profound unease at the idea that “home” rather than “elsewhere” might be the underdeveloped Other, a site of the lack, or failure, so often reserved for the Third World. As they begin their research projects, they find themselves surrounded by a rich array of housing terms that are used in Third World settings — from “slums” and “squatter settlements” to “pavement dwellers” and “informal subdivisions” — a vocabulary that indicates a spectrum of housing practices. In many ways, the dominance of the term “homelessness” in the American context bears testimony to the poverty of housing responses here.”
From Ananya Roy’s “Transnational Trespassings: The Geopolitics of Urban Informality” in Urban Informality
We’re headed to the Convoy of Hope this morning. Some statistics from the Hawai’i Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice’s recent report, “The State of Poverty in Hawaii”:
- Hawai`i has the third highest homelessness rate among the states, with an increase of 11 percent between 2010 and 2011. Of these homeless individuals, 42 percent are children.
- Hawai`i’s housing costs are the highest in the nation. Our median rent is 50 percent more than the national rate, and 75 percent of our low-income households spend more than half of their income on rent.
- Two-thirds of single adult families with one or two children are below the self-sufficiency level, while 18.5 percent of two-adult families with two children also fall below it.
- Between 2008 and 2010, the need for benefits spiked, with a 13 percent increase in families receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and a 17 percent increase in the amount of time on assistance; the number of people receiving state medical assistance jumped 22 percent; and applications to federally qualified health centers increased 62 percent.
- A “thrifty food plan,” as defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, costs 61 percent more in Hawai`i than on the mainland. Enrollment in SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) has increased by 39 percent since 2007, while 15 percent of our households don’t always know how they’ll get their next meal.
The poor and the homeless have few advocates. Especially the homeless. (See 2012 Honolulu elections in which taking away people’s belongings is considered a major success in humane homeless management.) But even the Scroogiest “are there no workhouses?” among us hesitate in our condemnation of those shiftless, improvident poor when faced with a poor, homeless kid.
Children’s rights advocate Marian Wright Edelman and her husband Peter Edelman are coming to Hawaii as part of the Artists for Appleseed event on August 24. Original MSNBC video clip that I couldn’t get to work via newwavefeminism:
The MHP show talking with Children’s Rights Activist Marian Wright Edelman about the plight of poor children in the country.
From dGenerate films:
STREET LIFE explores the hidden lives of homeless migrants who survive in the shadows of one of Shanghai’s most historic and affluent streets.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants are drawn to the allure of Shanghai, one of the world’s most vibrant cities, with hopes of earning a decent living. Some end up in the dark alleys of Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s largest shopping street, where they learn to hustle and scrape together any kind of living they can. One migrant, known as Black Skin, faces numerous pressures in his daily existence, including police violence. Black Skin’s story intersects with those of fellow bottle collectors, enterprising thieves and even a young boy who was abandoned. Eventually Black Skin goes mad, dancing wildly through the crowds of Nanjing Road and in the doorways of luxury shops.
That guy & his belly really reminded me of that one actor in Stephen Chow’s films. For the record, Kung Fu Hustle made me love the idea of Shanghai almost enough to forget how much more I love Taipei in reality.
Sticker sold in a San Diego store
Ever since the stored property ordinance (Bill 54) was signed into law here in the City and County of Honolulu, I’ve been reading/thinking a lot about the criminalization of homelessness. The clearest explanation on the fundamental injustice of these ordinances was laid out by legal scholar Jeremy Waldron in his 1991-92 article “Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom”:
Now one question we face as a society — a broad question of justice and social policy — is whether we are willing to tolerate an economic system in which large numbers of people are homeless. Since the answer is evidently, “Yes,” the question that remains is whether we are willing to allow those who are in this predicament to act as free agents, looking after their own needs, in public places — the only space available to them. It is a deeply frightening fact about the modern United States that those who have homes and jobs are willing to answer “Yes” to the first question and “No” to the second.
As someone utterly dependent on the public restrooms of the Seoul subway system (nearly always before the turnstiles and thus accessible to all), I am not sure why people get so huffy about homeless people in Hawaii choosing to live at beach parks. Access to showers and bathrooms ain’t no small thing. As Waldron writes, “Moreover, though we say there is nothing particularly dignified about sleeping or urinating, there is certainly something deeply and inherently undignified about being prevented from doing so.”
A lawyerly way of saying the following, yes, America does sh**ty things to homeless people (full article at Alternet).
1. Outlawing sitting down.
2. Denying people access to shelters.
3. Making it illegal to give people food.
4. Installing obstacles to prevent sleeping or sitting.
5. Anti-panhandling laws.
6. Anti-panhandling laws to punish people who give.
7. Feeding panhandling meters instead of panhandlers.
8. Selective enforcement of laws like jaywalking and loitering.
9. Police raids repeatedly destroying possessions and shelters of the homeless.
10. Kicking homeless kids out of school.
Honolulu is a Homeless Hotspot.
Richard Florida in Atlantic Cities:
Not surprisingly, housing costs play a role in homelessness. We found a positive correlation between the homelessness rate and the cost of housing (.37).
While the popular impression is that homelessness breeds crime, we found none. In fact, we found homelessness to be negatively associated with crime (with a correlation of -.33 to property crimes and -.27 to the overall crime rate).
As for economic conditions, our findings were mixed. The main economic factor that plays a role in homelessness is unemployment (with a correlation of .36).
Unsurprisingly, one of the strongest correlations of all was between warm winters and homelessness. The correlation between homelessness and mean January temperature is .47, the highest of any in our analysis.
I floated past the Occupy Honolulu encampment at Thomas Square earlier this evening, curious after reading the Civil Beat article on their December meeting with Mayor Carlisle following the new city ordinance prohibiting the storage of personal property on public sidewalks. Asking for an exception to Bill 54, the stored property ordinance, seemed like a failed opportunity on the part of Occupy Honolulu to claim solidarity with the some of the most maligned people within the 99%.
image from Civil Beat’s article on the Moiliili sweep
The Occupy encampment is located on an awkward corner of Beretania, facing away from oncoming traffic. I imagine it’s been little more than a blurry splotch of tents for bus riders and drivers commuting in the mornings. Turns out that tonight is their last night. Property removal notices have been pasted to nearly everything, the Welcome sign, the potted plants, the bookshelves, and of course the tents. I wish I had brought a camera just to document the thoroughness with which items had been tagged by city workers. It felt like a Alice in Wonderland version of Hoarders. The woman at the literature table mentioned that the table itself was pretty much the only object not tagged for removal. “This is protected under free speech, because we’re distributing information.” She maintained that the tents should also fall under First Amendment protection because of the slogans written on their sides.
In the comments section of the original article, a Dan Clark wrote
“Liberal idealists malign ‘colonial powers’ for ‘occupying’ aboriginal lands in the US, India, Africa, Latin America, Taiwan, Japan or the West Bank yet you think it is completely okay to monopolize the sidewalks and parks. Sidewalks are made for [walking], not camping. Frankly, the Occupy Movement is a colonial power trying to steal the parks and sidewalks the rest of us pay for.”
Setting aside the metaphorical silliness of equating protest with colonialism, it’s clear that the question of what constitutes acceptable public use of sidewalks needs to be discussed. A lot of it boils down to what we’ve learned to think of as normal. After 5 years in Seoul, I am used to seeing semi-permanent protest camps set up in front of public buildings and corporate headquarters, with a series of posters and banners exhaustively explaining the controversy to any passers-by. The vinyl lean-tos are a kind of three-dimensional newspaper with only one topic. So even though I am a bit of a grinch when it comes to the efficacy of Occupy encampments in terms of long term capacity building, I can imagine their potential as tangible tactile media.
And I suspect the horror with which some Oahu residents view being homeless in public — “what will the tourists think! they’ll never want to come back to Hawaii!” — is because homelessness at this scale is a relatively recent phenomenon here. All us mainland-raised malihinis think of homeless folks as a consistent and unsurprising presence on big city streets. Far from our visitors huffing & puffing in outrage at the sight of a wino in Waikiki, everyone has marveled at how much easier it is to maintain dignity and hygiene where there are accessible public bathrooms and showers at beach parks.
Oddly enough, what visiting friends have grumbled about are the edifices of abandoned appliances and furniture that block Honolulu sidewalks. I know that bulky items pick-up is a perennial topic at neighborhood board meetings. A Department of Health project with Waipahu High students came to the conclusion that community health was negatively affected by all the heaps of trash. Combined with intermittent or crumbling sidewalks, abandoned rubbish is a greater menace to pedestrian freedom than a homeless woman with a fort of suitcases at the bus stop or a protest camp on a not particularly visible corner of a busy thoroughfare.
I’m still mulling over how to reframe the issue and why we accept sitting furniture but not sitting people on our sidewalks, but I suspect there is a way to have this conversation. I think the next step is to nerd out and get a copy of Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris’ book Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotation over Public Space.
