L i f e o n t h e M a rg i n s i n a Residential Motel
Exiled in AMERICA
C H R I S T O P H E R P. D U M
PREFACE
In 1993 National Public Radio (NPR) reporter David Isay arrived in the South Side of Chicago with a remarkable idea. His mission was to find two kids growing up in public housing and, in his words, “hire them as reporters for a week and give them a chance to tell their stories.” Isay’s methodology was brilliant in its simplicity. He would give his young reporters tape recorders to carry as they went about their daily lives, chronicling their thoughts and experiences as they happened. It was in the Ida B. Wells housing project that Isay found his young and insightful correspondents; thirteen-year-old LeAlan Jones and fourteen-year-old Lloyd Newman. For seven days in 1993 and a year from 1994 to 1995, the pair used the simple power of their voices to capture the realities of inner-city life. They also reported on the aftermath of the death of Eric Morse, who died at the age of five after he was dropped from the fourteenth floor of an apartment building by two other young boys. Using over a hundred hours of audio, Isay, Jones, and Newman produced two award-winning NPR segments and the book Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago. I read this book as a first-year doctoral student and it made me wonder, what other voices were waiting to be heard? Many voiceless individuals are battling some sort of stigma that they feel they cannot reveal. According to sociologist Erving Goffman, stigma is “an attribute that is deeply discrediting.” There is
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perhaps no other class of criminal more stigmatized or scrutinized in the United States than sexual offenders, especially those who offend against children. In fact, one study found that individuals would prefer to have a murderer in their neighborhood over a child molester. Fears of recidivism have led to the passage of numerous federal, state, and local laws designed to keep convicted sex offenders away from potential child victims. They include sex-offender registration laws, such as the Jacob Wetterling Act, community notification laws, such as Megan’s Law, and residence restrictions, which limit the areas where sex offenders may live. Research suggests, however, that many legal measures may not be effective; sex-offender registries are filled with inaccuracies, and residence restrictions show little impact on recidivism. Yet the laws do have a tremendous impact on released sex offenders who try to reenter their communities. In surveys and interviews, many sex offenders report trouble finding jobs and securing housing, as well as the psychological effects of losing friends, feeling alone and isolated, being harassed in public, and fearing for their safety. These experiences may have distinct effects on the ability of sex offenders to reintegrate successfully into society. As I studied the lives of sex offenders, I wondered what it was like for them to live with these policies and the social stigma that surrounds their presence in the community. If someone empowered them to be the reporters of their lives, as Isay did with Jones and Newman, what would they say? My initial explorations into the state sex-offender registry alerted me to the presence of the Boardwalk Motel (figure 1), located in the largely white and middle-class suburban town of Dutchland. This motel held a dubious reputation in the community because government agencies used it to house registered sex offenders who would otherwise be homeless. It was the subject of many community debates concerning where sex offenders could live and how many should be allowed to live in one location. Adding to the concerns, a local legislator found through her own investigation that social services had placed families with children at the Boardwalk at the same time that registered sex offenders were living there. She also uncovered a plethora of code violations that included “no up-to-date
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fire alarm certifications, raw sewage, structural damage to roof, interior water damage, mold throughout entire rooms, exposed wiring, gas leak, missing bathroom tiles, rooms missing smoke detectors, bug infestation, bathroom mold, debris piled outside rooms, electric socket falling from wall, spliced wiring, cracked toilets.” In the fallout from this investigation, social services stopped housing families with children at the Boardwalk but continued to place adult clients there. These revelations about the Boardwalk made it clear to me that the motel was not just a home for sex offenders. Rather, it housed a variety of marginalized populations (such as people who were mentally ill, disabled, struggling addicts, or working poor) who lived hidden from the public eye, in squalid conditions that many of us would consider unfit for habitation. I had found not only an interesting group of potential reporters but a unique location where they were socially embedded. The focus of my study then moved from a more general interest in how sex offenders lived in the community to a much more specific inquiry into how marginalized populations lived at this motel. Inspired by classic and contemporary ethnographic works, including Elliot Liebow’s Tally’s Corner, Philippe Bourgois’s In Search of Respect, David Snow and Leon Anderson’s Down on Their Luck, Elijah Anderson’s Code of the Street, and Mitch Duneier’s Sidewalk, I set out for the Boardwalk Motel to capture the voices of its residents. I ended up living there for a year, witnessing firsthand the small triumphs and many indignities that the residents faced every day.
This book is an exploration of the Boardwalk Motel told through the perspective of those most qualified to tell it: the residents themselves. I conceptualize these residents as “social refugees”— persons who have been impelled to relocate within their own country of citizenship because of the influence of social context and/or social policy. By recounting their experiences, often in their own voices, I analyze what it was like to live in the intimate world of the motel, as well as in the surrounding community. Motel residents faced stigma and stereotype not only from the citizens of Dutchland,
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who feared for the safety of their homes and children, but also from one another. My goal is to show how these social contexts influenced resident status, identity, and behavior. Ultimately, I argue that their experiences at the Boardwalk Motel strongly affected motel residents in ways that were unique to the setting. These residents represented some of the most vulnerable individuals in society, and their living situation exacerbated their vulnerabilities. They were often precariously close to living on the street, a fact that was largely ignored in the public discussions of the motel. While the dynamics of homelessness are outside the scope of this work, writer Jonathan Kozol provides a simple lens through which to understand its root causes. In his book Rachel and Her Children, Kozol writes, “The cause of homelessness is lack of housing.” The following chapters examine how various social forces created a lack of housing that necessitated the existence of the Boardwalk Motel. Toward the end of my research project, the motel was forced to close and its residents needed new housing. Once again, societal forces pushed them to other, similar locations on the margins and out of the public eye. In this respect, the story of the Boardwalk is the story of society’s response to marginalization and inequality as manifested through the outcome of homelessness.
The introduction that follows provides the historical contexts for studying the Boardwalk Motel. I examine the rise and fall of the American motel industry, as well as the impact of America’s criminal justice system and the recent Great Recession on residential instability. I then describe my research methods and introduce the residents who were key informants in my research. Chapter 1 paints an in-depth portrait of the Boardwalk Motel, its history, and the living conditions encountered there. In chapter 2 I analyze how residents viewed the motel’s conditions relative to their previous housing environments. Residents also share their life histories, often featuring characteristics of vulnerability and instability that predated their arrival at the Boardwalk. Chapter 3 explores the issue of stigma and uses narratives to illustrate how residents formed identities and
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boundaries as a resistance to stigma. In chapter 4 I dive into the subculture of the motel that revolved around what I call the cycle of community, conflict, and fragility. Specifically, I examine the ways in which residents sought to address their deprivations through social interaction, and how the consequences of interactions gone wrong often left residents more vulnerable than when they arrived. Chapter 5 then turns its eyes toward the ways in which concerns about “quality of life,” “civility,” and “order” dominated perceptions about the motel, and how these concerns were, or were not, realized through resident behavior in the local community. Finally, the conclusion examines the historical and political significance of the Boardwalk Motel’s existence. By examining what happened after I left the field, I show how meaningful policy changes can be made in order to address the many societal failures that plagued life at the Boardwalk. It is a call for action and for a new way of looking at the many forms of marginalization, not just of homelessness but of class and social structure, wielded by powerful groups in attempts to “sanitize” their social space. Ethnographers find themselves in a unique position to observe the lives of others in deeply intimate ways. This gives us the power to show the other side of the coin, so to speak. My goal in this book is to tell the motel’s story in the words of those who know it best. It is an “alternative history” in a sense, because without it, the only record of the Boardwalk would be the accounts written by those who did not even live there. Throughout the book I attempt to present a counterforce to the stereotypes and stigmas that often plague marginalized populations such as those living at the Boardwalk. Such stereotypes often fail to take into account the social forces that affect human behavior. Goffman writes, “Persons in the same social position tend to possess a similar pattern of behavior. Any item of a person’s behavior is, therefore, a sign of his social position.” The social forces that drive behavior and social position cannot be considered when stereotypes and stigma prevail. Ultimately, I believe that by presenting the perspectives and experiences of motel residents, I allow them to lay claim to their significance as distinct and valid human beings.