Submitted by:
Jared Edgar McKnight
Primary Investigator + Research Lead
Unhoused, Unseen RnA PM
Allison Nkwocha
Research Lead Landscape Architecture
Tanushri Dalmiya Daniel Aguilera
Research Lead Planning + Urban Design
Research Lead Architecture
Research in Action, RnA 2024 @ WRT
Unhoused, Unseen:
The (in)visibility of homelessness in Philadelphia’s ‘public’ spaces
This project began as an extension of Jared’s previous research efforts over the last four years, which have focused primarily on the criminalization of unhoused individuals in ‘public’ spaces in Los Angeles, extending the research to Philadelphia to explore whether similar conditions exist for persons experiencing homelessness.
Jared's foundational research, which has received previous funding from the Landscape Architecture Foundation, Pando Populus, the University of Southern California and USC's Landscape Justice Initiative, worked to expose the structures that isolate, exclude, and oppress persons experiencing homelessness to determine how codified spatial regulations disproportionately target, and criminalize, one’s ability and right to live while unhoused in the face of exacerbated climate inequities.
Unhoused, Unseen: The (in)visibility of homelessness in Philadelphia’s ‘public’ spaces
In Philadelphia, the Unhoused, Unseen RnA team (Jared, Ally, Tanushri and Daniel) set out to explore whether similar conditions exist locally. , first through a deep dive into the City’s Code for policies that explicitly and/or implicitly criminalize the existence of unhoused individuals.
Through this process, the team began to address a gap in spatial analysis knowledge on homelessness over time in Philadelphia through mapping of policy, public facilities and infrastructures that act as supportive (or potential) resources, homeless services, land use, locations of cleared encampments, and climate data.
The theme of visibility and invisibility and their duality that people experiencing homelessness are forced to navigate in the city’s ‘public’ spaces—emerged as driving force for subsequent study. This enabled the team to zero in on the annual Point-InTime (PIT) Count as a possible mechanism to begin addressing how data on homelessness which is essential in determining state and municipal financial support is both difficult to collect, and notoriously inaccurate.
How can data collection do more to center the lived experiences and actual needs of people experiencing homelessness? This question is an entry point to broader questions we have as designers and planners, considering our own agency:
How can we expand our environmental justice, resiliency, adaptation, and climate action work to focus on the most vulnerable populations and frontline communities to arrive at more inclusive, equitable, and empathetic solutions for public spaces?
And how can this teach us to understand the contexts where we work in new ways—can this research reframe how we think about the contexts where we work, and better understand, at an extremely intimate scale, the communities where we seek to create impact through design solutions?
The annual Point-In-Time (PIT) Count of visibly unhoused individuals is conducted on a single night in January by 382 Continuums of Care (CoCs) covering the geography of the United States. The count is our primary source of data on homelessness, but is notoriously difficult to collect and often inaccurate. This research is interested in designing a new process for Philadelphia’s PIT Count by leveraging existing programs and resources so that we can create more empathetic touchpoints that compile human-centric data to achieve greater impact in interfacing with unhoused individuals living unsheltered. This project addresses the gap in knowledge on homelessness and its relation to public space in Philadelphia. Through the dual lenses of the visibility and invisibility of homelessness, this project discusses local narratives of encampment closures and the inherent shortcomings and challenges of the PIT Count to arrive at methodological and spatial interventions to humanize the way we count.
Introduction:
On Visibility Initial Inquiries Research Process
Understanding visible, and unveiling invisible, factors. Initiating existing conditions analysis in Philadelphia. Situating Philadelphia in the national context.
04 05 06
Going Beyond the Numbers Conclusions & Next Steps... Bibliography & References
Reframing how we see, so we can begin to see differently.
Building relationships to humanize the work + learn.
Annotated bibliography of relevant references.
In considering what homelessness means in Philadelphia and beyond, we realized that the visibility of “homelessness” in our daily lives is a profoundly important lens through which we perceive and understand homelessness in our city. The visual representation of homelessness is at the core of the narrative on the local and national homeless epidemic, and most Philadelphians likely have an image in their mind of what homelessness looks like.
Perhaps these images are rendered from imagery of the encampments that have long lined Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, the once infamous “El Campamento” encampment that was cleared in 2017, the frequent news coverage on expensive plans to “clean up” areas of the city at the intersection of homelessness and the opioid crisis, the policing operations of minimal success aimed at reducing addiction and homelessness, encounters with unhoused individuals in Center City or at the airport, the indefinite closure of SEPTA’s Market-Frankford Line Somerset Station, protest encampments from 2020, or the unflattering headlines on investigations into the city’s Office of Homeless Services.
Wherever the images of “homelessness” come from, homelessness has a very strong and visible narrative in Philadelphia. Language such as “open air drug market,” “zombies,” “National Guard deployment,” and the need to “take back the neighborhood” directly informs how we perceive, see, and even understand homelessness.
But what do we miss when we study homelessness through this narrow lens? What is invisible to outsiders, however well-meaning they may be? What lived experiences are we unable to see, and where are we subsequently unable to respond with empathy? Our team believes that these personal
and public perceptions of homelessness are especially important to discuss because they are directly connected to the criminalization often associated with homelessness. Public perceptions of visible homelessness typically link homelessness to criminality, drug use, violence, and danger, which contributes to a larger perception of the city as an unsafe place. Local policy reflects and addresses these public perceptions and concerns, and unhoused individuals bear the dual burden of being simultaneously ignored out of social disgust and increasingly made vulnerable through increased surveillance (Figure 1). The result for those experiencing homelessness in public space is a threatening physical visibility coupled with a dehumanizing social invisibility.
Our baseline image of homelessness (and most available data on homelessness) is derived from visible homelessness. But what about the forms of homelessness that we can’t see? Off the streets, there are people living in shelters, in their cars, and even less visibly, in motels and in the homes of others. In a February 2022 New York Times article, “A Life Without a Home,” a mother of four and nursing student named Chelsea Stevens, who lives in friends’ homes with one of her children, said “I’d say I do a really decent job at masking what’s going on. I don’t think I look homeless, do you?”1 People living in shelters and in cars fall under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) definition of homeless, but those living temporarily in motels on their own dime and “doubled up” in the homes of others do not. Even just by definition, the data on homelessness, which is notoriously difficult to accurately collect, does not speak to the range of lived experiences held by those experiencing homelessness.
Ralph Nunez and Cybelle Fox call homelessness “one of the most misunderstood and least documented social policy issues of our time.”2 As designers and planners conducting this research, we aim to contribute to efforts to bridge the gap between data, lived experiences, physical public space, and policy. Most importantly, we want to lead with empathy to make an impact locally and center human experiences while collecting and communicating ‘big’ data and information. Our practices as designers and planners demand that we think holistically across scales of individual space, housing, public space, social and political systems, neighborhoods, and cities. The solution to homelessness will ultimately be a spatial one. Homelessness
is, above all else, a result of the housing crisis, structural racism, and the criminalization of vulnerable individuals (often in ‘public’ space). That criminalization, which often leads to involvement in the criminal justice system, directly impacts the likelihood of individuals finding permanent supportive housing in the future. In his foundational research, Primary Investigator Jared Edgar McKnight found that “for as long as it takes to deliver a housing solution, unhoused individuals will continue to suffer at the hands of our codified systems of regulations, as they navigate the open spaces, ‘public’ realm, streetscapes, and parks that we design.”
3 Because homelessness is both a social policy and a spatial problem, we believe that designers and planners are uniquely suited to offer valuable and creative insights into one of the most defining issues of our time.
Public Perception of City as Unsafe
Linking of homelessness to:
• Criminality
• Drug Use
• Violence
• Danger
THREATENED/ CRIMINALIZED BY VISIBILITY DEHUMANIZED BY FORCED INVISIBILITY
Experiencing Homelessness in Public Space
Local Policy Reflects/ Addresses Public Perceptions Cyclical Ignoring = Social Invisibility Surveillance = Physical visibility/ vulnerability
1 Linda Villarosa et al., “Voices from Inside America’s Homelessness Crisis,” The New York Times, February 21, 2024, https://www. nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/21/opinion/ homelessness-crisis-america-stories.html.
2 Ralph Nunez and Cybelle Fox, “A Snapshot of Family Homelessness across America,” Political Science Quarterly 114, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 289–307.
3 Jared Edgar McKnight, “Criminalized for Their Very Existence: The Spatial Politics of Homelessness,” May 15, 2021, https://exhibitions. uscarch.com/criminalized-for-their-veryexistence-the-spatial-politics-of-homelessness/.
“Homelessness remains one of the most misunderstood and least documented social policy issues of our time.”
-
Ralph Nunez and Cybelle Fox
From “A Snapshot of Family Homelessnes Across America”
Figure 1 – Diagram of Visibility: Perception & Criminalization
Initially, we set out to determine how codified spatial regulations in Philadelphia and San Francisco exacerbate climate inequities and disproportionately target and criminalize one’s ability and right to live while unhoused. We wanted to better understand how our urban public landscapes can contribute to social advancement and how we can design and advocate for more equitable spaces where vulnerable populations can more safely negotiate our urban realm. Our work builds upon Jared’s previous research efforts over the last four years, which have focused primarily on the criminalization of unhoused individuals in ‘public’ spaces in Los Angeles. In Philadelphia, we began to explore whether similar conditions exist locally. Almost immediately, it became apparent that there is a gap in spatial analysis knowledge on homelessness over time and its relation to public space in Philadelphia. Given this local gap, we decided to focus our research exclusively on Philadelphia, with a desire to return to inquiries in San Francisco in a future scope.
We began with a deep dive into the city of Philadelphia’s Code for policies that explicitly (and/or implicitly) criminalize the existence of unhoused individuals in Philadelphia. We addressed the knowledge gap through mapping of local policy, public facilities and infrastructures that act as supportive (or potential) resources to those experiencing homelessness, known homeless services, land use, locations of cleared encampments, and climate data. This initial research and spatial analysis helped us further narrow the scope of our work and research question. While deep exploration of the ways that climate already does and will continue to impact people experiencing homelessness is profoundly important and was an initial goal for our research, we found that a more basic theme emerged as a necessary starting point to this work: the visibility and invisibility of homelessness.
Visibility and invisibility (and their duality that people experiencing homelessness are forced to navigate in the city’s ‘public’ spaces) decidedly became the driving force for our research. Rather than focusing on the design of public spaces as they pertain to homelessness, we backed up a step further to focus on the design of the data that directly informs policy and fiscal resources. We identified the annual Point-In-Time (PIT) Count (the national count of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness conducted on one night in January) as a possible mechanism to begin addressing data on homelessness, which is essential in determining state and municipal financial support but is both difficult to collect and notoriously inaccurate.
How can data collection do more to center the lived experiences and actual needs of people experiencing homelessness? This question is an entry point to broader questions we have as designers and planners: How can we expand our environmental justice, resiliency, adaptation, and climate action work to focus on the most vulnerable populations to arrive at more inclusive, equitable, and empathetic solutions for public spaces? And how can this teach us to reframe our understanding of the contexts where we work and help us better understand, at an extremely intimate scale, the communities with whom we seek to create impact and offer design solutions?
PERSONS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS ARE AT THE FRONTLINE OF THE CLIMATE
It was important to our team that we set guidelines for ourselves in the research process as a standard to hold ourselves to, a way to check our own biases, and as an intention to conduct our work with empathy and openness.
1. Unhoused individuals are experts in their own lives.
2. Humanize our work and approach with empathy at every scale and policy.
3. Language matters. Develop a lexicon and be mindful of how we use and define terms.
Above all, we want our research to be informative, accessible, sensitive, and approachable. We believe that this requires: 1) putting people first and remembering that individuals know their own needs best; 2) an interdisciplinary approach that spans multiple scales, from the city-wide to human-scale; and 3) critically engaging with personal biases and remembering that research and data are not neutral.
Throughout this research and report, there is reference to numerous terminologies to discuss and describe the topic of homelessness: people experiencing homelessness (PEH), homeless / homelessness, houseless / unhoused, sheltered / unsheltered, chronic homelessness, episodic / transitional homelessness, hidden (uncounted) homelessness. The term ‘homeless’ continues to be used in reporting on people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurities more largely, but in recent years, advocates and activists have recommended alternatives to the term ‘homeless.’
Alternative words like ‘unhoused’ or ‘houseless’ have been increasingly used to describe individuals without a physical address, because to be unhoused does not necessarily mean to be without ‘home.’ If we consider a ‘house’ as a place or physical space, and a ‘home’ as a feeling or a connection that transcends a place-based entity, a notion that is not contingent on the requirement of a physical place or space to feel a sense of ‘home’—then maybe ‘unhoused’ or ‘houseless’ can begin to reduce the sense of othering that occurs in reference to someone as ‘homeless’—acknowledging a more diverse set of experiences.
• Person experiencing homelessness (PEH) / Unhoused person / Houseless person [noun]
A person who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence (HUD); a person living on the street, in a shelter, in a single-room occupancy hotel, or in a car (CDC)
• Homelessness [noun]
To be unhoused does not mean to be without a ‘home’ (with the understanding that ‘home’ is not always a place, but also a mentality, a feeling, and/or a belonging)—this research defines homelessness as what is experienced by an individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, adequate and protected permanent shelter (nighttime residence)
• Human scale [noun]
The set of physical qualities, and quantities of information, that characterize the human body, its motor, sensory, or mental capabilities, and social institutions (Wikipedia); The measure of something in relation to the person or people using it; perceivable and relatable in relation to the size of a person; a scale that feels comfortable and appropriate to a person; The scale of one’s person, and by extension, one’s belongings and home
• Criminalization [noun]
[of unhoused individuals] Measures that prohibit life-sustaining activities such as sleeping, eating, sitting, and/or asking for money resources in public spaces through ordinances that include criminal penalties for violations of these acts (National Coalition for the Homeless)
We began our research by developing a baseline understanding of homelessness in Philadelphia with an overview of what homelessness means and how it is communicated at multiple scales: 1) as reported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); 2) as it appears in the Philadelphia Code and local policy; and 3) as documented in local media. We then moved into spatial analysis, visually representing what we’d learned through our research in maps and looking for compelling overlaps and topics of interest to narrow the scope of our inquiry. At the same time, we thought about what kind of outreach we could do within our local network of homeless services (ultimately, we determined that outreach would be a more appropriate step for a future phase of project work). After review and discussion of our body of research, we decided to focus on the broad theme of visibility and invisibility of homelessness and to specifically examine methodologies of counting unhoused individuals (a primary form of data collection on homelessness) as a first step in developing a new framework for collecting and communicating more representative, humanizing, informative, accurate, and useful data and knowledge on homelessness. This initial phase of our work concludes with reflections on how new methodologies of data and knowledge collection could contribute to more effective Continuums of Care (CoCs) and identifies an outreach plan for future phases of this work.
While a key finding of this research is that the realities of homelessness go beyond what official definitions cover, it is essential to understand official and applied definitions to properly analyze existing data on homelessness. HUD defines four categories of homelessness. Literal Homelessness covers “Individuals and families who live in a place not meant for human habitation (including the streets or in their car), emergency shelter, transitional housing, and hotels paid for by a government or charitable organization.” Imminent Risk of Homelessness covers “Individuals or families who will lose their primary nighttime residence within 14 days and has no other resources or support networks to obtain other permanent housing.” Homelessness Under Other Statutes covers “Unaccompanied youth under 25 years of age, or families with children and youth, who do not meet any of the other categories but are homeless under other federal statutes, have not had a lease and have moved 2 or more times in the past 60 days and are likely to remain unstable because of special needs or barriers.” The final category, Fleeing Domestic Violence , covers “Individuals or families who are fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking and who lack resources and support networks to obtain other permanent housing.”4
Notably absent from these categories are the estimated 3.7 million individuals and families who are doubled up (living in the homes of others).5
The four HUD categories of homelessness are further designated into either Sheltered and Unsheltered. Both subcategories are classified into Individuals, People in Families with Children, Unaccompanied Youth (under age 25), Veterans, and Individuals With Chronic Patterns of Homelessness.
The US Interagency Council on Homelessness also recognizes temporal definitions of homelessness: chronic, episodic and transitional. Chronic homelessness is defined as individuals experiencing homelessness for a year or more (but usually for multiple years), episodic homelessness describes those who move in and out of homelessness (multiple times), and transitional homelessness aligns with shorter-term experiences (usually less than 1 month). While episodic and transitional definitions are not utilized as a metric for data collection, data around chronic homelessness has largely driven federal policymaking.
4 “Children and Youth and HUD’s Homeless Definition,” The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, https://files.hudexchange. info/resources/documents/HUDs-HomelessDefinition-as-it-Relates-to-Children-and-Youth. pdf.
5 Villarosa et al.
National estimates for the number of people experiencing homelessness are derived from annual Point-In-Time (PIT) Counts conducted on a single night in January each year. The 2022 count found 582,462 people (roughly 18 out of every 10,000 people) experiencing homelessness across the United States.6 Of these, four in 10 were unsheltered, and six in 10 were sheltered. It is estimated that 12,691 people in Pennsylvania were experiencing homelessness in 2022, which is just over 2% of the national total.
In Pennsylvania, this represents a 5.1% decrease in total number of people experiencing homelessness from 2020, and a 21.8% decrease from 2007. Within the state, 9.8 in every 10,000 people were experiencing homelessness in 2022. Of these, 87.3% (11,085) were sheltered and 12.7% (1,606) were unsheltered. Of the 12,691 total Pennsylvanians experiencing homelessness in 2022, 7,861 were individuals, 4,830 were people in families with children, 579 were unaccompanied homeless youth, 778 were veterans, and 1,759 were chronically homeless individuals.7
HUD geographically specifies data on homelessness according to Continuums of Care (CoCs). A CoC is composed of “local planning bodies responsible for coordinating the full range of homelessness services in a geographic area, which may cover a city, county, metropolitan area, or an entire state.” 8 All 382 CoCs that together cover the United States are classified into one of four geographic categories: 1) major city CoCs, 2) other largely urban CoCs, 3) largely suburban CoCs, or 4) largely rural CoCs (Figure 2). The state of Pennsylvania is divided into 16 CoCs (Figure 3).
Local planning bodies responsible for coordinating the full of homelessness services geographic area, which a city, county, metropolitan an entire state (HUD)
6 Tanya de Sousa et al., “The 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress: Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness,” The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Community Planning and Development, December 2022, 11, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/ files/pdf/2022-AHAR-Part-1.pdf.
7 de Sousa et al., 104.
8 Ibid., 4.
In 2022, the Philadelphia CoC (a major city CoC) had 4,489 individuals experiencing homelessness—35.4% of the state’s total. Nationally, the Philadelphia CoC ranked 13th highest in terms of total number of people experiencing homelessness and 15th highest in terms of total experiencing homelessness per 10,000 people (with about 29/10,000 people) in 2022.9 To begin better understanding what these numbers looked like on the ground, we mapped public facilities and infrastructure that already do or can act as part of a supportive system of resources (Figure 4).
These sites can support typical daily needs, such as designated homeless shelters, or can be ‘activated’ in cases of emergency, like cooling stations and warming stations. In this category, we mapped recreation centers, senior centers, public libraries, and spraygrounds. Additionally, to begin thinking about what might drive higher PEH counts in certain areas of the city, we looked at where transitional shelters, train stations, and low produce supply stores are located. Parks and open space, a key form of the city’s public space, in addition to the city’s vacant land also provided an important base layer in our mapping of the city.
9 “State of Homelessness: 2023 Edition,” National Alliance to End Homelessness, January 6, 2024, https://endhomelessness. org/homelessness-in-america/homelessnessstatistics/state-of-homelessness/.
Data sourced from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2022 Annual Homeless Report to Congress (AHAR); U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Population Estimates.
Transitional Shelters
Public Spraygrounds
PCA Senior Centers
Vacant Land Use
Low Produce Supply Stores
Subway Lines and Stations
Highways
Parks and Open Spaces
Water N
Supportive Infrastructure 0 1 2 4 miles
§ 10-611. Sidewalk Behavior Ordinance, 1998.
§ 10-611.1.a.
// The following provisions shall apply city-wide:
» relating to unreasonable obstructions on the sidewalk;
» relating to littering on the sidewalk;
» relating to excessive noise on the sidewalk;
» relating to owner/occupier of private property keeping the sidewalk in good repair.
§ 10-611.1.b.
// The following provisions shall apply only in the zones designated by the Council:
» relating to riding a bicycle on the sidewalk
» relating to riding a scooter, roller skates or skateboard on the sidewalk;
» relating to loading or unloading a commercial vehicle on the sidewalk;
» relating to lying on the sidewalk;
» relating to sitting on the sidewalk;
» relating to unlicensed placement of any bench, planter, fixture or street furniture on the sidewalk;
» relating to unattended belongings on the sidewalk;
» relating to unrestrained animals on the sidewalk;
Sidewalk Behaviour Ordinance
Designated Zones
Highways
Parks and Open Spaces
Water N
0 1 2 4 miles
With a geographic base, we began to research the Philadelphia Code. Our primary objective was to explore whether any parts of the code explicitly or implicitly criminalized homelessness in the city. Obviously, each city has a unique code—prior research in Los Angeles demonstrated that criminalization can come from unexpected policies, like those on jaywalking, which was more heavily enforced in Skid Row than more affluent neighborhoods nearby, until it was decriminalized in 2023.
In Philadelphia, the Sidewalk Behavior Ordinance (§ 10-611), passed in 1998, does make unhoused individuals vulnerable to penalty for “obstructing” sidewalks and other public spaces (Figure 5). Within the Sidewalk Behavior Ordinance (SBO) zones designated by the city, no person shall “Lie on the public sidewalk, or on any object placed on the public sidewalk,” “Sit on the public sidewalk, or on any object placed on the public sidewalk, for more than one hour in any two hour time period,” “Sell of offer for sale any goods, wares, or services, or solicit funds for any purpose, in or on the public highway, except for licensed vendors,” “Sit, stand, lie or otherwise use the public sidewalk, or place one’s belongings or other objects upon the public sidewalk, in such manner as to unreasonably and significantly impede or obstruct the free passage of pedestrians,” “Allow his or her belongings or other objects to remain unattended on the public sidewalk for more than fifteen minutes,” or “Solicit money for any purpose on the public sidewalk in any manner, within an eight foot (8’) radius of any building entrance, or within an eight foot (8’) radius of any vending cart” or within a twenty foot radius of any bank entrance or automatic teller machine.10 These are just some of the provisions of the SBO that are particularly relevant to individuals experiencing homelessness. Violations of these provisions may result in fines ranging from twenty dollars to three hundred dollars.
However, upon further research we found that homelessness is not explicitly criminalized. The Philadelphia Police Department does not arrest people specifically for being homeless, nor has the City of Philadelphia criminalized sitting, occupying, or sleeping in public spaces.
10 “The Philadelphia Code, 12th Edition,” (American Legal Publishing, 2020), § 10-611 Sidewalk Behavior, https://codelibrary.amlegal. com/codes/philadelphia/latest/philadelphia_ pa/0-0-0-266407.
Climate Hazards & Exposure
Designated Zones (SBO)
Highways
Parks and Open Spaces
Water
Zones of High Heat Vulnerability N
Figure 6 – SBO Zones & Heat Vulnerability Map
While we decided not to pursue further research on the overlaps between homelessness and climate change during this phase of our work, the former will undoubtedly be exacerbated by the latter in the not-so-distant future. Currently, Code Red and Code Blue policies in Philadelphia establish emergency services and various cooling and warming centers around the city during extreme weather events. Our spatial analysis captured an important relationship between the Sidewalk Behavior Ordinance zones and areas that rank highest on the Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI). Generally, areas with the highest levels of heat vulnerability are also areas that are not designated per the SBO. There is minimal overlap between high HVI zones along the edges of some of the SBO zones. This contrast implies that areas in the city where being unhoused is the least criminalized are also the areas most vulnerable to extreme heat (Figure 6).
Note: The epidemic of homelessness is inextricably linked to the climate emergency, where at an extremely localized scale, the climate crisis exerts its most inordinate impact and burden on lower income communities, communities of color, and persons experiencing homelessness. Unhoused individuals, specifically those living unsheltered, are at the frontline of the climate crisis, and as a frontline community, they are the first impacted by environmental hazards and climate change. Climate will become an increasingly important factor of this work in future research.
Source:
Philadelphia Inquirer
// Enforcement:
With respect to violations of subsections relating to lying, sitting, obstructing or leaving objects unattended, or relating to soliciting near a building entrance or bank, first issues an oral warning to the person or persons in violation, and then, if the person or persons refuse to comply after receiving an oral warning, issues a written warning to the person or persons in violation. The written warning shall be printed in English and Spanish.
The passive enforcement of the Sidewalk Behavior Ordinance can be seen in the architecture of the public realm. Walking around Center City, it is not difficult to spot several instances of hostile architecture, and landscape architecture, embedded in our public spaces. These instances take many forms, from benches with dividers that prevent people from laying down, to sloped concrete surfaces where there would otherwise be a flat seat-height surface, or removal of benches and chairs from spaces formerly used for public seating, and spike features on railings and surfaces to prevent people from sitting on or leaning against them. The impact of architecture that becomes hostile in the public realm, whether intended to be so or not, is that certain behaviors are made uncomfortable and certain people (namely, the already marginalized individuals experiencing homelessness) are deterred from public spaces.
In Philadelphia, homelessness is particularly visible in encampments. The ongoing clearing of encampments over the last several years has become a primary thread of the city’s narrative on homelessness. Historically, most of Philadelphia’s encampments have been concentrated in the Kensington area (Figure 7). This makes sense—as post-World War II deindustrialization caused a loss of blue-collar jobs in cities across the country, the industrial infrastructure that had previously made Kensington a “Workshop of the World” and home to a strong working-class community began to crumble. What was once a thriving neighborhood took a devastating socioeconomic blow and became characterized by vacant industrial land and empty factories connected by networks of railways, overpasses, and tunnels. The combination of low visibility abandoned buildings and spaces and connection to functioning transit made Kensington an ideal place for opioid activity.11 Today, the neighborhood remains the center of Philadelphia’s opioid crisis and has seen a series of aggressive encampment clearings since 2017.
11 Stephen Metraux et al., “An Evaluation of the City of Philadelphia’s Kensington Encampment Resolution Pilot,” University of Pennsylvania, March 5, 2019, 11-13.
12 Metraux et al., 12.
Perhaps the city’s most notorious encampment, “El Campamento” had existed in some capacity as an “open-air drug market and shooting gallery” along a half-mile stretch of railroad since the 1990s, and was home to an estimated 60-120 people at the time of its clearing in 2017 .12 Following the clearing, several new encampments popped up and were subsequently closed nearby along Lehigh and Kensington Avenues over the next few years.
15 City of Philadelphia Office of the Managing Director, “Policy Regarding Outreach Process and Removal, Storage of Personal Items, Tents, and Other Structures from Public Property,” Managing Director’s Directive #70 (2021), https://www.phila.gov/media/20220524083135/ MDO-directive-70-tent-and-structure-20210803. pdf.
Large scale encampments also began to appear in the Center City area (though these have tended to be in the underground transit stations and concourses or masked within the alleys that largely support trash collection).
The city refers to encampment clearings as “resolutions” and now, as of May 2024, has conducted more than 25. What is their impact? The stated goal of the resolutions is to connect individuals experiencing homelessness with housing assistance and treatment services. This outcome is achieved on some level in every encampment clearing as there are always some individuals who accept the outreach offered, but a key a finding of the 2018 “An Evaluation of the City of Philadelphia’s Kensington Encampment Resolution Pilot” report was that “Individual placements did little to relieve population pressures at the encampments” and despite the “substantial numbers of individual placements…new persons seemed to take their places as the encampments maintained a rough population equilibrium.” 13 This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that in Philadelphia, when it comes to housing and addiction recovery, “Availability of short-term resources contrasts with scarcity of long-term resources.” 14
In August 2021, the city’s Office of the Managing Director issued a “Policy Regarding Outreach Process and Removal, Storage of Personal Items, Tents, and Other Structures from Public Property.” The stated intent of this policy is to guide the city’s encampment resolution process so that encampment clearing is plainly communicated, outreach efforts are made, and individuals’ personal property is properly dealt with.15 The city’s response to the encampment is to be based on “1) whether the encampment is an Obstruction or Hazardous Encampment; 2) the extent of any public health concerns; 3) the extent of any infrastructure concerns, and 4) the length of time the encampment has existed.” 16 The amount of time that the encampment has been established determines how much notice the city is required to give inhabitants before the clearing. These timelines of notice range from less than 24 hours to 30 days. Over the years, the city has been criticized for its encampment clearing practices for reasons ranging from lack of sufficient warning (in some cases due to poor posting of signage), leadership by police rather than by outreach teams, mistreatment and discarding of personal belongings, and displacement of individuals. Undoubtedly, there is a long way to go before encampment clearings can be declared completely effective by any metric. 13 Ibid., 7. 14 Ibid., 8.
16 Ibid., 3.
In our research and surveying of data and data collection methods, it became clear that the numbers that are available do little to represent the total number of individuals experiencing homelessness, or the lived experience of homelessness. Not all forms of homelessness are officially counted; the methods used for counting people experiencing homelessness rely on underskilled volunteer work in limited time frames and geographies; the data being collected covers basic demographics, but for the most part is not able to capture unique, individual experiences and perspectives that could provide profound insights into larger problems, as well as identify more humanscaled opportunities for intervention. Ultimately, homelessness is a wicked problem on local and national scales that is nowhere near being solved.
~582,500
People in the U.S. in a given night experiencing homelessness (2022)
According to the January 2022 PIT Count
U.S. Dept of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
~327,000
~255,500
Returning to our overarching theme of visibility and invisibility, we asked ourselves how we might be able to see homelessness differently. How can we better understand the built environment as it relates to the needs of people experiencing homelessness? How can climate information be better communicated to and planned for by those who are unsheltered? How can we design systems and spaces to promote social mobility? What social networks are invisible to us, and how do they impact movement and transiency? When we think about how to promote safety in public space, what perspectives are we missing?
These lines of inquiry brought us back to the idea of counting, which is the primary form of data collection on homelessness that currently exists and represents a key touchpoint between those who possess information, perspective, knowledge, and insights and the researchers and agencies who are trying to learn. We came to see counting as a lens into the existing knowledge gap on homelessness and a means to work towards new ways of understanding a complex problem.
We arrived at an updated research statement for the next phase of this work:
This research is interested in designing a new process for Philadelphia’s PIT Count by leveraging existing programs and resources so that we can create more empathetic touchpoints that compile human-centric data to achieve greater impact in interfacing with unhoused individuals in public places/ spaces.
PIT Counts “are unduplicated one-night estimates of both sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations. The one-night counts are conducted by Continuums of Care nationwide and occur during the last week in January of each year.” 17 The result of the national annual PIT Count provides an overall snapshot of homelessness at local, regional, and national scales and shows trends over time. The PIT Count is the only official count of individuals experiencing homelessness that occurs nationwide every year. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development manages guidelines and standards for the PIT Count and requires that every CoC conduct their count annually.
Each CoC manages its own PIT Count on the designated January night. In the Philadelphia CoC, the Office of Homeless Services conducts the PIT Count. Volunteers are recruited to do the counting within assigned geographic areas, which entails walking the streets, “counting each homeless individual they see, and asking willing respondents a series of demographic questions.” 18 Volunteers are counting both sheltered (those in emergency shelters, transitional shelters, and Safe Havens) and unsheltered individuals (those in the streets, parks, and public transit stations). Following the count, the data, along with that of the CoC’s Housing Inventory Count (HIC), is submitted to the HUD Homelessness Data Exchange’s (HDX) online PIT Count database. The results of the PIT Count directly inform how HUD allocates homeless assistance grants and how the city plans to address homelessness in future years.
There is inherently room for error in the PIT Count. A volunteer from Philadelphia’s 2024 PIT Count reported that on the night of the count, he “spoke to dozens of volunteers who actively work with homeless populations in Philadelphia” and that “Nearly everyone believes the count every year to be considerably off, to the point of being entirely unreliable.” 19 Indeed, our own research team found it difficult to believe that in the sixth largest city in the United States, of a reported 4,489 people experiencing homelessness, only 788 are unsheltered. The PIT Count is the tool we have, but can we rely on it? While there is an official methodology provided by HUD to the CoCs that sets minimum standards, each CoC still has the flexibility to adapt some aspects of the methodology to appropriately meet its own resources. 20
17 de Sousa et al., 4.
18 Jacob Fuller, “Guest Commentary: Is Philly Undercounting Our Homeless Population?” The Philadelphia Citizen, February 6, 2024, https:// thephiladelphiacitizen.org/guest-commentary-isphilly-undercounting-our-homeless-population/. 19 Fuller.
20 “Point-in-Time Count Methodology Guide,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Community Planning and Development, September 2014, 3, https:// files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/ PIT-Count-Methodology-Guide.pdf.
The requirement of conducting the count on a single night in January poses its own set of limitations. The January climate ranges widely across the country, making comparisons between different places challenging. In Philadelphia and other regions with seasonal variation, the count could differ greatly at different points in the year. One night (10pm – 4am) means only a single moment of capture is possible, which makes it difficult to learn about lifestyles that are in many cases defined by transiency and change. There is also an inherent limit to the capacity volunteers can count in one 6-hour night, based on the number of volunteers and the amount of area they need to survey. Finally, this short duration means that only limited insight into short-term and episodic homelessness is possible. The count is conducted by volunteers (Philadelphia’s 2024 count had over 100 volunteers)—while some have experience working with individuals experiencing homelessness and have participated in prior PIT Counts, others are new to the task at hand. The count relies upon visibility and is organized around zones of highest probability. People need to be seen to be counted, but many unsheltered individuals intentionally sleep in places that are invisible to the passerby. This is even more true on a given night in January, when unsheltered individuals may be pursuing options for shelter that are less exposed to the cold weather. A fear of lack of visibility on the volunteers’ side excludes potentially dangerous areas such as abandoned buildings and alleyways from the geographic scope of the count. In the case of sheltered individuals, there is no count of people in hospitals, alternate shelters outside of those designated before the count, or doubled-up in the homes of others (Figure 8).
Despite the factors that challenge the accuracy of the PIT Count, it is still central to the way that homelessness is understood and addressed. Our team envisions the possibility of implementing a new kind of PIT Count for Philadelphia. We propose a PIT Count that is made more accurate by being conducted seasonally, more informed about people through the adoption of by-name list (BNL) approaches that prioritize knowing and keeping in touch with individuals over time, and less extractive and more humanizing through creating empathetic touchpoints that directly benefit the individuals being counted. We believe that a PIT Count that creates a more balanced and beneficial exchange could help realize a truer Continuum of Care by providing a meaningful entry point that checks-in with people over time.
What is the Inconsistent Methodology Definitions and Guidelines vary by CoC and over time
HUD
Allocates homeless assistance grants to local organizations
Opportunities and Notions on Contributing factors to an inefficient PIT Count process
The current system, as well as the PIT Count itself, only solves for visibility. It also, arguably, provides more services and resources for the volunteers conducting the Count than for those being counted (coffee, hot chocolate, DJ and music). What if the system provided as much for those being counted as it does for those collecting the data?
CoCs
Office of Homeless Services, local touchpoint for assistance
Seasonality
One cold winter night in January
Transiency
A single moment capture
Duration
Limited Insight into shortterm /episodic homelessness
In the next phase of this work, we would be curious to explore how the PIT Count can become a tool for outreach, resource sharing, and connection with services rather than an expedited means of data collection. Figure 8 – PIT Count Diagram & Entry-Point Analysis
Call for Volunteers
January 24th, 2024 10pm - 4am Assemble at LOVE Park
Laws restrict them to occupy specific visible areas
SHELTERED
Alternate shelters, hospitals, doubled-up cases
Emergency
Transitional
Safe Havens
Visibility
Visibility
People need to be seen to be counted. But several sleep in invisble places
Code “Dangerous” areas
Lifestyle
People make alternate arrangements for cold
UNSHELTERED
Streets, Parks, Public Transport Stations
Such as abandoned buildings, alleyways are excluded
“I spoke to dozens of volunteers who actively work with homeless populations in Philadelphia. Nearly everyone believes the count every year to be considerably off, to the point of being entirely unreliable.”
- Jacob Fuller, volunteer 2023 PIT.
706
47 teams of 2-3 people 10-12min per person
A total of 4,725 persons experiencing homeless were counted in both sheltered and unsheltered locations.
Unseen: The (in)visibility of homelessness in Philadelphia’s ‘public’ spaces
Zones of Highest Probability
There is an inherent LIMIT to the capacity of the PIT Count’s methodology: with 47 teams for 6 hours at 10-12min per person a maximum of ONLY 1,410-1,692 people can be counted (not including travel time to/from locations)
The current point-source distribution, beginning at LOVE Park in Center City and disseminating outward, is also an inefficient means of urban mobility that mimics the power dynamics of a centralized system. The current count, overnight, could also be considered an intrusive means of engaging people where they are seeking shelter on that given night. What if the system were more localized, distributed within neighborhoods across the city as a means of more human-scale exchange? Could the PIT Count acknowledge existing resources or services provided to unhoused individuals (such as weekly free meals), inviting unhoused individuals to a more neutral ground to contribute rather than encroaching on their personal space and form of shelter on that given night?
This would involve designing spatial and methodological interventions to the current PIT Count process, as a means of arriving at policy change through engagement strategies in partnership with the many organizations and agencies within the CoC. A distributed, decentralized Continuum of Care system might engage in new ways. Philadelphia’s Office of Homeless Services deploys a Food Services Unit to ensure that all Philadelphians have access to healthy foods. Working with 34 meal providers, they serve over 500,000 meals a year through a weekly meal schedule that provides free meals citywide at numerous locations for breakfast, lunch or dinner. More largely, Philadelphia has an estimated 700 food pantries and soup kitchens across the city that could potentially expand from food assistance to spaces of exchange and conversation, welcoming unhoused individuals, and their lived experiences, to share a meal, a means of exchange that transcends data collection alone (Figure 10).
We see this process as one in which the holistic, scalar, systems-thinking approaches employed by designers and planners would prove to be incredibly useful. As designers, we have a unique set of skills and agency to approach this topic with empathy. We employ effective methods of spatial and experiential data collection, and we understand our public spaces in a way that sees beyond the data we extract, finding the human perspectives inherent to places. We deploy innovative toolkits to engage communities in our work, we understand patterns of mobility in our cities and urban spaces, and we bring our expertise to create more inclusive designs. This phase of research is not interested in designing a solution, but rather, a strategy that could impact our approach to the design of space.
Current System: Centralized & Single-Point Distributed
Considerations: How does 1 night, disseminating from 1 location, reinforce that only the most visible are “seen” ?
Opportunity: Localized & in Partnership with Distributed Resources
Considering: Urban mobility patterns, and engagement methodologies that invite rather than intrude.
Considering a preliminary methodology for a decision-making tool to begin to localize the count based on available resources distributed throughout the City of Philadelphia as a means to create more humanized touchpoints, inviting people to shared, safe spaces.
Food Pantries
Transitional Shelters
Low Produce Supply Stores
Transit/Subway Infrastructure N
Unhoused, Unseen: The (in)visibility of homelessness in Philadelphia’s ‘public’ spaces
Unhoused, Unseen: The (in)visibility of homelessness in Philadelphia’s ‘public’ spaces
Homelessness is a wicked problem that cannot be ignored and must factor into the way we understand, plan, and design public spaces. Spatial justice demands that people experiencing homelessness have just as much right to exist (which includes sitting and sleeping) as anyone else does in public space, especially when they don’t have another available option for shelter. In a city where there is a growing shortage of affordable housing, the issue of homelessness is not going away and will not be solved by criminalization, or by further separating those without shelter from being welcomed members of our local communities. Our discussion of what public space means, who gets to use it, and how it can be planned and designed to better support marginalized, vulnerable, and frontline peoples is more relevant than ever.
The time has never been more urgent.
This condition is not unique to Philadelphia. In April 2024, the Supreme Court heard City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. At the time of this writing, the case was largely still pending, but this was amended based on Friday, June 28th’s Supreme Court ruling. The question—is it constitutional or is it cruel and unusual punishment for local governments to be able to criminalize unhoused people for sleeping outside in public space when there are no shelter beds available?
When a group of people experiencing homelessness filed a class action to bar the enforcement of various local ordinances that forbade unauthorized sleeping or camping in public in the city of Grants Pass, Oregon in 2009, questions around the criminalization of unhoused individuals in public space reached national headlines. The City of Grants Pass, Oregon’s population of 600 unhoused individuals exceeds the number of shelter beds available, resulting in populations sleeping on the streets or in parks. The City of Grants Pass’ City Ordinances prevent homeless individuals from ”using a blanket, a pillow, or a cardboard box for protection from the elements while sleeping inside the City’s limits.” 21 Violators can be banned from city property, or even criminally prosecuted for trespassing. In 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held in Martin v. City of Boise that the Eighth Amendment prohibited imposing criminal penalties for homeless individuals who sit, sleep, or lie on public property because they cannot find shelter. Looking to Martin v. City of Boise as precedent, the United States District Court for the District of Oregon concluded that, “based on the unavailability of shelter beds in the City of Grants Pass, the City’s consequences for homeless persons sitting, sleeping, or lying in public spaces violated the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause, which was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit.” 22
In August 2023, the City of Grants Pass, Oregon appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, who agreed to hear the case in January 2024, and scheduled oral arguments to hear in April 2024. On June 28, 2024, the Court released their ruling, reversing and remanding the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a 6-3 ruling, holding that “enforcing laws regulating camping on public property did not violate the ’cruel and unusual punishments‘ clause of the Eighth Amendment.” 23 Effectively ruling that the city can enforce bans, criminalizing unhoused individuals sleeping outside, even when no shelter is available.
21 CITY OF GRANTS PASS, OREGON v. JOHNSON ET AL., ON BEHALF OF THEMSELVES AND ALL OTHERS SIMILARLY SITUATED , No. 23–175. Argued April 22, 2024—Decided June 28, 2024 (supremecourt.gov 2024).
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
In June 2024, the baseline for this research was presented at both the Environmental Design Research Association’s EDRA55 Conference on Human-Centric Design in Portland, Oregon, as well as at the City Parks Alliance’s Greater & Greener Conference in Seattle, Washington. Jared Edgar McKnight shared the initial outreach and work alongside panels of co-presenters working across academia, practice and the public sector. To be in conversation with individuals approaching this topic from numerous entry-points reinforced the necessity of this baseline research and work to go beyond the data and numbers, and to begin engaging more locally in Philadelphia, and beyond, to realize the human-centric touchpoints that the research hopes to explore further. The research received an incredible amount of positive feedback and excitement for reconsidering how we collect data, how we engage with frontline communities, and how we can potentially transform the methodology of data collection through reframing engagement.
The original RnA proposal outlined a process to form a baseline of research, as well as engage with local individuals, service providers, resources, nonprofits and city departments, in addition to engaging with unhoused individuals themselves. With the revised proposal, based on available funding for the 2024 RnA project, engagement was removed from the original scope, but remains a top priority to bring this work forward. We see engagement and forming partnerships as key to both validating the research to date, as well as identifying important next steps in the process. Our strategy around forming strategic partnerships considers a Philadelphia Power Map (Figure 11) – and the key players from the Federal to the State, and more locally from the City to the non-profits and service providers who all play active roles in data collection, and specifically the PIT Count process.
Through this process, we have identified individuals and organizations across six primary levels of engagement in homelessness in Philadelphia: the City, a business improvement district, a neighborhood CDC, a nonprofit service provider, a shelter, and a legal-aid provider. In order to engage effectively and efficiently, building on existing relationships will be key. As the primary coordinator of the annual PIT Count process, Philadelphia’s Office of Homeless Services (OHS) is a key resource – our team has reached out during this initial phase of research, but not yet heard back, we hope to find new opportunities to present this work and engage with OHS in next steps.
City of Philadelphia Office of Homeless Services (OHS)
Works with more than 60 homeless housing and service providers, as well as city, state and federal governments.
Center City District (CCD), along with CPDC and CCDF (Foundation)
Working together to enhance the vitality of Philadelphia’s downtown (business improvement district).
Project HOME, nonprofit 501(c)(3) public charity
Mission to empower adults, children, and families to break the cycle of homelessness and poverty in Philadelphia.
New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC)
Nonprofit supporting residents/businesses in Kensington, Fishtown & Port Richmond, with housing services.
Philly House (formerly Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission)
Philadelphia’s largest mens shelter and service provider organization focusing on meals, shelter, and services.
Homeless Advocacy Project (HAP), legal services provider
Providing free civil legal services and advocacy to reduce the frequency and duration of homelessness in Philly.
We also hope to engage Center City District as the local improvement district who is part of the PIT Count in Center City and deploys teams of Ambassadors of Hope as well as Community Service Representatives within Center City. In order to engage in the localized context of the Kensington neighborhood, NKCDC is also a key focus of our teams continued engagement. In the realm of non-profits and service providers, Project HOME (a long-term collaborator and client of WRT) is also a focus to understand their Public Policy and Street Outreach work, specifically as it relates to the PIT Count and provision of services and resources to unhoused individuals.
From the shelter perspective, we hope to engage Philly House (formerly Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission) around their work as the largest men’s shelter and service provider in Philadelphia. Lastly, our work hopes to engage Philadelphia’s Homeless Advocacy Project (HAP) through relationships established through WRT’s work on the Equal Justice Center with the Philadelphia Bar Foundation to understand their role in providing direct civil legal services to individuals and families experiencing homelessness in Philadelphia and informing local policy.
Additional partnerships that our team envisions intend to establish collaborative efforts to present and validate the work, as well as find future opportunities to engage with unhoused individuals, specifically those living unsheltered in Philadelphia. Building on existing programs and resources, we additional opportunities to engage through the Office of Homeless Services (OHS) Food Services Unit that works to ensure that all Philadelphians have access to healthy foods, and their weekly free meal programs in partnership with local organizations.
Continued partnerships will aim at understanding more empathetic and compassionate ways to engage, and interface with those living unsheltered in Philadelphia, and how that process can better ‘check-in’ with those experiencing homelessness. The continuation of the work will dive deeper into the question of climate, and the experience of those living unsheltered to realize a truer continuum of care through the provision of more localized resources at a cadence more frequent than a once-a-year count.
In order to continue this work, engage individuals, and network with players in Philadelphia’s Continuum of Care (CoC), we acknowledge that these next steps will require additional funding and resources. We also want to note that when engaging individuals in this space, we must be respectful of the fact that their entire work is devoted to this topic, and their time is valuable. That is why engagement will require specific funding to pay individuals as consultants of this research and work. Our goal is to compensate all those who are engaged through this work and future collaboration to recognize their time, expertise, and contributions through either a donation to their organization or a stipend for speaking with our research team.
As an immediate next step, our intent is to apply to the 2024-2025 WRT RnA program, specifically to carry out this next phase of engagement with local organizations and individuals. Through this effort, we hope to onboard additional researchers to this work in our office, and carry out a robust and meaningful engagement plan in the next round of RnA. This is our immediate next step for a number of factors, but namely that many funding sources and opportunities external to WRT restrict or lessen the chances of for-profit (LLCs), from being awarded research funding. That is why an immediate next step will be to form strategic partnerships, through a next phase of this work internal to WRT, in the non-profit, agency, and serviceprovider sectors to increase our opportunities for continued collaboration and funding for the work and research. Another avenue to consider for additional funding potential would be through partnerships in academia.
Local Funding Source Opportunities: William Penn Foundation Environment and Public Space or Democracy and Civic Initiatives Grants, or opportunities through Philadelphia OHS or CCD.
Funding
Goal: Reinforce funding through partnerships in next phase of research Specifically partnerships with nonprofit 501(c)(3)s, and also exploring partnerships through academia.
National Funding Source Opportunities: The Knight Foundation, Adbul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) Homelessness Grants, Russel Sage Foundation (RSF) Funded Research on Housing, National Endowment for the Arts, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, The Climate Reality Project Climate Justice for All Project Grants, National Low Income Housing Coalition Community Change Grants Program.
Immediate Opportunity: AIA Upjohn Research Initiative, due August 28th ($15,000-$30,000 for 6- to 18-months, requires matching funds).
We want to again highlight that the time has never been more urgent. In Jared’s larger body of work, his engagements found that no day is typical, and to be unhoused is to be in a constant state of motion. He also questions our complicity as designers in the criminalization of unhoused individuals who are threatened in the public spaces and parks we design if we do not recognize municipal codes with the same rigor and attention as we do the zoning and building codes that govern our work. Until the time we are able to provide permanent supportive housing and services to end homelessness, the weaponization of our public spaces will continue to define the inequities that our unhoused neighbors face. Should a continuum of care check-in with people, and acknowledge the seasons and lenses of visibility and invisibility that govern our current policies and attitudes towards those experiencing homelessness (Figure 12)? Hope, change, and our agency to advocate begins with our ability to engage more compassionately and locally.
To be unhoused is not to be sedentary in a tent - it is to be in a constant state of motion, responding to the complexities existing unsheltered. Encampment numbers frequently fluctuate between seasons and day-to-day, emphasizing the need for getting more accurate resident counts over multiple periods. The University of Pennsylvania recently completed An Evlauation of the City of Philadelphia’s Kensington Encampment Resolution Pilot, where they collected data on four encampments over 4 months, can we learn from this constant movement, as well as the growth of nearby encampments when others were decommissioned?
How Can we See Differently? Are there other Lenses?
Figure 12 – PIT Count Methodology Diagram
“Public” Spaces Encampments
Shelters
Formal Supportive Services
Temporary/Transitional Housing
Sleeping in Vehicle
Motel
Shadow Network Services
Doubling Up / Crashing COUNTED
Those living Unsheltered + Uncounted...
This research and work owes immense gratitude to the time, the dialogue, and the emotional undertaking of our team: Jared Edgar McKnight, Allison Nkwocha, Tanushri Dalmiya, and Daniel Aguilera. The safe space for dialogue, asking tough questions, approaching the topic with empathy and humility, and passion for this topic made this research and work clear, approachable and meaningful. Collectively, we want to thank all those who have been a part of this 9 month process.
Thank you to WRT for funding this phase of research, to Research in Action (RnA) for providing the venue to conduct this work, to the RnA Admin Team (James Stickley, Shuning Zhao, Cristina Bejarano and Sussie Ado) and the RnA internal (Charles Neer, Murali Ramaswami, and Richard King) and external (Danika Cooper, Assistant Professor at University of California Berkeley) advisors for the knowledge and insights shared during our progress, to the Shaping Communal Space RnA Team (Marissa Hebert, Beatriz Vergara Aller, Eden Wright, Yasmine McBride and Marina Freitas) for the insights gained through our co-sharing sessions, and to all of our mentors, advisors and sounding boards for listening, for questioning, and for guiding and supporting this effort. We also want to extend a large hug and thank you to our external mentor, Jean Yang, Assistant Professor at SUNY ESF, for her heartfelt response to the work and for offering her time and her own knowledge and research on homelessness to inspire our team.
Jared would also like to extend a special thank you to all those who have given such meaningful time and shared their space and experiences in support, and in mentorship, of this ongoing research since 2020, all of the organizations and non-profits who have supported this continued work through grant funding and the sharing time, space and knowledge: the Landscape Architecture Foundation, USC’s Landscape Justice Initiative, Pando Populus, student researchers from USC, professors and advisors, and specifically the local organizations and unhoused individuals who have so willingly engaged in this larger body of research.
At the bare minimum, this ongoing research hopes to amplify their voices and work as community leaders who advocate on behalf of unhoused individuals and families everyday in Skid Row and beyond. This work does not happen alone – this research is merely a conduit to share the messages that are truly developed in partnership.
Introductory Reading & Listening List
Interested in the topic? Consider these entry points:
99% Invisible: Unsheltered in Place https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ unsheltered-in-place/
Cruz, Teddy and Fonna Forman (2020). “Public Imagination, Citizenship and an Urgent Call for Justice,” Design for the Just City. https://www. designforthejustcity.org/read/essays/cruz-forman
Hood, Walter (1997). “Urban Diaries,” Spacemaker Press. (select chapters)
Jackson, Maria Rosario and John Malpede (2009). “Making the Case for Skid Row Culture,” Americans for the Arts, Animating Democracy. https://www. lapovertydept.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/LAPD_Makingthe-Case.pdf
Low, Jennifer (2019). “Design is Political: White Supremacy and Landscape Urbanism,” Agora Journal of Urban Planning and Design, 126-136.
Meryman, Brice (2020). “Public Space, No Exceptions,” Landscape Architecture Magazine. https://landscapearchitecturemagazine. org/2020/02/04/public-space-no-exceptions/
No Safe Place: The Criminalization of Homelessnessin U.S. Cities, Executive Summary, National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, pages 7-11
Painter, Gary (2020). Homelessness Overview, and Public Perceptions of Homelessness (Poll results) from Unhoused: Addressing Homelessness in California (Feb 2020 USC Schwarzenegger Institute Conference) https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=C5hmJsAvJ0U
Schindler, Sarah (2015). “Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment,” The Yale Law Journal. https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/architectural-exclusion
Stuart, Forrest (2016). “Down, Out & Under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row,” University of Chicago Press. (select chapters)
The Center for Urban Pedagogy (2015). “Dick & Rick A Visual Primer for Social Impact Design.” http://welcometocup.org/Store?product_id=115 (free download)
We the Unhoused podcast, Episode 1: Rising in Power feat. General Drogon. https://soundcloud.com/user-369990655
Unhoused, Unseen 07/24/2024
City of Philadelphia Office of the Managing Director. “Policy Regarding Outreach Process and Removal, Storage of Personal Items, Tents, and Other Structures from Public Property,” Managing Director’s Directive (2021). https://www.phila.gov/media/20220524083135/MDO-directive-70-tentand-structure-20210803.pdf.
Managing Director’s Directive #70 was issued August 3, 2021 to standardize the procedures for encampment resolutions in their dealings with the personal property of unhoused individuals living on public property as well as the procedures for connecting those individuals to local services following the encampment resolution. This document helped our team understand how the City of Philadelphia conducts its encampment resolutions and allowed us to begin questioning the process. In particular, we were interested in how the possessions of people experiencing homelessness are deemed by the city to be either personal property or debris as well as the outreach efforts that happen onsite at and leading up to encampment resolutions.
Cruz, Teddy, and Fonna Forman. “Public Imagination, Citizenship and an Urgent Call for Justice.” In The Just City Essays: 26 Visions for Urban Equity, Inclusion and Opportunity, edited by Toni L. Griffin, Ariella Cohen, and David Maddox, 1:40–45. The J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City at the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, Next City and The Nature of Cities, 2015. https://www.designforthejustcity.org/read/essays/cruz-forman.
This manifesto out of Harvard GSD envisions what a just and inclusive city looks like. Our team found it inspirational in cultivating our own ideas about what role designers and planners can play in the social, political, and economic landscapes of the city. Fellow practitioners may find the essay useful for considering how our disciplines should engage with and learn from the public in the places where we design as well as for envisioning the potential impact of interdisciplinary projects that prioritize justice.
Dunton, Lauren, Jill Khadduri, Kimberly Burnett, Nichole Fiore, and Will Yetvin. “Exploring Homelessness Among People Living in Encampments and Associated Cost: City Approaches to Encampments and What They Cost.” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, February 2020. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Exploring-Homelessness-Among-People.pdf.
Commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), this report examines how Chicago, Houston, San Jose, and Tacoma responded to encampments before COVID. The case studies focus on strategies and cost of response. Understanding the baseline costs of municipal approaches to encampments provided our team with one lens through which to critique Philadelphia’s approaches to encampments.
Fuller, Jacob. “Guest Commentary: Is Philly Undercounting Our Homeless Population?” The Philadelphia Citizen, February 6, 2024. https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/guest-commentary-is-philly-undercounting-our-homelesspopulation/.
Jacob Fuller provides a volunteer’s perspective on the 2024 Philadelphia Point-In-Time (PIT) Count. Fuller’s description of how the count works and what the volunteers do is followed by a discussion of the flaws of the PIT Count. He draws from
his conversations with dozens of fellow PIT Count volunteers who work with homeless populations in the city to reflect on the perceived lack of accuracy of Philadelphia’s PIT Count and potential alternative methods to the PIT Count. As our team zeroed in on the PIT Count as a primary point of interest, we found Fuller’s insights into the process and its critiques in Philadelphia helpful for developing our understanding of the local context.
“FY2022 Data Snapshot.” City of Philadelphia Office of Homeless Services, 2022. https://www.phila.gov/ media/20230221110800/ohs-data-snapshot-FY2022-report.pdf.
The annual report from the Office of Homeless Services (OHS) provides a comprehensive overview of the city’s most recent available data on homelessness. Additionally, the report offers a means of tracking the OHS’s progress on towards its goals of making homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring. Our team utilized the “FY2022 Data Snapshot” for its detailed report of Philadelphia’s 2022 PIT Count.
Leckerman, John. “City of Brotherly Love?: Using the Fourteenth Amendment to Strike Down an Anti-Homeless Ordinance in Philadelphia.” Journal of Constitutional Law 3, no. 1 (February 2001): 540–72.
John Leckerman’s article discusses the Sidewalk Behavior Ordinance (SBO) shortly after its passing in Philadelphia in the context of its disproportionate impact on people experiencing homeless. Leckerman’s argument is that the Fourteenth Amendment (which states that all citizens have the right to “equal protection under the laws” and that each State is legally obligated to provide citizens with due process) provides a basis for a constitutional challenge of the SBO and similar antihomeless ordinances. This article provided our group with important background information on the passage of the SBO in the political context of the end of the 20th century and brought it into conversation with legal challenges to similar ordinances in other cities, enabling us to better understand and question this complex layer of “zoning” in the city and its impact on people experiencing homelessness.
McKnight, Jared Edgar. “Criminalized for Their Very Existence: The Spatial Politics of Homelessness.” May 15, 2021. https://exhibitions.uscarch.com/criminalized-for-their-very-existence-the-spatial-politics-of-homelessness/.
Team member Jared Edgar McKnight’s research on Los Angeles County’s Skid Row and the LA Municipal Code’s regulations that restrict how unhoused individuals are able to navigate and exist in public space and proposal for a transitional strategy to a future housing solution provided the foundation for our research in Philadelphia. Our team’s research methodologies and process in Philadelphia draw directly from those that McKnight employed in Los Angeles County and contribute to the same growing body of knowledge on the human scale spatial and experiential analysis of homelessness. Designers and planners will benefit from study of McKnight’s project, which closely examines how design and planning practices impact unhoused populations and explores what potential transitional solutions they can provide.
Metraux, Stephen, Meagan Cusack, Fritz Graham, David Metzger, and Dennis Culhane. “An Evaluation of the City of Philadelphia’s Kensington Encampment Resolution Pilot.” University of Pennsylvania, March 5, 2019. https:// www.phila.gov/media/20190312102914/Encampment-Resolution-Pilot-Report.pdf.
This report independently evaluates two encampment clearings conducted by the City of Philadelphia in 2018 in the Kensington neighborhood. It provides invaluable insight into planning, implementation, and sustainment phases of the project, discusses methodologies employed, and explicitly states lessons learned in each phase. Our team used this report to better understand the city’s contemporary responses to homeless encampments.
“No Safe Place: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities, The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.” National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, 2014. https://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/sites/default/ files/No_Safe_Place.pdf.
This report provides an overview of how homelessness is criminalized in urban public spaces across the country and argues that these laws are both ineffective and socially problematic. The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty offers key recommendations of constructive solutions to ending homelessness that are not criminalization and provides examples of the implementation of such strategies in cities around the country. Our team used this report to develop our understanding of what criminalization of homelessness looks like nationally and what critiques are being made of it.
Nunez, Ralph, and Cybelle Fox. “A Snapshot of Family Homelessness across America.” Political Science Quarterly 114, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 289–307.
Nunez and Fox addressed an identified gap between research on family homelessness and social policy by examining ten cities across the countries through the lens of demographics and housing, education, income, and employment histories of families experiencing homelessness. This national snapshot of family homelessness at the end of the 20th century helped our team contextualize homelessness trends of the 21st century and better grasp just how misunderstood and unresolved homelessness remains as a national and local social policy issue.
“Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Affordable Housing: PRO Housing Grant Application, City of Philadelphia.” City of Philadelphia, November 6, 2023. https://www.phila.gov/media/20231107134013/PRO-Housing-GrantApplication-Nov-6-2023.pdf.
This is the City of Philadelphia’s application for an $8 million grant through HUD’s PRO Housing grant program. The city outlines its five strategies for removing barriers to affordable housing in Philadelphia: “1) Explore and Support the Preservation of Affordable Units, 2) Plan for Climate Resilient Housing, 3) Expand Opportunities for Creating Accessory Dwelling Units, 4) Reduce Barriers to Production, 5) Expand Philadelphia’s Inclusionary Zoning Policies.” In June 2024, Philadelphia was awarded $3.3 million by HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development. While our team did not expand our research into affordable housing, this document helped us develop a baseline understanding of the current availability of affordable housing in the city and what plans are being made to increase it in the future.
“Point-in-Time Count Methodology Guide.” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Community Planning and Development, September 2014. https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/ PIT-Count-Methodology-Guide.pdf.
This guide provides the minimum HUD standards for Point-In-Time (PIT) Counts and is used by the Continuums of Care (CoCs) as a toolkit to develop their own methodologies and approaches. Our team used this guide to build our understanding of the PIT Count process, its goals, and how it might vary between CoCs. From here, we were better able to analyze the Philadelphia PIT Count process and begin thinking about how it could evolve in the future.
Schindler, Sarah. “Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment.” The Yale Law Journal 124, no. 6 (April 2015): 1836–2201.
Sarah Schindler’s article examines exclusionary design tactics that often go under the legal radar. While exclusionary zoning ordinances receive legal attention, built environment elements such as highways, bridges that buses can’t pass
Unhoused, Unseen: The (in)visibility of homelessness in Philadelphia’s ‘public’ spaces
under, and street layouts (and the sidewalks and crosswalks that make them more or less walkable) are not so readily recognized as forms of discriminatory exclusion. Our team considered Schindler’s argument that “architecture is a form of regulation” in our discussions of hostile architecture and, more broadly, how public ‘public’ space really is. This article is relevant to all designers and planners interacting with the urban realm.
Sousa, Tanya de, Alyssa Andrichik, Marissa Cuellar, Jhenelle Marson, Ed Prestera, and Katherine Rush. “The 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress: Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates of Homelessness.” The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Community Planning and Development, December 2022. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2022-AHAR-Part-1.pdf.
The annual AHAR compiles the results of the national Point-In-Time (PIT) Count and the Housing Inventory Count (HIC) and examines trends from year to year. These estimates of homelessness are analyzed at the national, state, and Continuum of Care (CoC) levels. The AHAR is a necessary starting point to examining data on homelessness in the United States. Our team used the most recently published PIT Count results as the backbone of our Context sections.
“State of Homelessness: 2023 Edition.” National Alliance to End Homelessness, January 6, 2024. https:// endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-statistics/state-of-homelessness/.
This website expands upon the information provided in the annual AHAR reports, providing further analysis of trends and an archive of interactive, downloadable data. Our team used data from this site (which also incorporates US Census data) to chart determine where the Philadelphia CoC ranked nationally for total number of people experiencing homelessness and total experiencing homelessness per 10,000 people.
Villarosa, Linda, Samantha M. Shapiro, Christopher Giamarino, Will Enzinna, and Matthew Desmond. “Voices from Inside America’s Homelessness Crisis.” The New York Times, February 21, 2024, sec. Opinion. https://www. nytimes.com/interactive/2024/02/21/opinion/homelessness-crisis-america-stories.html.
This interactive article provides invaluable perspectives from people experiencing homelessness. Notably, it highlights the least visible forms of homelessness in a humanizing, empathetic way that expands the standard narrative around what homelessness looks like. Our team found this piece particularly helpful in developing our theme of visibility and invisibility. As we did not engage with unhoused communities in Philadelphia during this phase of research, we also benefitted from the article’s amplifying of voices and perspectives of people experiencing homelessness.
The following data sources were used to develop our series of maps. Not listed are several Philadelphia Inquirer and other local news articles on encampment resolutions that were used to determine the locations and dates of encampment clearings. PHL maps:
Philadelphia Heat Vulnerability Index, PPR Spraygrounds, PPR Swimming Pools, PPR Playgrounds, PPR Tree Canopy, Philadelphia Tree Inventory, Senior Centers, Free Library, Cooling Centers, Health Centers & Urgent Care, Building Footprints, Land Use, Low Produce Supply Stores, Transit Lines, Rail Network Lines
“2020 USA Crime Index.” ArcGIS Hub, hub.arcgis.com/datasets/b3802d8a309544b791c2304fece864dc.
Baran PK, Tabrizian P, Zhai Y, Smith JW, Floyd MF. An exploratory study of perceived safety in a neighborhood park using immersive virtual environments. Urban forestry & urban greening. 2018;35:72-81. doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2018.08.009.
Blasi, Gary, and Daniel Flaming . “Los Angeles: Why Tens of Thousands of People Sleep Rough.” BBC News. BBC, September 19, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49687478.
Bliss, Laura. “Mapping the Surge in L.A.’s Homelessness Epidemic.” Bloomberg.com, June 8, 2015. https://www.bloomberg.com/ news/articles/2015-06-08/a-map-from-the-los-angeles-times-shows-distribution-of-homeless-population-across-l-a-county.
Bunten, R. Jay. “How to Provide a Defensible Space.” Cedar Ridge Ranch: Defensible Space, 2020, www.cedarridgeranch.org/ defensible_space/defensible_space.php.
“California Code of Regulations.” California Code of Regulations - California Code of Regulations, govt.westlaw.com/calregs/ Index?transitionType=Default.
California State Parks, State of California. “State Park Peace Officer (Ranger).” CA State Parks, www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=851.
“CHARTER OF THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES, Code of Ordinances, Los Angeles County.” The State of California·Los Angeles County, lacounty-ca.elaws.us/code/coor_chcoloan.
Cohen DA, Han B, Derose KP, et al. The Paradox of Parks in Low-Income Areas: Park Use and Perceived Threats. Environment and Behavior. 2016;48(1):230-245. doi:10.1177/0013916515614366.
“County of Los Angeles Open Data.” Reporting Districts (RDs), LA County Emergency Operations Bureau (EOB), 2018. Currier, Cora. “Organizing Skid Row.” Dissent Magazine, 18 Sept. 2019, www.dissentmagazine.org/article/organizing-skid-row.
Denkmann, Libby. “Frustrated Federal Judge Confronts L.A. Officials About Homelessness Crisis - LAist.” LAist. Accessed February 7, 2021. https://apple.news/AH771HQRaR_yCQoXjlbWdbg.
“Frequently Asked Questions.” National Health Care for the Homeless Council. Accessed January 30, 2021. https://nhchc.org/ understanding-homelessness/faq/.
Gilmartin, Wendy. The Homeless Want More than Housing. 1 Nov. 2016, landscapearchitecturemagazine.org/2016/10/17/thehomeless-want-more-than-housing/.
Groff, Elizabeth, and Eric S. McCord. “The Role of Neighborhood Parks as Crime Generators.” Security Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1–24. Crossref, doi:10.1057/sj.2011.1.
Holland, Gale. “LAPD Defends Rising Arrests of Homeless People.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 7 Mar. 2018, www.latimes. com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-homeless-20180306-story.html.
Homeless Count 2019 Skid Row Data Summary. (n.d.). Retrieved February 01, 2021, from https://www.lahsa.org/ documents?id=3527-hc2019-skid-row-data-summary.pdf
“Inclusive Design Resource Center Resources.” Resources - Co-designing Inclusive Cities, 2020. https://cities.inclusivedesign.ca/ resources/.
J. David Hulchanski, Philippa Campsie, Shirley B.Y. Chau, Stephen W. Hwang, Emily Paradis. Homelessness: What’s in a Word? In: Hulchanski, J. David; Campsie, Philippa; Chau, Shirley; Hwang, Stephen; Paradis, Emily (eds.) Finding Home: Policy Options for Addressing Homelessness in Canada (e-book), Introduction. Toronto: Cities Centre, University of Toronto. www.homelesshub.ca/ FindingHome, https://www.homelesshub.ca/sites/default/files/Intro_Hulchanski_et_al_-_Homelessness_Word.pdf
Kamisher, Eliyahu, et al. “In Los Angeles, Police-Backed Street Cleanings Are Upending the Lives of Homeless People.” The Appeal, 3 Mar. 2020, theappeal.org/los-angeles-criminalization-of-homelessness-street-cleanings-sweeps/.
Unhoused, Unseen: The (in)visibility of homelessness in Philadelphia’s ‘public’ spaces
“LA County Parks and Open Space Data.” LA County Department of Parks and Recreation Parks and Open Space Data, USGS, County of Los Angeles Open Data.
LAPD. “Design Out Crime.” Los Angeles Police Department Memorial Badge, www.lapdonline.org/crime_prevention/content_basic_ view/8852.
Lapham, S. & Cohen, Deborah & Han, B. & Williamson, Stephanie & Evenson, K. & Mckenzie, Thomas & Hillier, Amy & Ward, Phillip. (2015). How important is perception of safety to park use? A four-city survey. Urban Studies. 53. 10.1177/0042098015592822.
Leger, Matthew. “Map Monday: Addressing Homelessness in LA County.” Data-Smart City Solutions. Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, August 13, 2018. https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/article/map-monday-addressinghomelessness-la-county.
“Los Angeles County California State Parks List.” Seecalifornia.com, www.seecalifornia.com/parks/los-angeles-county-state-parks. html.
Los Angeles Police Department Safe Place, 2019. https://www.lapdonline.org/inside_the_lapd/content_basic_view/61375.
Los Angeles Streets of Shame: Homeless Encampments. NBCLA, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?app=desktop&v=vXbAsGS5Nts.
Los Angeles, City of. 2019 HATE CRIME REPORT. Los Angeles, CA : Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, 2019.
Manthey, Grace. “Crimes against Homeless People Increased 24% in 2019 While Overall Crime Decreased, Crime Data Shows.” ABC7 Los Angeles, KABC-TV, 15 Jan. 2020, abc7.com/lapd-crime-stats-data/5849457/.
Mingle, Katie. “According to Need: Prologue.” 99% Invisible, December 1, 2020. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/according-toneed-prologue/.
“National Parks and Forests.” National Park Service and USDA Forest Service Data, County of Los Angeles Open Data.
OFFICIAL CITY OF LOS ANGELES MUNICIPAL CODE. City of Los Angeles, library.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/California/lamc/ municipalcode?f=templates%24fn.
O’Leary, Pieter M. “Walk in the Park: A Legal Overview of California’s State and Federal Parks and the Laws Governing Their Use and Enjoyment, A.” UNM Digital Repository, digitalrepository.unm.edu/nrj/vol52/iss1/9.
“Our Skid Row Urban Design Sourcebook.” Skid Row Housing Trust, rostenwoo.biz/content/skidrow/skidrow_sourcebook_online. pdf.
“Park Overview.” Los Angeles County - Parks & Recreation, parks.lacounty.gov/park-overview/.
“Parks and Public Health in Los Angeles County.” A Cities and Communities Report, May 2016, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, 2016, publichealth.lacounty.gov/chronic/docs/Parks%20Report%202016-rev_051816.pdf.
Puente, Mark, and Richard Winton. “L.A. Vows to Void 2 Million Court Citations and Warrants. Homeless People Will Benefit Most.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 3 Oct. 2019, www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-02/homeless-housing-erase-citationfine-fees.
Stiles, Matt, Ryan Menezes, and Emily Alpert Reyes. “Maps: Could Homeless People Sleep in Your Neighborhood If New Rules Pass?”
Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2019. https://www.latimes.com/projects/homeless-sleeping-maps/.
“Safe Parks Survey.” Los Angeles Police Department, www.lapdonline.org/safe_parks_survey.
“We All Need Parks!” Parks Needs Assessment, LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PARKS AND RECREATION, 2016, lacountyparkneeds.org/.
Woo, Rosten. Our Skid Row. rostenwoo.biz/index.php/skidrow.
Zhang, Christine, and Gale Holland. “Huge Increase in Arrests of Homeless in L.A. - but Mostly for Minor Offenses.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 14 Feb. 2018, www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-homeless-arrests-20180204-story.html.
The annual Point-In-Time (PIT) Count of visibly unhoused individuals is conducted on a single night in January by 382 Continuums of Care (CoCs) covering the geography of the United States. The count is our primary source of data on homelessness, but is notoriously difficult to collect and often inaccurate. This research is interested in designing a new process for Philadelphia’s PIT Count by leveraging existing programs and resources so that we can create more empathetic touchpoints that compile human-centric data to achieve greater impact in interfacing with unhoused individuals living unsheltered. This project addresses the gap in knowledge on homelessness and its relation to public space in Philadelphia. Through the dual lenses of the visibility and invisibility of homelessness, this project discusses local narratives of encampment closures and the inherent shortcomings and challenges of the PIT Count to arrive at methodological and spatial interventions to humanize the way we count.