An Inquiry into Homelessness and Belonging
Understanding the wicked problem and stakeholder relationships of homelessness in Pittsburgh
Transition Design Seminar, Carnegie Mellon University
Team Emergence: Xuehui Zhang, Sanika Sahasrabuddhe, a. Sánchez, Erica Dorn (Assignment 1a+1b)
Homelessness — Framing the Problem
Homelessness is on the rise in the United States, 500,000 people living on the streets is considered a low estimate. Pittsburgh’s share of the homeless population may at first seem insignificant compared to cities like San Francisco, or D.C., however it is estimated that in this city of 300,000 residents, there is an estimated 750 homeless residents in Pittsburgh.
The roots of homelessness in Pittsburgh are connected to cycles of mass global migration, loose labor laws and loss of industry leading to unemployment, a long history of racist policies and redlining, defunding of social programs including public housing, and the rising cost of healthcare, along with the rise of the opioid epidemic, and more. We further explore these root causes and consequences through our wicked mapping to uncover key histories and their root causes and consequences.
Homelessness is formally defined by the United States government as when a person “lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, and if they sleep in a shelter designated for temporary living accommodations or in places not designated for human habitation.” While homelessness may, at first sight, seem like a problem that is restricted to people without a shelter, the homeless population includes populations of people with shelters or homes and people without. We further explore the homeless community as a stakeholder group in Pittsburgh which includes those that are temporary homeless, sometimes refugees and recent immigrants, as well as those that live chronically on the street, bounce from shelter to shelter, or are at frequent risk of eviction.
There are several key events that help to tell the history and picture of homelessness in Pittsburgh and bring the complexity of it into view — some of which we’ve captured on this timeline.
Team relationship to the topic
“I was actually really shocked how ill people were on the street. It was like going to a third-world country. Young, old, people with mental illness, runaway kids, women (who) fled domestic violence, veterans. And they all have their own story.” — Dr. Jim Withers
Being a group of Transition Design students from several different countries and many different life experiences we found the wicked problem of homelessness to touch on many questions related to what it means to be a developed nation. From accounts of Dr. Jim Withers, the street doctor of Pittsburgh, high levels of illnesses were discovered within the homeless population, levels he considered to only be seen in underdeveloped countries. This provocation leads us to understand our relationship to the wicked problem and ask new questions that help to frame the problem. Eventually seeing new pathways towards a future where all residents feel safe, sheltered, and feel they can belong.
Erica — I gravitated to the topic of homelessness for several reasons. Firstly, I’ve worked in economic development and community building for over a decade, the mission of which has been to help build local living economies where all members of the local economy find we can belong and thrive. I’m driven to build inclusive local economies partially because the four main cities I’ve lived in throughout my life all have high amounts of people without sustainable shelter — Denver, San Francisco, New York, and Portland. It’s an urban reality that leaves me feeling helpless and deeply saddened. How is it that we tolerate living well amongst so many others who are suffering and what can we do about it? What hits closest to home is that my uncle was homeless for over thirty years. When I was listed as his next-of-kin, I was forced to face the realities of how he maneuvered through life homeless — I uncovered an incredible community that had supported him. I also discovered the haunting evidence of just how broken our health, social, and economic systems have become. I cannot tolerate living in a wealthy democracy will so many suffer.
Sanika — I was interested in developing and developed contexts rather than developing and developed countries. The homeless population and government initiatives driven towards their needs are different yet similar to the affordable housing and slum rehabilitation real estate development that happens in Mumbai city. Even though homelessness is called to be a wicked problem, statistically, the number of homeless people without shelter, is much lower than those in India. Yet, despite being from also called ‘developing country’ I am more than aware of the privilege I have. Family legacy in India, entitles offspring to be the inherent owners of housing property based on the will of the deceased. Being raised in a culture of children not being expected to go out and look for money, housing and education on their own, was a concept alien to me. We discussed the idea of broken social contacts in our team, and I learnt the broader definition of the term homelessness much more than I realised at its face value.
Amanda — It was interesting diving deeply into homelessness in the context of Pittsburgh. Like many other poorly planned cities, Pittsburgh’s infrastructure was not set up for success. Although homelessness is a pervasive issue here in Pittsburgh, there are many other cities that suffer even more greatly. From our research there are a plethora of initiatives and organizations working with populations that are oppressed by our socio-economic system. Maybe Pittsburgh should lend a hand to other cities because the homeless population is getting smaller. It was tough to grasp or understand just how many people were in not great living conditions. Because through our research we realized you don’t have to physically be outside to be homeless, You can live inside of a structure but lack a feeling of belonging, rendering one homeless.
Kate — I visited Los Angeles before this semester started, and homelessness is a giant issue there. It is impossible to avoid talking to people/citizens from LA on the problem of homelessness. It was very interesting to hear different attitudes or opinions towards homeless people, and stakeholders that are more directly related to them. Also, these different attitudes, such as complaint, empathy, can come from the same stakeholder group, which make the wicked problem more complicated. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh is a city with different weather, culture, economy and history background from LA. I am intrigued to see how these factors impact homelessness issue here in Pittsburgh, and make it different from other cities.
Initial Research and Understanding
For our initial research we began primary and secondary research through a broad review of literature and news related to homelessness in Pittsburgh and beyond. Through our discussions we came to share this idea of how homelessness manifests in different forms in the countries we come from. For example, in India, urban areas with dense populations have localities where informal settlements come up (also called Slums). Regardless of the country, urbanization has a crucial relationship with the density of the homeless population. Laws and the reality are often at tension with each other and lead to the criminalization of homeless people and further exacerbate the issues.
Our process of collecting and cohering involved gathering themes from our various perspectives and research, categorizing them by the STEEP framework, sorting, adding and modifying primary secondary root causes and consequences, and drawing connections between causes and consequences and across categories.
Initially the looked like this —
Final Wicked Problem Mapping —
*Here is a link to the presentation we gave in Transition Design class — feedback from this we used to refine this final post. Please look into this presentation to see previous versions of our maps and process.
A broad overview of STEEP Insights
Social — The historical traces of inequity in terms of basics needs, access to infrastructure and amenities as well as racial segregation are important to address, while unfolding the issue of homelessness in Pittsburgh. Of all the categories of root causes, the social causes and consequences are related to people’s identity and manifest in the form of implicit biases and impact how policy is framed, designed and who it targets. Mental health and questions of well-being inclusion or it’s lack stem from the narrative of segregation based on race, income as well as gender. The social category was key anchor for mapping our wicked problem because it defined identity and right to access to resources. The lack of resources and opportunities in Pittsburgh gives rise to a large aging population with a shrinking young working population. Homelessness among youth is a big question in Pittsburgh. Moreover, specific ethnic groups and communities face more targeted evictions than others.
Infra/Tech — The second nature of Homelessnessness is the infrastructural inequity rampant in Pittsburgh neighbourhoods. Certain neighbourhoods are shown to have a skewed access to resources. While marginalised groups are pushed to certain marginalised neighbourhoods, prices of housing and rent in certain neighbourhoods are unaffordable, while other neighbourhoods see a lot of abandoned properties. While abandoned properties are an opportunity to create infrastructure for the homeless population, band-aid solutions keep the issue alive with no framing and retargeting of these marginalised groups.
Economic — The rise and change of the nature of industries in Pittsburgh, also raises the question of whether there is a good match of the labour pool and the kind of jobs available as well. The rise of tech giants in Pittsburgh is driving venture capital money into certain kinds of investment including higher-income development, keeping the homeless as marginalized as ever.
Environmental — Not only is homelessness a socio-economic question - it gives rise to question of public health (including mental health) and overall sanitation of the city, with the city unable to cater to the needs of the homeless and lack of access to public housing.
Governance — The history of laws around homelessness and affordable housing have shaped the narrative of homelessness. Furthermore, social programs and funding for the care of the homeless is an outcome of these laws and their language. Affordable Housing is highly inadequate and continues to face cuts to the budget. In addition, band aid solutions continue to exist and try to curb this concern, but in vain.
Zooming In and Out
Through the process of wicked problem mapping we began to zoom in and zoom out of the STEEP areas to explore likely and unlikely interconnections. There are dozens of narratives that can be discerned from the Wicked Problem Map and that help to tell the complex story that today leaves approximately 800 Pittsburgh residents homeless/shelterless every night.
We’ve surfaced seven significant narratives that incorporate factors from each of the STEEP categories.
- Racist History and Policy
- Defunding and Privatization of Public Housing
- Economic and Population Decline and Job Loss
- Health and Medical Industry
- Trauma and Abuse
- Underfunded Social Programs
- Globalization, Mass Migration, and Gentrification
The following images which is also linked for higher resolution details out the narrative we’ve built through our research about each category — please read into the image and it’s storyboards we curated from our wicked problem map.
Mapping Stakeholder relationships
To begin to embed ourselves locally with homeless community and the service providers we attended an event called Pittsburgh Home — a full recap can be found here. This was an opportunity to meet people working in shelters, supporting the refugee and migrant communities, those affected most by gentrification, the formerly homeless and at risk homeless populations, as well as local advocates and service providers. This event helped us to better understand the local context and ecosystem.
After the event and through our research, we decided to expand from the three main categories to to five ‘communities’ of stakeholders using the pentad stakeholder framework (see image below): homeless community, non-profit & government service providers, policy makers, housing-related groups, and groups affected relatively directly.
Then, we reorganized, and added another stakeholder group — non-human factors.
Here are the final six groups we identified:
- Homeless Community
- Local Community members
3. Financial & Corporate Establishments
4. Policy Makers & Government
5. Non-profit & Government Service Providers
6. Non-human members
As shown in the image above, we visualized a relational ecosystem from which interesting patterns began to show up:
- The homeless community is the core stakeholder in the wicked problem of homelessness. It encompasses a large variety of various demographics and groups, such as veterans, evicted families, refugees, those suffering from substance abuse, and more. Matthew Desmond book, Evicted, serves as a longer narrative account of the many complex stories and histories that have led to current day conditions of homelessness. He names poverty and homelessness has become highly profitable for a select few, while devastating to many communities, especially people of color. Substance abusers, homeless youth, mental health community, each having various circumstantial causes. It is important to note that we considered the many categories of stakeholders that can be included as homeless — from sheltered to unsheltered. as we are trying to reframe homelessness, while they are generally broken down into 4 types: chronic, episodic, transitional, and hidden. However, there are variations in definition to homelessness, which make it difficult to understand homeless issues.
- Most conflicts spread out from or surrounding housing-related financial establishments; There are substantial internal conflicts within this stakeholder groups. Tenants and landlords by far have one of the most tenuous relationships in the entire relational ecosystem. This is due to the fact that much of the state’s public housing stock was demolished, especially in the nineties. Privatization of housing for low-income communities has become more common, leaving the rights of people to have safe and long-term housing to the whims and gambles of bankers and investors.
- Non-human factors, included aging infrastructure have a symbiotic relationship with the homeless community.
- There are many mixed relations around government and policy makers due to tensions between what government or non-profit should be providing. Most apparent however is the challenge of privatization of housing and and high-end development often being at odds with the needs of low-income communities — often government and policy is fueling these new developments. Time and again we heard the need for more investment in public housing, unfortunately it seems very few cities including Pittsburgh are poised to enter into public housing to the extent of the demand requires. We continue to be in tensions about public/private partnerships and whether these scenarios can meet the needs of our housing crisis.
Overall, there are much more conflict and mixed relations than symbiotic relations on the map. Homelessness is a wicked problem that connects deeply to human conditions that are outside of the built physical world alone.
Reflections and Insights
Through our research, mapping, and narrative creation process we faced a fundamental challenge — is homelessness an accurate way to describe the wicked problem? Many advocates and service providers working to serve individuals and communities who find themselves are calling for a reframing of the problem. Many believe that we face a crisis of belonging, This can be attributed, in part, to the unraveling of social safety nets and forced migration, and the loss of social bonds. Conversely, this comes at a time when the US federal government is continuing to defund any existing social programs, including public housing, and other forms of assistance for needy families. It may not be surprising then that homelessness is on the rise in the United States.
Shelter is understood to be a basic human right. We heard that consistent message from the homeless community and service providers that we met at a local event recently. People in Pittsburgh desire a safe place that they can call home and that fosters individual expression. Unfortunately, in the U.S. this human right has been delegated tobe mostly managed by private entities with financial incentives — this poses one of the biggest threats to safe and sustainable housing as a human right.
Through our research we exposed many nooks and crannies of the wicked problem that deserve further exploration, including investigating the nature of the problem from the perspective of the many different stakeholder groups. Because so many people are categorized as homeless, there are many potential avenues to explore what would lead to more security and belonging for each group. Addressing economic factors including ‘good jobs’, understanding and investing in social programs, developing public housing that is appropriate for the many different types of individuals and families in need, affordable and public healthcare and addressing the opioid and mental health crisis, are all avenues for further solution oriented exploration.For these reasons, it becomes important to reframe the definitions of home and belonging rather than solving the wicked problems with bandaid solutions that come from thinking of the problem as solely an issue of housing.
Providing safe and affordable housing to Pittsburgh residents, is one of the key priorities for the City Government of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh Foundation leads an initiative called 100 Percent Pittsburgh that aims to reduce evictions while also ensuring that all of Pittsburgh’s residents share in the economic return of the city.
Fundamentally, however, many believe we are facing a human crisis of belonging. We ask — how can transition design contribute to a sense of belonging for those facing homelessness in Pittsburgh?
We honor lives of the members of the Pittsburgh community who have died on our streets.
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