Communicating through barriers
Professor Ripley Smith and his student, Kate Larson, reflect on their research on the social support of people experiencing homelessness to pinpoint a trend in what creates community.
(Editor’s note: Names of the homeless, and any other identifying details, such as names of churches, were removed from the story to protect the privacy of the sources at the researchers’ request.)
By Emily Rossing and Sarah Bakeman, reporters
Ripley Smith sat in a cold, plastic folding chair in a North Minneapolis church library in late April, surrounded by shelves with kids’ bibles. Snacks and a some bottles of water sat on the formica table in front of him, its legs pushing into a worn-out olive carpet. The church looked nondescript in comparison to the ornate, historic buildings surrounding it. Smith mentally prepared to conduct the seventh interview of his summer research project, with a man named John. This was the same church, with its worn-out ’70s remodeling, that provided John with food, hygiene products, and eventually a part-time job when he found himself homeless.
John was one of 62 sources interviewed by Smith and his team of student researchers in the summer of 2021. The goal was to glean insights from homeless or previously homeless people in order to visualize their social networks. Then the team planned to analyze the data to pinpoint what social support is lacking in the lives of the homeless. But Smith quickly found himself invested in their stories, especially the story of John.
John found himself facing an addiction and without a home. He and his brother survived for years off of the generosity of churches and by collecting discarded scraps of metal and selling them to salvage yards. They also developed a few shallow, but key, relationships with restaurant owners and church leaders that led to part-time jobs and an eventual pathway out of homelessness.
Smith reflects on John’s demeanor during the retelling of his life story.
“It was like sitting down and talking to somebody who… had climbed Mount Everest and survived,” Smith said. “You just get to sit down and hear from them about an amazing journey that they’ve been on and how they had conquered it.”
Smith’s research is part of an initiative with Envision Community, a nonprofit proposing a tiny house community for those experiencing homelessness in Minneapolis. Envision is unique from other homeless shelters in the area in that it is investing serious time and resources into figuring how to make their space more than just a homeless shelter, but an area where authentic community permeates. Envsion’s founder, Bill Walsh, invited Smith to take lead on research that can uncover what that looks like at a practical level.
“We’re trying to figure out what the secret sauce is for making a community really thrive,” Smith said. “We can build homes, but we want to create a community.”
“People experiencing homelessness… lack a sense of community attachment.” –Ripley Smith, researcher
In an attempt to measure the number of social connections their interviewees had, Larson and Smith handed out a paper with 20 empty slots, telling them to fill it with the names of people who were regularly present in their lives. An average middle-class American could list anywhere from 50–100 people. Out of the 62 interviewees, the most names listed were 19, and only one person could hit that number.
“People experiencing homelessness… lack a sense of community attachment,” Smith said. “And so [Envision] wanted to know what we can do proactively to facilitate that. And that was a big piece of the puzzle that we were hoping to solve with our research.”
From mid-April to mid-July, Smith and senior communication studies major Kate Larson conducted long days full of interviews with people experiencing homelessness. Roughly every other week, the two would commute to a Minneapolis church or a Bloomington hotel, which rented space to St. Stephen’s Shelter since COVID-19 had shut down nearly all other hotel business. Smith and Larson, along with other research students brought on by Smith, spent all day asking the same set of questions to interviewees but getting long and different answers.
Some interviewees came in high after smoking meth. Some came in with emotional trauma. Some came in watching the clock, making sure they wouldn’t be late to a minimum wage but full-time job.
Larson remembers the variety of states interviewees would enter the room in.
“That was the surprise; you never knew the person coming in … what condition they would be in,” Larson said. “Again, many of these people experience severe mental illness. Some of them are still wrestling with substance use.”
When John received an opportunity to get treatment, he was nervous. He’d heard stories of people who had gone to rehabilitation facilities just to lose all their connections, which are as valuable as anything when experiencing homelessness. Connections can bring security in the form of food, work and overall social support, all of which are at risk while someone is away, learning to fight and cope with addiction.
“When they go to get treatment, a lot of times you break off those relationships, those resources… and then things change,” Smith said. “The… relationships that you’ve formed, maybe they moved on, or you get disconnected somehow.”
Seeing this theme across several interviews, Smith and Larson discovered a data trend. Many people experiencing homelessness lack lasting social connections. Often, if they do have social connections, these connections lack density, meaning their networks are weaker because the people within it do not know each other. For example, while a working American may have several connections within their workplace that all know each other, a homeless person will often have connections in separate circles, like a pastor at a church and a brother and a restaurant owner.
Larson spent weeks transcribing the words of their conversations. Then, Smith joined in on the process of coding interviews into larger themes. The data analysis revealed several barriers preventing people from getting out of homelessness, as well as several pathways that indicated someone was on their way to reaching housing stability. Many of the pathways, Smith and Larson realized, had to do with having meaningful social connections.
Smith notes this will be useful for Envision moving forward.
“As [Envision] invites people to join their community, they want to know what kind of the normative situation for social connectedness might be for these new members of the community, and what we need to address,” Smith said.
“[The interviewees] kept insisting, ‘I am not homeless. This is just something I’m going through, but it’s not who I am.’” –Ripley Smith, researcher
Some people like John were able to overcome the barriers, perhaps due to his social support staying in tact. He returned from rehabilitation, and the support from his church had not disappeared. This discovery is not usually the case for those experiencing homelessness. Smith noted only about 10% of the interviewees seemed to have as positive of a viewpoint on their experience as John did. Still, there was a certain persistence, and hope that struck him.
“[The interviewees] kept insisting, ‘I am not homeless. This is just something I’m going through, but it’s not who I am,’” Smith said.
Now October, Smith and Larson still sift through their hundreds thousands of hours of data and reflect on the stories they heard. They have provided Envision their raw data, and are working with their board, consisting of many people who are without homes now, to determine what the next steps forward are for Envision.
“We are very appreciative of Dr. Smith’s work,” said Dr. Walsh, one of Envision’s founders, “Envision is planning on…gathering members of the homeless community to brainstorm ideas on how to use those insights to develop concrete ideas to try at Envision.”
While finding data trends is the focus of the research, Larson said she gained much more from this experience than statistical analysis. She urges her peers to confront the stigmas surrounding those in housing instability and to understand the reality and nearness of these people.
“I hope Bethel students and people know in general that homelessness is not far from you,” Larson said. “There’s ways that you can support and serve your community without going far.”
