Hilary Silver, “Multilevel Governance of Homelessness During the Coronavirus Pandemic: Challenges and Opportunities”, 14.04.2022, 5:00pm – 7:00pm

Seminar Cities WIP (Work in Process) 

Sciences Po, Room K008, 1 Place Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 75007 Paris, Compulsory registration

This paper discusses some of the innovations and difficulties in multilevel governance of homelessness since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Homelessness varies a great deal geographically. National policies to address it, where they even exist, are administered at a very local level, often in partnership with the private nonprofit sector. Even in the best of times, multilevel governance challenges introduce uneven responses to homelesssness and housing instability. When the Covid-19 crisis hit, policy responses were likewise hampered by inefficient coordination among levels of government, especially in federal states like the US, Germany, and Italy. The immediate national actions taken to protect people from the disease such as lockdowns, masking, and social distancing were difficult to apply to those experiencing homelessness, especially rough sleepers. Before federal governments could respond, many regions, states and localities adopted various emergency measures: deconcentrating congregate shelters, moving people – especially those infected – to individual dwelling units, commandeering vacant hotel rooms and apartments, distributing masks, water, and disinfectant.

Encampments were cleared or provided with services, and outreach to street dwellers increased in the interest of public health. The life-or-death urgency of the crisis created an opportunity to break through complacent business as usual, providing a shock to the path dependency of institutionalized responses to homelessnesss. Yet these initiatives sometimes ran up against subsequent federal policies, such as national health guidelines, eviction moratoria, and direct cash or rental assistance, with rigid regulations, short timelines and premature expiration dates. Some local and state governments lacked prior administrative experience or financial capacities to carry out the federal policies to protect the unhoused during the pandemic. Data collection on homelessness was similarly curtailed, making it difficult to monitor what was happening on the ground, while increased activism by and on behalf of the poor and newly jobless pressured governments to respond promptly to rising needs.

Speaker

Hilary Silver is Professor of Sociology, International Affairs, and Public Policy & Public Administration at George Washington University and Professor Emerita of Sociology and Urban Studies at Brown University. She served as Chair of the GW Department of Sociology, Director of the Urban Studies Program at Brown, and Editor of City & Community, the journal of the Community and Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, which honored her with the Lynd Award for Career Lifetime Achievement.

Collective discussion

For more information: citiesarebackintown@sciencespo.fr 

Compulsory registration