Homeless encampments: Difference between revisions

 

In some cases, this choice of term may reflect and signal an authorization under which the settlement is operating: for example, in Portland, '''Right 2 Dream Too''' residents and supporters often deliberately refer to their location as a "rest area" because it is authorized as a campground under state law, similarly to highway rest stops. Residents, supporters and observers may also choose to avoid 'camp' or 'encampment' because the site may be non-temporary (e.g. with '''Dignity Village''', or '''Emerald Village''') or aspiring to be. Or, residents/supporters may employ a name intended to define themselves as a community or organization not necessarily fixed in one location: Right 2 Dream Too's web site states, "We are a nonprofit organization operating a space.."

In the context of the [[Village Buildings]] book project, we see 'encampments' as a common but contested, often incautiously or tendentiously used term that tends to conflate and illegitimize a diverse range of dwelling situations, and which is often not the term people dwelling in these sitautions themselves use. Also, the usage tends to obscure what may be positive potentialities of the situation, such as marginalized people's solidarity, creativity, agency and self-determination, political organizing and expression, self-building, mobility, and the possibility of incremental development of site, community, or dwellings into permanence.