Abstract
In response to increasing homelessness in our city, Seattle Pacific University invited a homeless encampment (Tent City) to reside on our university campus for three months. This provided an opportunity to engage students on issues of poverty and inequality. Building from a service-learning model, we devised course work around homelessness and applied research. Students took a two-quarter course sequence to become knowledgeable about homelessness and sociological research methods in order to collect field observations and conduct interviews with Tent City residents. Based on student reflections, stereotypes about homelessness were challenged and social distance between students and people who were homeless was reduced. Student exposure to homelessness through faculty-guided research is an effective tool in developing a sociological imagination and an important step in fostering agents of social change.
Students are often attracted to sociology because they want to understand contemporary social problems, including why they exist, how they persist, and how they can be ameliorated. Homelessness in the United States is one such social problem. More than 550,000 people experience homelessness on any given night (National Alliance to End Homelessness 2015). While national trends show homelessness decreasing slightly, many cities are experiencing significant increases. Homelessness in our own city, Seattle, has reached crisis levels. 1 The 2016 Seattle/King County “One Night Count” reported more than 4,500 people living in cars, in tents, under bridges, and in doorways or riding the late-night buses—a 19 percent increase from 2015.
As a response to increasing homelessness, the Seattle Pacific University (SPU) community hosted a tent encampment in the winter of 2015. For 13 weeks, our campus served as the temporary home for approximately 50 to 80 men and women living in Tent City 3 (referred to as Tent City). Founded in 2000, Tent City is the oldest homeless encampment in Seattle, successfully maintaining the camp by partnering with the city and various community organizations.
SPU is a small, non-elite liberal arts college located 10 minutes north of downtown Seattle. Affiliated with the Free Methodist denomination, the university enrolls 3,100 undergraduate and 1,000 graduate students. The undergraduate student body includes 38 percent ethnic-minority students. Nearly 30 percent of SPU students reported a family income less than $40,000, with more than another quarter reporting family incomes between $40,000 and $80,000. In a universitywide representative survey collected by the authors, 7 percent of SPU students reported having experienced homelessness.
SPU’s hosting of Tent City gave us a unique opportunity to engage with students around homelessness. We devised a three-course sequence to (1) expose our students to the literature on homelessness, (2) focus on ethical and appropriate methods of data collection, and (3) provide more advanced preparation in homelessness literature and the research process. We then mentored a student research team that collected data from field observations and interviews with residents of Tent City. We also took data on our students as they moved through the research process to see what and how they learned about homelessness and Tent City. 2
Tent Cities as Learning Opportunities
Students interested in studying social problems, such as homelessness, sometimes struggle to link individual problems with social structures—or what C. Wright Mills (1959) terms personal troubles versus public issues. Sociological studies highlight the social causes of poverty and homelessness (Gowan 2010), including the lack of institutional support for people who are homeless (Jencks 1994), and the destructive effects of homelessness on individuals and society (Snow and Anderson 1993). While research clearly links homelessness to larger social forces, public perceptions of homelessness often fail to make these crucial connections. It was clear that students needed hands-on experience to critically examine public perceptions and stigmas attached to those who are homeless, as these perceptions have implications for public policy (Lee, Tyler, and Wright 2010). While Seattle’s homelessness crisis is unenviable, it provided a real-world example (Blouin and Perry 2009; Breese and Richmond 2002; Mobley 2007; Rooks and Winkler 2012) of the confluence of public issues and personal troubles.
Sociology “is well positioned to provide relevant knowledge and conceptual and theoretical tools for understanding both social problems and the experiences of marginalized populations” (Blouin and Perry 2009:121). The partnership between Tent City and SPU allowed us to combine traditional course work with practical research experience, laying a foundation for civic engagement (Potter, Caffrey, and Plante 2003) within a supportive university context. Drawing insights from the sociological imagination (Mills 1959) and public sociology (Burawoy 2005), we devised an innovative learning experience capitalizing on the benefits associated with service-learning courses. The active learning models within service learning can awaken and direct students’ sociological imaginations (Hironimus-Wendt and Wallace 2009) as well as give students opportunities to gain job skills, a greater appreciation of diversity, and a better understanding of civic engagement (Blouin and Perry 2009; Mooney and Edwards 2001).
Our model tailored and integrated course material (Parker-Gwin 1996) to prepare student researchers to enter into the field with substantive knowledge and methodological skills (Potter et al. 2003). The project incorporated several components of service learning, including structured reflection (Hattery 2003; Lewis 2004; Nurse and Krain 2006), application of acquisition skills, course credit, services rendered, and spending time in the community (Mooney and Edwards 2001). It is also consistent with Breese and Richmond’s (2002) account of the “marriage” between applied sociology and service-learning movements. Similar to previous work done with juveniles who are incarcerated (Nurse and Krain 2006) and mental health patients (Hironimus-Wendt and Wallace 2009), our project incorporated an interview component with a marginalized population—residents of a homeless tent encampment.
Service learning is often a standard practice in universities. There are, however, some limitations. While students have access to substantive literature and some faculty guidance, they often do not have a necessary amount of academic knowledge or sustained faculty engagement. Since the service and the learning are generally concurrent, students can be overwhelmed and lack motivation or commitment, which is less useful for partner organizations (Blouin and Perry 2009). In addition, college students may be unprepared “to confront issues related to poverty, race, mental illness, substance abuse, or homelessness” (Blouin and Perry 2009:128). The community-based organizations studied by Blouin and Perry (2009) suggested that “additional preparation in the classroom” could address some of these challenges, creating a more robust learning experience. From the onset, this was a research project and not a traditional service-learning project. Yet the inclusion of key elements from the service-learning model, as well as modifications drawn from critiques in the service-learning literature, aided our design. In developing our pedagogical approach, we were mindful to ground the students in sociological knowledge and application to enhance civic engagement and student’s perceived efficacy (Johnson 2005).
Research Method
With provisions for Tent City’s stay on campus developed nearly a year in advance, we were able to integrate courses into our annual seven-course teaching load. Two of the three courses were taken prior to Tent City’s arrival, with the third course concurrent to Tent City’s winter visit. During the fall quarter (2014), 30 students took Homelessness in America to better understand the structural causes of homelessness and possible solutions (including site visits to social service agencies). Twenty students also took Introduction to Research Methods to learn appropriate methods for data collection and to be sensitized to marginalized populations. 3 Together these courses gave students substantive knowledge on homelessness and armed them with practical skills to collect data.
Data Collection: Field Observations, Interviews, and Student Reflections
Having completed the first-term courses, 12 students took a senior research seminar coinciding with Tent City’s visit. 4 Seminar students began the research component of the project by collecting field data at various films and forums on homelessness sponsored by the university and Tent City. Students then spent several weeks familiarizing themselves with the encampment, spending informal time in the Tent City common areas, meeting and talking with residents.
As the research team members developed rapport with Tent City residents, they began conducting interviews, resulting in data from 24 residents. 5 Interviews lasted an average of 45 minutes and took place in the Tent City common area or at local coffee shops. Students were given coffee cards to treat residents while they were being interviewed. 6 Tent City residents completed an institutional review board consent form as well as a short demographic survey. Students then walked the residents through a semistructured interview protocol that asked about residents’ experiences with homelessness and living in Tent City. 7 Interviews were recorded and transcribed. The research team also collected data as participant-observers at various local and regional events.
As the students worked through the process of research, they shared how their training and experience were coming together (or not) during weekly seminars. In order to determine if student perceptions about homelessness were shifting, we collected written reflections over the course of the term. At the end of the term, we collected final written reflections of their experiences and conducted two debriefing sessions. The first session was an open-ended group session, with the second being an individual video debrief with an impartial, non-SPU interviewer. 8 Both debriefing sessions were transcribed.
Findings
Student reflection data illustrated an overall positive impact of the project on our students’ lives. The course sequencing proved crucial to student knowledge about homelessness, laying bare many of the students’ conscious and unconscious biases about homelessness. In their reflections and debriefings, students expressed that their course work helped them to better understand the complexity of homelessness. Students related that before the course work, they had the “same kind of stigmas” as popular perceptions about “homeless people being different.” After taking the course work, they became more aware of “how really easy it is to fall into a path of homelessness.” Immersion in the academic literature also served to increase students’ compassion. Students reported a newfound empathy for people who were homeless, stating that they simply “did not understand” the larger social context of being homeless. One student said she had “a new empathy that I didn’t have before because I didn’t understand…all of the factors, and all of the different ways that people come into homelessness and how they deal with homelessness.”
Students recognized that the process of learning about a social problem was necessary, even if difficult, and was best realized when applied beyond an academic context—that “combining research with service is a crucial combination.” This combination created significant shifts in student understanding.
I think the main thing when I started out is I didn’t realize how invisible the homeless were to me. I mean, you could just be walking down the street and you do see them but you avert your eyes . . . because you don’t want to feel shameful for not giving them money or anything. And I’ve . . . learned through this [class] . . . even if you feel like you aren’t called to give at that moment, just looking them in the eyes and giving them a smile and acknowledging, “Hi, I’m a human. You exist, I exist, we’re having this exchange,” and then keep going, it’s made it impossible for me not to see the person on the side of the street anymore. And even if I can’t always help, I’ve found that it’s really important to just acknowledge their presence.
Face-to-face Interactions: Challenging Stereotypes
While the course work gave students a strong background in understanding the structural issues that cause homelessness, increasing their empathy, it was the combination of rich academic reading and repeated social interactions that challenged stereotypes. For many students, this meant acknowledging previous assumptions about the characteristics of people who are homeless. For example, one student stated that “people who don’t have homes, or don’t have houses, aren’t like all criminals or drug addicts or mentally ill or things like that.” Another student said, “Just one lecture on these implications and one visit to Tent City was enough to reform any stereotypical perception I still had on homeless people.”
Even with the course work behind them, students struggled to move into the field and interact with residents of Tent City. During the research seminar, one student explained that it was “definitely uncomfortable” to go into Tent City. For another student, jumping into the research eased the fear associated with engaging Tent City residents, saying that initially it was “scary,” but “once I had my first interview I was like, ‘Wow, these people are . . . I relate to them.’”
Having negotiated the initial meetings, students asked residents to participate in in-depth interviews to learn more about who the residents were, what had led them to Tent City, and how they navigated being homeless. For our students, hearing residents’ personal stories illustrated the larger problem of homelessness, linking private troubles to public issues.
Doing the interviews and hearing how one of the people . . . had a really bad home life, the other had a job for 19 years and couldn’t get employed somewhere else. It’s so sad, but it’s so humanizing at the same time, and realizing that really could be me especially if I don’t have the support network I have.
Students connected their academic course work to real individuals struggling with homelessness by linking homelessness to social institutions, like family and the economy. Given the social divisions between themselves and residents of Tent City—and people who are homeless more generally—it is revealing that students could imagine themselves in the situation of people who reside in a tent encampment.
As students became more comfortable and familiar with Tent City residents, the social distance between the two groups lessened.
I think [interviewing] was really powerful because it’s one thing to read about homelessness and know all the facts and read all the books, but to actually . . . go down there and . . . interact, it really broke down that social distance and the discomfort . . . and it was really powerful to build friendships with [residents] and maintain those relationships.
Through interviews, students saw their own stereotypes about homelessness firsthand.
[O]ne of the ladies I interviewed, she went to college, she went to pharmacy school, and you know everything seemed like it was going good for her. And her father passed away and a month later her mother passed away, and so she kind of got into this like spiral of depression. And it just . . . shows that it’s not always that someone’s lazy, or they want to be in that position. . . . I could go to college, graduate, be in a job, and somehow still become homeless. So it’s very powerful to . . . learn about that.
Face-to-face interactions provided students an opportunity to challenge biases and reinforced a structural understanding of homelessness. In this case, having a graduate degree did not protect against becoming homeless. The stark reality that homelessness could happen to anyone—even to them, given the right combination of circumstances—significantly influenced their perceptions.
Students began to understand that multiple interactions led to “the breaking down of social barriers and the breaking down of social distance.” As one student stated, “I maybe had this idea of seeing Tent City 3 residents as an ‘other’ before, I guess, as an ‘us’ and ‘them.’ . . . But then through . . . different interactions with them, just seeing them as just people, too.” Another student, actively working with the homeless population prior to this project, summarized the experience similarly:
I feel like this was the smallest the social gap has been for me. . . . Having them [residents] on campus . . . having like a daily opportunity to engage with them and build relationships I think is really powerful. So that’s definitely kind of one of my biggest takeaways is just kind of having that social distance be the smallest it’s ever been.
A Paradox
Learning about and interacting with those who are homeless created dissonance for our students. They began to question more concretely their privilege and the inequalities inherent in society.
I think one of the things I have been grappling with the most . . . [is] the “us” and “them” idea . . . because I think I have always thought of homeless people or people living in Tent City as “them” I guess or the “other” . . . I don’t know. That whole thought of, “Well now they are going to go outside and sleep in a tent . . . and I am going back to a house I live in” . . . I don’t know. It’s hard. It’s hard for me.
While student perceptions shifted, structural inequalities did not. Students were still living in stable housing, with educational privilege and resourceful networks; Tent City residents continued to live in unstable encampments, lacking privileges and with less resourceful social networks.
Even when students’ negative perceptions of homelessness shifted, they did not always intervene when friends or family made negative or stigmatizing comments about people who are homeless. Students began to realize this disconnect and struggled with how to respond.
I don’t know. It’s almost weird. I have thought about it a couple times where one of my housemates has made some kind of degrading remark, like, “oh that homeless guy at the bus stop” and “there is this homeless guy bugging me,” or something like that, and I have thought about how . . . I might have said something sometimes. But there are definitely times I haven’t said anything and I . . . don’t know why I haven’t said anything.
This led to further concerns as good intentions collided with conspicuous inaction. Some students questioned if they were exploiting residents to obtain interviews. One student told us, “I almost felt weird, like I was in there trying to exploit [residents] or something like that.” In response, one of her peers said,
Yeah, I would feel exactly the same. I would be really excited to be [in Tent City] and then be like, “Oh, by the way do you want [to do] an interview?” and they would say no, and then I’m like, “Okay I am just going to hang out for fun,” but then I felt bad because they were just thinking, “Oh, she wants interviews. That’s all she wants.”
Social Engagement and Personal Transformation
Despite the tensions, students characterized their experiences as transformative. Face-to-face interactions with residents from Tent City challenged stereotypes, bridged social distance, and created relationships. For one student, the shift in worldview was powerful.
It’s sad that people that are already marginalized . . . don’t have, like a safety net to pick them up when they’re already falling. . . . [A resident] I know, both of her parents passed away, so it’s like, I . . . can’t even imagine not having my parents . . . it is overwhelming and I think I can understand how once you get into that path, how hard it is to get out. . . . [T]his class has really taught me that. . . . We think that people just pick themselves up and like—how can you? Like so much is impossible.
This reflection illustrates a shift from an individualized “pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” view-point, so prevalent in popular discourse, to a more nuanced structural framework—and a less judgmental one.
Students also expressed change beyond the classroom, with the Tent City experience permeating their daily lives with family and friends. A student summarized the diffusion of ideas across her social networks: “Not only did it impact you as an individual but it impacted everyone you talked to. Now my family knows more about homelessness, my friends, my roommate—they’re all having their eyes opened to this social cause.” The university’s organizational response to homelessness helped students challenge friends: “I was in constant conversation with friends at other universities and they were amazed at the work SPU was doing, and challenged to consider how their own institution is addressing homelessness.”
Linking Academic Knowledge and Personal Stories with Social Advocacy
The combination of course work and interest in constructively addressing homelessness culminated in advocacy. Several students began voluntarily attending events such as Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day at the state capitol. They also attended Seattle City Council meetings focusing on homeless encampments and other housing policies. Over the course of Tent City’s stay at SPU, a neighboring city was hearing discussion on a new ordinance that discriminated against those who are homeless. Our students accompanied a contingent of Tent City residents to a planned protest of the ordinance. As one student noted, “Through attending the Housing and Homelessness Advocacy Day in Olympia and later attending a protest . . . I felt like I was doing something with my education surrounding these issues.” This advocacy shifted our students’ sense of agency and how education could be leveraged to make social change. 10
Relationships built between students and residents encouraged partnerships to form in order to advocate for those who are homeless and with those who are homeless. The face-to-face interactions between students and residents made a difference: “Just having a face behind why we’re advocating for housing, and a tangible story about why housing matters, [is] really powerful and that’s something that Tent City 3 really gave me.” Another student reported that she partnered with Tent City residents to fight a discriminatory ordinance because “we’re friends” and “homeless people shouldn’t be the only ones who are advocating.”
In sum, the effect of the project seemed far-reaching for the research team. Students reported experiencing personal transformations that influenced everyday interactions in private and public spaces, altering their worldviews. The magnitude of the effect for our students extended beyond their own lives and shaped conversations with friends and family members about homelessness. As teachers, it was powerful to see students move from explaining homelessness in individual or moral terms to actively advocating for structural change.
Discussion
Our university’s hosting of Tent City allowed us a unique opportunity to engage students around issues of homelessness. Similar to Hironimus-Wendt and Wallace (2009), we found that active learning assisted students in navigating micro-, meso- and macrolevel social arrangements. At the microlevel, we witnessed social engagement and personal transformation. Characterizing their experiences as transformative, students’ face-to-face interactions with Tent City residents shifted perceptions around homelessness. Students reported that their personal lives changed in terms of their own views, how they talked about homelessness, and with whom. Student reflections highlight the implications for personal and social change. At the mesolevel, the university’s mobilization of resources, including our curriculum, facilitated student engagement with Tent City. The Homelessness in America course gave students a strong background in understanding the structural issues that cause homelessness. The Introduction to Research Methods course gave students the tools to sensitize them to issues of data collection and marginalized populations. The research component—the senior seminar—reinforced the real-life experiences of people who are homeless. Finally, at the macrolevel, students linked academic knowledge and personal stories with social advocacy. Partnering with residents of Tent City, students committed to state and local advocacy by speaking at city council meetings and talking with lawmakers in the state capitol.
Student Learning and Social Change
We saw a progression of student learning (McKinney 2007; Rooks and Winkler 2012). In the beginning, students had assumptions about homelessness (e.g., people who are homeless do not work) but moved to more structural and compassionate understandings (e.g., without a safety net, people can easily become homeless). Student interactions and conversations with those who are homeless were central to this learning progression. Student reflections highlighted how project participation gave deeper understanding of homelessness, consistent with other research (Hattery 2003; Rooks and Winkler 2012). Students reported that engagement reduced the social distance with people who are homeless and challenged preconceived stereotypes consistent with research on active learning (Mobley 2007; Nurse and Krain 2006).
While some gaps in understanding still remained, students reported gaining valuable and nuanced accounts of homelessness. Personal transformations extended to family and friends, altering discourses about homelessness. The project also provided an educated foundation for social action. In fact, the level of social engagement and advocacy expressed by our students was a surprise to us, as similar projects were less successful in social advocacy and activism (Mobley 2007). The project appears to have ameliorated the “doom and gloom” of many sociology courses (Johnson 2005) that can lead to heightened apathy, indifference, and a decreased sense of self-efficacy. Overall student reflections were hopeful and action oriented in line with goals of public sociology.
Implications and Limitations
Several implications of this work were reflected in our student reports. Learning prior to entering the field is necessary. Being grounded in a sociological understanding of homelessness was crucial as a starting point, giving students a foundation to collect data. This shared foundation helped foster relationships between the students before they entered the field. The relationships developed between the students in the research team eased the transition from classroom to field, which was challenging (more so than we expected). While the academic classroom familiarized students with the problem of homelessness, the practical classroom of a homeless encampment was unfamiliar, and students lacked the skills to navigate Tent City’s norms and culture. As faculty, we learned that fostering collaborative relationships through intentional curricular design is necessary but not sufficient. Building relationships with students helped us build trust so that we could effectively mentor the students through the research process.
Consistent with other critiques of service-learning models, we also found limitations to the project. First, stereotypical images of people who are homeless did not disappear. Students sometimes reverted to using deep-seated stereotypical images to contrast their experience with residents of Tent City (for example, “not all homeless people are drug addicts”). Second, we would need longitudinal data to evaluate if and how long the transformations students reported are sustained. Third, most universities are not located in cities with crisis levels of homelessness or homeless encampments, making this research project less replicable. We are encouraged, however, by the recent commitment of our neighbor, the University of Washington, to host Tent City in the winter of 2017. 9 Finally, the level of faculty time and engagement such a project requires, in addition to regular teaching loads and other university service, deters a wider application.
Even in light of the limitations of the project, we believe that the course sequence coupled with active student engagement around issues of homelessness in our city significantly influenced students. The project allowed students to use their sociological imaginations along with applying the tools of social science. There is great potential in addressing complex social problems, such as homelessness, through this type of educational experience. One senior wrote that her experience in the research team was, by far, the best experience of her college career. By engaging in faculty-led research, students reported being transformed by their experiences learning about and interacting with residents of a homeless encampment.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the three anonymous reviewers and editor for their feedback. We would like to thank the students involved in this research, the residents of Tent City, and Nate Palmer.
Editor’s Note
Reviewers for this manuscript were, in alphabetical order, Robert Hironimus-Wendt, Daisy Rooks, and Stephanie Southworth.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded in part by Seattle Pacific University’s Spiritual and Education Resources for Vocational Exploration (SERVE) Grant Program.