Abstract
The homeless in Sacramento suffer a loss of basic rights, human and civil, and this loss of rights exacerbates the factors that contribute to, and are experienced, as a result of homelessness. Moreover, the emotional, medical, legal and economic problems of the homeless leads to their stigmatization by the general public, as well as by the social service providers and governmental agencies empowered to support them. Once branded as deviant or pathological members of society, the homeless find themselves being treated as second-class citizens. In response to this change of status and in an attempt to gain agency with which to defend themselves, homeless citizens form imagined communities such as my target subject group. Two years of fieldwork with Safe Ground Sacramento have demonstrated that the members of Safe Ground do, in fact, suffer a loss of basic rights and are treated as though they are broken individuals. This treatment often leads to the development of a low sense of self-worth, resulting in self-blame on the part of these individuals. Indeed, there are cases of mental illness, substance abuse and disability, but I argue that there are also systemic causes for homelessness within our political economy. Moreover, my research has led me to inquire into why the homeless are misunderstood and treated in the above manner, an inquiry which has led me to an investigation of American worldview. Americans, with a strong emphasis on individualism, appear to lack the compassion to consider solutions for those citizens most in need, the homeless. The societal changes required to change American worldview towards a more collective position on the individual-collective continuum can appear daunting as do changes in our political economy, the most robust in the world. These changes require that we relook our current dominant theory of justice based on a contractual social justice model which stresses the struggle for perfect societal institutions and, look instead at comparative models that ask what could be if we remove particular injustices from society. In so doing, we must restate the meanings of key concepts such as freedom, equality and opportunity in a way that will move us towards a more collectively-minded political economy, theory of social justice and definition of ourselves as individuals.