ABSTRACT
City redevelopment policies promoting tourism, shopping, sports, and entertainment have facilitated the social exclusion of the poor and have promoted harsh policing strategies in response to declining downtown revenues. Urban policies that lead to rapid gentrification of the city have displaced poor and working people for years. However, recent increases in disparities of wealth combined with a reduction in the social wage, inadequate health care, and the decline of affordable housing have forced the poor and homeless out of desirable public spaces, isolating them in peripheral neighbourhoods and in shelters. This new ‘Revanchist’ (Smith, 1996a) city reflects uneven development and the intensification of such development through the rapid movement of global capital. The response by homeless activists and poverty workers to this social exclusion has ebbed and flowed throughout the past twenty years. Policing and legislative strategies practised by cities have also shifted, reflecting the dynamic political nature of housing and homeless struggles.
