'A Bridge Over the Chasm': Rhetoric and Reflexivity in Housing Advocacy

Abstract

As we cast housing in the language of crisis, development, shortage, and units, we lose sight of its value in the context of social relations and human wellbeing. The rhetoric that has evolved to explain gaps in housing access intersects powerfully with homelessness policy and advocacy, and ideas about leadership and solutions. In a case study of a housing advocacy subculture in Anchorage, Alaska, I ask whether naming, and critically examining, one’s own experiences of being housed can disrupt habitual ways of acting and leading and create more informed, collaborative, compassionate, and transformational approaches to change in the housing and homelessness arena. Through a lens of critical reflexivity, I identify interlocking structural conditions, or “blueprints,” that constitute housed rhetoric and relations. I propose adapting a series of existing action-based tools to unpack these blueprints and support inclusive, collaborative policy work across difference