Heterotopias of the Homeless: Strategies and Tactics of Place-Making in Los Angeles

The perfect metaphor for (the current landscape of human services) is provided by the homeless who nightly populate the beaches of Santa Monica and Venice, California. They sleep next to the ocean at the continent’s edge, a little distance from a tide that could sweep them away. This portrait of the landscape of despair presages the collapse of the human-service system and abandonment of those in need. The lucky and resourceful who manage to survive hang on by their fingernails at the edge of society.