Scroll through the comments section on NextDoor or Facebook, or listen to speeches by certain politicians, and you'll likely hear something about how we need to "take back our city from the homeless."
It's a common sentiment that academic researchers have a word for: "revanchism."
The word literally translates to "revenge" in French, but researchers in urban studies circles often use it while describing policies criminalizing homelessness that emerged in the 1990s.
It's a "vengeful attitude," says Matthew Anderson, director of the urban and regional planning program at Eastern Washington University. It's "rhetoric that demonizes the homeless."
This summer, Anderson and a group of political science students at EWU published a paper about revanchism in Spokane titled "(Com)passionate Revanchism and the Role of Private-Sector Coalitions in the Spatial Management of Houselessness," in Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography.
The paper is notable not just for its searing critique of Spokane's response to homelessness, but also because empirical research on homelessness policy in midsize cities like Spokane is relatively rare.
Anderson's paper looks at the trend of businesses frustrated by local governments' response to homelessness forming coalitions to "take matters into their own hands." It also responds to previous research that argued cities were on the cusp of a "post-revanchist" era.
That prior research, Anderson says, drew on examples in larger cities, where political dynamics mean you "can't really get away with overtly demonizing rhetoric anymore."
"I read that and thought, 'Well there it is,'" Anderson says. "Because it's clearly not true in Spokane."
Anderson's paper cites rhetoric from local politicians like Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward, who famously declared that "we make it too easy to be homeless" and who has aggressively pushed to enforce the city's law against sitting or lying on public sidewalks.
The paper also compares two business coalitions formed in response to the growing homelessness crisis: Spokane's Hello For Good, and Oregon Harbor of Hope in Portland.
Hello For Good is a coalition of businesses led by Washington Trust Bank that formed in 2021. The group brings in speakers for regular symposiums in an effort to study how leaders can better address homelessness.
The paper's main critique of Hello For Good is that the coalition overemphasizes addiction and mental illness, while overlooking housing affordability issues, which numerous studies have identified as the primary cause of homelessness.
The paper argues that coalitions like Hello For Good aren't actually focused on the larger problem of homelessness — they're interested in the aspects of homelessness that impact businesses' bottom line. The paper describes a spring 2022 Hello For Good symposium, which the authors attended, as displaying "revanchism cloaked in compassionate language."
"Presumably, if unhoused individuals were not addicted to drugs or mentally ill, then [Hello For Good] would not have a reason for existing," the paper argues.
Chris Patterson, who works for Washington Trust Bank and co-chairs Hello For Good, disagrees with this characterization. He says Hello For Good would still exist.
"I think it's one-sided," Patterson says of the paper. "We are for housing. But we also want to make sure that housing comes attached to services."
Patterson, a former adviser to Woodward, argues that a thriving downtown business corridor is essential to addressing the crisis.
"Because capitalism is philanthropy," Patterson says. "They go hand in hand. When you make money, you give money."
"Presumably, if unhoused individuals were not addicted to drugs or mentally ill, then [Hello For Good] would not have a reason for existing."
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The paper has been generating buzz in local homeless provider circles. Last week, an attendee at a Spokane Homeless Coalition meeting asked Gavin Cooley, a former city official who's been leading efforts to regionalize Spokane's homelessness services, whether he'd read it.
"I think it was a great paper," Cooley said. "As it regards Hello For Good, I think it's outdated. But it made good points."
When Hello For Good formed, Cooley said the group "represented some political positions on homelessness that I think would be unpopular" with the service providers gathered for the coalition meeting. But Hello For Good has evolved, Cooley said, and its more recent symposiums reflect a shifting sensibility. (Anderson says the paper was submitted to the journal about a year ago.)
The featured speaker for Hello For Good's upcoming Oct. 17 symposium is Ed Brady, president and CEO of the Home Builders Institute.
"We're going to be focusing on the challenges of building housing," says Patterson.
Patterson says featured speakers come on a volunteer basis, and that money donated to Hello For Good goes toward food, event space and other symposium costs. He says he hasn't tracked how much the organization has raised.
"We're not out there seeking dollars," Patterson says. "We know that the dollars that are given to us, they're given to us for our symposiums."
Washington Trust Bank, which launched Hello For Good, is politically active, and recently donated $30,000 to the Spokane Good Governance Alliance, a conservative political action committee. But Patterson says Hello For Good itself isn't political.
"We're not looking for people who are going to say, 'Yes, I agree with you,'" Patterson says. "I'm actually looking for somebody who's going to say, 'I don't agree with you at all.' Because we want to be able to educate people from every angle." ♦
