Tent City, Seattle: Refusing Homelessness and Making a Home

＂In 2000, Seattle became the first city in the United States to grant permanent legal status to a peer-operated tent encampment, forever changing Seattle’s urban landscape. Today, cities across the west such as Denver, Portland, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Sacramento have followed suit. In this manuscript, Tony Sparks explores how residents of Tent City 3-a large, longstanding tent encampment in Seattle-attempt to create and sustain a sense of home in the context of the displacement and exclusion that we often refer to as ＂homelessness.＂＂--

Tony Sparks is associate professor of urban studies and planning at San Francisco State University.