25. Housing and Homelessness with Elizabeth Carpenter-Song Interview
Michelle Rathman: I'm Michelle Rathman and welcome to the Rural Impact. As always, I am so thankful that you've carved out some time in your schedule to listen to another conversation that works to connect the dots between policy and everything that we can think of where rural is concerned. Now today, this is the second in our series focused on housing and homelessness, which of course are two enormous topics to tackle at the same time.
So, in this episode, we are going to focus on homelessness. And in the rural context, homelessness, of course, looks very different than the tent city images we see in a B-roll news clips on the national news. Rural homelessness and housing insecurity together, they are historically underreported and quite frankly not well understood.
And that is why we have invited Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, author of Families on the Edge, Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England to join me here in our virtual studio. But before we do that, I do want to put a policy bug on your ear. Now this is something that I have not revealed here before, but I will.
I often track legislation that's important to me because as you listen to my conversation with Elizabeth and others in this series, I think it's also important to always keep in mind that homelessness is absolutely connected to policy. And so, I went looking for information on current legislation activity involving homelessness, and I included adding a filter for rural so that it would show me anything specific in that area.
I often frequent a website called congress.gov, and if you've not been there, it's really easy to check out different legislation as it moves through the very slow halls of Congress. But I found several proposals introduced by members of Congress with double digit co-sponsors, however, quite partisan, but here's the important part.
There are a lot of solutions to address rural homelessness that may never make it out of committee. So, for example there is the Ending Homeless Act of 2023. This is stalled somewhere in committee. This has been going on since 2023. Also introduced in 2023 was The Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act, also kind of stuck in limbo and committee from what I can tell.
And one more that I want to share with you, which is H. R. 6970 and that is the DASH Act or Decent, Affordable, Safe, Housing Act for all and specifically, what I think is important about this bill is that it would require, if passed, the Department of Housing and Urban Development to number one, provide housing vouchers to individuals and families experiencing, or at risk of experiencing homelessness.
Number two, it would provide grants for the modular construction of affordable housing. It proposes a new formula for distribution of housing trust fund amounts, and it also encourages zoning and community planning methods that promote multi-family housing.
And a few of these things might be familiar to you. If you listen to our first episode in the series. The last thing I just want to mention about this bill, as it also makes permanent certain homeless assistance programs. Now, this was introduced by Oregon's District 4 Representative Vale T. Hoyle in January of this year, 2024, with no movement beyond committee reported thus far that I can see.
I'm going to keep my eye on this one. And if you out there happen to have any insights on this as well, or any of the other two that I mentioned or others, I welcome hearing from you. I will just say, if I may, as a rural stakeholder, I really do encourage all of us to follow along and track the legislative activity of this and other issues important to you.
And I just think it's important for us if we're going to talk about how we like the policy of somebody of our elected officials, office seekers and holders that we really need to understand the kind of policies that they are working on. When we don't see them behind closed doors, so.
Do that later. Because here now is my conversation with Elizabeth Carpenter- Song, medical and psychological anthropologist at Dartmouth College and author of the wonderful book, very thoughtful book, Families on the Edge, Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England Are you ready?
Let's go.
Michelle Rathman: Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, Research Associate Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College and the author of Families on the Edge, Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England. Welcome to The Rural Impact, Elizabeth, we're so grateful that you could join us today.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: Thank you so much for this opportunity, Michelle. I'm really looking forward to our discussion today.
Michelle Rathman: Thank you. You know, I want to just start out by saying it's an excellent book and we're going to talk a lot about it. We've just come off a series that we did focused on Arriving at Thriving, and we did talk about housing as a component, but not just housing, but the behavioral and mental health piece of it as well.
So we have a lot to unpack. I think your perspective is so unique and I just want to say that, Families on the Edge, could be describing any family, anywhere in rural America and those places that are known to some and not known to too many, I think, but it's your book is focused on rural New England.
Talk to us about that. Let's start there and kind of lay the groundwork.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: Sure. So, I really appreciate that, that question in terms of what is, what's special about this place of rural New England. And, I think, first of all, part of the answer to that is, I think what brought me into this work in the first place and thinking about the ways in which housing related challenges and homelessness in small town and rural America was something that I became aware it was something that was quite hidden.
And hidden from a research perspective, too, that most of the work that had been done in this space from a research perspective, not surprisingly, had focused on urban communities. And so, my initial kind of foray into this was really motivated by this sense of, I really want to learn more about this.
I know that people are struggling within my local community here in New England. And yet there's just not a lot known about people's experiences. And then from the New England standpoint, one of the things that really stood out to me, and I'm an outsider to New England. I grew up in the mid-Atlantic region.
I'm a transplant to rural New Hampshire myself. And I've always been struck by the strong sense of self-reliance. And the strong sense of individualism that exists within this context. And I think that's something that we see across different rural settings within the U. S. I think it's something we see as a kind of value that we have in the U. S. broadly.
But it felt particularly amplified within this setting to me. And I call that in the book, the New England bootstraps mentality. And I was interested to understand how that impacted people's experiences of poverty and housing and security, how that came to impact their experiences of receiving care and services within this context.
And so that sensibility around place and particularly the way in which that orientation towards self-reliance within New England is such a core value for us within this setting is something that I try to explore in terms of its implications for how people are experiencing homelessness within this setting.
Michelle Rathman: It's such an interesting point, because it kind of leads to potentially the condition behind why it's so challenging to accurately document and account for rural homeless populations because of it not being something that people are readily wanting to address.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: That's absolutely right. That, that this is something that not only is there quite a lot of stigma that's associated with becoming homeless within this setting, but that unfortunately then gets internalized for many people as a sense of shame. The sense that I ought to be able to make it on my own.
I ought to be able to have a home for my family. And so, it really does have implications for people's willingness to seek out services, people's willingness, as you're suggesting, Michelle, to let their struggles be fully known. And that can be a barrier then in terms of us understanding even the scale and the extent of housing related struggles within the region.
Sure.
Michelle Rathman: that's too hard to look around and that fear is realized because there are stigmas. So, speaking up is challenging. Before we dive into, cause I love the structure and what you put together. Before we dive into that, you take a really good look at five families, if you will, and their snapshots.
And before we get into becoming homelessness, go through that process and describe a little bit about who our listeners are going to meet when they read your book.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: So, this work begins in the fall of 2009. So many years ago
Michelle Rathman: Mm hmm.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: And the families that are the subjects of this work were all in residence at a shelter for families experiencing homelessness in central Vermont. And all of them at the time of the study had been in residence at the shelter for several months.
All of them were actively looking for housing. They came from a range of backgrounds. So, I had some families who were headed by single moms, others who, other families with a husband and wife, people with varying levels of education. And yet all were united by the experience of poverty and housing insecurity.
Many had family and extended kin within the area, and yet may have been in situations of intergenerational poverty, and so their own families did not have the resources or the space to be able to take them in. Other families, struggled more with mental health related challenges. Some had substance use challenges.
And so, I ended up working very, very closely with five families, who I met in the fall of 2009. And as I spoke to people along the way, I was always thinking about, how do these experiences relate more broadly to experiences of other families? And I was always heartened to know one of my close collaborators, said to me at one point during the study, she said, Elizabeth, “behind each of the five families that you've worked closely with, think of it as a line of others with similar experiences behind each one of them.”
And so, I do think that learning closely from those five individual families really brings to light a range of issues and a range of challenges that are being faced by families in similar circumstances.
Michelle Rathman: So many lessons that could be learned, you know, as a result of reading them. Let's talk now transitioning into you know, there's a whole section that talks about becoming homeless in rural New England and the rhythm of life at a shelter. I really appreciate that you're sharing with us that it's not, you know, it’s families made up of all different sizes, you know, children involved, not for everyone, and so forth.
But talk about that, the becoming homeless and the rhythm of life in a shelter and what is it that you are take away from that, your takeaway from that.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: So, a couple of takeaways from that. So, within this particular shelter setting unlike I think what many many people may think of when we think about a shelter. People may think about individuals who need to queue up on a day-to-day basis to have access to a bed for the night. That was very different from the setting in which I was working.
And this was a setting in which families were able to stay for, and it was very typical for families to stay for many months at a time. This reflects the lack of affordable housing within our region. It took people months and months and months, despite active searching, despite the support of caseworkers within that setting. Took them a very long time to find housing and people had access to a range of supportive services within that setting as well to help them with their various needs.
At the same time, this was a very, I described this and have found this to be very supportive environment.
At the same time, families also spoke to this phenomenon that has been described by Donna Haig Freedman, who is a researcher and has studied homelessness. And she writes about, parenting in public, and this is a concept that I borrow from her to describe what it felt like to be a parent within an institutional setting and even within a supportive environment, it's still the case that what you're doing as a parent is kind of under, under the watchful eyes of others within that setting, whether that's staff or whether that's other families.
And sometimes that can feel as though you're under a bit of a magnifying glass. And so that's part of that rhythm of life for families is that sense of, as Friedman describes it, giving up some of the autonomy and privacy that's so often taken for granted in American family life.
Michelle Rathman: Gosh, never even thought about that, just that feeling of what that might do to someone's psyche to, to just feel like there's, I mean, it's not freedom. It's, you know, kind of living under someone else's house rules if you will.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: Exactly.
Michelle Rathman: So, I'm curious about you've got another section about life on the edge and kind of the blurred edges of your research and I love that description.
What do you mean by that?
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: Yeah. So, what I mean by that, so this work started in the fall of 2009, and then all of the families by the spring, by that following spring of 2010, all of them had moved out of the shelter setting. They moved into a variety of settings, some into subsidized housing, others doubling up. Others moving for a period of time into a motel.
And this question came to me at that point. Was I still studying homelessness if all of the families had moved out of the shelter at that point in time? And, at the time, I hadn't conceived of this as being a long-term project.
Michelle Rathman: Mm hmm.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: And I had initially intended to follow families for about a year and yet there was something pulling me to learn more about their experiences and part of that is because not only was I curious about how families would fare in the community, but also these were people that I had grown to care a lot about. And so, the type of work as an anthropologist that I do is very deeply relational, and relationship based.
Michelle Rathman: Mm hmm.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: And so, I wanted to continue to spend time with people and to learn from their experiences. And so, this began this blurred edge is really between kind of that edge of homelessness and housing security.
And this is something that families moved across that edge over the course of the study, where for periods of time, they would be stably housed, and then it might be a lost job. It might be an illness. It might be a divorce. Eventually over time. That stability would be eroded for most of the families in the study.
And so that's why I titled the book Families on the Edge, to evoke that sense of the specter or the threat of always being on the edge of losing your housing.
Michelle Rathman: I really picked that up because I also wrote down just the whole terminology around episodic homelessness and chronic housing insecurity. I mean, it is living on the edge. One minute you get your, you know, your feet grounded and, there's some sense of being able to create something more normal and then poof, one change happens.
And unfortunately, we have so many policies in place that, kind of, step in, present some roadblocks along the way, which I'm curious to talk about as well. Let's talk just a little bit about some of the common findings that you have around isolation and fraught family friendship relationships. Because for so many out there, you know, I think, I know this is for me, so I certainly can only speak to that.
I like to think that in a situation that I would be able to turn to people who are in my life and ask for help. And you touched on this earlier, but let's just talk about some of the common findings, that you have, and maybe there are some ways that we can think about addressing them on the front end.
So, it doesn't become a barrier to receiving help on the other side.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: So, and if I'm hearing your question correctly, Michelle, so a couple of things to touch on there. Most of the families that I worked with had extended kin and family in the area and most during an initial crisis turned to family members and turned to close friends for help and were often able to stay for short periods of time.
It wasn't a situation though that could be sustained. In many cases extended families themselves didn't have the resources or the space oftentimes to be able to take in adult children and their own children. And so that was, that's part of it. And families in some cases would nevertheless provide that's a financial support when they were able help in other ways, such as giving rides to the grocery store, rides to the doctor.
That could be unpredictable though. But not everyone was in that situation either. Others were much more isolated from their families and didn't receive those forms of support. And so it can't always be counted on in that way. And for some families, I'm thinking of one woman in particular, the shame of becoming homelessness was so great for her that she never even revealed to her mother that she was living in the shelter.
And this was something that she felt a great deal of support and relief in the type of conversations that we were able to have in the context of the research. She'd say, Elizabeth, it just feels so good to be able to talk to somebody about this.
Michelle Rathman: I can only imagine we're going to take a quick break and we come back. I want to make a transition here because we've touched on the homelessness factor of it. But we know there's a very another really important dot to connect. And that is in the realm of care because the two go hand in hand. So let's talk about that when we come back.
So stay with us. We'll be right back with this real impact conversation.
Okay, we are back with my Rural Impact Conversation. I am joined with Elizabeth Carpenter-Song, and we're talking about her research, her book, Families on the Edge, Experiences of Homelessness and Care in Rural New England. And we've talked about several different aspects around homelessness, and now we're going to switch lanes, if you will, to talking about the care part of the equation, because you do have a whole section here, section four, Paradoxes of Care.
And I'd like for you to talk to us because I'm fascinated from your perspective to discuss that troubled interface between marginalized rural families, care providers, and the system of care intended to support families. We had an earlier conversation. I just shared some experience, you know, with you that I have and the work that I do.
So let's dive into that. Can we?
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: Sure, absolutely. So, shifting to think about the care aspects of this So, one of the things that I began to observe in my time with families was that many many parents were themselves struggling with mental health related concerns. And in some cases with substance use challenges, and yet in many for many of them there was a sense of not being well connected or strongly engaged with services. With mental health related services and with medical services.
And that's what I described as that troubled interface, trying to think about the people, for whom we would imagine there could be such benefit, to being engaged with mental health services. And yet, in many cases, there was this sense of disconnect. And that was something that I was really became very interested to, to understand from people's perspectives why that would be. And it wasn't just one answer. And this is something that I think that's really important to keep in mind is that the, there are a range of reasons for that type of disconnect.
In some cases I write about a woman who I call Barbara within the book, a pseudonym. And she, I described this as she really wanted to engage with those types of things on her own terms. She was very critical of systems of care. She's very skeptical about mental health services. She herself had been in forms of therapy, had been in forms of mental health treatment in the past, but was quite resistant and hadn't really seen the benefit and maintained a strong sense of skepticism.
Other families were very ambivalent and engaged in ways that they might attend services, and participate in services, and yet maintain that, that sense of ambivalence. And for others, they might be heavily involved in services and yet it seemed as though everything was so fragmented for them that again, the benefits weren't accruing for them.
Michelle Rathman: You bring up such an interesting point because we hear, you know, you, you can hardly turn a page or turn the day in the calendar where you're not hearing how important is like, we have to improve access to mental health. We have to. And there are so many programs, we feature them, you know, the Opioid Substance Use Disorder Programs, all the services, did you have any sense of more specific reasons why there was diminished trust, why there was ambivalence to our accepting and receiving mental health care and substance use services and treatment? Because it's, I think it's important for us to, if you have insight so that we know how to do it different, how do we approach it differently?
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: Sure, and some of the lessons that I learned from families involved, a lot of issues around trust. Feeling as though trust had been violated in the past by health care providers in other cases, feeling a sense of a disconnect between those without shared experience of similar struggles.
Poverty or homelessness feeling as though I'm thinking of one quote from a mother in my study, you know, “the therapist can say that she understands, but she really doesn't.” And for others, that really the sense of fragmentation of our systems becomes such a barrier for care as well, feeling as though I have to keep retelling the same story over and over again.
Or I'm spending, does my provider understand that I just spent two hours on the bus in order to get to this particular appointment? Do they have a sense of what I may be going home to? And so, what I call for is, you know, greater attention and training to things that we would describe as the social determinants or the social drivers of health.
And so really really attending to some of those aspects of someone's everyday life, where they're living? Are they having access to food? What are the struggles that they are bringing into that particular encounter with that particular provider that can, and by attention, I think to, to those to those details and carrying and gaining insight into those aspects of the person's life? I think that's the beginning and the building of a bridge to a greater trusting relationship.
People have been really burned by systems over time.
Michelle Rathman: You bring up so many great points because I think about and I wrote down Jim and Hannah, they're the intensive engagement in care. They had so much engagement in care, but it wasn't moving the dial for them. There was so many touch points, so many people, so many contacts, so many calls, so many visits and so forth.
And yet here they were. I think, when we're looking to connect those dots to policy, I think one nugget that you just made me think about Elizabeth is that, we do, in certain aspects of healthcare, for example, ask a question, an intake question, such as, do you, did you have something to eat today?
And I think the second question is something to the effect of, are you afraid that you're not going to have enough money for meals, leftover for meals or something of that nature? But to your point, maybe the policy nuggets here is that we could be thinking more about, and we've talked about it here, connecting the dots.
Okay. If transportation is an issue, I know there are a lot of different services, but it seems to me that what you're sharing is it's not that easy to navigate them for people.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: Terribly difficult to navigate those systems
very.
Michelle Rathman: And difficult for them to then, you know, kind of see the next, the possibility of what might be next. Let's with the time we have, let's make another transition here because, and again, you touched on it earlier, but I think it's worthy of discussing some more, which is really homelessness as a moral failure.
We have, if we don't have a wakeup call, I just don't know what it is going to take for us to recognize that this is a you know, this is a societal failure. Really not an individual's moral failure, but the traumatic ruptures and fabric of family life and something that really, I'm going to just say it, kind of blew me away, was reading about, my daughter and I had a conversation about this. For people who families who find themselves homeless, the children being removed from, I don't, I can't say the home, but we're being removed from their parental situation and what that has to do to a family in the rural places that you travel.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: So, this was something that is a really important dimension of again, going to that earlier question about how we can understand these points of disconnect. One crucial element within this is fear as well. Fear that if I reveal the full extent of my struggles with mental health or with substance use, or even with housing, that this may put me at risk of being seen as a quote unquote unfit parent.
And risk of having my children taken away from me. And this was unfortunately the case for two of the five families that I worked closely with over the course of the study. And this was something that I describe as the traumatic rupture. For each of these families and the ways in which as they were struggling to do the things that were asked of them to regain custody and to be reunited with their children, it felt like the goal post was forever changing and being pushed back.
And over that period of time, as they were alienated really from the work of, and the joys of caring for their children. As they were pushed further away from those rhythms and routines of family life, that really eroded. And their capacities and so deeply demoralized these parents that over time this absolutely had devastating consequences for them over time.
In neither case were they reunited with their children. And in both cases, we saw greater exacerbations of their mental health and substance use challenges. And this is something that I write about in the context of thinking about how can we do better? I think we can all agree that outcomes like that are so deeply tragic.
And so how can we do better? Clearly, that's not the intention of care providers. Clearly, that's not the intentions of our social service system. And yet, many of the constraints under which were those programs were those individual providers are operating, the types of funding constraints that, that make their caseloads too big, all of those types of things contribute then to those types of outcomes, unfortunately.
Michelle Rathman: Yeah, I'm going to say it everywhere you look, it's policy failure. And it's not because of people not wanting to do the work. We know that, but we're not connecting enough dots to say like, if this happens and this happens and this happens and this happens, and it is that proverbial endless cycle and so the next thing I want to talk to you about is just surviving the stigma of poverty.
So, there is there, presumably there are other sides, we can, people are able to find that long term solution. Things change. I think the conditions change in their life. They are able to receive the resources and help and so forth. So, what does surviving the stigma of poverty look like?
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: So, in some cases, I think there are two parts to, to that question, Michelle. I would point out that even in the context of enduring poverty and housing and security, families, I observed that families did a lot within the context of their everyday lives to root themselves to place. So, maybe they were living in a new place and planting a vegetable garden.
Or maybe they were having people who would double-up and crash on their couch, but they would contribute and make a meal together. So those types of everyday activities were really important in terms of maintaining a sense of, just being a part of a family, being a part of a community.
And so, I think that's one aspect of it that helps families to endure those little things that help families to endure. The bigger part of that question is what contributes to, in some cases families security over time, and some families did move to the families move toward greater security over time. And the key structural determinant in both of those cases was access to safe and affordable housing.
And so, in both cases, families were able to move into subsidized housing, which capped their contribution to rent at 30 percent of their income. And that enabled, that provided that stable base then for families to build on other strengths, then. To be able to return to work, to be integrated within the community, to have their kids participate in school and sports and camp.
And so, thinking about that housing, really being that foundation, then for families, then to move on and to move towards thriving within their communities.
Michelle Rathman: And for as much as it feels like we're moving away from that, there are so many really good things happening on that front. And that's integrated also with those supports for social determinants of health. Before we go I'm asking this question of everybody that I possibly can, because these conversations we say all the time, they're not light subjects, but the goal is to enlighten people to understand a little another little piece of of these bigger conversations.
And I wonder if you could share with us, just some. some takeaways, but how do you see communities, institutions like yours, I mean, higher education and even policies at the local level, how do we, what's your formula maybe for addressing how we can make more of these priorities align around equity? To address some of the equity challenges that we have for those living in, in poverty in rural New England and really, like we said, it could be happening anywhere else.
So what are some of the things that we can do for the moon and stars to align to, to be better to do better, to for the people that you're describing, the families that you're describing who so desperately are deserving of a life of dignity and safe and affordable housing?
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: Sure. So, I think, one, one way that I might answer that question or begin to answer that question, Michelle, is really, I think one of the core goals that I had in writing this is really to humanize how we think about housing insecurity and homelessness. And really then to begin to lay a foundation for all of us.
To feel as though into a question. What is our role? What is our responsibility within this space that this? I think there's oftentimes and understandably so, of course, these are terribly complex issues, but we don't want that to devolve into a sense that it's too big. There's nothing I can do. Where that you know that sense of cynicism, even that can come into play, but to really think about well, within my local context. What are the ways in which how can I educate myself on my own towns zoning ordinances? For example, what are some of the things that might be limiting development? Are there things that I would identify as being perhaps regressive in terms of moving toward building and having greater inventory of housing within the community?
Thinking about making this something that people can educate themselves about this isn't somebody else's problem and that's something, certainly within the New England context. I think there's a lot of potential here, and I write about the fact that I think New England could be a national model, and part of that is because we have a local governance structure.
Everything's very hyper local for us, and this is something that there's such opportunity for people to become involved at the local level to understand more about how decisions are being made to participate in those decisions. And again, to think about and to really imagine. What is the world that we want to create?
And this is something that to really see this being or that we're all striving toward creating greater opportunities for everyone within this very special place here in Northern New England to be able to feel a sense of belonging and to be able to have opportunities to thrive within this context.
Michelle Rathman: It sounds and feels so much better than the alternative. I'm reminded and I hope I get this right. Imagine if I read this somewhere. Imagine if the term affordable housing was used as normally as you would edible food. Right makes perfect sense. Oh, my gosh, Elizabeth. I could talk to you forever and I'm, we're going to put the information about your incredible book.
We are, thank you for your time, for your words, for your wisdom, for your research for sharing this with us again. Make sure that you can find information about Families on the Edge on our website, and, you know, that's very easy to find at the theruralimpact.com and also look for our resources tabs for the show notes from this conversation.
So, Elizabeth, you're welcome back any time with new insight and information. We'd love to have you.
Elizabeth Carpenter-Song: Thank you so much, Michelle. This has been such a pleasure.
Michelle Rathman: It's great to meet you.
And so I want to remind you the next time on The Rural Impact. We are going to continue our series focused on various aspects of rural housing and homelessness. And we are talking to a journalist who wrote about a Texas teen and their homeless journey. And of course, we're also going to bring in some more researchers here.
We're going to talk to a few prominent researchers who are going to connect yet some more dots on these matters. You know, I always want to say thank you to Brea Corsaro. She's an awesome associate producer and of course for our technical graphics, editing, Sarah Staub. We thank you so much for all your hard work. To Jonah Mancino for lending your musical talents in the music department.
And then til the next episode of the Rural Impact, I always invite you to take good care of yourself and each other. And don't forget, check your voter registration. You got time to do that. We'll see you again soon.
