Righteous Dopefiend

Neoliberal policies profoundly affected the unhoused people of Edgewater people during their lifetimes, particularly policies that relied more on free market forces than regulation, leading to the devastating wealth disparities that were already becoming evident at the time of this book’s publication.

During the 1970s and 80s, Nixon and Reagan’s shift toward neoliberalism meant globalization—the subsequent movement of jobs overseas (where corporations could pay less for labor and could legally exploit workers to a greater degree than in the US) led to a generation of manual workers seeing their jobs become obsolete. Due to the skyrocketing rent as San Francisco became more and more gentrified, many of these manual laborers lost stable housing as they lost their jobs.

These industrial workers were the parents of people living in the Edgewater encampment; their children now cycle in and out of marginalized temporary labor. The jobs that unhoused people work in the run-down, industrial district reflect the gray areas of the legal economy. The few business owners that stay afloat in the area give unhoused people odd jobs, often paying them significantly less than they would other workers, including undocumented workers.

Not only are some of the business owners outright abusive, but legal work with local businesses also perpetuates racial disparities, as business owners prefer to give the limited employment opportunities to white applicants. Even while panhandling, Black people receive far fewer donations than white people do. In speaking with Bourgois and Schonberg, white interlocutors are more likely to aggrandize their legal work history, whereas the Black ones are prouder of their illegal exploits. To maintain dignity and a sense of purpose, both groups are more likely to own the work they can do. Since Black interlocutors had a much more challenging time landing legal employment or accessing social welfare services, illegal jobs were the main ones they could take on.

The chapter ends with a discussion of the direct competition between undocumented Latinx day workers and the unhoused, resulting in ethnic and racial tensions that reflect long-held racial stereotypes in the US.