"'They Don’t Want Us Anywhere': The Impact of Anti-Homelessness Laws on Unsheltered Residents of Fort Worth, Texas" (by Brie Diamond): Review 1

Vote: Publish pending minor changes

The paper is both interesting and illuminating, and it is very well-written. As someone whose research is in a completely different area from this (though I have experience with qualitative research), I thought it was very accessible and did a good job of explaining the concerns surrounding the issue of homelessness and these laws to someone with no background on the issue. I only have a couple of points that I think could help the author tighten up what is already a really strong paper:

• In the second paragraph under the subheading Anti-homelessness Laws, the monetary amount should be written out numerically ($500).

• The author mentions a specialized unit of LEOs, EMTs, and mental health services providers was created to address homelessness outreach. Can they say more about this? Is it just a dedicated group or are they working collaboratively? What types of resources are they equipped with? In other words, is this unit unique to Fort Worth, thereby potentially creating a model, or is this in line with what other cities are doing?

• Under the heading “Right to Public Space”, I think the first reference to Mitchell should be 2003, not 2008, based on all other references as well as the references list. Same issue in the discussion.

• It might be helpful to include a table with the pseudonyms and some key demographic / contextual information (e.g., age, gender, years resident, years homeless) before getting into the findings.

• Given that the author has 18 interviews, it would be helpful to provide more context in the findings. For example, instead of saying “some of the people interviewed held negative views of these officers,” say how many. If coding isn’t discrete (meaning that, for example, someone could hold both positive and negative views), say that up front, but provide more concrete details to show how prevalent each theme or subtheme is.

• Some careful proofreading is needed to tighten up the punctuation – commas missing throughout in key places that can make sentences read as run-ons or awkward. This includes in the participants’ quotes.