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Prevailing theories of poverty governance emphasize how political and economic constraints associated with urban neoliberalism have led to the retraction of protective welfare commitments and an increased criminalization of poverty. While research on this "disciplinary turn" has been generative, it tells us little about countervailing trends or how institutional responses to poverty change over time. Addressing these gaps, this article offers a case study of the emergence and acceptance by the business community of a supportive Housing First and harm reduction initiative called JustCARE—a distinct technique of poverty governance not readily explicable within existing theoretical frameworks. By situating JustCARE within a wider strategic action field of poverty governance, we reveal the macro-, meso-, and micro-level dynamics that together facilitated its inception, growth, and eventual embrace by members of the formerly hostile business establishment. Specifically, we underscore how two exogenous shocks (COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter [BLM] uprisings) enabled a well-positioned advocacy organization to articulate and implement a non-punitive homelessness response alternative. We conclude that field-based scholarship centering "theoretically deviant" cases can reveal how the contradictions and failures of neoliberal poverty management can generate unique opportunities for meaningful institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late twentieth century, as part of a broad effort to maximize the profitability of commercial spaces and address the complaints of business interests, cities have increasingly criminalized the presence and behavior of populations perceived as disorderly. The resulting police interactions produce a range of deleterious outcomes, particularly for individuals contending with mental health and substance use disorders, homelessness, and other behavioral health concerns. Against this backdrop, we provide a case study of Let Everyone Advance with Dignity (LEAD), a novel public safety intervention developed in Seattle, Washington. LEAD diverts businesses' disorder complaints from police and 911 toward program personnel who provide long‐term harm reduction services and resources. LEAD's non‐punitive approach has demonstrated success in reducing the harms of criminalization, improving individual outcomes, satisfying business grievances, and, more broadly, disrupting the defining logic and practices of neoliberal urbanism. LEAD's successes carry theoretical implications, demonstrating the need for nonpolice alternatives to reconfigure the organizational field of public safety by intervening into the longstanding coalition between businesses and police. The LEAD model also offers insights about the concrete steps necessary to ensure public safety and community vitality without police involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Banishment is an increasingly common tool for urban social control. In Seattle and other cities, new tools give the police stronger authority to create and enforce zones of exclusion. Deployed most commonly in neighborhoods populated by homeless people and members of other disadvantaged populations, banishment orders seek to coerce individuals to relocate. As an attempt to reduce crime and disorder, however, we suggest that banishment fails. We demonstrate this by drawing on interviews with forty-one Seattle residents who live with at least one exclusion order to ascertain how their strong connections to place make compliance with banishment an oppressive burden. Even if banishment increases the authority of the police, and thereby helps them to respond to public concern about 'disorder', it makes everyday life more perilous for the socially-marginalized. This suggests that banishment's increased popularity deserves robust contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]