John Betts
John Betts is a Ph.D. candidate in Public and Urban Policy at The New School studying material politics of homeless policy and governance. His research interests include homeless policy (specifically the right to shelter in New York City), technopolitics, and new materialisms.
John Betts is a Ph.D. candidate in Public and Urban Policy at The New School studying material politics of homeless policy and governance. His research interests include homeless policy (specifically the right to shelter in New York City), technopolitics, and new materialisms. He is a social worker by training, but came to social work after a detour through graduate work in critical theory. John has spent over a decade working in homeless services in New York City and he has developed over $200 million in proposals funding nearly 800 shelter beds, 1600+ units of housing, and homeless outreach services. John has spoken at conferences across the United States and his work has been published in Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness.
Diffrient, N., Tilley, R., Bardagjy, J. C., & Henry Dreyfuss Associates. (1974). Humanscale 1b: Link measurements. Photo by John Betts.
John’s research uses purpose-built shelters in New York City—that is, facilities built with the express purpose of providing shelter for people experiencing homelessness—to open broader questions about the material politics of homeless policy in New York City and the United States more broadly by considering purpose-built shelters as an instantiation of New York City’s right to shelter, a technology of homeless governance, and as an exemplar of the continued privatization of the welfare state. John’s research foregrounds questions of materiality in governance and politics by drawing on literatures emerging out of “new materialisms” into conversation with those from critical housing justice and homeless governance. Heeding sociologist Susan Leigh Star’s call to “study "boring things,”” he uses the bureaucratic minutiae of homeless policy to intervene in questions of material politics and world-making. To undertake this research, John is conducting an insider “material ethnography” of the purpose-built shelter, with a specific focus on two shelters that he is helping to develop at the organization at which he works. Ultimately, John’s project intends to answer the question: How should we make sense of the use of “purpose-built shelters” to provide for the right to shelter in New York City?
