Thesis
Homelessness and the non-profit industrial complex
Master of Science (M.S.), Drexel University
Aug 2026
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00011553
Abstract
The Non-Profit Industrial Complex describes the non-profit sector as serving as an arm of the government, helping to control, maintain, and surveil the status quo. The critique is that despite their claims of wanting to change/solve/help social issues, non-profit work is still under capitalism and within the state and owning class rule. However, a more recent description of urban areas is "revanchist city," which describes the "revenge" taking place in the streets against minorities. Revanchism highlights the ever-increasing privatization of property, resources, and publics in efforts to control and criminalize unwanted people and activity. This paper starts with wanting to understand the fragmentation felt among service organizations, particularly those who reach people experiencing homelessness. It also starts with a right to housing perspective and thinking about the re-housing process chronically homeless individuals would have to go through if seeking. Combine the revanchist city with critiques of non-profits, and you get an "ambiguity of care," a blurry space of NGO's filling the gaps by offering help while in the guides of societal norms of deservingness and expectations of individualism. This paper interviews organizations based in Philadelphia and uses their words to add to the conversation around non-profit work and poverty. Organizations spoke to both sides of the same coin, from expressing a lack of trust in the government to pride in their efforts, and expectations for responsibility; from the difficulties of professionalizing to the benefits of being small scaled, and to the funding and property systems they work within. I aim to discuss the questions of, to what degree do organizations understand their part in the Non-profit Industrial Complex, and if their work has any ties to resistance and social change?
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Details
- Title
- Homelessness and the non-profit industrial complex
- Creators
- Faythe Endres
- Contributors
- Andrew Zitcer (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Master of Science (M.S.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University
- Number of pages
- iv, 79 pages
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Urban Strategy; Architecture, Construction, Design, and Urbanism; Drexel University; Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design
- Other Identifier
- 991022206079904721