From the Archive: The Joyful Necessity of Sleeping in Public
An essay on the right to rest, regardless of means—revisited as we reconsider the nature of shelter
I’m at work on a number of pieces that follow up on our last post, “Houses Without Walls?,” in which I started to poke at some of our current preconceptions about housing and what it might look like. The more I give it thought, the more I am becoming convinced that the very way many of us conceive of housing—what a house is, and how we come by it—is part of the hyper-commodification of shelter, and the increasing number of unsheltered people around the globe. But I think some of the conclusions I’m beginning to draw might be a little hard to swallow if one doesn’t already, as I do, start from a conviction that living in public spaces—and by necessity resting and sleeping in public—is a basic right. So I thought that before jumping ahead, it would make sense to share this essay, published in the first few months here at Unsettling, in which I discuss the right to sleep in less-than-private places, both my own experience in doing so and reasons for emphasizing this right in an era of dramatic climate events. There are updates to be made when it comes to local policies on camping or sleeping outside, which we’ll discuss more soon, but all the major points remain relevant. We were still pretty tiny when this first came out, so I know this piece will be new for most of you—I hope you enjoy it.
Until next time,
Meg
The Joyful Necessity of Sleeping in Public
Originally published March 19th, 2021
The Power of Napping Near Strangers
When I was younger, I possessed what I now think of as a superpower: the ability to fall asleep, in front of others, in public, almost anywhere. I grieve its loss often, and think of how once I slept anywhere I wished, noise and bother be damned. In vans packed with the rowdy boys of my church youth group, as we headed home from camp. On a gentle grassy hill nearby my first high school, where a few friends and I occasionally went while cutting class. Once, at my second high school, in class itself—the teacher made me stand the rest of the period as punishment. I slept in train stations filled by echoing footsteps, and in crowded airports. In libraries and bookstores, of course. Anywhere with a couch, really—90’s coffee shops were heaven. On sports fields—both the field itself, if unoccupied, or on the far end of the bleachers, were good choices. Once, at the mall, I convinced a friend to slip into a mattress store, to see if we could manage a nap before the sales staff noticed us and threw us out. We didn’t quite fall asleep, but I got enough shut-eye to warrant the effort.
Memories of certain public naps flood me with warmth, a sense of connection: I somehow made myself comfortable on a pile of shale at the end of a hiking trip with my Girl Scout troop in junior high, and slept in the light breeze circling round the top of a small mountain overlooking the Columbia Gorge. My first year of college and in New Orleans for spring break, I napped in a park, book bag and jacket propping up my head toward the sun as songs from nearby street musicians drifted by. Not so many days after, I rested in a grassy, happy field (what others might have described as a vacant lot) not far from the Greyhound station in Jackson, MS. It was an extended stop during the endless bus trip back to Chicago, on which I also napped on my companion’s shoulder for much of the way. I would carry the warm imprint of those naps with me for weeks, and they sustained me through the blustery last fight winter always puts up in the Great Lakes before spring finally and truly arrives.
In hindsight, one could read those acts of public sleeping as obviously political. They often elicited strong responses from others, usually in the form of concern, the same kind I sometimes received when insisting I walk the ten blocks home from an evening event, some overly chivalrous male or protective adult protesting that I should instead accept their ride or company on the way back. I can picture myself scrunching up my face and shaking my head at the imagined fears and potential harm others always seemed able to summon up in these moments. I opted instead to summon the image of the experience itself, whether nap or walk, and proceeded on. It all felt intuitive to me—it simply made sense to walk or rest in those spaces of the world in which I happened to be, and the potential risk too slight to deny myself such simple pleasures. But as the comments never went away, I eventually began to see in my approach a unique moral or political stance (20-year-old me would have used the first term; present-day me might opt for the latter but emphasize that they’re intrinsically bound). Long before I would read Jane Jacobs, I was making arguments about how having more people out in public made those public spaces safer for everyone. If there wasn’t already a culture of being out in the parks or streets, I would argue, then there needed to be those who would step up to be the first. Doing so might help assuage others’ fears enough that they, too, felt free to go on an evening or late-night stroll; from there the effect could snowball, and wouldn’t we all be much happier then? As for the napping, I also saw it as a radical act of trust: to demonstrate to strangers that you trusted them enough to close your eyes and drift into a dream, presuming no harm would come your way. That’s the world I wanted to live in, and I stubbornly insisted on my right to help bring that world into being through simple acts like nodding off on a park bench. Even if others thought me nutty for it.
Of course, there was another side to my sleeping superpower: I couldn’t help it. I was consistently short on rest, a natural result of living in noisy households or dorms where things often didn’t quiet down until well after midnight. While in college I also worked a mixture of late and early shifts at the library circulation desk, increasing the erratic quality of my sleep schedule. This all changed during my final year, when—while sharing an apartment with early-to-bed roommates in a quieter building reserved mostly for upperclassmen—I resolved at long last to follow my mother’s advice and at least try to get eight hours of sleep a night. It was life-changing: I no longer fell asleep involuntarily during long lectures. I had some of my best grades, even while auditing additional classes, heading up a couple of student organizations, and planning a wedding. I had found my reverse superpower: the ability to stay awake when and where I wanted. I was in awe at the magic of regular rest.
It all belied the cheerful story I told about random naps in random places: they weren’t always out of desire, but often out of necessity. I could fall asleep in public spaces, despite the noise and hubbub or the presence of strangers, because I had to. My body rarely gave me much choice. It would still take time for me to really come to terms with it, but I simply am not capable of full functioning on anything much under seven hours of sleep, really eight. Neither college nor graduate school ever saw me successfully pull an all-nighter. There was always some wall that I hit—most literally with my face, as it smashed against the pages of a book or into my computer keyboard. Always a moment where my body took over and said, very simply, “enough.”
Public Sleeping Bans: Laws Against Humanity
Necessity, of course, is why most people sleep in public. Rest is one of the most basic necessities of being human—of being an organism of any kind. It’s an absurd society, then, that would seek to criminalize one of the most fundamental functions and essential needs of the human body, and banish it from public view.
And yet that’s exactly where we are: a society that aims to prevent sleeping in public not only through mechanisms such as “hostile architecture”—think bench designs that prohibit lying down, or sprinklers with motion sensors under awnings that could otherwise offer shelter—but through outright bans, matched with hefty fines and even jail time. Such bans are being enacted in towns and cities of a variety of sizes and demographics around the country. The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty documents this well, in their report Housing Not Handcuffs. Of the cities they surveyed, over half have “sit-lie” laws that prohibit sitting or lying down in public places; 21% ban sleeping in public citywide. These are in addition to bans on public camping, bans on sleeping in vehicles, and bans on loitering. Thou shalt not sleep in public, not even standing up.
The Law Center and many other advocates speak of these as anti-homelessness laws. Others more accurately describe them as anti-poor laws. For it isn’t just those without shelter falling asleep on the bus stop bench—it’s the worker scheduled for back-to-back shifts without a chance to go home and get meaningful rest. Yet it would be more accurate still to call these anti-human laws. For in what reality is every individual so perfectly productive and well-planned that they never have a moment in which they need to sit and rest while out in the world?
Even that phrase—“out in the world”—carries some heavy presumptions and baggage. It divides reality up into private and public spaces, helping to create the mental structures in which we designate some activities fit for one space, some for the other. It softly presumes that every person has a private realm to which they can easily return to meet their basic needs. This, of course, is simply not true, especially not in a society that makes the having of a private realm—i.e., housing—a commodified good. If activities like sleeping and resting, or even merely sitting down, are restricted to privately-owned spaces, then we are essentially banning being human in public, while simultaneously charging everyone for access to private spaces necessary for essential human functions.
Defenders of these laws will try to “assure” us that they aren’t meant, for instance, to prevent an elderly person on her walk through the neighborhood from sitting down should she become short of breath and need to rest. They would admit, then, that such laws are to be applied discriminately; that enforcers of the law should choose who they hassle and fine or jail based on visual cues that might indicate how long the person intends to sit, if they do such things regularly, if they look like the “type of person” that will be returning to permanent housing. They admit, then, that such laws are intended only for the poor, or for those whose habits might fall slightly outside the norms of a given neighborhood, or for anyone else law enforcement deems “suspicious” by their mere presence. Clearly such laws create yet another route by which racial and other forms of discrimination can turn into abusive overpolicing.
Laws that inherently rely on such discrimination are unjust laws. Moreover, they criminalize the guiltless act of being without money. By requiring that money be used to access private spaces designated appropriate for the carrying out of basic human functions—be it the catching of a breath or the relieving of a bladder—and what’s more, by threatening imprisonment of those who cannot pay—such laws criminalize our humanness. We are not born into this world with a dispenser of cash or a credit card built into the palm of our hands. We are birthed with our bare skins, our organs and physiological systems, and nothing else. If we are lucky, we are born into a web of social relations that will help us meet our needs. And some of us, in this modern era, are born into social webs that might—again, with luck—pass on financial resources that modern institutions have come to demand. Those humans are a tiny minority. The rest of us need a bathroom that doesn’t require us to buy coffee in a paper cup for access. We need a park where we can rest and not live in fear of being jailed. We may, in a rougher moment of life, even need the opportunity to sleep there overnight without fear of police violence.
Many of the campaigns working to overturn these laws use language that focuses on creating sympathy for those experiencing homelessness. There is an attempt to make sure we understand that people are facing structural issues, that it’s not a matter of individual blame. These framings are well-intentioned but miss the bigger picture. Such laws should not be overturned only because those most impacted right now are free of blame or deserving of sympathy. They should be overturned because they criminalize us all.
Sleeping Bans in the Era of Climate Disaster
The list of towns prohibiting sleeping in public anywhere in city limits is filled with places with reputations for ostensibly progressive political culture, from Asheville, NC to Santa Fe, NM, or Boulder, CO; cities throughout California; and a host of cities in Oregon, including Portland, Corvallis, and Eugene.[1]
There’s one major Oregon city not surveyed by the Law Center: Medford. Located over four hours south from Portland on the I-5 corridor, it’s not a city well-known outside the state. But it made national news last year when the devastating Almeda Fire tore through the adjacent towns of Phoenix and Talent and hit the city’s outskirts. I traveled through southern Oregon last fall, and saw the effects of the fire firsthand, saw how block after block held only cinder and ash where homes and trees once stood.
My partner and I had initially hoped to stay in the area for a while, one of our first stops in a strange nomadic pandemic life we’ve been living. We thought perhaps we’d rent a place for a month or two, but scrapped that plan after the fire hit. How could we take up long-term housing in an area with so many families who suddenly had no place to live? We stayed a few nights at a local motel instead, signed up to volunteer at a relief site distributing food, then searched through our belongings to see what might be useful for others. Among the more obvious items: our second backpacking tent. It was roomier, relatively speaking, and more durable than our main lightweight tent. Into the donation pile it went.
Tents for shelter were absolutely necessary in the aftermath of the fire, which destroyed over 2,500 homes. And they’re likely still necessary, as many impacted residents remain displaced or struggling. What’s more, of those Oregon residents impacted by last year’s fires—the Almeda was certainly not the only one—over half who applied for federal disaster relief funds were rejected. While the reasons are varied, many are caught in the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to prove residency in a home that no longer exists, with all verifying documentation likewise burned up. Many residents, including those who are undocumented, are not eligible for FEMA aid to begin with. Even if they were, and had means to acquire temporary housing while fire cleanup continues, there would be no place for them to stay: vacancy rates in the Rogue Valley in February of 2021 were near 0%.
The state government in Oregon is trying to pick up slack where FEMA is failing[2], but the fact remains: in the region around Medford, massive fires displaced thousands of people and affordable long-term housing is nowhere to be found. It’s in this context that the Housing Advisory Commission in the city of Medford has somehow deemed it appropriate to author new rules expanding prohibitions against public camping, both adding areas that are off-limits and also changing violation of the ordinance to a misdemeanor. Medford’s anti-camping ordinance is already written broadly, and includes not just tents but bedding—which seems to suggest that, if the proposal for upgrading violations to misdemeanor status is passed, someone could be arrested for sitting on the sidewalk with a blanket around their shoulders.
This proposal in Medford, in the wake of the fire, is like a looking glass into the future, showing how our failing legal and justice systems will intersect with the disasters resulting in part or whole from a changing climate. We must look clear-eyed at that reality, and come to terms with the truth that we are all at risk of being displaced in the near future. I usually hear people discuss this risk in an abstract way—it’s still something that might happen elsewhere. In that other unlucky country, unlucky state, unlucky county, unlucky neighborhood. It keeps creeping closer but there’s some imaginary line we can draw and say it’s happening “over there.” It’s time we accept that we may be the ones in need, sleeping outdoors for an ambiguous length of time. Maybe just a night, maybe just a month, but maybe more. Even those of us reading this on shiny laptops and phones. It’s all in the realm of possibility, one we’ve been shielding our eyes from for some time, hoping our luck will hold out. We must begin to look at it more directly. To gaze into that looking glass without flinching is to know that allowing the creeping criminalization of public camping—of living in public— is to ensure the chips are stacked against us at some future moment when we’re at our lowest. When spectacular cold for your region bursts the pipes in your house, and even though you have the means for a room, all the hotels are full. When all your belongings are swept away in the once-in-a-generation flood that now comes every decade. When the earthquake, natural or fracking-induced, tears apart the very ground on which you used to live. And yes, when fire destroys not just your home, but those of everyone in your community.
These are the unfortunate, but easily predictable, possible futures we face. And it’s why we should rally when we hear news of proposed rules like those in Medford, and keep them off the books. Many residents in southern Oregon are already more than aware of the injustice these proposed laws represent, and are campaigning to prevent them from passing. This includes the Southern Oregon Coalition for Racial Equity; the Housing Justice Alliance; Rise and Resist Oregon; and others.
The Housing Justice Alliance is gathering signatures from area residents, and one can also send testimony to the Medford City Council at council@cityofmedford.org. If you’d like to support efforts on this front, and are from outside the region, consider donating to any of the groups above, as well as to ongoing fire relief efforts.
For Justice or For Pleasure?
I could end this post now, after what’s become a familiar litany in recent times: an alert sounded to some potential injustice about to be wrought; an appeal to broader moral principles; a description of the multiplicity of intersecting calamities that should make this of concern; an unrequired but strategic nod to how solving said concern is in one’s own best interest; and at last, a simplistic call to act or financially support those better situated to do so.
Litany done, let’s set it all aside for a minute. Forget everything I just said: for just a moment, forget that the future might be hard for many of us. Scale back your concern for the overlapping housing and climate crises. Make them seem whatever size they felt the last time such things, for you, appeared manageable, reasonable—something our society could genuinely handle, and had motivation to do so. Take however many deep breaths will help you release either the anger or anxiety you might be holding, and imagine instead the feeling of being fully, deeply, refreshingly rested—reach as far back as you need into your memory in order to find that feeling. Stay there a minute. Now imagine falling asleep and waking up with that level of wellness. Only you’re not in bed: you’re slowly coming to after a nap against the bark of a willow in a nearby park, and the sun is streaming through the tree’s flickering strands of beaded leaves; there are children and others running about and playing, and it never occurred to you to worry about falling asleep here, no matter your age or gender or race, because in this imaginary world we’re dreaming up, no one would dare harm someone in need of rest, especially once they had found such a perfect spot to get it. In this dream world—into which you are awakening, warm life spreading up through your muscles and opening your eyes to the camaraderie about you—everyone knows how fundamental the need for sleep is, and they will let you have it.
Just as the framing of laws against sleeping in public only as “anti-homeless” or “anti-poor” lessens our understanding of how they effectively redefine the world into spaces in which we can and cannot be in our human bodies, so a framing of solutions to this problem meant only to solve injustice or lessen potential harm diminishes our full picture of ourselves. The right to linger on the sidewalk, the right to sleep in a park—these aren’t merely about survival, though they certainly include it. They’re also about holding onto the innate pleasures that come with being social and earthly beings, the ability to find satisfaction without being charged an entry fee. They are about knowing the delicious treat of sleeping under a willow.
Such pleasures should be considered the most sacred of all birthrights. The pleasure of simply being, of resting in a moment and letting either sun or rain fall on your face. The pleasure of standing idly on your street corner to see who from the neighborhood might come by, be it person, bird, or bee. And the pleasure of being provided shelter in the forms offered by the world: under a tree or in the lee of a rock; under the awning of a shop; in your own built structure, if you have one; in a bed or a tent offered by a neighbor if you do not.
There is survival here, but there is also joy and connection. When I began writing this essay, I had forgotten about all those moments when, short on sleep, I had found it necessary to rest in front of others. As I recounted them, I thought at first that they were too different from the experiences of those displaced by disaster to be part of the same discussion. Yet as more and more memories came back, I realized that finding shelter and rest outside an established home did not exist for me on some sort of binary of survival vs. pleasure. If anything, survival and pleasure, or rest as necessity and rest as leisure, were almost always intermingled. There was the time my family slept in a car at a highway rest stop, unable to afford a hotel, but afforded instead a glowing view of the sunrise. Or the night I sheltered alone in an abandoned farmhouse in the Spanish countryside, a little lost and a storm approaching, and felt absolute gratitude for the crumbling, dusty walls blocking the wind. There were all those mornings I drifted in and out of a nap on the campus lawn after my early shift, catching glimpses of the changing clouds and receiving much-needed energy to make it through my next class. There was yesterday, when I climbed the winding path up a juniper-dotted hill, and sat on a makeshift bench built by anonymous hands. Sat at first to rest but then grew comfortable and sat for the mere sake of sitting, sat with my head cupped in my palms and stared down happily upon the small town tucked in a canyon, here in Arizona where I’m currently staying. Survival and pleasure both, all of it.
Protecting our right to be fully human out in public isn’t only about knowing the truth of our current hard times or those yet to come, so as to better prepare. It’s also about knowing how much more human, and alive, we can be in this moment. It’s acting from a foundation of radical trust, an act that says there might still be enough time and strength of will to allow us to reclaim the pleasure of simply existing, of being human without being productive; of simply living in the social-natural wealth of the world, rather than cutting it off. It’s a stubborn insistence on our right to help bring the world we want to inhabit into being, even in difficult times. All through a simple act like nodding off on a park bench.
Both our future and our present demand that we reclaim our right to be fully human, in public, free of charge. Heed that demand. Go take a nap.
NOTES
[1] For a full list of surveyed towns and their prohibitions, see Housing Not Handcuffs, Appendix A, page 105.
[2] Anyone displaced by fire in Oregon can call the state’s wildfire housing hotline at 833-669-0554 to be placed in free hotel housing, regardless of FEMA eligibility. The state is also providing food.