In Jason Adam Wasserman and Jeffrey Michael Clair’s book At Home on the Street: People, Poverty, and a Hidden Culture of Homelessness, they provide a thorough recount of their ethnographic methodology and findings. In their second chapter, Accessing a Hidden Population,  it is discussed how important it was for Wasserman and Clair to be accepted into the homelessness community’s “private property” of Birmingham, Alabama’s, Catchout Corner. Although Catchout Corner is the city’s public property, this was the first time I had ever heard of a homeless community referred to as having private property. How can they have private property of they cannot afford it? Yet, the researchers had this understanding that this space did, in fact, belong to their homeless participants and they had to be accepted into their homes.

This was almost threatened by the drug dealers that provided and employed some of the homeless participants. Not only did the dealers believe that the researchers would harm their business, but the homeless participants also advised for them to leave the Corner. Luckily, Wasserman and Clair were not intimidated and decided to return to the homeless community. That is how they gained the participants’ respect. I felt that this bit of information about their approach and experience represents the way they went about their entire project. It was interesting to see the homeless participants in a position of respect, instead of pity or other negative emotions that are usually seen. It made me wonder if people viewed the homeless as worthy of respect, how much of a difference that would make in decisions that are made for them.