Between Safety and Erasure
This project addresses the escalating crisis of homelessness in Los Angeles, focusing on the systemic failure of punitive policy and the role of media in manufacturing social consent for that failure. The core problem is the Criminalization of Existence, an aggressive policy strategy that erases the presence of the unhoused rather than solving the housing crisis.
Client
AAPI Data
DELIVERABLES
APK.| Project progress doc
Year
2025
Role
Interaction designer, developer
Research Question
How can immersive experience reveal the structural pressure behind homelessness, rather than simply asking users to feel sympathy for an individual story?
In Los Angeles, homelessness is often addressed through visibility control rather than structural care. Policies such as LAMC 41.18 criminalize basic acts of existence in public space, including resting, staying, or securing personal belongings. Instead of resolving housing insecurity, these policies often produce temporary displacement and reinforce the idea that unhoused people are a public nuisance to be removed.
This punitive structure is further supported by media narratives that dehumanize homelessness through images of tents, carts, and disorder, while rarely showing the structural causes behind housing precarity. For many communities, especially AANHPI individuals experiencing hidden or precarious housing, the crisis becomes even less visible due to stigma, undercounting, and cultural pressure to self-erase.
