Homelessness, AIDS, and Stigmatization: The NIMBY Syndrome in the United States at the End of the Twentieth Century

In AIDS, Homelessness, and Stigmatization, Lois Takahashi takes a close look at the social forces behind local-level community opposition to human service facilities associated with homelessness and AIDS. Using both quantitative and qualitative data and methods, She argues that this community opposition is a product of the changing social construction of stigma, or the ways in which we define who is acceptable and who is not. The book demonstrates that the social and spatial construction of stigma can be a useful theoretical concept for understanding ongoing and future community response. Throughout, the author stresses the importance of economic, welfare state, and demographic restructuring in community response to homelessness and HIV/AIDS, and examines the role of institutions, such as municipal governments and the courts, in defining and adjudicating local facility siting disputes.