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The purpose of this study was to understand the organizational and structural barriers young people face in seeking housing and to interpret those barriers through the lens of white supremacy culture. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with 31 young people (ages 18–26) accessing a variety of homeless services, including a drop-in center, emergency shelter, and transitional housing apartments. White supremacy culture was used as an organizing framework for interpreting thematic findings. Participants described bureaucratic and systemic barriers to accessing and maintaining stable housing; lacking resources necessary to securing and maintaining housing; and rigid rules in community and living environments that created difficult in maintaining safe housing. Five tenets of white supremacy culture emerged as we applied the organizing framework to our findings: power hoarding, paternalism, worship of the written word, fear of open conflict, and right to comfort. Our findings reflect that organizations employing bureaucratic processes hold power to determine who can access housing, what is required of those young people, and how housing can be maintained. Yet, those holding the power at these decision points often do not reflect the identities of those benefiting from the services. Future research and critical analysis using a white supremacy framework or Critical Race Theory may allow for better understanding of barriers for young people experiencing homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although mutual aid organizing is a social movement practice long sustained by queer/trans people, immigrants, people of color, and disability communities, among other communities pushed to the margins of society, with the emergence of the COVID‐19 pandemic, and subsequent government failures in addressing unmet needs, mutual aid proliferated into new (and more socially privileged) communities in the United States and across the world. Amidst this landscape of extraordinary and unique crises, our study sought to understand the benefits experienced by those engaged in mutual aid in the early months of the COVID‐19 pandemic in the state of Colorado, United States. Our team conducted semistructured individual interviews with 25 individuals participating in mutual aid through groups organized on social media or through intentional communities. We found that participants, who engaged in mutual aid in the early months of the COVID‐19 pandemic, built empathy, a sense of nonjudgement, and critical consciousness as they created common ground as humans. Participants also found mutual aid engagement to provide nourishing support, to hold pain among more people, and, simply to "feel good." We discuss the potential implications of these benefits for sustaining mutual aid movements through the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic in the United States and beyond. Key Points/Highlights: Mutual aid organizers during COVID‐19 experienced benefits to individual and collective well‐being.Mutual aid built a sense of empathy, nonjudgement, and critical consciousness among participants.Mutual aid provided nourishing support, an ability to hold pain among more people, and "felt good."Horizontal interdependent care models have benefits as we face complex crises of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mutual aid, a longstanding practice among socially marginalized communities, has proliferated as a widespread form of collective care amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and compounding crises. We used critical phenomenological methods to understand how participants (N = 25) who engaged in mutual aid in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic conceptualized mutual aid, and how their social identities intersect with their conceptualizations. We found that conceptualizations of mutual aid fell upon a spectrum; some participants (who primarily held privileged social identities) saw mutual aid as a temporary crisis response, which was similar to traditional aid, and could be adjunctive to government support. Others (who tended to hold more marginalized social identities) saw mutual aid as an ongoing support mechanism which was explicitly different than traditional aid and should be separate from government structures. Our research offers insight into mutual aid at a moment of compounding crises and little studied increase in mutual aid. We invite mutual aid groups to consider how their understandings of their work fall upon this spectrum and offer resources for political education in mutual aid work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rapid emergent media scan, describing 1) how mutual aid emerged as a response to COVID-19 and 2) how digital organizing was used for mutual aid, was conducted using a media bias framework to select media outlets, standardized search terms to identify relevant content, and content analysis to describe themes. A variety of digital tools (e.g., social media, crowdsourcing, video conferencing) were used to coordinate people/resources, raise funds, create connections, and educate others. Findings encourage digital organizing to meet tangible and intangible needs when formal systems fail, while carefully avoiding reifying inequities based on differential access to technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]