Beyond safety net value(s): Tourist hotel rooms for people experiencing homelessness

This article examines the shape of care and value through an ethnographic study of an intensive, temporary housing intervention for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco, California, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on a new anthropological theory of value, the results highlight the slipperiness between surveillance and care, and how value may be produced or diminished in specific, embodied ways through respite, space, privacy, and dignity. This article troubles the concept of the social "safety net," suggesting instead that high-quality and even costly initial public investments for the poor generate public value.