Growth and flexibility at the margins? The voluntary sector and civil society in post-welfare Portland

In this article, we shed light on the growth and flexibility of the voluntary sector as it responds to the housing crisis in American cities. To do so, we adopt a perspective from the margins of the post-welfare city (using governmentality studies), focusing on obscure grassroots actors at the interface of the state, the voluntary sector and civil society. Based on fieldwork carried out in Portland, Oregon (USA), this article analyzes city code changes and incentives as government technologies, to shed light on how civil society and voluntary organizations operating at the margins are made responsible for providing resources and participating in the response to homelessness, while simultaneously having their practices subjected to control. We argue that, far from being excluded, some organizations at the margins are selected by the state for inclusion in the voluntary sector, while others remain at the margins as a way to delegitimize their own interventions and the way they provide services.