“Nowhere else to go”: Slow abandonment and (en)closures of long‐term care in Los Angeles

Residential long-term care facilities, known in California as "board and care" homes, have been closing rapidly in the last decade. Proponents assert these provide vital forms of housing and care to the poor and must be saved, while critics contend they perpetuate the institutionalization of people with disabilities and should be abolished. Drawing on 18 months of fieldwork in Los Angeles, I demonstrate that board and cares offer residents much-needed shelter and sustenance while also trapping them in worsening conditions amid ongoing "slow abandonment" by the state. Residents are confined by neoliberal state policy and political-economic forces that leave them with "nowhere else to go," and articulate critiques of their predicament that far exceed reformist solutions intended to salvage this peculiar, struggling institution. Seen through the lens of slow abandonment, meaningfully addressing residents' concerns requires an abolitionist project of building life-affirming structures of support.