This study draws upon ethnographic data from a group of homeless persons residing in a 24-hour donut shop that doubles nightly as an ersatz shelter. This article examines the role of ‘urban hybrid spaces’ – spaces that serve dual roles as legitimate business establishment and homeless habitation or hangout – in facilitating the construction and enactment of more dignified identities for the unhoused. Ethnographic data depict the strategies by which unhoused individuals utilize an urban hybrid space to verbally, symbolically, and performatively assert and maintain a ‘patron identity’ – understood as someone who is housed, employed, autonomous, occupies the donut shop legitimately, and associates with other such people. I argue that this identity is uniquely facilitated by the social and physical context provided by the donut shop qua private business.
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