HOMELESSNESS IN AMERICA

Homelessness in America

Homelessness in America

Introduction

Homelessness has existed in North America from colonial days, but it emerges as a public and political issue only episodically. Previous periods of public concern in the United States have included the great leap toward industrialization and urbanization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Depression of the 1930s, and the Skid Row, post-World War II era (c. 1945-c. 1990).

When homelessness reemerged as a topic of public concern at the end of the 1970s (Dordick, 1997), debate centered on the same questions that had been discussed in earlier periods: How large is the homeless population? Who are they, and why are they homeless?

Size of the Homeless Population

Estimates of the size of the homeless population depend in great part on how homelessness is defined. The narrowest definitions include only those people literally without a roof over their heads on a given night (Dordick, 1997). Broader definitions include any person without legal access to a conventional residence on a continuing basis, thus including those living in their vehicles or those without a permanent address who live with relatives or friends episodically. Even according to the narrowest definitions, however, estimates of the number of homeless people in the 1980s were staggering compared with the previous forty years. By most accounts, between half a million and a million Americans were literally homeless (in shelters or on the streets) every night; the number rose to perhaps several million if the count was expanded to include the hidden homeless (those living in their vehicles or with families) population as well (Huth & Wright, 1997). A study by Bruce Link and his colleagues in the mid-1990s showed that an astounding 3 percent of the U.S. population had been literally homeless at some time between 1985 and 1990. After the initial explosion of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the total size of the homeless population has continued to grow, but at a slower rate.

Diversity of the Homeless Population

Researchers have also been surprised by the diversity of the homeless population. Studies during the past twenty years have revealed a heterogeneity not previously appreciated—in gender, race, age, employment status, parental status, mental health, and presence or absence of substance abuse problems. While the most visible homeless people are disproportionately single males (Huth & Wright, 1997), mentally ill or suffering from some form of substance abuse, or both mentally ill and with a substance abuse problem, significant numbers are not. Hidden populations—physically concealed or, more commonly, passing as housed—contain even higher percentages of people not formerly thought of as part of the homeless population, including women with children, two-parent families, and employed people. Researchers have come to appreciate that differences in investigative methods—how researchers define homelessness (Link, et al, 1995), where researchers find homeless people to be interviewed or surveyed—can produce significantly different snapshots of the population.

Contemporary Theories of Homelessness

In the initial years of the most recent explosion in homelessness, both academic and lay explanations of the phenomenon emphasized the individual characteristics of ...