HOMELESSNESS

Homelessness in Cleveland, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Homelessness in Cleveland, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Introduction

The causes of homelessness, for example unemployment, the need of inexpensive housing and the need of amenities for the brain and bodily infirm, are national problems. The history of the homeless in Cleveland reflects national tendencies in the figures of homeless and the community's answer to the homeless problem. Cleveland's economy was cyclic and subject to the national economic cycles. (Katz 2003)

In the decade's former to Cleveland's emergence as a developed center, boat crew and dock workers were unemployed when the dock shut in the winter, as were the canal and trains workers. Men accumulated in the town to await the opening of the shipping season. These were some of the first homeless in Cleveland. Cleveland endured through the nation's economic cycles: the depression of 1873, the Panic of 1896, the depressions of 1915 and the post-World War I years, the Great Depression, and the economic depression of the 1980s. Each time span seen a boost in the homeless of Cleveland.

 

Discussion

The assumption in the pre-industrial era was that families nurtured for them; only the "worthy poor" who were willing to work should be sustained by the community. Ohio poor regulations were proposed to supply respite for those who were solely impoverished, helpless and dependent upon public charity. State regulation very resolute how localized authorities would supply public aid to their people if the respite was temporary. The township was the prime governmental body to blame for the care of inhabitant indigents. Tax levies supplied capital to aid those who had no other entails of support; although, only those individuals who established "legal settlement" in a township were suitable for assistance. This requirement was instituted to prevent outsiders from moving to a township in alignment to take benefit of aid which was proposed only for the inhabitants of the community, for one time lawful settlement was got, the community was obligated to supply assistance. (Nieto 2008)

 

Yesterday

Pre-World War I. In 1816 the Ohio legislature authorized county authorities to construct and administer poorhouses and infirmaries to supply long-run respite for their poor and homeless. Cuyahoga County was the only county in Ohio which did not set up a poorhouse, so Cleveland took on the responsibility. The Cleveland City Charter of 1836 authorized "care of paupers in a poorhouse," and until the council cast a vote to assemble a poorhouse and infirmary in 1849 and levied a levy to yield for it, the homeless discovered protect in a timber building behind the ERIE ST. CEMETERY. The infirmary housed infirm and insane indigents as well as the poorhouse and the Outdoor Relief Department. The poorhouse assisted most of the desires of the homeless until the first widespread economic depression of the 1870s. As people became less economically independent and more dependent on commerce and economic circuits, the number of homeless individuals rapidly outstripped the community's proficiency to supply aid to them.

Outdoor respite, as are against to direct respite, comprised ...