Homelessness

Background of Homelessness

Homelessness is not a new phenomenon: the United States has had people without permanent dwellings since the colonial era. The Elizabethan Poor Laws, brought over from England, guided the colonists in their handling of poverty. From this early period, policies and beliefs emphasized work and family responsibility, thereby keeping the numbers of idle people limited and out of sight.

It was not until larger urban areas developed that pockets of homelessness arose. Periods of economic or social upheaval, such as after the Civil War or during the Great Depression, witnessed larger and visible pop [Page 496]ulations of homeless people. While they were still considered vagrants, there was more tolerance of homelessness when it seemed to be caused by large-scale disturbances such as war or economic depression. By the 1960s and into the 1970s, with the development of social programs for the poor, homelessness seemed to dissipate and fade from social awareness. By the 1980s, this had changed. Homelessness emerged as a national concern. Media attention publicized the lives of people in shelters and those living on the streets.

Homelessness in America: the estimates of the homeless population based on information gathered by the U.S. Conference of Mayors indicates 41 percent are single men. A root cause of homelessness is poverty.

Two factors seem to have contributed to the growth in the numbers of people who were homeless and their visibility. During the 1960s, a movement called deinstitutionalization emerged. This public policy change involved closing public mental hospitals and encouraging people who had been institutionalized or would be institutionalized to live within their communities. This movement was facilitated in large part through the creation and advancement of psychotropic drugs, medications that could help people with serious mental illnesses to cope with day-to-day living and not be institutionalized.

While positive in its intent, the policy had one major drawback. The social and medical support resources needed to help people maintain their regimen of medication and healthcare never fully materialized. Deinstitutionalization, removing people from living in state mental hospitals, required the development of a network of community mental health centers. While some were created, the extent of services was never adequate for the need. This left many formerly institutionalized people without resources and skills to live safely on their own, and added to the homeless population.

Much of the visible homeless population of the 1970s was an outgrowth of deinstitutionalization. Coupled with this growing number of individuals was a new [Page 497]group, homeless families. During the 1980s, cutbacks in social programs, growing costs for housing, and economic decline for lower-end workers contributed to the growth in the numbers of homeless families with children. It was during the 1980s that the term homelessness came into popular use.

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