Address Unknown: The Homeless in America

Description

Homelessness in America has grown from a minor problem in isolated areas of a few big cities into a near epidemic. Today, scarcely any American city of any appreciable size lacks homeless people. Homeless shelters and programs have become as essential and as commonplace as police protection or water and sewage treatment. What to do for, with, or about the homeless is a nagging and complex social policy issue debated at all levels of government. Address Unknown emphasizes the large-scale social and economic forces that have priced an increasingly large segment of the urban poor completely out of the housing market. Seen in this light, the problem of homelessness is that there are too many extremely poor people competing for too few aff ordable housing units. The nation would be facing a formidable homelessness problem even if there were no alcoholics, no drug addicts, no deinstitutionalized mentally ill people-no personal pathologies of any kind. Rather than a choice, homelessness is the result of housing markets that have very little to off er to extremely poor people. The plight of the homeless is very visible, and Address Unknown is one of the first major investigative studies into the nature and multiple causes of the problem. Wright considers demographic, economic, sociological, and social policy antecedents of homelessness. A hallmark is the delineation of the range of factors involved, including deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, urban renewal, the decrease in lower-skilled jobs, changing political priorities, and bureaucratic obstacles to providing existing social services to the homeless population. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Introduction to the Transaction Edition Preface Acknowledgments Chapter One: The Human Faces of Homelessness An Old Face A New Face A Woman's Face A Dead Face 10 A Child's Face Imagine Notes Chapter Two: Homeless in America: The New American Nightmare Definitions and Numbers of Homeless The Bottom Line Is Homelessness a New Problem? Is Homelessness a Growing Problem? How Did lt Come to Be? Notes Chapter Three: The Root Causes: Housing and Poverty The Situation in the Large Cities Where Has the Low-Income Housing Gone? Notes Chapter Four: Who Are the Homeless! One Thousand Homeless People Homeless Families The lone Homeless: Women and Children lone Adult Men: The Elderly lone Adult Men: The Veterans lone Adult Men: The Disabled lone Adult Men: Employment Status Racial and Ethnic Composition Education Family Background and Affiliations Geography Criminal Background Extreme Poverty Nature and Duration of Homelessness Disabilities Reasons for Homelessness Notes Chapter Five: How People Become Homeless The Poverty line Resources of the Homeless The Dynamics of Homelessness But Why Now? Notes Chapter Six: Drunk, Stoned, Crazy, and Sick Alcoholism Drug Abuse Mental Illness Deinstitutionalization Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Illness: The Overlap Physical Illness Notes Chapter Seven: To Promote the Social Welfare Barriers to Participation Some Obvious Barriers Some Not-So-Obvious Barriers The National HCH Experience Some Tentative Conclusions Notes Chapter Eight: Who Can Be Helped, and How? Homelessness as a Poverty Problem What Does Homelessness Cost Society? Prevention: Rent Insurance Homelessness as a Housing Problem Short-Term Amelioration Coordination of Services The Social Welfare System Alcoholism Mental Illness Conclusion Notes Bibliography Name Index Subject Index