Poverty and the Homeless | Introduction
A crack cocaine dependency makes it difficult for forty-two-year-old Stella Tate to keep a job, pay rent, or maintain stable relationships. Consequently, Tate—who also suffers from arthritis, heart problems, and seizures—has spent several years living on the streets. During these years, she would sleep under park benches, covering herself with discarded newspapers to stay warm and hidden. On colder nights she might venture into an emergency shelter, which offered heat, but which also required her to engage in the “one-eyed sleep”—a state of half-alertness prompted by the fear of having one’s possessions stolen. Tate has also been severely beaten both in the shelters and in the city parks. Presently, a rehabilitation program has helped Tate to remain drug-free for several months, and she lives in an apartment. But she is wary of taking her current life for granted. “This is not my first time rising,” she admits, recalling past bouts of being sober and housed. “Raw existence can be only a few slips away.”
David Christian, a rental car mechanic in his mid-thirties, lost his job when the tourist industry plummeted after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His wife Gina, a temporary worker at a nursing home, did not make enough money to support David and their four children. The family pawned off nearly everything they owned to move to Dallas, Texas, where David’s former boss opened a new business. When that business failed, David and Gina had to sell parts from their two cars to pay for food. “I was reduced to begging. I felt degraded, like I was less than human,” recalls Gina. Unable to pay rent, the family eventually found shelter at the Interfaith House, which provides three months’ free housing for one hundred needy families each year. David now has an $8.00-per-hour job at a Texaco station, and the family has begun to save some money. But the Interfaith House has had to break its own rule and allow the family to remain for an additional three months. Otherwise they would be living in a car.
Stella Tate is the type of person many people picture when they hear the word homeless. Transients who are substance abusers, mentally ill, or very sick—often referred to as the “chronic homeless”—may spend years in a recurring cycle of illness, deepening poverty, institutionalization, rehabilitation attempts, and homelessness. Some remain transients for life. The chronic homeless, however, make up only 10 percent of the homeless population. Increasingly, families like David and Gina Christian and their children are joining the ranks of the destitute. An economic recession, stagnant wages, layoffs, and rising unemployment coupled with skyrocketing housing prices are pushing more and more working families onto the streets or into temporary shelters. In many cities the number of homeless families is the highest that analysts have seen in a decade. There were nine thousand homeless families in New York City in 2003—an increase of 40 percent since 2002. In Anchorage, Alaska, families made up seventeen hundred people seeking shelter in 2001—an increase of 17 percent since the year 2000. “It’s embarrassing to say that the [numbers of homeless are] up,” says Philip Mangano, head of the U.S. government’s Interagency Council on Homelessness. “But it’s better to face the truth than to try to obfuscate.”
Despite the increase in homelessness, the public today does not seem to view it as a compelling social problem. In the 1980s and early 1990s, when fighting homelessness had become a popular cause, many cities built emergency shelters and supportive housing projects with on-site services for the jobless, the ill, and the addicted. But after Congress cut the budget for homeless services in the late 1990s, cities were not able to keep up with the requests for assistance, and the homeless again poured out onto the streets. Irritated with federal unresponsiveness to the homeless problem, the public at large demanded that the streets be “cleaned up.” Many locales then focused on discouraging transience and keeping homeless people away from downtown areas. Orlando, Florida, for example, passed an ordinance that made it illegal to lie down on the sidewalk. An ad campaign in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, asked people to stop giving money to panhandlers. And Santa Monica, California, adopted a law preventing transients from sleeping in shop doors or receiving food from unlicensed providers.
Another factor bearing on the perception of homelessness, according to some analysts, is the basic lack of national leadership and discussion on poverty issues. In the opinion of researcher and author Jack Newfield, “the increasing gap between rich and poor . . . are not hot-button talk-show issues because so few politicians with a national following agitate about them with continuing conviction.” Moreover, Newfield points out, “[the] growing concentration of wealth has given the superrich domination over politics through extravagant campaign contributions and media ownership.” He believes that the control of politics and media by the affluent makes it exceedingly difficult for the poor to be heard. Unwilling to alienate the wealthy individuals and corporations that donate to their campaigns, most major politicians avoid discussing the unequal distribution of wealth and the growth of poverty and homelessness, claims Newfield.
Susan Baker, co-chair of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, would likely disagree with Newfield’s assertions about the politics of poverty. In 2001 Baker met with Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Mel Martinez to discuss solutions to homelessness. Baker had come across a new study suggesting that the best way to reduce homelessness was to provide permanent housing for the chronic homeless—the substance abusers and the very ill who are often lifelong transients. Since the long-term homeless take up 50 percent of the relatively expensive space in emergency shelters, Baker thought that providing permanent housing for them would save money and create more temporary-shelter space for homeless families. She convinced Martinez that the Bush administration could end chronic homelessness in ten years by providing 200,000 apartments for long-term transients. Since her meeting with Martinez, this “permanent housing” plan has become President George W. Bush’s official stance on homelessness, and he has promised to end long-term homelessness in a decade.
But many experts believe that Bush’s adopted stance does not go far enough, especially in light of the relatively small amount of new funding—$35 million— that the permanent housing plan will receive. “To give a sense of how much that means,” explains Time reporter Joel Stein, “$35 million is equal to the money set aside to help keep insects from crossing the border.” Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, argues that Bush’s plan is too limited: “The largest-growing sector [of the homeless] is actually women and children. A true strategy needs to include the entire population.” Moreover, many advocates for the homeless contend that the new plan seems more geared to keeping the obviously homeless out of sight than in providing destitute people with assistance.
An effective strategy to help the homeless, argues Homes for the Homeless president Ralph da Costa Nunez, should focus on getting more shelters to provide supportive services for homeless individuals and families. The U.S. government, he contends, is not likely to construct enough low-income housing in the near future, and homeless people are increasingly turning to the shelter system “as the one remaining element of a dwindling safety net.” But it is just this element that could begin to turn the tide of homelessness, states Nunez: “By using the national shelter infrastructure already in place . . . we can enhance services to be comprehensive and focused on building long-term skills that foster independence and economic viability.” Such service-oriented shelters could provide homeless people opportunities to receive counseling, improve literacy skills, complete high school, and build an employment history. In Nunez’ view, “We are going to have to acknowledge that, for the time being, a shelter is indeed a home, and one that must continue to evolve into a community with opportunities.”
While analysts and policy makers differ on which strategies would best reduce destitution and homelessness, they generally agree that the persistence of poverty presents a compelling challenge that should not be ignored. In Poverty and the Homeless: Current Controversies, authors examine the severity of U.S. poverty and homelessness, debate the problem’s root causes, and discuss various approaches to helping the poor. These chapters offer a thought-provoking introduction to the plight of America’s often-invisible population of poor and homeless people.
