The major theme in this book is that people are homeless because of structural arrangements and trends that result in extreme impoverishment and a shortage of affordable housing in U.S. cities. It explains the economic and historical causes of homelessness with accounts of individuals and families.
This book is the first to combine a cogent explanation of the economic and historical causes of homelessness with accounts of individuals and families on the streets, in soup lines, and in shelters. The human side of the story, told from ethnographies conducted in three diverse cities—Chicago, Denver, and Tampa—shows that there is no “culture of poverty” that makes people poor, just as there is no “culture of homelessness” that leaves people without shelter. Instead, the authors show that large numbers of people became homeless through the processes of urban and industrial decline.Homelessness is largely an urban phenomenon. It increased dramatically when cities witnessed the simultaneous loss of low-income housing and good-paying industrial jobs. However, the increase in the number of homeless people does not suggest a special social problem—arising from the character of individuals—but is the result of social and economic transformations in American cities since the late 1970s.In this book the words of the homeless tell the stories of people who were “making it” before but eventually fell into circumstances of extreme poverty. The many paths taken to homelessness, revealed in their stories, speak to the changing conditions of inequality in the United States today and the need for new public policies.
Homelessness is one of the most compelling social problems in the United States. Dating from the early years in Colonial America to the current problems relating to homeless women and children, homelessness has been the topic of discussion of scholars, social activists, and policy makers. Many types of social problems are linked to homelessness, including poverty, substance abuse, foster care, and crime. As a result, unpacking the issues has proven to be a challenge for anyone interested in this topic. Homelessness in America offers an assessment of what is known about each segment of the homeless population, which contrary to conventional belief, is comprised of a wide variety of faces from many backgrounds. It explains linkages to other social issues and provides a balanced overview of homelessness in light of the varying perspectives on the topic. While much of what has been written about homelessness has come from the academic perspective, agendas often interfere with an accurate understanding of the problem. Clearly, there is a place for other types of perspectives, including those that view homelessness through political and legal lenses. These groups have provided us with a robust body of information within which we may better understand the questions relating to homelessness. McNamara has brought together the voices of these groups in order to reveal the numerous political, economic, and social constraints that beset current attempts to solve homelessness. In addition, the commonly held belief that homelessness is a result of laziness or a poor work ethic is turned on its head to reveal that homelessness is truly a multifaceted and complex issue.
Despite an extensive literature on homelessness there is surprisingly little work that investigates the roots of homelessness by tracking homeless people over time. In this fascinating and much-needed ethnographic study, Megan Ravenhill presents the results of ten years' research on the streets and in the hostels and day-centres of the UK, incorporating intensive interviews with 150 homeless and formerly homeless people as well as policy makers and professionals working with homeless people. Ravenhill discusses the biographical, structural and behavioural factors that lead to homelessness. Amongst the important and unique features of the study are: the use of life-route maps showing the circumstances and decisions that lead to homelessness, a systematic study of the timescales involved, and a survey of people's exit routes from homelessness. Ravenhill also identifies factors that predict those most vulnerable to homelessness and factors that prevent or considerably delay the onset of homelessness.
First published in 1999. The phenomenon of homelessness is not new, but it has only recently been perceived as a social problem in European Member States. Even in the early 1990s little was known about the paths in and out of homelessness. This volume presents the papers arising from EUROHOME: Emergency and Transitory Housing for Homeless people: Needs and Best Practices. This project enabled a review of the state of knowledge in the field, an analysis of recent trends and a discussion of the prospects for improvement in the prevention of homelessness and the public response to housing in Europe. EUROHOME, and this collection, thus bring together experts in the study of: *
Examines costs associated with the use of homeless and mainstream service delivery systems by families and individuals experiencing homelessness for the first time in six study communities. Assigning costs to public programs is a first step toward developing measures of the value of public interventions compared to the public costs incurred by ignoring or avoiding the problems those interventions are intended to address. The study finds that the experience of homelessness is diverse and the associated costs vary tremendously depending on the pattern of homelessness and family or individual status. It is not, however, a study of either cost-effectiveness or quality of care, but rather a calculation of costs associated with homelessness. Illustrations.
Originally written as a doctoral dissertation in sociology, this book focuses upon the problems of homelessness and the role of shelters in dealing with homeless families. It uses participatory field research at two temporary shelters to analyze the phases of reaction that ensue over time of dwelling among parents residing with their children. The author also discusses how residing at homeless shelters affects survival of family units as well as the quality of relationships between homeless families and their kin. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Concentrating on three main themes, this text argues that it is the rise in community opposition across race, class, and region that should be considered in terms of the changing social construction of stigma.
The challenges facing military veterans who return to civilian life in the United States are persistent and well documented. But for all the political outcry and attempts to improve military members' readjustments, veterans of all service eras face formidable obstacles related to mental health, substance abuse, employment, and — most damningly — homelessness. Homelessness Among U.S. Veterans synthesizes the new glut of research on veteran homelessness — geographic trends, root causes, effective and ineffective interventions to mitigate it — in a format that provides a needed reference as this public health fight continues to be fought. Codifying the data and research from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) campaign to end veteran homelessness, psychologist Jack Tsai links disparate lines of research to produce an advanced and elegant resource on a defining social issue of our time.