The Roots of Contemporary Homelessness

Following the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society programs in the 1960s, homelessness was considered to be history in America. In the 1980s, however, the number of homeless people in America surged to levels not seen since the Great Depression. What caused homelessness to go from practically a non-issue to a population that today is more than one percent of the nation and growing?

There is no simple, concrete answer. The Western Regional Advocacy Project, for example, attributes the rise to "everything from economic downshifts, to high unemployment, to deindustrialization, to global outsourcing of jobs, to the rollback of social programs, to disruptions of familial networks, to urban renewal, to the reduction in open-market low end housing, to racial discrimination, to gentrification, to the near elimination of federally supported affordable housing." Phew.

In this brief foray into history, we will focus on two of the most compelling and frequently cited reasons for the surge in homelessness in the 1980s: the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and a persistent and severe affordable housing crisis.

The Mentally Ill: Nowhere to Go

According to NAEH, "the seeds of homelessness were planted in the 1960s and 1970s with de-institutionalization of mentally ill people." Deinstitutionalization can be traced to the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963, a law with good intentions that never received the funding required to have the desired effect. Lillian Rubin describes the de-institutionalization process as devastating for both patients and professionals, "ultimately, [deinstitutionalization] closed nearly half the hospitals in the country and dramatically reducing bed capacity in those that were left, leaving uncounted tens of thousands of people to fend for themselves."

The immediate effects of deinstitutionalization were compelling. A 2003 study points out that in 1970 there were 413,066 beds in state and county mental hospitals in the United States. By 1988, this number had decreased to 119,033 and in 1998, this number was down to 63,526 beds. As a direct result, the number of mentally ill individuals living on the street has been disproportionately large ever since. According to the NCH, "an average of 16% of the single adult homeless population and 8% of individuals in homeless families suffer from some form of severe and persistent mental illness."

Affordable Housing: Nowhere to Live

In the Housing Act of 1949, Congress declared that "every American deserves a decent home and suitable living environment." While programs related to this legislation helped many people achieve homeownership and revitalized urban centers, it also resulted in the removal of millions of affordable housing units in American cities. Between 1973 and 1993, over 2.2 million of these units disappeared.

During this time, the federal government was also redirecting federal funding from rental assistance for poor people to promoting home ownership. Consider these two statistics from WRAP:

• Compared to 1978, the U.S. government is currently spending nearly 65% less on developing and maintaining affordable housing units for poor people. ($83 billion was appropriated in 1978, while only $29 billion was allocated in 2005.)
• Compared to 1978, the U.S. government currently spends $84 billion more on subsidies for homeownership programs. (It spent $38 billion in 1978 on these subsidies for middle-class and affluent homeowners versus $122 billion in 2005.)

Thus, the gap between the number of affordable housing units and the number of people needing them has widened significantly since the late 1970s, creating a bona fide housing crisis for poor people in America. Rents have increased faster than income for many American households. And the demand for public housing greatly exceeds the supply. Only 30% of those eligible for housing assistance actually receive it.

Perhaps WRAP said it best:

The de-funding of federal affordable housing programs, coupled with the loss of public housing units as well as private-sector affordable housing, should be central to any discussion of the causes of homelessness, yet they have been all but ignored in the debates about and policy responses to the current ongoing crisis. No matter what other factors may come into play in any individual's experience of homelessness - without housing, that person will remain homeless.

Clearly, ending homelessness is no small task. Larger, systemic issues have caused its growth in the past twenty years and large, systemic changes are needed in order to end this unacceptable issue.