Homelessness: Overview

Introduction

Although there have been people experiencing homelessness in America since colonial days, it is only in recent decades that the problem has become a national, rather than a local, concern. Previously, the number of people experiencing homelessness was small. However, changes in the nature and numbers of people experiencing homelessness during the period from the 1960s to the 1980s brought about calls for government action to provide services for people experiencing homelessness and to prevent homelessness.

Advocates for people experiencing homelessness have argued that housing is a basic human right, as part of the “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, and that a focus on providing housing without preconditions respects this right. Others have opposed efforts to alleviate homelessness through a housing-first approach, arguing that actions that address the root causes of homelessness and public safety better lessen the issue of homelessness.

Understanding the Discussion

Bench squatting: The practice of staking out a bench in a public place as a personal living space.

Chronic homelessness: Experiencing homelessness for one year or longer or having at least four episodes of homelessness in the last three years.

Compassion fatigue: The feeling of being overwhelmed and exhausted by constant appeals for donations of money, time, and effort.

Deinstitutionalization: A term used to describe the release of nonviolent patients with mental illness from institutions and returning them to the community.

Pauper: Someone who is able to work but refuses to, or cannot find work. In the past, paupers were sometimes provided for in poorhouses.

Poorhouse: An old institution that existed before 1935. Poorhouses housed people with physical or mental illnesses, people with disabilities, older people, paupers, and people who had committed crimes, all in one place. Paupers were expected to work for their room and board. Children were often “bound out” to community residents.

History

The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century saw a sharp increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness, or paupers, as they were then called, in the United States. Generally, these people had left their homes and extended families to live in distant cities where they could find work. When technological advances rendered their jobs obsolete, the former workers had nowhere to turn for support.

Some of these people experiencing poverty were able to remain in their homes and receive assistance in the form of food, clothing, fuel, and vouchers for medical care. Other people experiencing homelessness were provided for by those who made the low bids for local contracts to “keep paupers.” Still others, both individuals and families, were auctioned off to the lowest bidder, who would feed and house them and keep any money paupers earned.

As early as the 1820s, however, many people were opposed to public relief for people experiencing poverty, making a distinction between people considered worthy, or deserving, for having wealth and people considered unworthy, or undeserving, for experiencing poverty. These critics insisted that taking care of those who did not have a physical or mental illness or were not older encouraged laziness. In response, the European concept of the poorhouse, or workhouse, was introduced in the United States.

Often, poorhouses also served as jails and institutions for people with mental illnesses. There was particular concern for the children of people experiencing poverty, who were usually “bound out” to local families as indentured servants until they were seventeen years old, to keep them away from the potentially unsafe poorhouses. Orphanages also sprang up to provide care for the children of people experiencing poverty.

During this period, individuals with mental illness were often kept in poorhouses, generally in substandard conditions. The work of social reformer Dorothea Dix in the latter half of the nineteenth century resulted in the transfer of individuals with mental illness to state hospitals. After the Civil War, there was another spike in the number of people experiencing homelessness in the United States, as wounded or mentally traumatized ex-soldiers failed to reintegrate into society and find jobs. State boards of charity were created to standardize and improve the management of poorhouses, orphanages, and mental hospitals.

By the time the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, poorhouses had become more like nursing homes, caring for people with illnesses, older people, and people with disabilities. Social Security put an end to the poorhouse system by providing for retirement benefits, unemployment compensation and, for the first time, national assistance for local health and welfare programs.

Homelessness increased again during the Great Depression as banks foreclosed on mortgages that people were no longer able to pay. Also, many men “tramped” around the country, seeking work; some of these men completely abandoned their families. But homelessness, except among individuals with disabilities, was still seen as a temporary condition. Beginning in the 1960s, the numbers of people experiencing chronic homelessness began to rise.

Homelessness became a political issue in the 1980s during President Ronald Reagan’s administration. The numbers of people experiencing homelessness burgeoned, and they included women and children. In contrast to people experiencing homelessness in the past, this population often found no shelter at all.

Some Americans were infuriated by Reagan’s suggestion that some of the people experiencing homelessness in the United States might be homeless by choice. They argued that the president’s own policies had multiplied the numbers of people experiencing homelessness by deinstitutionalizing individuals with mental illness without providing for their support in the community, reducing funds for housing and job training, and severely cutting social welfare programs and federal assistance to cities.

Reagan’s supporters countered that the number of people experiencing homelessness had not increased as much as was believed. They also maintained that court challenges that had resulted in the removal of vagrancy laws had contributed to the problem. Further, they argued that expenditures for housing were not cut during the Reagan years, only authorizations.

During the 1990s, Congress curtailed funding for homeless and welfare services. By

During the administration of President Barack Obama (2009–17), the federal government made more concerted efforts to combat homelessness throughout the country. In 2009, Obama passed the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act, which consolidated assistance programs for people experiencing homelessness and emphasized coordinated community efforts to provide permanent supportive housing and to increase prevention programs and resources. Following this legislative act, the administration released Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent Homelessness, an ambitious agenda outlining four goals aimed at preventing and ending homelessness: to end chronic homelessness by 2015; to prevent and end homelessness among veterans by 2015; to prevent and end homelessness for families, youth, and children by 2020; and to create a strategy to end all types of homelessness.

In 2013, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reported that homelessness had declined by 6 percent since the release of this federal plan. While improvements were made, the issue of the lack of affordable housing remained one of the biggest factors causing homelessness. In his 2017 budget, Obama proposed spending $11 billion over the following ten years to end homelessness among families with children, of which $8.8 billion would go to housing vouchers and $2.2 billion to short-term assistance.

Despite such efforts, in 2019, the National Alliance to End Homelessness reported that the numbers of people experiencing homelessness had grown over the past several years, with 552,830 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2018. Of that total, 180,413 were in families, 36,361 were unaccompanied youth, and 37,878 were veterans.

At the same time, as the numbers of people visibly experiencing homelessness continued to fluctuate, compassion fatigue continued to be a concern. Several cities, especially tourist sites and affluent areas, passed measures during the early twentieth century to remove people experiencing homelessness from downtown areas. The National Coalition for the Homeless reported that between 2013 and 2015, more than twenty-six US cities and communities passed laws to restrict sharing food with individuals experiencing homelessness. Courts have sometimes struck down such laws as unconstitutional.

Homelessness Today

By 2021, Congress was deliberating several bills that would further prevent homelessness, including the Fighting Homelessness with Services and Housing Act and the Ending Homelessness Act, both of which sought to increase federal spending on affordable housing projects. The urgency of such legislation became even more evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which millions of families lost jobs and homes, especially people of color who were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Some pandemic-related legislation was passed during this period that helped provide relief to populations experiencing homelessness. The American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in March 2021, included $5 billion in new funding to reduce homelessness as well as funding for emergency housing vouchers, among other provisions.

As costs for housing, including both owning and renting, remained prohibitively high for a wide range of Americans and affordable housing further proved insufficient into 2024, many noted that older people, particularly those representing the baby boomer generation born after World War II, had begun to make up a greater proportion of the number of people experiencing homelessness. Stagnant incomes, higher costs of living, and economic downturns meant that many baby boomers approaching or reaching retirement age by that point had not been able to accrue as much savings; as they aged, they also needed to factor in greater health-care costs. With federal housing assistance still limited, some older adults struggled to maintain housing stability, increasing concerns around the inability of most available shelters to adequately accommodate people experiencing more physical and mental limitations and conditions. HUD reported that in 2023, about 30 percent of the number of people experiencing homelessness were fifty-five years old or older, and 8 percent were over the age of sixty-four. Additionally, among those fifty-five and older, 46 percent were experiencing unsheltered homelessness in places not meant for human habitation.

Meanwhile, a significant legal case involving the rights of people experiencing homelessness escalated to the Supreme Court in 2024. In this case, a group of people experiencing homelessness had filed a lawsuit, citing cruel and unusual punishment, against a city in Oregon that had implemented laws, without providing sufficient shelter accommodations, fiscally punishing people for sleeping and camping outside in public areas.

Much of the controversy surrounding the issue of homelessness in the 2020s resulted from differing views of people experiencing homelessness and the approaches to be taken to reduce homelessness. Advocates for people experiencing homelessness generally maintained Meanwhile, critics have argued that a one-size-fits-all approach to homelessness has only increased the numbers of people experiencing homelessness and that priority should be given to addressing the root causes of homelessness in society. These essays and any opinions, information or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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