The Homeless

Late in the 1970s, Americans began to notice more people sleeping in public places, wandering the streets with their belongings in shopping bags, begging for handouts and rooting through garbage bins for food or cans. By the late 1980s, the homeless were everywhere, a grim reminder of America's social and economic troubles. How widespread is this problem, how did it happen, and what can be done about it? These are the questions explored by Christopher Jencks, one of America's foremost analysts of social problems. Merely determining the number of homeless people is no easy matter. Jencks shows that estimates of the homeless population often depend more on politics than on hard evidence. However, if we count only people who sleep in shelters or public places, the number has increased four-fold in the past 15 years. He examines the standard explanations for this disturbing trend and finds that the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, the invention of crack cocaine, rising joblessness among men, declining marriage rates, cuts in welfare benefits and the destruction of skid row have all played a role.
Changes in the housing market have had less impact than many claim, however, and real federal housing subsidies actually doubled during the 1980s. Jencks also pinpoints policies that have gone wrong. Although deinstitutionalization began in the 1950s, it was not until the late 1970s, when involuntary commitment was virtually abolished, that homelessness became common among the mentally ill. Finally, he proposes several practical approaches that might help the homeless. Anyone who believes, like Samuel Johnson, that the quality of a civilization is measured by the way it treats its most unfortunate members should find this book an enlightening effort to reconcile the claims of compassion and prudence.