| Description |
xlix, 170 pages ; 22 cm |
| Note |
Originally published: New York : A. de Gruyter, ©1989. (Social institutions and social change). With new introd. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-164) and index. |
| Contents |
The human faces of homelessness -- Homeless in America: The new American nightmare -- The root causes: Housing and poverty -- Who are the homeless? -- How people become homeless -- Drunk, stoned, crazy and sick -- To promote the social welfare -- Who can be helped, and how? |
| Summary |
"Homelessness in America has grown from a minor problem in isolated areas of a few big cities into a near epidemic. Today, scarcely an American city of any appreciable size lacks homeless people. Homeless shelters and programs have become as essential and as commonplace as police protection or water ad sewage treatment. What to do for, with, or about the homeless is a nagging and complex social policy issue debated at all levels of government. This text emphasizes the large-scale and economic forces that have priced an increasingly large segment of the urban poor completely out of the housing market. Seen in this light, the problem of homelessness is that there are too many extremely poor people competing for too few affordable housing units. The nation would be facing an formidable homelessness problem even if there were no alcoholics, no drug addicts, no deinstitutionalized mental ill people-no personal pathologies of any kind. Rather than a choice, homelessness is the result of housing markets that have very little to offer to extremely poor people. This book is an investigative study into the nature and multiple causes of the problem which considers demographic, economic, sociological, and social policy antecedents of homelessness. A hallmark is the delineation of the range of factors involved, including deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, urban renewal, the decrease in lower-skilled jobs, changing political priorities, and bureaucratic obstacles to proving existing social services to the homeless population"--Provided by publisher. |
| Subject |
Homelessness -- United States.
|
|
Homelessness. (OCoLC)fst00959545
|
|
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
|
| ISBN |
9780202362571 |
|
0202362574 |
| Standard No. |
99932751972 |
|
