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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Homelessness: An Overview, Jim Tull
Homelessness: An Overview, Jim Tull
New England Journal of Public Policy
The homelessness crisis in the United States has reached epidemic proportions as the diversity of the homeless population expands to the point where it resembles the general population. The deepest and most long-standing cause of homelessness is poverty, but there are other forces as well, including the severe shortage of affordable housing (particularly due to urban renewal); deep funding cuts at the federal, state, and local level; the policy of deinstitutionalization; the Vietnam war; and unemployment. A new public policy approach to homelessness is needed, one which addresses these multiple forces and is grounded in the assumptions that housing and …
Making The Homeless Disappear: Redefining Homelessness In Massachusetts, Sue Marsh
Making The Homeless Disappear: Redefining Homelessness In Massachusetts, Sue Marsh
New England Journal of Public Policy
While unemployment rocked Massachusetts, housing costs remained at record levels, and the federal government continued its inattention to housing and human service programs, the numbers of homeless families sheltered by the commonwealth of Massachusetts declined. This article examines the changes over the last decade in the way Massachusetts provides shelter to homeless families. What has in fact changed for homeless families, Marsh contends, is whether the state of Massachusetts considers them homeless. An increasingly complicated and burdensome set of rules has become a highly effective gatekeeper that keeps the commonwealth's shelter expenditures down and homeless families out.
Housing And Services For Homeless And At-Risk People: Newport's Experiment, Mary Ellen Hombs, David A. Mehl
Housing And Services For Homeless And At-Risk People: Newport's Experiment, Mary Ellen Hombs, David A. Mehl
New England Journal of Public Policy
Large and small communities alike have diverse groups of people in need of housing and services: mental health patients, single homeless adults, individuals with substance abuse problems, the elderly, the mentally retarded, the unemployed, and people with low or fixed incomes. Even with unlimited resources to create necessary solutions, most communities would subscribe to the conventional wisdom of segregating people according to their major needs and managing the resulting environment with a combination of behavioral regulation and casework. In Newport, Rhode Island, an ambitious nonprofit housing organization decided to break those rules and provide a continuum of secure housing choices …