Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Cost Of Home Ownership In Vermont, 1975-1990, Arthur G. Woolf

New England Journal of Public Policy

Housing prices in Vermont, like those in the other New England states, shot up dramatically during the economic boom of the 1980s. This article investigates the causes of that price increase and focuses on the cost of home ownership in Vermont in the years 1975 to 1990. Cost of home ownership is defined as the percentage of family income needed to finance an average-price home. Although prices skyrocketed during the 1980s, the actual cost of home ownership as a percentage of income was about 15 percent greater in 1990 than it was during the mid-1970s. Housing price increases are expected …

New York Revisited, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The works discussed in this article include: City of the World: New York and Its People, by Bernie Bookbinder; New York, New York, by Oliver E. Allen; New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time, by Thomas Bender; The Heart of the World, by Nik Cohn; The Art of the City: Views and Versions of New York, by Peter Conrad; After Henry, by Joan Didion; Literary New York: A History and Guide, by Susan Edmiston and Linda D. Cirino; Our …

The Legacies Of Deindustrialization And The Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, Douglas M. Reynolds

New England Journal of Public Policy

Creation of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor and release of a master plan for cultural and physical resource development is creating a new standard for private, local, state, and federal partnerships. Actions by the Corridor's partners are shaped by both past and contemporary economic development issues. Using tools of humanistic inquiry — history, economics, preservation, sociology, political science — for social and economic purposes signifies far-reaching shifts and possibilities for public planning and policy philosophies in both public and private agencies.

Umass Selects A New President: Elements Of A Search Strategy, Richard A. Hogarty

New England Journal of Public Policy

The selection of a new university president, an event of major importance in academic life, is usually filled with tensions on the part of those concerned about its outcome. The 1992 presidential search at the University of Massachusetts exemplifies such tensions. There were mixed reactions to the overall performance. When they finished reviewing candidates, the search committee had eliminated all but Michael K. Hooker, who, they deemed, has the necessary competence, vision, and stature for the task. The main conflict centered on the question of "process" versus "product." The trustees rejoiced in what they considered an impressive choice, while many …

The Boston Harbor Cleanup, Paul F. Levy, Michael S. Connor

New England Journal of Public Policy

Boston Harbor earned a widespread reputation as "the dirtiest harbor in the nation" during the 1988 presidential campaign. Well before that campaign began, though, efforts were under way to reduce the amount of pollution entering the harbor. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority was created in 1985 to undertake a massive public works program — including construction of a 1.3 billion-gallon-per-day sewage treatment plant and a sludge fertilizer processing plant — to end the decades-old practice of dumping sewage wastes into the ocean. The program will also cause water and sewer charges to rise dramatically during a fifteen-year period.

The project …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Four years ago, in the 1988 Summer/Fall issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy, we wrote,

"[The two] presidential candidates, Michael Dukakis and George Bush, [proved] themselves extraordinarily adept time and again at not addressing any of the excruciatingly difficult choices a new administration will have to make. But the realities the new president will face cannot be indefinitely obscured. The prosperity we enjoy, the unparalleled splurge in consumption during the 1980s, has been fueled by borrowing against the future. Although this observation is not especially new — and repetition has robbed it of urgency — what …

Latinos In Massachusetts: Growth And Geographical Distribution, Ralph Rivera

New England Journal of Public Policy

Massachusetts has undergone radical changes in its racial/ethnic composition in the last ten years. The Latino population, owing to its extraordinary growth rate during the last two decades, is the largest racial/ethnic minority group in the state. Yet relatively little is known about this population because of the "information gap." Based on 1990 census data, this article focuses on the growth and geographical distribution of Latinos in Massachusetts. It considers the undercount of Latinos, the growth of Latinos in the commonwealth from a national perspective, and assesses the increase of Latinos in the New England states. It explores the growth …

Homelessness, A. E. S.

New England Journal of Public Policy

Personal story from A.E.S., a member of the Portland (Maine) Coalition for the Psychiatrically Disabled.

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 …

Framing And Claiming The Homelessness Problem, David A. Rochefort, Roger W. Cobb

New England Journal of Public Policy

Despite a recent upsurge of interest in the issue, homelessness is a problem of long standing in American society. This article traces how several forces catalyzed the problem's re-entrance onto the political agenda in the 1980s. It then reviews the ongoing debate over homelessness causes and cures as a struggle for problem ownership that has complicated the choices of public policymakers. The final section examines various descriptive attributes that figure into the dispute over how to define homelessness and influence the nature of the public policy response to it.

The Housing Affordability Slide In Action: How Single Mothers Slip Into Homelessness, Elizabeth A. Mulroy

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article presents the concept of a housing affordability slide toward homelessness, then analyzes how single mothers living in the Northeast experienced the stark reality of the slide in the summer of 1991. Discussion on critical elements of the slide includes a resource squeeze between high housing costs and low incomes, frequent residential mobility, limited locational choice, and multiple stress burdens. Single mothers speak in their own voices to explain their experiences of the slide and what its impact has been on them and their families. Policy recommendations cover linkage between family well-being and national urban policy and a court-ordered …

Twin Peaks, Vince Putnam

New England Journal of Public Policy

Poetry by Vince Putnam, a resident of Fifty Washington Square, Newport, Rhode Island. His work has appeared in In the Heart of the City, a literary magazine produced by the residents of Fifty Washington Square. He is pursuing an MSW degree at the University of Rhode Island.

Program Design And Clinical Operation Of Two National Va Initiatives For Homeless Mentally Ill Veterans, Robert Rosenheck, Catherine A. Leda, Peggy Gallup

New England Journal of Public Policy

In 1987, in response to reports of large numbers of veterans among America's homeless, the Department of Veterans Affairs established two new national health care initiatives, which have seen over 40,000 homeless veterans since their inception. We present here evaluation and treatment data on a sample of 14,000 of them. Because of differences in their design, the two programs vary in the degree to which they emphasize community outreach, homelessness prevention, and the provision of aftercare services to patients discharged from other VA programs. In spite of these differences, veterans treated in the two programs have similar health care problems …

Triangulation In Monument Square, S. B.

New England Journal of Public Policy

A personal story by S.B., a member of the Portland (Maine) Coalition for the Psychiatrically Disabled.

My Life, Thomas Newman

New England Journal of Public Policy

A personal story by Thomas Newman, a resident of Fifty Washington Square, Newport, Rhode Island. His work has appeared in In the Heart of the City, a literary magazine produced by the residents of Fifty Washington Square. He hopes to be a photographer.

Aids And The Homeless Of Boston, James J. O'Connell, Joan Lebow

New England Journal of Public Policy

Homeless persons with AIDS and HIV infection face significant health hazards during the daily struggle for survival on the streets and in the crowded shelters of our cities. This article offers a historical perspective on the evolution of the AIDS epidemic within the homeless population of Boston and examines the demographics, risk behaviors, and survival statistics of that epidemic. The Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program is presented as a model of service delivery that offers quality health care to homeless persons with AIDS while addressing the special needs of those bound by the immediacy of the next meal …

Let Them Have Housing, Wendy Quinones

New England Journal of Public Policy

Does eliminating homelessness primarily require social services or affordable housing? Research done among former guests of the family shelter operated by Wellspring House, Inc., suggests that, at least for one group of homeless mothers, the provision of secure and affordable housing enables them to function and even to flourish. This article explores both the research and its philosophical underpinnings.

The Grassroots Home: How Local Communities Are Fighting Homelessness, Sheila Rauch Kennedy

New England Journal of Public Policy

In the 1980s federal policy combined with market forces to produce the American tragedy of homelessness. Since that time influential policymakers have debated every aspect of the issue, but avoided the large-scale commitment needed for solutions. Locally, however, grassroots efforts have made these commitments and forged the coalitions needed to address the issue. The solution to homelessness lies in harnessing these same successful public and private resources on the regional and national levels.

Massachusetts At The Crossroads, Richard E. Ring

New England Journal of Public Policy

Massachusetts is at a critical juncture in its care for homeless individuals. In the face of a charged political climate and with a governor bent on the "downsizing" and "privatization" of government services, decisions are being made that are of major importance to the welfare of homeless individuals in this state. Based on the choices of the state administration, Massachusetts can either solve its homelessness problem in the near future or relegate its homeless population to a lifetime spent on the streets or in shelters. In comparison to other states, Massachusetts has been relatively successful in caring for homeless people. …

A Single Man And Christmas, Steve Johnson

New England Journal of Public Policy

Steve Johnson is a resident of Fifty Washington Square, Newport, Rhode Island. His work has appeared in In the Heart of the City, a literary magazine produced by the residents of Fifty Washington Square.

Aggressive Outreach To Homeless Mentally Ill People, Ellen Nasper, Melissa Curry, Elizabeth Omara-Otunnu

New England Journal of Public Policy

Historically, people with chronic mental illnesses have been particularly at risk for homelessness. In 1984, the Connecticut Department of Mental Health (DMH) articulated policy to insure housing for mentally ill persons. One facet of that policy is to increase mental health services to homeless people. The Greater Bridgeport Community Mental Health Center has addressed this need through the formation of the Homeless Outreach Team (HOT). This article describes the development, organization, clinical work, and future of HOT. The team is run jointly by the Mental Health Center (funded through DMH) and Family Service-Woodfield, a United Way-funded agency that provides case …

Streets Are For Nobody: Marie, Melissa Shook

New England Journal of Public Policy

From an interview by Melissa Shook, September 11, 1988, South End. Reprinted, with permission, from "Streets Are for Nobody: Homeless Women Speak," Boston Center for the Arts, 1991.

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Today, much of public policy debate takes place in a social vacuum. This is partly because policy issues are often rather arbitrarily assigned to particular and seemingly unconnected disciplines that put a premium on maintaining their separate baronies of intellectual hegemony, and partly because of our own too-pervasive proclivity for compartmentalizing in order to simplify. One of the goals of the New England Journal of Public Policy is to invade, as it were, these baronies, to liberate the policy issues held hostage there and release them into a broader, more human context, one that accentuates the idea of connectedness as …

Foreword, Raymond L. Flynn

New England Journal of Public Policy

Imagine a hypothetical disaster befalling America's cities. A bomb, perhaps; or a ferocious hurricane; or an earthquake. Two to 3 million Americans lose their homes. We know that, daily, the evening news and the major newspapers would feature stories on the number of people victimized by the disaster. Many Americans would volunteer to help their neighbors in need, and many community agencies and local governments would come to the rescue, but the public would rightly expect the federal government to play a leading role in repairing the human and physical damage. The president and Congress would act swiftly to declare …

Homelessness Past And Present: The Case Of The United States, 1890-1925, Ellen Bassuk, Deborah Franklin

New England Journal of Public Policy

An examination of the professional, political, and popular literature on the nature and extent of homelessness from 1890 to 1925 affords a comparison of the economic and social characteristics of the homeless population at the turn of the century with that of today. The discussion covers the ensuing debates over the causes of homelessness, the various subgroups among the homeless during both periods, and the relative rates of homelessness, the context of extreme poverty and dislocation, and the prevalence of individual disabilities. Except for the growing numbers of homeless families over the past decade, the homeless populations during both eras …

On Dumpster Diving, Lars Eighner

New England Journal of Public Policy

Lars Eighner became homeless in 1988 after leaving a job he had held for ten years as an attendant at a state hospital in Austin, Texas. He lives in a small apartment in Austin and continues to scavenge. This article was originally published in the Fall 1990 issue of The Threepenny Review. Reprinted with permission.

Question, Edward Baros

New England Journal of Public Policy

Poem by Edward Baros.

The Last Thing We Need Is Another Shelter, Jessica Segré

New England Journal of Public Policy

Segre suggests that family homelessness is merely the latest and most devastating example of America's lack of commitment to children and families. The history of human services for children is presented to show that, both at the community and at the policy levels, this population and its needs have been neglected, subjected to fragmentation, and consistently downgraded on our lists of priorities. The societal values that have led to this situation are discussed and revealed as still reflecting an individualistic, frontier outlook, which is, however, becoming an anachronism. The need for a child/family policy is stressed, as is the urgency …

The Housing Crisis Enters The 1990s, Peter Dreier, Richard Appelbaum

New England Journal of Public Policy

Homelessness in the United States is a symptom of a much deeper economic and housing crisis — a widening gap between incomes and housing prices. With the end of the Cold War, the nation has the resources to solve these problems, but to do so it must mobilize the political will. This article examines the roots of crisis, the public policies and market forces that created it, and policy recommendations to solve the problem. Key to forging a solution is building the political coalition needed to create a broad public consensus.

Shelter The American Way: Federal Urban Housing Policy, 1900-1980, Ronald Dale Karr

New England Journal of Public Policy

American urban housing policy has featured subsidies for the suburban middle class and parsimonious spending for the urban poor. The outlines of this policy took shape during the Progressive Era: acceptance of the capitalistic market economy, support for the deserving poor needing temporary help, toleration of racial segregation, and the designation of overcrowding as the single most important urban problem. Progressive housing reformers championed stricter housing codes and model tenements, but housing conditions for the urban poor showed little improvement.

The U.S. government avoided direct involvement in housing until the early 1920s, when it promoted local zoning legislation. Under the …