Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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 …

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.

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 …

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 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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

Build Homes Not Bombs: Get A Better Economy To Boot!, Richard Krushnic

New England Journal of Public Policy

Our nation has a rare opportunity to shift resources from military to civilian activities for the next few years. A budget pact is supposed to prevent transfers of funds from the military to domestic programs during fiscal years 1992 and 1993, but the pact is cracking in light of the sudden collapse of the Soviet military and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union. While jobs are lost when funds are shifted out of the military, the funds don't disappear - they are used for alternative federal expenditures, paying federal debt, or tax reduction. Many alternative expenditure patterns are available to …

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.

Streets Are For Nobody: Caroline, Melissa Shook

New England Journal of Public Policy

From an interview by Melissa Shook, July 7, 1988, Boston. Reprinted, with permission, from "Streets Are for Nobody: Homeless Women Speak," Boston Center for the Arts, 1991.

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.

Housing The Homeless Through Expanding Access To Existing Housing Subsidies, Barbara Sard

New England Journal of Public Policy

The premise of this article is that homelessness in America today is essentially a product of the lack of affordable housing for very low-income people. The article outlines this central income/housing gap analysis as the factual predicate of the goal to alleviate homelessness through securing subsidized housing resources for the homeless and imminently homeless. It explains why, based on the nature and number of annually available housing subsidies, expanding access to existing housing subsidies is a valuable, workable, short-term, at least partial solution to the immediate crisis of lack of affordable housing, albeit one which does not negate the acknowledged …

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.

Diary, Susan M. Fowler

New England Journal of Public Policy

A personal story by Susan Fowler, a former resident of Fifty Washington Square, Newport, Rhode Island. She now lives in her own apartment in Newport with her two-year-old daughter and is "doing great." Her work has appeared in In the Heart of the City, a literary magazine produced by the residents of Fifty Washington Square.

Indemnified In A January Soup Kitchen Line, Ray Hall Jr.

New England Journal of Public Policy

Poetry by Ray Hall, Jr., a contributor to Pile of Papers; Stack of Karma, a collection of poetry published by the Portland Coalition Press. Reprinted with permission.

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 …

Housing, Community Support, And Homelessness: Emerging Policy In Mental Health Systems, Paul J. Carling

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article summarizes the dramatic changes in public policy through which public mental health systems are attempting to meet the housing and community support needs of persons with severe and persistent mental illnesses, including those who are homeless. It traces the historical approach to meeting these needs through defining people principally as patients and providing some combination of psychotropic medications, outpatient therapy, and structured, supervised quasi-institutional settings such as group homes, shelters, and segregated single-room-occupancy, or board-and-care facilities. A transition phase in public policy has emphasized defining these individuals essentially as service recipients who need greater or lesser amounts of …

The Kindred Bonds Of Mentally Ill Homeless Persons, Richard C. Tessler, Gail M. Gamache, Peter H. Rossi, Anthony F. Lehman, Howard H. Goldman

New England Journal of Public Policy

While the unraveling of the kinship bond has long been suspected to play a role in the epidemiology of homelessness, the connection between kinship and homelessness has been little studied. Based on a normative analysis of the role of family structure in response to adversity, this article explores the impact of the amount and quality of kinship ties on episodes of homelessness experienced by discharged psychiatric patients in Ohio. Survey data derived from personal interviews with both former patients and their kin indicate more strain in relations with kin of the homeless than the nonhomeless. The strain in the kinship …

Untitled, Kathie Boulanger

New England Journal of Public Policy

Poetry by Kathie Boulanger, who is a member of the Portland (Maine) Coalition for the Psychiatrically Disabled. Her poem first appeared in Pile of Papers; Stack of Karma, a collection of poetry published by the Portland Coalition Press. Reprinted with permission.

Streets Are For Nobody: Awilda Cruz, Melissa Shook

New England Journal of Public Policy

From an interviewed by Melissa Shook, July 29, 1989, Shepherd House, Dorchester. Reprinted, with permission, from "Streets Are for Nobody: Homeless Women Speak, "Boston Center for the Arts, 1991.

My Name Is Edward, I Am An Alcoholic, Edward Baros

New England Journal of Public Policy

A personal story by Edward Baros, 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.

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.

Subgroups Of The Homeless: Street Kids, Bruce Clary, James Harrod, Rachel Olney

New England Journal of Public Policy

Street kids are a feature of many cities, but only recently have they been included among the homeless. They were defined as runaways, throwaways, or youth in crisis. They had a place to live, even if it was a foster or group home or an institutional setting. However, many are without shelter at one time or another and face the same problems as the chronic homeless: the need for food and shelter, avoidance of victimization, and help for personal problems. In 1988, the National Institute of Mental Health funded three national demonstration projects on adolescent homelessness. We report findings from …

Homelessness, Alcohol, And Other Drug Abuse: Research Traditions And Policy Responses, Gerald R. Garrett

New England Journal of Public Policy

Although homeless alcoholics and other drug abusers more often elicit public scorn than sympathy, ironically they enjoy a celebrity status as research subjects. This article provides an overview of research literature on the homeless and their alcohol and drug problems. The evolution of public policies concerning control, rehabilitation, and treatment of homeless substance abusers is also traced with special attention to the interaction between scientific literature and policy responses over the past century. Although homeless populations today are more diverse than their counterparts in earlier decades, the analysis suggests that the policies and programs developed in response to the crisis …