Homelessness is not new. Studies have found evidence of it in ancient Egypt, classical Greece, and in Rome at the height of her glory as the capital of a vast empire. It also has a long history in the U.S. It was in the 1870’s that the term homeless was used to describe itinerant “Tramps” or “Hobos” who traveled the country in search of odd work.
It was in the 1870’s that homelessness became a national issue when the national railroad system facilitated men, and they were mostly men, “riding the rails” in search of a better life. For some, the phenomenon was evidence of an emerging moral crisis. Even Jacob Riis, the Dutch born “muckraker” who later in life authored his famous exposé, “How the Other Half Lives,” arrived in America in 1870 as a 21-year–old who joined what he self-described as a “great army of tramps.”
According to many who have studied the issue, the modern era of homelessness dates to the 1980s when factors like high unemployment, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, the emergence of HIV/AIDS, the country’s worst recession since the Great Depression, and the decline in the supply of affordable housing all contributed to families of the homeless.
The root causes of homelessness today are many. They involve a mental health crisis that does not appear to be abating, a defeat in the federal war on drugs, a declining supply of affordable housing, and an economy that does not provide incomes for the working poor that can keep up with rising rents and property values.
This is not a problem easily resolved with government money. California has one of the nation’s highest rates of homelessness despite being a state that spends more on this issue than most other states. Federal, state, and local investment may be key to bettering the plight of the homeless, but that investment must be contextualized within a web of housing initiatives, mental health services, drug addiction help, and so much more.
What we have instead is a patchwork of insufficient shelters, underfunded private community organizations, and worsening economic and social factors that impede the development of affordable housing even when that housing is seen as key to the problem. We are left often to cope with the homeless “one case at a time.”
One unintended side effect of our approach is that it often results in separating the homeless individual from what community he or she had in an encampment with others who shared the kind of intimate understanding of the problem that only comes with experiencing it.
There is no intent here to offer a silver bullet for the eradication of homelessness. The suggestion being made is that our approach to social problems often atomizes the individual from the group even when the group offers what our fractured and underfunded services often cannot offer.
Encampments may be an example of social cohesion that we are not yet ready to eliminate but which could be made better with dedicated land and rudimentary infrastructure.
The problems that motivate action with respect to the homeless are not all altruistic. Gatherings of the homeless do include those that do lead to crime and drug use. The removal of the mentally ill from institutionalization, perhaps an excellent move in itself, leaves the onus to provide mental health care, often in a context that lacks community support.
The inevitable backlash comes from those closest to the encampment who see property values threatened, safety hazards, and businesses harmed. The true but unfortunate fact is that empathy is often in direct relationship to our distance from the homeless.
Is there a way to try a community-based approach, allow a community of the current homeless to develop their own collective approach to self-help with the threat of eviction removed on provided land with a level of basic infrastructure? The money we spend may turn out to be less than we are already spending. The ability to bring what services we do have to those who need them may be enhanced by the lack of atomization.
We will not defeat a problem that has been with us for so very long. But we may be able to return some dignity to it and make ourselves and the homeless better off in the bargain.
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From the Bible: The poor you will always have with you. From Matthew, Chapter 26
