About Poverty Related to Homelessness

In a society that defines identity largely through jobs and lifestyles, nothing feels more devastating than than losing both commodities to join the ranks of America's homeless population. However, as the cost of living continues to creep up--accompanied by growing economic insecurities--more people are ending up one paycheck or misfortune away from becoming homeless themselves through no fault of their own. As with any social issue, coming to grips with the consequences requires an understanding of new, subtler factors that have changed the complexion of homelessness--such as the mortgage meltdown, a dearth of affordable housing in many areas and chronic underemployment.

Types

Experts have had little difficulty documenting links between poverty and homelessness. However, poverty can take many guises--something often obscured in academic studies. For example, the decline of auto work jobs that made middle-class comfort more readily available--a trend that began accelerating after its 1980s origins--helped to boost homeless populations. Gentrification of low- and middle-income urban areas created a cycle of spiraling rents that ate away at incomes, aggravated by growing lack of more affordable housing. (In San Francisco alone, for example, obtaining the right to build such housing can hit $700,000, according to a November 2007 "Atlantic Monthly" article.) Lack of affordable housing choices also remains an issue in rural areas, where income often lags behind national averages. The mortgage crisis that gripped American media headlines throughout 2008 also played a major role, driven by foreclosure rates not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Significance

For many newly-unemployed workers, the reality of losing benefits--typically, after a six-month period--pushed them closer to the streets, particularly if a replacement job wasn't forthcoming. Even when this happens, however, that may not offset the cost of living, especially if the person becomes underemployed--the economist's term for jobs that don't match skill levels, such as a cab-driving biologist, for example. Another, little-understood phenomenon is the rise of "survival debt," or using credit cards to pay for basic necessities like food and medicine. This trend coincides with Americans' growing inability to save--which declined from 5.9 percent of income in 1993, to just 1.3 percent a decade later. Combined with lack of available credit, this inability to cushion against emergencies can mark the tipping point toward living on the streets.

Effects

For people caught up in cycles of poverty and homelessness, the most obvious and pressing problems are lack of access to resources that others consider a given--such as food, clothing, education and quality health care. The latter issue has proven particularly acute to people struggling with substance abuse, since some type of health insurance is a prerequisite for getting treatment at rehabilitation clinics--something that the homeless lack. On a subtler, more insidious note, failure to be seen as a suitable employment risk may expose the homeless to greater harassment by police, or local ordinances aimed at pushing them out of higher-income suburbs and tourist areas. Increased rates of child abandonment, divorce, domestic abuse and suicide are yet another undesirable aftereffect of homeless-related poverty.

Prevention/Solution

Since the 1960s--when sociologists and popular media first started seriously documenting the homeless phenomenon--policy has swung from relatively permissive attitudes, and attempts to improve the supply of available housing stock, to harsher, more punitive measures that advocacy groups consider aimed at keeping homeless people "out of sight, out of mind." Conservative political models emphasize a market-driven approach--as exemplified by the loosening of banking and mortgage regulations that gathered steam during the 1980s and 1990s--with an eye toward jump-starting economic growth that would presumably include more affordable housing units. Liberal and moderate policymakers, on the other hand, insist that no major solution is likely--or workable--without more aggressive government intervention. Many such proposals were advanced during the 2008 mortgage crisis, ranging from moratoriums on foreclosures to increased availability of low-interest loans.

Considerations

The tsunami of crunched credit, increased foreclosure rates and decline of higher-paying manufacturing jobs--which traditionally lead the way for other private sector employers--poses a major challenge for policymakers struggling to deal with the impact of homelessness. These difficulties, in turn, may make it harder to reach the homeless, who are leery of institutions they consider to have failed them during a crisis--yet, without even a token boost in their own resources, may have little or no chance of escaping the streets. The fallout of the 2008 mortgage crisis also effectively left fewer public dollars to deal with the problem, ensuring that the debate will continue as fiercely as ever.

Resources

• National Law Center on homelessness and poverty
• The worst kind Of debt: charging the groceries
• A tale of two town houses