Word: homelessness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When wave after wave of newly homeless people rolled through the cities, emergency shelters seemed the surest and quickest way to get them off the streets. So most of the money allocated by Congress and by states went toward emergency, rather than preventive, care. Only rarely was there money for rental assistance, tenant-landlord mediation or short-term crisis loans to help the near homeless keep the roofs over their heads. Public money paid slumlords $2,000 a month to put up families in "welfare hotels." But this did nothing to ease the families' desperation, fight their addictions or restore...
...many were in fact as well. Half the people residing for more than two years in New York City shelters test positive for tuberculosis. Men sleep with their shoes wedged under the legs of the cots so they won't be stolen. At least one-third of all homeless women have been raped. "You don't get to sit and relax when you're homeless," says Catherine, 62, a homeless woman in Seattle. "God help your behind while you're out there...
When cities tried to move families out of shelters, they discovered just how deeply scarred the victims were. In an effort to empty its disgraceful welfare hotels, New York City renovated old public housing and moved in homeless families. No one anticipated the invisible quarantine: shunned by their neighbors, the families had no sense of community, no help for the problems that had put them on the streets in the first place. Many parents still had no jobs, still drank too much, still beat their kids. Within a year, some of the buildings had been looted or burned, and drug...
Other cities were having the same experience, until it became impossible to sustain the illusion that all a pregnant, crack-addicted teenage prostitute with AIDS needed was a place to call home. From that admission was born the concept of linkage. Rather than merely providing a shelter, homeless advocates are weaving a web. By combining detoxification programs, job training, day care, parenting classes, health care and social services under one roof, they can help the street people who are unwilling or unable to travel all over town to find the services they need -- if those services exist...
...people in welfare hotels, but they can also cost about half as much. Each city, even each neighborhood, can custom-design its programs. Areas with a desperate AIDS problem can focus on providing outpatient care. For single adults, SROs with on-site services may be a permanent answer. For homeless families, transitional housing can cushion their re-entry into the private market...