Homelessness in History



We’ve learned a lot about addressing the issue of homelessness with different audiences in the past 10 years. For one thing, the subject itself (whether for donors or public audiences) can be touchy. It’s not a happy subject (over a million homeless children, ever-increasing homeless veterans, overall numbers rising dramatically).  And with increased unemployment, foreclosures, high health care costs and two prolonged wars, many people are peeking over the edge of homelessness that were not before. This has always been the case in poor economic times in the U.S. but more significantly when there has been economic transition.

I've been told there was not really a history of homelessness, that it is a modern phenomenon. But that is simply not true. Historian Ken Kusmer, author of Down And Out, on the Road: The Homeless in American History, reminds us that we have had periods of homelessness in the past besides the Great Depression.  In the 1980s (the start of modern homelessness) we saw the shift from a manufacturing economy to a service/information economy. Kusmer describes a similar shift in the late 1880s when the nation moved from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing one. Both shifts meant upheaval for many workers that were left extremely vulnerable and, in the worst cases, without a home. Many people were left more vulnerable from the shift and when you added illness, injury or strained social networks, the combination became a type of homelessness cocktail.

The stigma of having no home in 1880s--true today as well--is evident in Stephen Crane’s, “An Experiment in Misery,” which first appeared as an article in the New York Press (1894) and was later released as a book (1896).

He was going forth to eat as the wanderer may eat, and sleep as the homeless sleep. By the time he had reached City Hall Park he was so completely plastered with yells of "bum" and "hobo," and with various unholy epithets that small boys had applied to him at intervals, that he was in a state of the most profound dejection.

War veterans have also been overrepresented among homeless people in American history. In the modern era, Vietnam veterans and veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars may return with psychological and physical scars that extend the war beyond the battlefield, can lead to drug addiction and/or isolation from others, and for many, homelessness. A number of Civil War veterans were also homeless. Many became accustomed to traveling, living on the road as soldiers, and once the war ended in 1865 continued living on the road either for economic reasons, afflictions from the war or because they had nothing to go back to.

Why is a historical lens on homelessness important? There is a belief that homelessness is tied to modern times and economic recession. When the economy declines, some people are left homeless. It seems logical enough. But history shows us that this is not always the case.  Other forces are at play.  In the early 1980s when Ronald Regan took office, the economy was horrible and homelessness was becoming visible in ways that was new, including the presence of homeless families. When the economy recovered and soared for many in that decade, rates of homelessness nonetheless continued to rise. It rose through the dot.com explosion of the Bill Clinton 1990s and it rose through the economic downturns following 9/11 and the Great Recession of George W. Bush’s presidency.  Latest federal data indicates rates of homelessness are currently holding steady. We’ll see if that is accurate.

Today our challenge is not to get stuck with the same old models, not play the blame game across ideological sides and not to assume a rising tide will lift all boats.  Instead we need to take a holistic, systemic look at homelessness.  We need to collaborate across federal departments more than ever and across sectors while incorporating best practices that are proven effective.  And in our collective work in this area we need to maintain a humanistic—especially historic—perspective.

When we think of ourselves as Americans at our best, we think of the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty: Emma Lazarus’s 1883 poem, “The New Colossus” (from which our organization derives its name). It’s a vision of America symbolically reaching out to those in need of comfort, offering welcome and, implied, a home.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

If you are concerned about homelessness in Massachusetts or elsewhere in the U.S. and would like to join our campaign, please visit our website at http://www.giveusyourpoor.org/ to (1) sign up for our newsletter, (2) make a donation, (3) engage your company, (4) host a house party, or (4) volunteer in other ways. Thanks!
 
This piece first appeared in a slightly different version as a blog entry for The Public Humanist in the Valley Advocate. The Public Humanist is the blog for the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.

Photo by Lynn Blodgett, from his book, Amazing Grace: The Face of America's Homeless (Earth Aware Editions, 2007).

Do the rights thing? by Keith Bender

Do the right thing, I've heard people say this like some mantra that guarantee's the desired outcome. As if you can always know what that is? The right thing to do is based on what? Some spiritual connection threading its way through our reality helping those who ask? Or boring ethics we ignored in school? Maybe it’s a new form of wishing people good luck when we really don't know what else to say. More probably, I hope it's an indication that we are advocating for behavior that we all deem is acceptable. Like putting people and the planet first before profits and other things like that.

Doing the Human Rights thing takes a little more knowledge than the ever-pleasing but self-centered world renown sentence nearly everyone can blurt out..... that pursuit of happiness thing. The proper context allows us to reclaim and gather our strength away from the noise we live with in our heads, competing forces struggling for our attention. When was the last time you took time to review your rights and a little history surrounding their creation? A tour of Wikipedia may very well restore some hope in humanity if you are currently feeling disenfranchised or outcast by the Financial Racism this consumer oriented object addicted society has nurtured. You know the one I mean. The place where no place is okay if you don't have an address with legit sleeping quarters attached to it. Where you know something’s wrong but you just can't put your finger on it. The place where the Police enforce property rights as precedent over human needs.

"WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF EVIDENT. THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL,

THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS,

THAT AMONG THESE ARE LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF SAFETY AND HAPPINESS."

George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1 uses "the pursuit of Safety and Happiness." Thomas Jefferson used the combined reference again in his Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence. Safety somehow gives way to Life and Liberty along the way and by the time it reaches Madison's desk we cover the uncovered expanse of human needs and rights in the line:

SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO DENY OR DISPARAGE OTHERS RETAINED BY THE PEOPLE.

The "Others" is rights not spelled out for reasons obvious once the context of enumeration is understood. We pride ourselves in response to everyday crisis. Begin to falter when major catastrophe like Katrina or 9/11 come along and Chronic problems of safety like Homelessness seem to somehow provide a negative payback we can use to feel more fortunate about as we play the consumer game described at the Story of Stuff.

The American Dream needs its counterpart, The American NightMare? NOT!!! As polite as I can be I admit to being one of those Financial Racists I complained about earlier. A denial mechanism? A way to allow or permit this behavior to continue while I went about my life unaffected by and disengaged from feelings that would have told me something is really wrong here. Too caught up in the CAPITALISM game to realize that falling off the playing board had no real way back.

If Ending Homelessness is really our goal then like a Gold miner knowing that you have to clear a route by blasting away rock, our last 10 feet that stand in the way of the gold, the Safety clarification, is that rock needing blasting. This clarification of safety as a right must be seen as a mandate. It really is time we did the right thing for our homeless.

Keith Bender lives in West Springfield, VA where he is a writer, blogger, advocate, and "new wave old hippy." He previously was a realtor and owner of a homestaging business. Keith was recently homeless for over a year.

History and Homelessness by Howard Zinn

Historian, teacher, author Howard Zinn died Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at the age of 87.  Mr. Zinn was a scholar advisor to Give US Your Poor for the planning process of the documentary film by the same name about homelessness in the United States.  Below is an excerpt of the statement he submitted to the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities in support of that project (we worked on sections together, any clunky stuff is clearly mine). We post now in remembrance and appreciation of his work and generosity. - JM

BY HOWARD ZINN:  ...I have always been interested in examining history from the perspective of the rank and file. Most history books give the perspective from the top: from elected officials, industrialists, people of power and importance. Indeed, the sources are much more available for this approach: journals kept by educated men and women, documents, official biographies.

But there are also sources, though more difficult to find, which represent the conditions of life, and even the thinking, of those at the bottom end of society. It is the history of these people which needs very much to be told. And while important decisions are made by the authorities in any culture, the momentum for these decisions usually comes from below, from the movements of oppressed people.

The "homeless" are among the most neglected of this underclass, those left out of traditional histories of the United States. We get rare glimpses of these people in history through a folk song or a biographer's description of George Washington passing the homeless on a trip through Philadelphia. The impression is left that there were no "homeless" until the Great Depression, that this temporary condition of widespread poverty was remedied by the New Deal, and that it only reappeared in the 1980s. That view would lead us away from understanding the structural base of homelessness, as a permanent phenomenon in the nation's life. The result would be complacency and inaction.

The Declaration of Independence says we are all created equal, that we all have rights that cannot be taken from us - the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But these rights have never been applied to the homeless, and this film should lead people to think about that. The right to pursue happiness is meaningless if people do not have the resources for a happy life: food, a home, health care, satisfying work.

The Bill of Rights operates differently for rich and poor. The right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure is different for a family living in a mansion than for a family living in a housing project, or out on the street. We should look beyond the Bill of Rights to the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that all people, everywhere in the world, are entitled to work and decent wages, to holidays and vacations, to food, clothing, housing and medical care, to education, to child care and maternal care.

There have been books, articles and films that examine homelessness. But they have not had a significant effect on the national consciousness. A film on homelessness in America would make an important contribution to the history of the underrepresented in American society.

My role as advisor is to help ensure that "Give Us Your Poor", as a historical work, presents the perspective of those Americans who have been struggling simply to have a place to live. My hope is that the film will raise consciousness about homelessness, thus leading viewers away from the notion that it is an acceptable part of American life. By looking at homelessness in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we may learn something about how to deal with it today.

This film is a humanities project because it is steeped in history. It is not simply the history of public policy, but the history of people struggling for a place to lay their head and fight for dignity. It is the history of the American people and their answers over time to the question: "How do we treat our fellow citizens when they are most vulnerable?" To answer this question is to get at the heart of a humanist approach to the problems of society.

For more information on Howard Zinn's career and life visit http://www.howardzinn.org.