Marybeth Shinn - In the Midst of Plenty

Contemporary Social Issues , a book series authored by leading experts in the field, focuses on psychological inquiry and research relevant to social issues facing individuals, groups, communities, and society at large. Each volume is written for scholars, students, practitioners, and policy‐makers.

Series Editor: Brian D. Christens

Multiculturalism and Diversity: A Social Psychological PerspectiveBernice Lott

The Psychological Wealth of Nations: Do Happy People Make a Happy Society?Shigehiro Oishi

Women and Poverty: Psychology, Public Policy, and Social JusticeHeather Bullock

Ableism: The Causes and Consequence of Disability PrejudiceMichelle R. Nario‐Redmond

Social Psychology of Helping Relations: Solidarity and HierarchyArie Nadler

In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What to Do About ItMarybeth Shinn and Jill Khadduri

Forthcoming

Taking Moral ActionChuck Huff and Almut Furchert

Psychology and Social Justice: Science, Education, Practice and PolicyJamie Franco‐Zamudio, Wendy R. Williams, Jessica Salvatore, and Vikki Gaskin‐Butler

Marybeth Shinn

Jill Khadduri

This edition first published 2020 © 2020 Marybeth Shinn and Jill Khadduri

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data

Names: Shinn, Marybeth, editor. | Khadduri, Jill,‐ editor.

Title: In the midst of plenty : homelessness and what to do about it / edited by Marybeth Shinn, Jill Khadduri.

Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley‐Blackwell, [2020] | Series: Contemporary social issues | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019053468 (print) | LCCN 2019053469 (ebook) | ISBN 9781405181259 (hardback) | ISBN 9781405181242 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119104766 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119104759 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Homelessness–United States. | Homeless persons–United States.

Classification: LCC HV4505 .I52 2020 (print) | LCC HV4505 (ebook) | DDC 362.5/920973–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053468LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053469

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: © Alessandro Conti/Getty Images

For Dave and Tom, with thanks for their love and support, and many dinners cooked along the way .

Though many dispute it, we have not always had widespread homelessness in the United States. I know this because my first job out of graduate school was working for a policy advocacy organization (National Association of Neighborhoods) in Washington, DC whose major concern was residential displacement. At the time, in the 1970s, cities were just exiting a period of intense urban change characterized by slum removal, highway construction, and urban renewal. Many affordable urban housing units had been lost. And our organization felt that more losses were to come. Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels that could be paid for by the day, or week, or month were vanishing. Multifamily rental housing (and other than in New York City almost all multifamily housing was rental) was disappearing—converted to ownership in the condominium boom of the 1970s. Cities were sitting on properties acquired through tax foreclosure, and with no resources to repair them they were being lost to the affordable market. In short, federal policies and social movements were resulting in a declining supply of affordable housing, and we feared that the result would be homelessness among very poor people. At the time, this position was viewed as alarmist in the extreme. There was no way, we were told by a prominent liberal senator, that the American people would tolerate widespread homelessness. It simply could not happen.

If only he had been correct. When we started, if someone poor and down on their luck needed a place to live, one could probably be found that same day. If a day laborer spent his earnings at the bar instead of on the nightly rent for an SRO room, he might sleep on the street—for a night or two. But being homeless for weeks or months on end was nearly unheard of.

All of this changed relatively quickly. Affordable housing continued to be lost, and starting in the early 1980s, the relatively robust federal subsidies to replace it were slashed. What had been a national surplus of affordable housing relative to the number of poor households that needed it had turned into a growing national gap. Around 1982, people started sleeping on the steam grates of Washington, DC and the cities across the nation, and homelessness emerged as a national problem.

Over the years since then, the nation has dug itself into a deeper hole on housing, seen homelessness grow and take hold, and moved from short‐term responses like “a hot and a cot” to more effective and sophisticated ones like permanent supportive housing. It has seen the number of people who are homeless recede—but not go away. Homelessness has settled in, and to many it now seems inevitable and unsolvable.