EQUAL TO THE POPULATION OF SOUTH DAKOTA. For the first time in 23 years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development presented a report to Congress yesterday documenting the scope of the United States� homelessness epidemic. The survey used a new approach, collecting data on the number of Americans sleeping on the street or seeking temporary shelter over a three-month period from January to April 2005, instead of just counting street-dwellers on one specific night, as past surveys have done. The results? 754,000 Americans were homeless for at least part of 2005, meaning they slept on the street or sought beds in shelters or transitional housing. One-third of the homeless were families with children. About half were black. (According to the Urban Institute, meanwhile, only 6 percent of the homeless population does not suffer from a mental illness or substance abuse problem.)
In urban America, affordable housing, job training, and public health are all solutions to homelessness. But politicians tend to focus on erasing the evidence of homelessness rather than addressing its causes. As New York mayor, of course, Rudy Giuliani epitomized this approach. Under his leadership, homelessness was seen mainly as a quality of life issue for the rest of us. I�m from New York and hey, I�ll be the first to admit that the sanitized, chain-ified Times Square has been good for the city�s public image. But when you hear talk of Giuliani being a social moderate, it�s worth remembering that this is the mayor who criminalized sleeping on the street and even laying down in public, suggested putting children into the foster care system if their parents lost their jobs and became temporarily homeless, and cut the city�s affordable housing budget in half, all while opposing a raise in the minimum wage that would have raised living standards for the working poor. After building his popularity on the backs of the city�s neediest, he of course claimed credit for �cleaning up the streets.� And sadly, many New Yorkers were just fine with that.
--Dana Goldstein