Over the Edge
Hayes, Robert M.
HOMES FOR THE HOMELESS OVER THE EDGE The Growth of Homelessness in the 1980s Martha R. Burt The Urban Institute Press, $29.95, 267 pp. Robert M. Hayes 0 ne of the most revealing emblems of...
...Washington's silence began with President Ronald Reagan's feelgood denial and stretched to one of the more pitiful comments by a federal official, the deputy assistant director for housing of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Phillip Abrams, who muttered in 1982, "No one is living on the streets...
...And its style and tone nonaccusatory...
...But Washington, with the exception of minor emergency appropriations, stood paralyzed in the face of a national disaster afflicting hundreds of thousands-if not millions--of citizens...
...He is As we enter the second decade of mass homelessness in the United States, it sometimes is difficult to keep in mind that American sidewalks need not resemble wretched campgrounds...
...But, at a minimum, Over the Edge points us in the...
...It is not likely that her definitive study will end homelessness or even end the political charade of blue-ribbon committees which continue to study homelessness...
...So what does a good man do...
...First, by definition, the homeless individual or family needs a place to live...
...Well, it's not entirely fair to say that government does nothing to help the homeless...
...She properly plots the demise of the lowincome housing market in U.S...
...The dodge of mystery should no longer work with a public that is, I think, still decent enough to demand a solution to homelessness...
...Its truth is unassailable...
...But don't bet on it...
...Money, housing, and an array of social supports are the means of ending mass homelessness in America, according to Over the Edge...
...But even the best responses include only meager funds for "demonstration" programs and, invariably, the appointment of blue-ribbon committees, task forces, and the like to study the issue and make recommendations...
...No, Paradise News is a literary novel, as previous works by the former professor of English at Birmingham University (U.K...
...To say that Burt's work states the obvious is no insult...
...Its policy recommendations unavoidable...
...Commonweal 22 May 1992: 23...
...The mayor then appoints a new committee to study the recommendations...
...This is a love story, a status report on the minds of late twentiethcentury theologians, an allegory of modem tourist practices as pilgrimage, and finally a meditation on finality: of the four last things, death, judgment, heaven and hell, only death is certain...
...And elsewhere, "The probability of past suicide attempts is much higher in all subgroups of homeless persons than the national average Yet there is a very valuable purpose to this encyclopedic work...
...In the early 1980s the homeless poor were "discovered," at least by the nation's mainstream media...
...The buffoonery of the Reagan years, however, gave way during the course of the 1980s to a more sophisticated and dangerous denial-a denial not of the problem but of a remedy...
...For some, it will be a job-often with training for that job...
...Burt, like most authors who speak truthfully, points to simple and real answers...
...But the solutions are not complicated and the costs not infinite...
...have led us to expect...
...For each homeless person, Burt confirms, the solution remains chill 22: 22 May 1992 Commonweal ingly simple...
...The hero, Bernard Walsh, very much in the pattern of Lodge's displaced academic heroes, quotes Yeats, points the direction of the neo-Platonic allegory, and yet, in ways most unlike his predecessor Phillip Swallow (Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work), gains from us considerable compassion...
...She carefully charts the conditions of poverty, mental illness, and drug and alcohol abuse which contributed to the rise in homelessness...
...The thoroughness of Burt's analysis leads her to restate some fundamental, but unreadable, truisms: "Homeless persons are extremely poor," she declares...
...By 1992 neither President George Bush nor the host of Democratic and Republican governors and mayors denies the existence of mass homelessness...
...To maintain that housing, Ms...
...So too is the florid emotionalism of recent celebrated books on the issue like Jonathan Kozol's inspiring Rachel and Her Children...
...Warmly and sincerely committed to the poor, Mayor Dinkins lacks the money and, some say, the vision to be of much help...
...cities during the past fifteen years to demonstrate the fundamental cause of homelessness: people cannot afford housing...
...He appoints a commission, chaired by, no less, Governor Mario Cuomo's son Andrew, which holds hearings, deliberates, makes headlines, and ultimately releases a report with recommendations...
...This is so deeply Catholic a book it is a wonder that it is not religious...
...But we should remember that until the past decade we avoided mass homelessness in this nation...
...And she correctly calls for government intervention in the housing market through a regional approach of subsidizing renters where there are sufficient housing vacancies and developing additional affordable housing units where vacancies do not exist...
...Slap any cover on this book, and you have an intelligent and workable analysis of how to end homelessness in your state or in your community...
...Amen...
...Bravo...
...The hapless administration of New York's Mayor David Dinkins showcases the government policies toward the homeless in the 1990s...
...Robert M. Hayes 0 ne of the most revealing emblems of the go-go eighties in the United States was the emergence, for the first time in American history, of mass homelessness during an era of economic prosperity...
...In a world ruled by sense, Over the Edge: The Growth ofHomelessness in the 1980s would put an end to studies about homelessness by commissions, committees, task forces, and working groups...
...Politicians pandered, public opinion polls showed widespread support for solutions, and community groups, along with some state and local governments, engineered basic and successful relief programs...
...Instead, they decry it, wring their hands in anguish, describe the complexity of the problem, and do nothing...
...Burt continues, something more will often be necessary...
...Throughout that decade of material excess, record numbers of men, women, and children in emergency shelters and on the streets matched record highs in the stock market, corporate profits, and executive compensation...
...Others will need mental health care, remedial education, training or caring for children, substance abuse treatment...
...DEdward T. Wheeler avid Lodge has returned to familiar territory-sex and the fences Catholicism seems to throw about it...
...Public policy must respond either by making existing housing affordable for that person, or by creating additional units that will be affordable...
...The hypermoralism of the participants (this reviewer included) in the political debate over homelessness is mercifully absent from Over the Edge...
...While not readable by the general public, Burt's sober book should become the first line of offense when the next president or governor or mayor decides to appoint a group to study homelessness...
...Burt's analysis is an intelligent and nonideological capsulization of the obvious...
...The other three items get marginal restatement in a quotation from Unamuno by way of Reader's Digest...
...By the mid-1980s the nation was sympathetic...
Vol. 119 • May 1992 • No. 10
