The Homeless, Christopher Jencks
O'Connell, Patricia A.
No room at the inn—or anywhere hristopher Jencks is a wellknown academic (in fact, the John D. Mac Arthur Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University) whose previous writing and...
...Robert Frost wrote in "The Death of the Hired Man" (1914), "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in...
...One must also remember that not all homeless people are mentally ill...
...expanded rentsubsidy programs for homeless families...
...moreover, its appendix material and notes account for one-quarter of its total page count...
...First, someone must decide what a home is (and thus what it means to be without one...
...In fact, Jencks's book is at its maddening best when he shows how opposite political camps, whatever their intent, have both been involved in increasing homelessness...
...25...
...Jencks confines his book to what he calls the "visible homeless," street people and shelter or welfarehotel clients, who numbered a few hundred thousand in the late eighties, according to his estimate (contrary to the figure of 2 to 3 million put forth by well-intentioned advocates for the homeless such as the late Mitch Snyder, a figure that was picked up by the media...
...Patricia A. O'Connell worth reading...
...First, how the homeless got to be that way...
...And Jencks's clear indication in his preface that this is not a book about individuals is accurate but troubling...
...maybe the eight books that inspired this volume (cited in The Homeless) will provide further reading...
...In addition, the experience of homelessness may cause mental illness in people who might otherwise be reasonably healthy...
...The homeless and those concerned about them no doubt wish it were all that simple at this end of the century...
...Among families, three factors appear to have been important: the spread of single motherhood, the erosion of welfare recipients' purchasing power, and perhaps crack...
...changes in the way we deal with the mentally ill...
...and a performance-contracting and voucher system so that providers of services to the homeless would be held accountable to a degree they are not now...
...Not everyone will agree with Jencks point for point...
...REVIEWERS PATRICIA A. O'CONNELL'5 reviews have appeared in various periodicals, including the New York Times Book Review...
...No room at the inn—or anywhere hristopher Jencks is a wellknown academic (in fact, the John D. Mac Arthur Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University) whose previous writing and editing credits include anumber of impressive books, among them The Urban Underclass, Who Gets Ahead: The Determinants of Economic Success, and The Academic Revolution (which includes a lengthy and shall we say interesting chapter, "Catholics and Their Colleges...
...Until such time as academics and government officials spend more time directly with homeless people, we may be doomed to perpetuate the status quo in which those making or suggesting policy have insufficient knowledge of the true needs and responsibilities of those homeless...
...sion of the shelter system and soup kitchens may have been a factor in the rising number of homeless in the late eighties...
...This convoluted subject allows Jencks the opportunity to display two refreshing qualities, his willingness to admit he doesn't know something and his desire to venture a guess nonetheless...
...Jencks says it best himself...
...while I know no statistics on the matter, I suspect that when the homeless mentally ill are involved in violence they are as likely to be victims as aggressors...
...The "number" of homeless people is itself a vexing issue because counting the homeless is no easy task...
...He also suggests that the expan"Actually, I like living in a shoe, but the neighbors keep bellyaching about property values...
...For a multitude of reasons, including ignorance, liberal and conservative policymakers and private citizens have sometimes been just plain incorrect about what causes homelessness and what can prevent or reverse the phenomenon...
...RAYMOND A. SCHROTH, S.J., is a professor of journalism at Loyola University in New Orleans, WILSON CAREY McWILLIAMS teaches political science at Rutgers University...
...That's homelessness during the early 1980s...
...Most of the book focuses on problems, but the final chapter proposes some solutions as well: improved housing for the homeless in return for greater responsibility on their part...
...Upon reading the two-part NYRB article (April 21 andMay 12,1994) in conjunction with the book, one realizes that the periodical and hardcover versions of Jencks's essay more than occasionally echo each other word for word...
...Whatever form one chooses, Jencks's words, accompanied by tables and figures, are profoundly intriguing and well THE HOMELESS Christopher Jencks Harvard University Press, $17.95,161 pp...
...The author explains in his preface that this present volume grew out of a review assignment for The New York Review of Books...
...For example, Jencks does a superb job of illuminating the process by which deinstitutionalization of mental patients, 24 BOOKS championed by many liberals, combined with the creation of Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income, an increasing tolerance of atypical behavior, and tax revolt converged in such a way that the mentally ill found themselves with nowhere to live...
...As Jencks reveals, the media weren't alone in distorting facts about the homeless and related issues...
...Without ideological bombast or promises of quick fixes, he explores the causes of homelessness in the United States in the 1980s and offers some "partial solutions" for the future...
...The reader feels as though Lewis Carroll's Alice were leading a tour through a looking-glass house with all its contradictions, but the final stop is neither house nor home: it's the streets...
...Anyone who has worked with the homeless or has provided at least temporary housing for a friend or relative who would otherwise be homeless knows that "homeless" is not a collective noun...
...Armed with a definition of homelessness, one must find people who meet the criteria, a project that involves a whole new set of variables— whether they' re located during the day or at night, whether they'll emerge from hard-to-find tunnels and abandoned buildings, whether they're willing to cooperate with interviewers, etc...
...Reading the NYRB pieces, therefore, may well be sufficient...
...Compared to those tomes of considerable heft, The Homeless, which Jencks acknowledges is his first solo bookwriting effort, is blessedly short...
...As far as I can tell, the spread of homelessness among single adults was a byproduct of five related changes: the elimination of involuntary commitment, the eviction of mental hospital patients who had nowhere to go, the advent of crack, increases in long-term joblessness, and political restrictions on the creation of flophouses...
...And on Jencks moves through topics such as rent control, drug abuse, family ties, bad luck, and the American "can do" mindset, pointing out correct assumptions and shooting down mistaken notions (one of which he calls "breathtakingly wrong") about the gestalt of housing and homelessness...
...Some citizens fear violence among the mentally ill homeless, but not all are violent...
...The homeless are individuals...
...a day-labor market that would allow workers sufficient money at least to eat and rent space in a cubicle hotel (which would mean rewriting municipal codes and building in nonresidential areas...
Vol. 121 • July 1994 • No. 13
