WHY THEY HAVE NO HOMES

...Here are some of the factors contributing to the growing problem of homelessness in the United States: 11 As a result of 1981 changes in the regulations governing Aid to Families with Dependent Children, half of the working families receiving such assistance lost their eligibility and another 40 per cent had their benefits reduced...

...Such arguments ignore mounting evidence that there are "normal" individuals—and families—among the homeless...

...Homelessness is, in sum, simply an extreme manifestation of poverty, and homelessness is on the rise because poverty is, too...

...At best, the data are confused and contradictory...

...Condominium conversions and gentrification—encouraged by tax policies that aid real estate developers and those who own rather than rent—push out the poor...

...11 The Reagan Administration has ended most programs of low-rent housing construction or rehabilitation...

...Less than half a year later, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a study that put the number at only 250,000 to 350,000-a finding widely criticized as based more on political preference than on sound methodology...

...Charles Krauthammer, a senior editor of The New Republic, wrote recently in The Washington Post, "There is a better alternative [to shelters], however, though no one dares speak its name...

...But he insisted that the homeless are essentially a deranged segment of the population, and that we must have the "political will" to isolate them from society "whether they like it or not...

...According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, only 33 per cent of the 9.5 million officially counted as jobless in 1983 were collecting unemployment benefits of any kind—the lowest percentage on record since the introduction of unemployment compensation...

...Local studies show that the median age of the homeless in shelters ranges from the late twenties to the mid-thirties...

...H At bottom, the problem of homelessness is caused by the loss of tens of thousands of low-rent housing units each year...

...Urban renewal has destroyed central-city SRO-hotels, apartments, and rooming houses...

...Krauthammer acknowledged the need to create better institutions than the snake pits that outraged the public in the 1950s and that led to passage of the Community Mental Health Act of 1963...

...at worst, they reflect deliberate attempts at obfusca-tion...

...Asylum...

...H Millions of unemployed workers are receiving reduced assistance...

...Conservatives tend to insist that homelessness is primarily a problem of the mentally ill, and that the solution is a simple one: institutionalization...

...The result is an ever-widening gap between the shelter people can afford and the shelter they need...

...The available information, usually based on small and unrepresentative surveys, is further distorted to serve political ends...

...On the exceptionally cold night of January 9, 1985, when New York City housed almost 20,000 people in shelters and hotels, 63 per cent were in family groupings...

...His latest book, "The Transformation of San Francisco," was published last fall by Rowman & Allanheld...

...H Rents paid by families in subsidized housing have been raised from 25 per cent to 30 per cent of income—an increase that will transfer $6 billion from the pockets of the poor to the Government in the years from 1981 to 1986...

...Furthermore, HUD is systematically diminishing the existing and irreplaceable stock of 1.3 million public housing units by subjecting it to demolition, abandonment, sale, and conversion—a process helped along by the lack of adequate operating, maintenance, and modernization funds...

...the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of "doubled up" households-17,000 in New York City's public housing projects alone...

...The heavier tax burden means less disposable income for rent and other necessities...

...H Every year, some 2.5 million Americans are displaced from their homes...

...The homeless are just one step ahead of the pre-homeless: the 2.7 million renter households with incomes of less than $3,000 a year, who must devote a median of 72 per cent of income to their housing costs...

...For many families on the margin, that seemingly small increase can result in voluntary departure or forced eviction for nonpayment of rent...

...To be sure, alcoholics and the psychiatrically or physically disabled are no small part of the homeless population...

...Late in 1983, for example, the U.S...

...By definition they are difficult to count, and many resist—with good reason—all official and unofficial attempts to study them...

...Chester Hartman (Chester Hartman is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C...

...In New York state, welfare rent ceilings remained unchanged from 1975 to 1984, despite enormous housing inflation during that period...

...Economic pressures on the poor and near-poor are intensifying while housing costs continue to climb...

...The plight of the homeless is a political issue, and one that is attracting more and more attention...

...But even the Reagan Administration's discredited HUD study acknowledged that more than 20 per cent of the occupants of shelters are in family groups, and that mentally ill individuals account for only 22 per cent of those in shelters...

...Unless the workings of the private market and of government are drastically revised, these will be the homeless of tomorrow...

...11 Most welfare grants include totally inadequate allotments for housing...

...the 6 per cent of all homeowners (almost 10 per cent in states with high unemployment) who are more than thirty days behind in their mortgage payments...

...In New York City, half of the almost 500,000 eviction actions in 1983 were directed against public assistance recipients, whose next home may well have been a city shelter...

...Department of Health and Human Services asserted that as many as two million Americans were homeless...

...H Cutbacks imposed in 1981 on food stamp and child nutrition programs—expected to total $12 billion by this year-force many families to "choose" homelessness in preference to hunger...

...In other states, the rent allotment in welfare allowances ranges from 20 per cent to 60 per cent of HUD's locally established "fair market rents...

...These data point to a grim reality often overlooked when homelessness is equated with mental illness: The tragedy of the homeless is, in fact, linked to structural aspects of our economic system and to specific public policies pursued by government...

...H According to the Urban Institute, the poorest fifth of the nation saw its taxes increase an average of 24 per cent from 1980 to 1984...