Homelessness has been an ongoing process since housing became an industry mixed into a capitalistic society. The issue was a problem, but a stagnant problem for the most part until the 20th century as “urbanization, immigration, and industrialization transformed New York City’s economy” (The Progressive) by making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The industrialized city took on too fast, creating an overproduction in supply and a decrease in demand for goods which would eventually lead to a devasting unemployment rate. Shortly after, “nearly 15 percent of the city’s population was receiving public relief…, many families became homeless, living in shantytowns or in the expanding number of shelters and hotels…, [and] more than 23,000 children were in institutional or foster-home care” (The Progressive) as parents could not afford to raise their own children at the risk of homelessness. Documentation from muckrakers such as Jacob Riis further develops the intense increase in destructive, urban homes and the homeless. His NYC collection focused on the “the Bowery, the city’s most impoverished neighborhood and birthplace of our modern shelters’ ancestor, the Bowery Mission” (Jeantet). The Bowery Mission began in the 1870s when the synonym “’skid row’” was applied to the area and “in 1894 give the children of recent immigrants the chance to escape the tenements in the summer” (qtd. in About).
As the Great Depression fell through, Herbert Hoover initiated his plans to save the homeless population, Hoovervilles. In NYC, these were developed “in Central Park’s then empty reservoir and Riverside Park” (History). However, NYC Hoovervilles did not provide any good conditions—homeless families crowded together in a tenement while remaining impoverished.
After the Great Depression, the U.S. would enter World War 1 and World War 2, providing a working environment for women and decreasing the homelessness rate. World War II brought an “increase in manufacturing production... [and] after the war, brought about widespread prosperity,” but “public policies developed during this age of affluence paid scant attention to the needs of the poor” (The Progressive). Public policies favored a more capitalistic approach as the decades went by, but at the same time, various programs were established to fight poverty and homelessness such as the Great Society.
Into the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s and 70s, progressive movements broadened to help poverty and the homeless. At the time, the Bowery remained a hub for the homeless where “men would be found sleeping in the streets, the subway or tiny, windowless, 90-cents-a-night hotel rooms” (Jeantet). In 1966, the police decriminalized public drunkenness which put an end to “police stations [serving] [as] shelter[s] for hundreds of homeless people on any given night” (Jeantet). Around this time period, Lyndon B. Johnson announced the War on Poverty. The War on Poverty started as one of Johnson’s initiatives which he believed would create a long-term impact on the rising issues of poverty in America, but it did not help the homeless much. The project did “concentrated on education, job training, and, most importantly, community empowerment” and used “the focus on opportunity [to] lead a decrease in poverty rates during the period” (The Progressive). Unfortunately, the War on Poverty was short lived as it “fail[ed] to prevent more people from falling into poverty due to the emerging structural changes in the economy” (The Progressive). Poverty after Johnson’s programs flourished again in the 80s and 90s.
The 1980s started out with a booming economy, but the concept of “contemporary homelessness” started to take hold (History). While there are various theories about why the homelessness rate flourished during the 1980s, the most recognized one is the release of mentally ill patients who mostly were “substance abus[ers]” which did not play well over the “emergence of crack, which flooded the streets of New York City in the mid-1980" (History). Moreover, job opportunities decreased as did public aid to homeless or impoverished families by the 1980s: manufacturing jobs dropped to “360,600” while “in 1977 there were 538,600 manufacturing jobs in the city” and “the average Aid to Families with Dependent Children payment in 1985 had sunk to 63 percent of its 1963 value” (The Progressive). Awareness of increasing homelessness resulted in several more government-initiated programs in the 1990s and into the 2000s including the Welfare Reform program of 1996.
Today, poverty and homelessness are soaring in New York City and around the U.S. Up till 2017, the numbers had only increased year after year. At its highest (in 2017), the number of adult families entering the Department of Homeless Services rose up to 1,583 while families with children entering this system rose up to 12,595 (New York City). These homeless children, however, are still attending school as the attendance rate in 2017 for homeless children was 82.7% (New York City). Homelessness is a grave issue. To not have a home, a safe place where food and shelter is guaranteed can affect a person in nearly every aspect of their lives.