A History of Homelessness in America

It seems as though the worst-case scenario for a person to end up is on the street, without a home. Currently, there are many looking for ways to escape homelessness, and many are desperately trying to avoid it.

Early Homelessness: Before the Great Depression

It is unexpected, then, that the first major emergence of the unhoused individual in the United States happened in the 1870s by choice. Homelessness back then was more a problem of lack of jobs than a lack of shelter. The unhoused were overwhelmingly young, ablebodied, white men who exploited the newly developed national railroad system in search of work. They “rode the rails” to find employment, but they also developed a collective counter-cultural identity. They hopped from train to train out of love of the open road, while also escaping from the monotony and constraints of factory work. These individuals were viewed with disdain by much of the American population. In 1887, the dean of Yale Law School wrote of them as “lazy, shiftless, sauntering or swaggering, ill-conditioned, irreclaimable, incorrigible, cowardly,” (Wayland, 1877, p. 10). As seasonal jobs began to be taken by immigrant farm workers, and company values began to shift towards loyalty and longevity in workers, the lifestyle of these types of migrant workers was fading away by the 1920s.

Homeless during the Depression

The Great Depression was an era of unprecedented homelessness. Soaring unemployment led to eviction as tenants could no longer afford rent and homeowners failed to pay their mortgage. Encampments called “Hoovervilles” after President Herbert Hoover sprang up around major cities. Many Hoovervilles were met with hostility by regional governments, raided and burned by police in an attempt to displace the unsightly tent cities. However, some gained legitimacy, such as the Hooverville in Seattle, Washington, which stood for ten years across nine acres just outside of the city and had its own unofficial government, including a mayor. The Seattle Hooverville was burned down twice by Seattle police but was rebuilt each time by its residents. When a new Seattle mayor was elected in 1932, and with the help of the Unemployed Citizen’s League, Seattle’s local government learned to tolerate the existence of tent cities. By 1934, there were nearly 700 racially diverse residents, the vast majority of them men. Donald Roy, a sociology graduate student who studied the Seattle Hooverville, described it as “an ethnic rainbow” where men of different backgrounds interacted with “shabby comraderie.” The Seattle Hooverville stood until 1941 when inhabitants were given a notice to leave, and the community was burned down for the third and final time by the Seattle police.

Homelessness during and after World War II

The rampant homelessness of the Great Depression was mitigated by World War II. The War created jobs and revitalized the economy, employing previous inhabitants of shack cities and helping them afford rent again. After WWII, both the demographics of those experiencing homelessness and its definition shifted again. The homeless remained majority white and male, but the average age crept up, from 20s and 30s to over 50. These individuals lived in cheap hotels in the poorest neighborhoods of big cities. Although today they would be excluded from the mainstream perception of homelessness, they were considered as such because they were largely dependent on welfare or social security.

The Modern Era of Homelessness

What we know as homelessness today began to become a national issue during the recession of the 1980s. There were many causes, including, but not limited to, gentrification, high unemployment rates, increasing rent and wage stagnation, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and an inadequate amount of affordable housing. Additionally, in response to the 80s recession, the budget of many social service and government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), was slashed. HUD’s budget decreased from 29 billion in 1976 to 17 billion in 1990, leading to a reduction in subsidized housing. Further cuts in Supplemental Security Income, as well as reductions in who qualified for Social Security benefits, forced many mentally ill and disabled individuals living in cheap housing onto the streets, as they lost government assistance that had previously enabled them to pay rent. Thus, the demographic of the typical unhoused person shifted. They were younger, more impoverished, and experienced more medical, mental health, and substance abuse issues than the unhoused of previous years. It also wasn’t just men who struggled with finding housing, but increasingly women and whole families as well. This has become the era of homelessness, which is currently experienced by half a million people in America today. It is not due to any choices or economic recession but by the disinterest in and unwillingness to fund efforts to make housing affordable.

Sources

Demirel, Magic. "Seattle's Hooverville." Washington.edu, 2009, www.depts.washington.edu/depress/hooverville_seattle.html.

Gregory, James. "Hoovervilles and Homelessness." Washington.edu, 2009, depts.washington.edu/depress/hooverville.html.

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. "The History of Homelessness in the United States." National Library of Medicine, National Academies Press (US), 11 July 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519584/.