Ella Howard - Homeless: Poverty and Place in Urban America

HOMELESS

POLITICS AND CULTURE IN MODERN AMERICA

Series Editors:
Margot Canaday, Glenda Gilmore, Michael Kazin, and Thomas J Sugrue

Volumes in the series narrate and analyze political and social change in the broadest dimensions from 1865 to the present, including ideas about the ways people have sought and wielded power in the public sphere and the language and institutions of politics at all levelslocal, national, and transnational. The series is motivated by a desire to reverse the fragmentation of modern U.S. history and to encourage synthetic perspectives on social movements and the state, on gender, race, and labor, an on intellectual history and popular culture.

POVERTY AND PLACE IN URBAN AMERICA

ELLA HOWARD

Copyright 2013 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.

Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
www.upenn.edu/pennpress

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Howard, Ella.

Homeless : poverty and place in Urban America / Ella Howard. 1st. ed.

p. cm. (Politics and Culture in Modern America)

ISBN 978-0-8122-4472-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. HomelessnessNew York (State)New YorkHistory20th century. 2. Skid Row. 3. Bowery (New York, N.Y. : Street). I. Title. II Series.

HV4506.N6 H73 2013

IN 1961, New York City Mayor Robert Wagner announced a major renewal initiative for the citys infamous skid row. Based on research conducted by social scientists, Operation Bowery would develop and implement policies designed to end urban homelessness. Explaining the plan, Wagner asserted, We will be rebuilding men and making possible the rebuilding of a blight area at the same time. Wagners comment revealed the rhetorical fusion of the citys broken men and the street where they lived. In a period of optimism and faith in governmental research and programs, officials were confident in their abilities to survey, analyze, and repair the poor as well as their decrepit neighborhood. The ambitious project followed on the heels of the federal urban renewal program, which had similarly attempted to revitalize the nations skid rows, but focused on their buildings rather than their occupants. Homeless individuals dutifully cooperated with researchers and officials in both initiatives, but expressed little hope for change, or even much desire to leave skid row. As one homeless man remarked, I wont leave the Bowery till I die.

By the 1960s, homelessness seemed a permanent feature of the Bowery, having defined the street since the turn of the twentieth century. As the citys skid row, it housed religious missions, public shelters, cheap hotels, greasy restaurants, dive bars, pawn shops, used clothing stores, and, of course, the homeless men and women who frequented them. These businesses and their patrons lined the Bowerys sixteen blocks, from Chatham Square in Lower Manhattan north to Cooper Square, giving shape to a distinctive, if poorly understood, culture of homelessness.

Reformers and politicians had long criticized the Bowery. As far back as the nineteenth century, when it had housed theaters and amusements for the working classes, some of the citys respectable citizens had decried it as a den of sin. Police raids during the 1880s and 1890s temporarily closed the poolrooms and gambling halls, leading to the regular arrests of dozens of area prostitutes. Investigators were horrified by the lodging houses for homeless men. In the words of one observer, The filthy bed-clothing, scarcely more filthy floors, the offensive odor resultant from a lack of ventilation, and the foul air laden with the odor of poor gin and poorer tobacco, makes the places vile and unhealthy resorts as it is possible to conceive of. Investigative journalist and social reformer Jacob Riis offered similar commentary, describing the areas cheap lodging houses as sites of corruption for nave young men:

Figure 1. By the turn of the twentieth century, the Bowery was home to many organizations serving the homeless, including the Hadley Rescue Hall, which offered a free supper and invited guests to come as you are. George Grantham Bain Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

As a matter of fact, some of the most atrocious of recent murders have been the result of schemes of robbery hatched in these houses, and so frequent and bold have become the depredations

Such graphic narratives told of cheap, dirty accommodations used by desperate men of limited means and questionable motives.

Despite this critical attention, the neighborhood remained remarkably unchanged for decades. What explains the tenacious longevity of such a filthy and dangerous district? This book answers that question by analyzing the experience and politics of homelessness. Skid rows were established in response to changing economic conditions, as increasing numbers of migrant workers and unemployed men took up residence in urban centers. Their continued existence over the ensuing decades resulted from the overlapping and conflicting solutions that were offered to the problem of homelessness, each reflecting a distinct understanding of the situation and construction of the problem.

For the homeless, the problem often centered on insufficient food and shelter, as well as the callous indifference of politicians and the general public alike toward their plight. As a result, the homeless crowded onto the nations skid rows in search of meals, beds, showers, bars, and companionship. Many politicians identified the problem as that of potential crime and disorder perpetrated by the homeless. In response, they supported crackdowns on panhandling, vagrancy, and public drunkenness, and invited policing practices that discouraged the homeless from living outside skid row by punishing their behavior more severely when they ventured away from the district. The homeless had migrated to skid rows and many city officials were intent on keeping them confined there.

Some groups saw skid rows themselves as part of the problem of homelessness. Owners of homes and businesses located nearby often agreed with Chamber of Commerce members that the presence of the homeless on the streets lowered property values and harmed the neighborhood. They described the homeless as volatile, threatening, and unpredictableunfit to occupy valuable urban space. As a result, they tried to eradicate skid rows, supporting urban renewal initiatives designed to raze skid-row districts and displace the homeless from city centers. Similarly, many social scientists saw the skid-row homeless as an especially maladjusted population, unable to survive in mainstream society. They conducted massive research projects in search of the elusive sociological explanation for homelessness. Their work focused on a better understanding of human development, but they also hoped to contribute to the effort to end homelessness and, thus, skid rows.

Most Americans misunderstood the journey that led individuals to inhabit skid rows. Over the course of the twentieth century, homelessness was a more fluid category than is commonly recognized. Many impoverished individuals and families moved into and out of homelessness. In some cases, specific life events sent them to the streets, but general economic trends also played a major role in the trajectory of many. With few exceptions, however, the dominant explanations of homelessness placed blame solely on individuals. As a result, assistance programs did not attempt merely to help one survive, nor did they offer broader social and economic critiques. Instead, they focused on reforming the behavior, morality, or character of the homeless. The proposed causes of homelessness changed over time, ranging from laziness, a lack of religiosity, and poor socialization, to alcoholism and drug use. Usually, though, a single theory was privileged, regardless of the diverse individual circumstances.