The Social Establishment of Homelessness: Social Policy and Individual Experience in the Development of a Social Problem

Author: J. Jeff McConnell

Dissertation School: State University of New York at Stony Brook

Abstract:
My research includes two case studies of divergent homeless populations, both conducted in the urban and suburban surrounding of the New York metropolitan area. One is of the street-dwelling homeless, mainly single adult men, in Long Island communities; the other of homeless families with children in the emergency housing system of Westchester County, immediately north of New York City. In my research, based on case studies of these two homeless groups, I examine homelessness on three distinct but interrelated levels: 1) the survival strategies developed and employed by the homeless to endure and escape their plight; 2) the communities that are formed out of these strategies and which operated to entrench some members in homelessness while aiding others in escaping it; and 3) the ways in which social policy shapes and differentiates these strategies and communities, and therefore determines the opportunities for and barriers to escaping homelessness.

The dynamics and structure of the community are the primary determinants distinguishing between those homeless who become entrenched in long homeless episodes and those who are able to utilize homelessness as a temporary economic strategy, which ends in a return to a housed existence. The data for the case study of the street dwelling homeless were collected as part of a project funded by the Richard Sterling Clark Foundation on Hidden Homelessness on Long Island. The project provides a rich data source, including life histories (taped and transcribed) with 30 homeless men and women, keepers in the surrounding environment, and housed individuals who still interact with the homeless.

The second case is a longitudinal panel study of 342 transitionally housed families in Westchester County. We collected extensive event-history background data on the heads of personal networks (Fischer 1982), which we are administering in all three interviews. While the proliferation of various policy initiatives in the 1980s clearly did not stem the tide of homelessness, my analysis will make it clear just how profoundly such policy differentiated among people who face housing crisis and how thoroughly it shaped their strategic survival strategies.

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