Was there homelessness before Reagan?

[BuelahWitch]

After reading a thread that argued whether RR releasing the mentally ill in the early '80s wsa a good or bad thing, it got me to wondering how rampant homelessness was before St. Ron of Reagan took power. I was still and school during the Carter administration, and don't remember alot of reports about it (but that doesn't mean it didn't exist). Can any of you older DUers help with an answer?

[spinbaby]

1. I saw the first homeless during Reagan

Before that, although I had heard of hobos, I had never seen a homeless person. I remember how appalled people were when homeless people first appeared on the streets.

[BuelahWitch]

5. Perhaps homeless families started under Reagan

Before the homeless were mostly men? (ie. "hobos")

[DBoon]

11. "hobos" were thought of as a remnant of the 1930's

A few old guys who were part of the last wave of homelessness and kept it up.

NO homeless before Reagan - people with serious problems (alcohol, etc.) lived in flop houses. Even someone with serious financial problems seemed to find someplace to live. You have a very bad skid row section of most towns that oused them.

I really shocked at the time

[tigereye]

28. a lot of that has to do with changes in mental health

policy, too. Many people with mental illness were forced to live in state hospitals, even with milder forms of illness, prior to changes in the law. Many homeless people have untreated mental illness.

However, many folks were able to live in the community or community living arrangements who would not have had that freedom previously.

[DBoon]

12. dupe

[Warpy]

18. There was a minute amount of homelessness in big cities

in skid row areas, alcoholics who hadn't been able to beg enough to get a room in a flophouse or who didn't have a pension check to sign over to a rooming house landlord every month. Probably 90% were men, since women could always trade sex for a night's housing.

After 1980, everything changed. Deinstitutionalization, that buzzword that meant closing state mental hospitals and turning the inamtes loose, created a population of people who were simply unable to care for themselves to the point of negotiating housing even with a monthly welfare check to pay for it. Reagan tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthy spurred a wave of gentrification in the cities, converting rooming houses back into single family mansions, thus throwing a lot of marginal workers out of the only housing they could afford. This is when we started seeing homeless people who were NOT skid row alcoholics, who had jobs, who had families.

Those were the two main mechanisms fueling the shame of large scale homelessness: throwing mental patients out to fend for themselves and creating the kind of wealth that depleted the marginal housing market. Reagan cut social programs for the former and housing programs for the latter.

[cannabis_flower]

2. I'm not sure...

about how prevelent it was. But before that people generally just called them bums.

[Kraklen]

3. Not nearly as much.

And not nearly as many of the mental disturbed ones either.

[liberal N proud]

4. There have always been homeless but not in the numbers

as since Reagan.
When he cut funding for mental care many were simply turned out on the streets.

[Sanity Claws]

6. Some but a lot less

I lived in NYC and saw some homeless living in the subways and down in the Bowery. But that was about it. During the Reagan era, you started seeing them spout up everywhere, even trying to sleep in doorways of commercial buildings or on subway or building gratings (hot air came up) at night. I think the term "shopping bag" lady was coined during the Reagan administration.

[SlackJawedYokel]

7. Not like after he cut budgets

to mental hospitals and the govt benefits that kept some of these folks in halfway houses, etc.
Not to mention that under Reagan corporate America discovered the joy of "down-sizing" to improve their numbers.

Cletus

[patricia92243]

8. During Reagan it became rampant. I had never really heard of Homelessness

before that. Of course there were always some homelessness but not in the numbers we see now.

[mahina]

9. I'm not that old but I can tell you we didn't have people begging

and sleeping in the street in Honolulu, San Francisco, or Boston prior to Reagan. We had poverty, yes, but not crazy people living on the sidewalk. How do we fix this? Does anyone know of a strategy that works?
People say "Ph they WANT to be homeless, you can't just lock them up" but I don't want to lock them up and I seriously, seriously doubt they want to be homeless.

[whistle]

10. Yes, of course, but Ronald Reagan showed just how.....

....compassionate conservatives really deal with the homeless in this country. They put them on the streets where they can be seen!


<snip>
Fact Sheets from the National Coalition for the Homeless

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/facts.html

[politicaholic]

13. Are you kidding me?

Homelessness is a part of the human condition.

What is anomalous about the Ronald Reagan move is that it was very seldom that you would see a crazy, violent, or schizophrenic person with out some kind of care or protection from the state. Closing asylums was an insane idea in itself.

[undergroundpanther]

21. Homeless

Shelters are DANGEROUS. People that have never been homeless do not get it. If you only have a pair of shoes they can get stolen off your feet in a shelter.

Homelessness is caused by INEQUALITY

Some are forced to have none so others take it all.

Our society distributes wealth in an INVERTED manner it goes to the least people with the least need.And everyone BELIEVES this is proper.

Homeless people who want to be homeless are not running away from a home they are running away from exploitation abuse domination and coercion.

"Helpers" and the "charitable" can be downright cruel,patronizing,humiliating to homeless people because of this bigotry twords poverty and resentment our culture instills in us as kids.Sometimes holding on yo your own freedom to have your dignity respected in the way you define it ..is all you have..Especially when everything else is taken from you, you can hold onto that, and it is something precious...

People with homes or who have never been institutionalized, don't realize how precious a sense of autonomy and dignity is and how important the right to BE as you are is until everything else around their supposed identity is gone. But I don't expect comfortable,successful, socially accepted, people who never had their rights and lives stolen in such a cold way to ever understand this situation about losing it all and keeping your dignity until they face the streets or the mental hospitals, prison or some other ghastly dehumanizing totalitarian situation "for their own good" and see for themselves how horrible the state can be to people who refuse to play the game...

[JHB]

22. It wasn't insane, it was the way it was done...

IIRC, most of the pressure to close mental hospitals came from the liberal end of the spectrum, not the conservatives. A lot of the asylums were little more than holding pens rife with abuse and short on treatment. ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was the image most people had.)

The notion was to close down these big "out of sight/out of mind" facilities and create smaller community homes that weren't so isolated and could provide a more stimulating environment which would benefit most of the residents.

Notice how this develops a two-step process:
1) Close the big ugly isolated facilities;
2) Open many more smaller facilities closer to everone else.

Politically speaking Step 1 was easy: big eyesores were closed, the state saved money (of course, conservatives jumped on that part).
Step 2 was much harder: not only would it cost tax money (in a time of high inflation and tax bracket creep), but community homes often ran into NIMBY opposition (and still do).

The easy step was taken, the hard step was often done half-assed or not at all, with predictable results for those who couldn't function well enough out in "the real world".

[tigereye]

29. no, many people with mental illness or mental retardation

relished the idea of a less restrictive environment, compared to being forced to live in an institution...

[madrchsod]

14. there were homeless on the streets

before the 80`s but not in the numbers that we have now. dixon state school was an institution for the mentally "retarded" and other psychical maladies. the state started closing this place down in the mid 70`s and by the mid 80`s they were down to a small population. then the state closed the institution and converted it to a prison.
many of the people who were their were placed into nursing homes until the state made that illegal ,now many people are placed in residential living centers which is much better than the old state school system.
another problem is that many were dumped into the streets or were put into prisons because of their "brushs with the law". also contributing to the homeless famlies is the first round of ronnies economic policy and the veit nam era soldiers mental problems.

[JHB]

15. Housing costs enter into it too...

Back in the 70s there were still flophouses and SRO hotels where someone who was marginally functional (i.e., might have some mental illness, but could keep it together enough to hold down a low-level job at least some of the time) could afford some kind of minimal place to stay.

Early 70s "urban renewal", late 70s inflation, and Reaganite recession all helped put an and to that sort of situation, and those people were left to the streets and parks.

[Karenina]

16. Ronald Reagan

ENSURED the detritus from the Viet Nam misadventure would be exposed to conditions that would "reduce" their "excess population." No nassy numbers of those who sunk into oblivion after being called to "serve their country." Just for a *JOKE, check out the numbers and conditions who have SURVIVED notwithstanding. I used to encounter them in the park next to the beach in Santa Monica. Doubtless many of them have left the building...

[maxsolomon]

17. "new homeless & old"

good book.

details the systematic destruction of the infrastructure that housed "marginal populations". there were different gradations of housing available depending on how poor you were; SRO's, flop houses. all torn down during urban renewal. along with public transportation systems. woo hoo, how uniquely american!

this began before reagan, but flowered under his watch. it makes living in a city so pleasant!

[prodigal_green]

19. What homeless?

Doesn't the neo-con death cult just refer to them as "outdoor enthusiasts"?

[LandOLincoln]

20. I was working in downtown Los Angeles in the early 80s

and it was as if the number of homeless doubled or tripled overnight.

Up until then, there'd been the usual, mostly men, some just garden-variety alcoholics, some vets of various conflicts who were disabled physically and/or mentally, but I'd never seen women and whole families begging on the streets the way I did from 1981 on.

[Cleita]

23. Actually, it started in California with the passing of

Proposition 13,which lowered property taxes to 1%. This caused social programs to be defunded like mental health programs and hospitals. Jerry Brown, Gov. at the time, tried to keep the wolves at bay with a tax surplus he had built up. But it was inevitable that these programs would die one by one. Many states followed California, enacting their own versions of proposition 13. In the early eighties, we started seeing homeless in droves across the nation.

Maybe Reagan didn't start it, but he did nothing about it when he was President and proceeded to make matters worse instead of better. Also, he and Jarvis tried to get another Proposition 13 type of legislation passed when he was Governor of California, but it failed the first time. So we can say it was spawned by Reagan if not actually passed under his governorship and presidency.

[LandOLincoln]

32. Well, Prop. 13 passed in 1978, didn't it? And it wasn't until mid-1981

that the number and type of homeless in L.A. surged so noticeably. Brown's tax surplus might well have had something to do with the delayed reaction, but it certainly seemed to me that Reagan's ascendance to the presidency had a lot to do with it as well.

[Cleita]

35. I tought I said that.

I don't give Reagan a free pass at all because as President he could have reversed it by allocating federal funds to states for mental hospitals and hospices to treat these people. Also, many homeless in the eighties became that way because they lost their jobs. Now I don't have any stats handy right now, but wasn't there a recession in those years that triggered this?

Also, one thing I didn't mention was the real estate boom of the eighties where property values and rentals more than tripled making housing a luxury for many of the working poor. I credit this directly to the lowering of property taxes making California real estate very attractive. I was living in Santa Monica at the time and our reaction was to pass rent control, an act which caused the Reaganites to call us The Peoples Republic of Santa Monica, or communists if you will.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

24. Here in San Francisco...

I saw the occassional "bum" (as they were called) on the streets of my town. Usually downtown, and usually drunk. After dear old Ronnie, we were hit with a wave of mentally ill people littering the streets -- it was a terrible thing to see. From there, it has only gotten worse.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. There was some homelessness, but it was almost entirely

late stage alcoholics who had hit bottom and hardcore "hobos" who traveled around the country and did odd jobs.

You never saw large numbers of people living on the streets or camped out under freeway underpasses. That's a "gift" of the Reagan administration.

[rustydog]

26. There's always been homeless people!

When i was a kid, i was warned not to talk to the hoboes living by the creek under the railroad bridge.
They were called bums, hobos, etc.

when that GREAT compassionate president Ronald Reagan decided the mentally ill had the right to live amongst us and HE had a right to the money being spent to aid them in state-run institutions and programs.

As a result, the homeless population skyrocketed and it has stayed that way since.

Compassionate Christians, Culture of LIFE, pro-war gutless uncaring swing concerned only with the slop directly in front of their snouts at the trough.

[CBHagman]

27. Best to read up on it, I think.

Homelessness is by no means a new social problem. I remember reading that in the late Victorian era, people were paying a fee to spend the night in a boarding house where they couldn't lie down on a bed but paid to lean against a rope. Strange image.

And by the way, though I detest Ronald Reagan, we can't just say he "cut" anything. Bear in mind that presidents set policies and submit budgets to Congress, and then Congress passes its spending bills. Spending levels are not unilaterally decided by the president. Thus a president can propose cuts or increases, but they have to be passed. Once a department receives money, however, I guess that all bets are off as to how it will be spent.

I do agree that Reagan was generally indifferent to the needy and to refugees, and of course there was a scandal in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. However, I understand the policy of removing the mentally ill from institutionalized care began before the Reagan administration.

And just as a general note, find a copy of "The Good Old Days -- They Were Terrible!" It deals with the ugly side of the past everyone's so nostalgic for.

Here are some links to check:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/truegrowth/dankerr.htm

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:seRgXybRS6IJ:www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/downloads/NYCHomelessnessHistory.pdf+%22history+of+homelessness%22+%2B+america&hl=en

http://www.otterbein.edu/resources/library/cmbook/cmhousng.htm

On Reagan:

http://www.allhatnocattle.net/reagan%20quotes.htm

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/06/10/MNG8V73F8V35.DTL&type=printable

The SF Gate article generally holds to the "Reagan's cuts" position.

[Mairead]

30. No. I'm 65 this year, so I remember clearly a time when there was not.

And that time ended with Reagan. He started the downhill slide.

Until his regime, beggars were few and far between, the mad were imprisoned in hospitals (a mixed blessing), and the local jail often had a revolving door for terminal alcoholics, who would be 'arrested' each night, hosed off and given a cell bunk, and then a meal to see them on their way in the morning.

Reagan ended all that.

Clinton, however, did the yeoman work. He finished Reagan's start when he helped shred the social safety net.

Until Clinton, people in financial trouble could at least get the pittance from the dole to help keep a roof over their head. Today, only corporations and the wealthy are allowed to get public monies without being disabled. If someone's simply out of work because employers don't want them (maybe they've the wrong skin color, or age, or aren't attractive or whatever it might be) that's their fault, and they'd better hope they can find a private charity that's not yet been overwhelmed.

[geniph]

31. The de-institutionalization actually started under Carter

A lot of liberals were (and are) of the opinion that everyone should be mainstreamed, including those who were severely psychotic, those who were too developmentally delayed to care for themselves, etc. It was a combination of factors that led to the explosion of homelessness that started in the late 70's/early 80's - liberal reluctance to keep people in institutions and conservative hard-heartedness and penny-pinching.

Much as I (still) detest and despise Reagan and admire Carter, the mainstreaming of the mentally ill was largely done under Carter.

Basically, the conservatives who didn't want us paying for social services to the disadvantaged took advantage of liberals' soft-heartedness with regards to the institutionalized to close institutions and throw people out on the street with no resources whatsoever to protect them.

A large part of the driver behind the early closing of what safety nets existed for those who lost their housing was the insane explosion of interest rates in the late 70's. Housing costs suddenly tripled in many areas. Rents for even flophouses tripled - it became economically un-feasible to maintain low-income housing. Low-income housing all but disappeared in many areas as housing costs exploded. People who'd depended on this kind of housing were suddenly unable to afford even the substandard housing they'd had before.

The second factor WAS entirely Reagan's fault, and led to the huge explosion of homelessness that occurred after 1987. The tax cuts of 1986 crippled the federal social services budgets. What little was left to construct low-income housing was gutted, and suddenly you saw something that'd been unheard of after the Depression - homeless families.

[JanMichael]

34. Actually de-institutionalisation started in the 60's.

It generally goes like this:

60's-70's - D.I. in measured doses
70's-80's - HUD down 50%
75-85 - Boomer onset of diseases like schizophrenia.

Reagan exacerbated the problem but it was happening before anyway and the demographic weight of the Boomers really wrecked it.

Top off the fact that 85% of HUD $$$ has gone to and still goes to faith-based agencies and...Voila!

[Bridget Burke]

33. I remember reading about the appalling conditions in India.

There were actually people without homes--they lived in the streets!

That was so many patients were discharged from the old-style mental hospitals. They could, more humanely, be cared for in small, community based outpatient facilities. Good idea. Too bad the new "facilities" never got funded.

[SoCalDem]

36. Reagan pulled the thread

and the "garment" has been unraveling for 25+ years.. Reagan made it "ok"..even desirable to dismantle "gubbmint meddling".. The media machine blathered on endlessly , all the phrases we know and love(to hate) today.,.

Get gubbint out of your pocket
Get gubbmint off your back
Fair taxes
Welfare Queens
Welfare Cadillacs
Welfare cheats..

and so many more.

Poor people have always been with us, but there was a time when governments knew in their guts that to ignore and punsih these people would just lead to worse problems.
If you cannot afford to buy food, you MIGHT actually steal it
If you cannot afford a roof over your head, you might squat illegally in a building
If you have no way to earn money, you might break into homes of people who DO have money
If you are so despondent, and have no hope, you might waste what little you have on "substances" that help you escape...if only temporarily

Back then , the "family" was in better shape and lots of poor family members were helped by a combination of family and state. Once the squeeze got put on families, they were no longer to help...just as the "state" rug got pulled out from under their poorer relatives.

[tblue37]

37. In 1971, as the young wife of a Spanish professor,

I spent the summer in Spain for the first time. I was astonished and appalled at the fact that there were beggars! I had never seen or heard of such a thing. All over the place I saw desperate, destitute people.

Starting in the 1980s, I began to see the same thing here in the US. I think the mentally ill were a large part of the new homeless population. But I also think the lack of affordable housing and the fact that Republican economic policies chip away at the security of the middle class also has something to do with it.

I am ok right now, but several times during the years since my 1983 divorce, I was near the edge where I could have become homeless (with my two small children). I am a poorly paid adjunct faculty member at a state university. The only way I avoided homelessness was that my landlord let my rent slide during the summer, so I paid it off by paying double rent for the months during fall semester. (He knew I would pay.) I also juggled utility bills, paying any given one only at the last minute before the water, gas, or electricity would be turned off. Occasionally I missed the deadline for the water bill, but usually I just made it under the wire.

I also fell behind on my credit card bills, and ended up with huge penalties and a destroyed credit rating. I am just now paying off those bills. I have paid off one, and two more will be paid off within the next year or so. One went into collection, and I have an arrangement that will take me about 6 years or so to pay off—at 0% interest. Much of the balance on these cards added on from penalties and usurious interest rates.

I didn’t play around with credit. I was raising 2 kids, and I often didn’t have the money for necessities, so I had to use credit sometimes.

Sears was the worst. I had charged about $750 over the years (kids needs, mostly, plus shoes for me, that sort of thing), but with penalties and huge interest rates, I ended up owing $1,900 (one of the cards I will have paid off by next year).

This despite the fact that I ran a home daycare, taught 6 or 7 classes a year at the university, tutored on the side, did alterations and a bit of tailoring and dressmaking, and did freelance editing.

I think that any society where a person can do so many socially important jobs and still not make enough for basic necessities is seriously screwed up!

If my landlord had been even a bit less cooperative, I would have ended up homeless, too.

[Talismom]

39. LOL--check out what I say in 38 below!

Looks like we had the same experiences observing Spain and the US during the same time period! It's shocking to see such changes in ones own lifetime--isn't it?!

[Talismom]

38. Drunks in the Bowry--never families with children!

In the early 1970s, I was a teenager whe went to Madrid with family. I was horrified for days when a tired looking woman holding a baby in diapers and the hand of a half naked toddler put out her hand to beg from me. It was the first time I had seen impoverished children on the streets of a major city where there was plenty. By the mid-80s, it was everywhere and has been since. I tell kids this and they are amazed that it hasn't always been that way here.

I've often heard that discretionary income has taken a nose-dive in the US since the 70s, a sign of the decline in the middle-class and I know it is true from memories like this.