Thinking Critically About Social Problems
Being Homeless in the Land of the American Dream
When I met Larry Rice, who runs a shelter for the homeless in St. Louis, Missouri, he said that as a sociologist I should learn firsthand what is happening on our city streets. I was reluctant to leave my comfortable home and office, but Larry baited a hook and lured me onto the streets. He offered to take me to Washington, D.C., where he promised that I would see people sleeping on sidewalk grates within view of the White House. Intrigued at the sight of such a contrast, I agreed to go with him, not knowing that it would change my life.
When we arrived in Washington, it was bitter cold. It was December, and I saw what Larry had promised: sorrowful people huddled over the exhaust grates of federal buildings. Not all of the homeless survived the first night I was there. Freddy, who walked on crutches and had become a fixture in Georgetown, froze to death as he sought refuge from the cold in a telephone booth. I vividly recall looking at the telephone booth where Freddy’s frozen body was found, still upright, futilely wrapped in a tattered piece of canvas. I went to Freddy’s funeral and talked with his friends. To me, Freddy became a person, an individual, not just a faceless, nameless figure shrouded by city shadows.
This experience ignited my sociological curiosity. I felt driven to learn more. I ended up visiting a dozen skid rows in the United States and Canada, sleeping in filthy shelters across North America. I interviewed the homeless in these shelters—and in alleys, on street corners, in parks, and even in dumpsters. I became so troubled by what I experienced that for three months after I returned home, I couldn’t get through an entire night without waking up startled by disturbing dreams.
In this research, I discovered that there are many routes to homelessness. Here are the types of homeless people whom I met:
- Listen on MySocLab Audio: NPR: A Few Small Steps to Homelessness
This man in California has a full-time job, but, unable to afford an apartment, he stays at a homeless shelter.
- “Push-outs”: These people have been pushed out of their homes. Two common types of “push-outs” are teenagers kicked out by their parents and adults evicted by landlords.
- Victims of environmental disaster: This type really surprised me, but they, too, live on our streets. The disasters I came across ranged from fires to dioxin contamination.
- The mentally ill: These people have been discharged from mental hospitals. Although unable to care for themselves, they receive little or no treatment for their problems. Like the teenagers, they are easy victims of the predators who prowl our city streets.
- The new poor: This group consists of unemployed workers whose work skills have become outdated because of technological change.
- The technologically unqualified: Unlike the new poor, these unemployed workers never possessed technological qualifications.
- The elderly: These people have neither savings nor family support; they are old, unemployable, and discarded.
- Runaways: After fleeing intolerable situations, these boys and girls wander our streets.
- The demoralized: After suffering some personal tragedy, these people have given up and retreated into despair. The most common catalyst to their demoralization is divorce.
- Alcoholics: The old-fashioned skid-row wino is still out there.
- Page 209
- Ease addicts: These people actually choose to be homeless. For them, homelessness is a form of “early retirement.” They have no responsibilities to others, and they come and go as they want. Some, in their 20s, spend their days playing chess in the parks of San Francisco.
- Travel addicts: These people also choose to be homeless. Addicted to wanderlust, they travel continuously. They even have their own name for themselves: “road dogs.”
- Excitement addicts: Among the younger of the homeless, these people enjoy the thrill of danger. They like the excitement that comes from “living on the edge.” Being on the streets offers many “edge” opportunities.
As you can see, the homeless are not a single group. Rather, they arrive on our city streets by many “routes.” Note how different the “routes” are for the last three types (those who choose homelessness, a minority of the homeless) than for the first nine types, who do not want to be homeless. Because there are many “causes” of homelessness, it should be obvious that there can be no single solution to this social problem. We need multifaceted programs, perhaps based on the various “routes” by which people travel to this dead-end destination.
For Your Consideration
Based on the types of homeless people that I found on our streets, what solutions would you suggest to homelessness? Be practical.
In Sum: Social Structure.
The patterns of poverty we have reviewed do not point to laziness, stupidity, or any other personal characteristics as its cause. Instead, they point to structural features of society. Poverty follows lines of geography, age, education, gender, race–ethnicity, and marital status. To understand poverty, sociologists examine features of the social system: discrimination, marriage and reproductive patterns, education, welfare programs, changes in the economy, and the availability of work. In later chapters, we shall discuss some of these patterns, but for now let’s consider an analysis of poverty that has generated considerable controversy in sociology.
Is There a Culture of Poverty?
- We boast of vast achievement and of power, Of human progress knowing no defeat, Of strange new marvels every day and hour—And here’s the bread line in the wintry street!
Berton Braley, “The Bread Line”
A Culture of Poverty.
Why do some people remain poor in the midst of plenty? After years of doing participant observation with poor people and gathering extensive life histories, anthropologist Oscar Lewis (1959, 1966) concluded that people who remain poor year after year have developed a way of life that traps them in poverty. He called this the culture of poverty. Perceiving a gulf between themselves and the mainstream, these people feel inferior and insecure. Concluding that they are never going to get out of poverty, they become fatalistic and passive. They develop low aspirations and think about the present, not the future. Some become self-destructive, as illustrated by their high rates of alcoholism, physical violence, and family abuse. Their lives become marked by broken marriages, desertion, single-parent households, and self-defeating despair. Their way of life, this culture of poverty as Lewis called it, makes it almost impossible for them to break out of poverty.
Sociologists do not like the concept of a culture of poverty because it appears to blame poor people for their poverty. As I just stressed, sociologists look instead at structural causes of poverty. Herbert Gans, introduced in the earlier section on the functions of poverty, has also written extensively on this topic. He expresses his dislike of this concept in the Spotlight on Social Research box on the next page.
