Housing and Urban Development: Family Homelessness

Introduction

Families now comprise a major segment of the homeless population. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report, 222,197 people in families were homeless on a single night in 2013, accounting for 36 percent of all homeless people counted. This condition has been considered as a problem in this country. However, from social constructionist perspective, it is socially constructed by members in its society rather than an objective condition. This paper provides the process of family homelessness problem being socially constructed since the 1970s and discusses how policy solutions was framed throughout the process.

Social Construction of Family Homelessness

Hidden Stage. Homelessness in the United States has always existed, without interruption. Assistance to homeless population was provided along with assistance offered low-income people before the 20th century, almost entirely delivered by charity and faith-based organizations (Leginski, 2007). However, homelessness did not come to the public’s attention as a national issue until the 1970s and 1980s because to be homeless meant primarily living without the social relations—spouses, parents, or children—before the 1970s (Bagalman et al, 2013). Specifically, the condition of homelessness was slept at night in the cheap accommodations available on skid rows rather than sleeping in public places that people did not have to see them (Rochefort, & Cobb, 1992; Rossi, 1994).

On the other hand, researches conducted during the 1950s and 1960s on homelessness issue contain no mention of homeless families. Bagalman et al. (2013) point out that it was because social researchers defined the homeless as “familyless” ...

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...hensive, integrated, and long-term solution (Rochefort & Cobb, 1992) that was also interpreted in the policy product—Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987.

Works Cited

Cronley, C. (2010). Unraveling the social construction of homelessness. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 20(2), 319-333.

Gulati, P. (1992). Ideology. Public Policy and Homeless Families. J. Soc. & Soc. Welfare, 19, 113.

Rochefort, D. A., & Cobb, R. W. (1992). Framing and claiming the homelessness problem. New England Journal of Public Policy, 8(1), 5.

Rog, D. J., & Buckner, J. C. (2007, September). 5-homeless families and children. In Toward Understanding Homelessness: The 2007 National Symposium (Vol. 4).

Shinn, M. B., Rog, D. R., & Culhane, D. P. (2005). Family homelessness: Background research findings and policy options. Departmental Papers (SPP).