Quote:
Originally Posted by DaveinWimberley
...We probably need to add more like 30,000 beds to get to parity with what we had in the 60s.
Come to think about it, It seems as if there are somewhere near 30,000 hard core homeless people in Texas. What a coincidence!
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Studies have shown that homelessness is not *primarily* a mental health nor a substance abuse problem. Rather, there are myriad causes for the origins of homelessness and the proliferation of the problem, since the early 1980s. If you have the time, I recommend reading
Creating a Science of Homelessness During the Reagan Era. The conclusion is here:
The first generation of homelessness research can be regarded as simultaneously groundbreaking and crippled by its political and sociohistorical context. Baxter and Hopper's pioneering ethnography brought homelessness into the national consciousness, and the NIMH- and NIAAA- funded studies established a foundation for an empirically based approach to investigating the scope and dimensions of the problem. In particular, these early studies can be credited both with disproving the widely held assumption that homeless populations consist solely of deinstitutionalized or untreated mental patients, and with identifying a distinct subpopulation of chronically homeless individuals who were disabled by combinations of mental illness, substance abuse, and physical illness. Subsequent research that built on this foundation has fostered an empirically grounded approach to addressing homelessness among people with serious mental and physical disorders. The lack of early federal support to address the structural causes of homelessness, however, unwittingly led to a disproportionate policy focus on the most physically and mentally disabled minority of the homeless population. The blame for this fragmented approach to homelessness belongs not primarily on the NIMH or the NIAAA but on the larger political context in which they operated. The parameters of acceptable research were highly circumscribed by Reagan administration officials, who clung to a historically rooted ideological belief that homelessness resulted mainly from individual character flaws. The administration's 1981 attack on the federal government's social research programs, its aggressive denial of federal responsibility for responding to homelessness, and its move to cut HUD funds by 70% between 1980 and 1987 together forestalled the development of a coordinated homelessness research program that examined housing, employment, and social services along with mental and behavioral health aspects.137(pE1) The unwavering belief of many mental health experts that deinstitutionalization was the sole cause of homelessness, along with the long legacy of sociological research that focused on the individual and cultural pathology of the poor rather than on the economic and political causes of poverty, formed the ideological bedrock for this individualization of a structural problem. Moreover, the impact of this distortion continues to be felt today, as the homeless crisis of the 1980s lingers into the second decade of the 21st century.
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