I chose to tackle the social problem of homelessness in the United States. The book that I read was called, "The Visible Poor: Homelessness in the United States" by Joel Blau. This book took an in-depth look at the causes of homelessness in the United States. The author disproves the convenient myths that most homeless people are crazy, drug addicts, or lazy misfits who brought their suffering upon themselves. He shows that the current crisis was an unavoidable result of economic and political changes in recent decades, steadily reviewing the explanations offered by researchers, politicians and experts, from the deinstitutionalization of mental patients in the 1960s to the gentrification of urban neighborhoods in the 1970s to the removal of federal spending on social welfare in the 1980s. Blau argues that current government policies at every level are held up in pointless head counting and quick-fix solutions that only push the homeless out of sight without touching the underlying causes. He advocates social reforms ranging form a national standard for welfare benefits, a higher minimum wage, and establishment of a social sector for non-profit, affordable housing. .
Since the early 1980's, when the issue of homelessness became the focus of national attention, homeless advocates, social scientists, and policy makers have tried to get an accurate count of homeless people. However they had different reasons why they wanted to count the homeless. The advocates wanted to prove that it was a serious problem that needed immediate attention from the policymakers. Social scientists wanted to know if the recession was behind the increase in homelessness. And the politicians .
hoped to find low numbers that would show the problem was not a result of the Reagan economic policies.
According to the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), homelessness is defined as an individual or family, who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.