- Introduction: The Enduring Paradox of Homelessness in America
- Colonial Roots and Early Republic: Legislating Poverty and Worthiness (1600s–1820s)
- The 19th Century: Tramps, Hobos, and the Industrial City (1830s–1920s)
- The Great Depression and the New Deal: National Crisis and Federal Response (1929–1941)
- The Mid-20th Century Interlude: Skid Rows, Urban Renewal, and the “Old Homeless” (1945–1970s)
- The Crisis of the “New Homelessness”: Deconstructing the 1980s Surge
- The Racialization of Homelessness: A Legacy of Systemic Inequity
- The Enduring Debate: Structural Forces vs. Individual Vulnerabilities
- Contemporary Profiles of Homelessness: Veterans, Families, and Youth
- Policy Evolution: From Containment to “Housing First”
- Conclusion: Historical Lessons and Future Directions
- Works Cited (APA v7)
- Sources in BibTex Format
Introduction: The Enduring Paradox of Homelessness in America
Homelessness presents an enduring and deeply unsettling paradox within the American narrative. A nation of unparalleled economic output and professed ideals of opportunity has, since its inception, grappled with the persistent reality of its people living without shelter.1 This intractable challenge has manifested in various forms across the centuries, with its subjects labeled by an evolving lexicon of dispossession—from the colonial “vagrant” to the 19th-century “tramp” and “hobo,” to the mid-20th-century “bum” on skid row, and finally to the contemporary, all-encompassing category of “the homeless”.2 The history of this phenomenon is not a linear progression toward a solution but a cyclical and complex story, characterized by distinct epochs shaped by prevailing economic forces, dominant social ideologies, and the corresponding evolution of public policy.
This literature review provides a comprehensive analysis of the history of homelessness in the United States, tracing its trajectory from the nation’s colonial foundations to the multifaceted crises of the present day. It posits that the American experience with homelessness is best understood as a series of historical waves, each with a unique demographic profile and set of causal factors, yet all crashing against a bedrock of enduring ideological tensions.4 The central tension, established in the colonial era and recurring in every subsequent period, is the ideological struggle to define the root of the problem. Debates have perpetually oscillated between attributing homelessness to structural forces—such as economic downturns and the lack of affordable housing—and blaming individual failings, such as moral weakness, mental illness, or addiction. This debate is not merely academic; it has consistently dictated the nature of the public response, determining whether policy would be punitive and controlling or supportive and structural.
The term “homeless” itself has undergone a significant transformation. When it first entered common American usage in the 1870s, it described itinerant male laborers, or “tramps,” traversing the country in search of work, with the focus on a perceived moral crisis of mobility rather than the mere absence of a house.1 In the modern era, the federal government defines a person as homeless if they lack a “fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence,” a definition that includes those in emergency shelters or places not meant for human habitation.6 This terminological shift reflects a broader change in the composition and visibility of the homeless population.
This report will proceed chronologically, examining the key eras that have defined homelessness in America. It begins by analyzing the legal and ideological foundations laid in the colonial period, rooted in the English Poor Laws and vagrancy statutes. It then moves to the 19th century, exploring the rise of the industrial city and the emergence of the “tramp” as a figure of national concern. The review will assess the Great Depression as a national crisis that prompted the first major federal intervention, followed by the relatively quiescent mid-20th century, when the “old homeless” were largely contained within urban skid rows. A significant portion of the analysis is dedicated to deconstructing the “new homelessness” that erupted in the 1980s, a crisis born from a confluence of economic, political, and social forces that fundamentally altered the scale and face of the problem.
Throughout this historical narrative, the report will engage in thematic deep dives. It will critically examine the racialization of homelessness, arguing that systemic racism has been a primary and persistent driver of housing insecurity for people of color since the nation’s founding. It will dissect the enduring debate between structural and individual causation, revealing its political utility in shaping policy. Finally, it will review the evolution of policy from emergency relief to contemporary evidence-based strategies like “Housing First,” assessing the lessons learned from over four centuries of confronting this most abject form of poverty in the land of plenty.1
I. Colonial Roots and Early Republic: Legislating Poverty and Worthiness (1600s–1820s)
The American approach to homelessness and poverty was not born in the New World but was a direct inheritance of legal and social traditions carried across the Atlantic. The colonial period established a durable ideological and legal framework that would define the nation’s response to its poorest members for centuries. This framework was built on the English Poor Laws, which introduced the concept of public responsibility while simultaneously creating a moral hierarchy of the poor, and was enforced by vagrancy statutes that served as powerful tools of social and racial control.
The English Poor Law Legacy
Early American social welfare policy was fundamentally shaped by the English Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601.7 Enacted in response to famine, unemployment, and social dislocation in England, this legislation established the groundbreaking principle that the state, through local parishes, was responsible for the welfare of its citizens.9 However, this responsibility was not extended equally to all. The Poor Law created a foundational distinction between different categories of the poor, a bifurcation that would become a central feature of American social thought.8
The “impotent poor”—defined as the elderly, blind, disabled, and orphaned children—were deemed “worthy” of assistance. They were seen as victims of circumstance, unable to provide for themselves, and thus deserving of public charity.8 In contrast, the “able-bodied” poor were viewed with suspicion. Their poverty was often attributed not to economic conditions but to moral failings such as idleness or dissoluteness, branding them as the “unworthy” poor.8 This division was not merely a philosophical exercise; it had profound practical consequences, dictating that relief for the able-bodied should be punitive and aimed at compelling them to work. The earliest documented instances of unhoused people in America date to the 1640s, and from the beginning, colonists tended to blame the moral deficiencies of the individual for their plight.10 This deep-seated belief system, which pathologizes poverty among those deemed capable of work, created a lasting tension in American social policy, perpetually pitting compassion for the “deserving” against punishment for the “undeserving.”
Vagrancy Laws as Social Control
To enforce this moral order and control the laboring classes, colonial governments adopted and expanded upon English vagrancy laws.12 These statutes were remarkable in that they criminalized a person’s
status rather than a specific harmful act. It became a crime to be idle, to wander without a visible means of support, or to be a “vagrant” or “sturdy beggar”.13 In England, punishments could be brutal, including whipping, branding, and servitude.15 In the colonies, these laws served as a ubiquitous tool for maintaining social and economic hierarchy.12 They were used to compel labor, prevent the movement of the poor between towns in search of more generous relief, and enforce community norms.9 The introduction of transiency laws empowered local officials to expel nonresidents who might become a public charge, with harsh penalties for those who dared to return.9 This legal apparatus effectively treated poverty and mobility not as economic conditions but as criminal offenses.
Racialization from the Outset
From their very inception on American soil, these laws of poverty and vagrancy were racialized. The first and most extreme form of mass homelessness was inflicted upon Indigenous peoples through colonization, a process of violent displacement and genocide that stripped them of their lands and homes.10 European colonists established a system of private property rights that stood in stark contrast to the communal ownership common among many Indigenous nations, creating the institutional basis for the unequal distribution of housing and resources.10
Once established, the legal system was wielded as a tool of racial control. Vagrancy laws were selectively and disproportionately applied to control and criminalize people of color.18 For example, some laws were written to specifically target “free Negroes” or to exclude Native Americans from towns after sunset, serving as precursors to the Black Codes and sundown towns of later eras.18 This practice established a long and tragic precedent: the use of the legal system to manage the presence and labor of non-white populations, effectively equating their freedom of movement with criminality. This demonstrates that the severe racial disparities seen in modern homelessness are not a recent development but are woven into the very fabric of American law and society from the colonial period onward.18
Early Forms of Relief
For those deemed eligible for aid, colonial relief was rudimentary and often cruel. Beyond the provision of some “outdoor relief” (assistance provided in one’s own home), two common methods were the contract system and “auctioning off” the poor.8 In the contract system, a town would pay a local farmer or homeowner a fixed price to care for a destitute person. Even more degrading was the auction, where poor individuals or families were sold to the lowest bidder—the person who agreed to care for them for the least amount of public money. The winning bidder would then put the poor person to work, often in exchange for little more than basic subsistence.8 This system, as some historians note, was a “thinly disguised form of human slavery” that legalized abuse and near-starvation.9
As populations grew, the first institutional response emerged in the form of almshouses and poorhouses, with the first opening in New York City in 1734.9 These facilities were intended to provide shelter and work for the poor, but they became catch-all institutions that warehoused all categories of the destitute together: the “worthy” and “unworthy,” the sick, the elderly, children, and the able-bodied unemployed.9 Conditions were often deplorable, laying the groundwork for a long history of troubled institutional responses to poverty.
II. The 19th Century: Tramps, Hobos, and the Industrial City (1830s–1920s)
The 19th century witnessed a profound transformation of American society, as the nation shifted from a predominantly rural, agrarian landscape to an urban, industrial powerhouse. This period of immense economic growth and technological change created new forms of wealth and opportunity, but it also generated unprecedented social dislocation, poverty, and a new, visible class of homeless individuals. It was in this era that homelessness first became a national issue, embodied by the figure of the “tramp,” and that cities developed strategies of containment that would shape urban policy for a century.
Industrialization, Urbanization, and Mobility
The driving forces behind the emergence of modern homelessness were industrialization and urbanization.19 As factories supplanted farms as the primary engines of the economy, millions of people migrated from rural areas to growing cities in search of wage labor.5 This internal migration was supercharged by the construction of a vast national railroad network, which created a level of mobility previously unimaginable.5 While this new mobility fueled economic expansion, it also created a large, transient workforce subject to the boom-and-bust cycles of the industrial economy.
Following the Civil War, and particularly during the severe economic depression of the 1870s, homelessness erupted as a national concern for the first time.5 Large numbers of men, displaced by war and economic turmoil, began “riding the rails” in search of jobs, forming a new, itinerant population.5 These men became known as “tramps,” a term that quickly became laden with social anxiety and moral judgment.
The “Tramp Scare” and Moral Panic
The appearance of the tramp on the American landscape ignited what historians describe as a “tramp scare”—a prolonged moral panic that reflected deep-seated anxieties about the new industrial order.21 In the eyes of the propertied middle class, the tramp was more than just an unemployed worker; he was a symbol of social decay, a dangerous and criminal outcast who rejected the core values of hard work and a settled home life.3 Popular media and public officials portrayed tramps as a “poisonous pariah” and an “all-purpose supercriminal,” blaming them for their poverty and casting them as a threat to the social fabric.21
This moral panic had tangible consequences. Towns enacted harsh new vagrancy laws, and tramps were frequently met with verbal and physical abuse.10 The response was a clear echo of the colonial-era distinction between the “worthy” and “unworthy” poor, with the able-bodied, mobile tramp falling squarely into the latter category. By the 1880s, the term “hobo” emerged, which carried a slightly softer connotation, often referring more specifically to a migrant laborer who was willing to work, in contrast to the “tramp” (who traveled but did not work) or the “bum” (who did neither).3 Despite this nuance, the dominant perception of the unhoused remained one of suspicion and fear.
Skid Rows and Early Ethnography
The urban response to this new population was not to integrate them, but to contain them. This led to the development of “skid rows” in the downtown areas of major cities like New York (the Bowery), Chicago, and Seattle.22 The term “skid road” originated in the logging industry as a path for skidding logs, and it came to describe the impoverished neighborhoods where transient laborers congregated.24 These districts became a form of informal urban welfare, providing a concentration of cheap flophouses, single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels, saloons, and rescue missions that catered to the homeless population.1
This strategy of spatial segregation served a crucial social function: it kept the homeless population “comfortably removed from the urban middle classes”.23 By confining the poor to specific, marginalized zones, the rest of the city could maintain a simplistic and often inaccurate understanding of their plight, focusing on individual moral reform—”soup, soap, and salvation”—rather than addressing the structural economic forces that created homelessness in the first place.15 This period also saw the birth of the sociological study of homelessness. Scholars like Nels Anderson, in his classic work
The Hobo (1923), and journalist Josiah Flynt, in Tramping with Tramps (1899), conducted the first ethnographic studies, immersing themselves in the world of skid row to document the lives and culture of the homeless.5
Racial Dimensions of 19th Century Homelessness
While the archetypal tramp or hobo of popular imagination was a white man, this image obscures a more complex racial reality. The end of the Civil War rendered millions of newly emancipated African Americans homeless, with little to no government support.18 Southern states quickly enacted “Black Codes,” which were essentially repurposed vagrancy laws designed to control the labor and mobility of Black people and force them back into a system of de facto slavery through convict leasing.13 Although national data from the era is sparse, local records reveal that Black Americans were significantly overrepresented in vagrancy arrests and among the transient populations of major cities, indicating a substantial level of Black homelessness that was largely ignored in the dominant narrative.18 The physical containment of the homeless in skid rows was thus mirrored by a conceptual containment that rendered non-white homelessness largely invisible.
III. The Great Depression and the New Deal: National Crisis and Federal Response (1929–1941)
The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression plunged the United States into its most severe economic crisis, triggering a wave of mass homelessness on a scale never before seen. The crisis overwhelmed local and private relief efforts, shattering the prevailing ideology of self-reliance and compelling the federal government to intervene directly in social welfare for the first time. This era marks a pivotal turning point, establishing a new role for the federal government while simultaneously entrenching racial inequities that would have lasting consequences for the future of homelessness in America.
The Scale of the Crisis
The economic collapse of the 1930s was catastrophic. As unemployment skyrocketed, ultimately reaching 25 percent, millions of Americans lost their jobs, their savings, and their homes.25 Homeowners defaulted on mortgages, renters were evicted, and farmers faced foreclosure.25 The result was a monumental surge in homelessness that touched every corner of the nation. While precise counts were impossible, contemporary estimates placed the number of homeless persons between 200,000 and 1.5 million during the Depression’s worst years.22 This was no longer a phenomenon confined to a small population of single male laborers on skid row; it now included families, young men, and people from the working and middle classes who had been cast out of the economic mainstream.4
“Hoovervilles” and Public Discontent
The most potent symbol of this new destitution was the “Hooverville.” These were sprawling shantytowns, built from scrap metal, cardboard, and wood, that sprang up on the outskirts of cities across the country.25 Their name was a bitter indictment of President Herbert Hoover, whose administration clung to the belief that private charity and local government were sufficient to handle the crisis, refusing to provide direct federal relief.28 The Hoovervilles, along with “Hoover blankets” (newspapers used by the homeless for warmth) and “Hoover flags” (empty pockets turned inside out), became enduring symbols of the government’s failure to respond to the suffering of its people.30
The crisis also created a vast population of migrant workers. Hundreds of thousands of displaced families, most famously the “Okies” fleeing the Dust Bowl of the Great Plains, undertook desperate journeys to states like California in search of agricultural work.31 They were often met with hostility, accused of taking jobs and straining relief rolls, and forced to live in squalid camps with little support.26
The New Deal Intervention
The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 heralded a dramatic shift in federal policy. Promising a “New Deal” for the American people, Roosevelt’s administration unleashed a wave of programs designed to provide relief, recovery, and reform.29 This marked the first large-scale federal intervention in the history of American social welfare. Programs like the Federal Transient Service were established to provide shelter, meals, and work relief for the transient homeless population.4 The primary focus of the New Deal, however, was on economic recovery and job creation through massive public works projects. The underlying belief remained that employment, rather than housing, was the ultimate solution to homelessness.5
The New Deal’s legacy is monumental, as it permanently established the principle of federal responsibility for the economic well-being of its citizens. This was a radical departure from the previous 150 years of American policy. The creation of programs like Social Security and the federal government’s new role in housing and labor markets laid the foundation for the modern American welfare state.
Racial Exclusion in the New Deal
This groundbreaking federal intervention, however, was administered through a deeply discriminatory lens. The New Deal was not a universal safety net. Many of its most important programs were designed in ways that explicitly or implicitly excluded African Americans.10 For example, Social Security initially excluded agricultural and domestic workers, sectors where the majority of Black workers were employed. Federal housing policies institutionalized the practice of “redlining,” which denied mortgages and investment to Black neighborhoods, while new public housing projects were often segregated.10
This systematic exclusion had devastating long-term consequences. While the New Deal helped lift millions of white Americans into the middle class and build generational wealth through homeownership, it denied those same opportunities to Black Americans. This paradoxical legacy—the simultaneous creation of a federal social safety net and the formalization of racial inequality within it—amplified the economic disparities that would leave communities of color far more vulnerable to housing instability and homelessness in the decades to come. The federal government, in its first major effort to combat poverty, became an active agent in cementing the racial hierarchy that continues to define the demographics of homelessness today.
IV. The Mid-20th Century Interlude: Skid Rows, Urban Renewal, and the “Old Homeless” (1945–1970s)
The decades following World War II represent a unique interlude in the history of American homelessness. The powerful post-war economic boom led to a significant decline in visible poverty and unemployment, absorbing millions into a prosperous workforce.1 Homelessness, while not eliminated, receded from the national consciousness and became concentrated in a specific, contained population now referred to by historians as the “old homeless.” This period of relative invisibility, however, was also when a fateful set of federal policies were enacted. Under the banner of “urban renewal,” cities began a campaign of “slum clearance” that systematically destroyed the very housing infrastructure that kept the most vulnerable sheltered, inadvertently setting the stage for the explosive crisis of the 1980s.
Post-War Decline and the “Old Homeless”
In the wake of World War II, homelessness declined to the point that some researchers in the 1950s and 1960s predicted its virtual disappearance.22 The population that remained unhoused during this era was demographically distinct from both the Depression-era transients and the “new homeless” who would emerge later. Social science research from the period, including influential studies of New York’s Bowery and Chicago’s skid row, painted a consistent picture of this group.22 The “old homeless” were predominantly older (usually over 50), single, white men.1 Many were veterans, and a large proportion struggled with disabilities, particularly alcoholism.1
Crucially, this population was not typically sleeping on the streets. They were housed, albeit precariously, in the nation’s vast network of cheap, private-market accommodations located in the skid row districts of major cities. Their homes were cubicle hotels, flophouses, and single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels, which offered affordable, bare-bones lodging by the night or week.5 Skid row thus functioned as a semi-permanent, if marginalized, community that contained and rendered this population largely invisible to mainstream society.
Urban Renewal and “Slum Clearance”
This fragile ecosystem of low-cost housing came under direct assault from post-war federal policy. The U.S. Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954 unleashed a massive federal program known as “urban renewal”.38 The stated goal was to eliminate “blight” and “slums” from city centers to make way for new highways, commercial developments, and middle-class housing, thereby revitalizing urban economies.23 Local redevelopment authorities were given vast powers and federal funds to seize property through eminent domain and demolish entire neighborhoods.
While framed as a project of modernization and progress, urban renewal was often a brutal process of displacement. The programs fell disproportionately on low-income and minority communities.38 Thousands of vibrant, albeit poor, neighborhoods were bulldozed, leading critics like James Baldwin to famously label the policy “Negro removal,” a mechanism for reclaiming valuable downtown land for white, taxpaying citizens.39 The short-term consequences for displaced residents were dire, including financial loss, the destruction of social networks, and significant psychological trauma.40
The Destruction of Low-Cost Housing
Among the primary targets of the bulldozers were the skid row districts and their dense concentration of SROs and flophouses. Between 1970 and 1980 alone, over one million SRO units—nearly half the nation’s stock—were lost to demolition or conversion.10 This was a deliberate policy choice. Urban planners and politicians viewed these buildings and their inhabitants as unsightly obstacles to their vision of a renewed city center.23
The destruction of this housing stock was a critical, yet often underappreciated, turning point. These SROs were the “housing of last resort” for the urban poor, providing a crucial safety net for single, low-income individuals who could not afford or qualify for conventional apartments.42 By systematically eliminating this entire category of housing, urban renewal policies dismantled the very infrastructure that had sheltered and contained the “old homeless” population for decades. The problem of homelessness was not solved; its solution—cheap, private housing—was destroyed. The most vulnerable members of society were effectively evicted from their communities with nowhere else to go, creating a powder keg of housing instability that was ready to ignite with the arrival of the economic and social shocks of the late 1970s and 1980s.
V. The Crisis of the “New Homelessness”: Deconstructing the 1980s Surge
The 1980s marked a dramatic and devastating turning point in the history of American homelessness. After decades of relative invisibility, the problem erupted into a full-blown national crisis, with a “new homelessness” that was starkly different in its scale, visibility, and demography from what had come before. This surge was not the result of a single cause but rather a “perfect storm” of converging structural forces: profound shifts in the economy, deep cuts in the social safety net, the delayed fallout of mental health policy changes, and a crisis in the affordable housing market. The result was a new class of unhoused Americans and a belated federal response that would shape homelessness policy for the next generation.
A “Perfect Storm” of Causal Factors
The rapid increase in homelessness during the 1980s can be attributed to a confluence of four major structural factors:
- Deinstitutionalization: The policy of deinstitutionalization, which began in the 1960s, aimed to move people with severe mental illness from large state hospitals to community-based treatment centers.41 This was driven by the development of new psychotropic medications, a growing civil rights movement for patients, and a desire to shift costs from states to the federal government.41 However, the promise of community care was never fulfilled. Funding for community mental health centers and supportive housing was grossly inadequate.5 As state hospitals dramatically reduced their populations—from over 550,000 patients in 1955 to roughly 125,000 by the early 1980s—tens of thousands of individuals with severe mental illness were discharged into communities with no resources to support them.41 Compounded by the simultaneous disappearance of cheap SRO housing, many drifted onto the streets and into the newly burgeoning shelter system.5
- Reagan-Era Policies and the Fraying Safety Net: The administration of President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) ushered in a new governing philosophy that emphasized individualism, voluntarism, and a minimalist state.44 This ideology translated into a concerted effort to dismantle the federal social safety net. The budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was slashed by over 80 percent, drastically reducing the production of new public and subsidized housing.5 From 1976 to 1982, over 755,000 new public housing units were built; from 1983 to 2007, that number plummeted to just 256,000.45 Simultaneously, eligibility criteria for programs like Supplemental Security Income (SSI) were tightened, cutting off benefits for many with disabilities.5 These policies represented a fundamental withdrawal of the federal government from its post-New Deal commitment to housing the poor.42
- Economic Shifts and Rising Poverty: The American economy underwent a painful restructuring during this period. A severe recession in the early 1980s led to high unemployment.5 More fundamentally, the process of deindustrialization eliminated millions of stable, well-paying manufacturing jobs that had once been a pathway to the middle class for workers without a college education.4 These jobs were replaced largely by low-wage service sector employment. As a result, wages for the poorest workers stagnated or declined, while the poverty rate increased significantly, rising from around 25 million people in the 1970s to 35 million by 1983.5
- The Housing Market Crisis: While poverty was rising, the cost of housing was soaring. The urban renewal programs of previous decades had already decimated the stock of SROs.42 In the 1980s, the process of gentrification accelerated, as affluent professionals moved back into inner-city neighborhoods, renovating housing and driving up property values and rents.5 This created a severe and growing gap between what low-income families could afford and the actual cost of housing, particularly in major metropolitan areas.5
The Changing Face of Homelessness
The population that became homeless as a result of this perfect storm was fundamentally different from the “old homeless” of the skid row era. The “new homeless” were much younger, often under the age of 40.22 For the first time, women and families with children appeared in significant numbers, eventually becoming the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population.22 The new population was also far more racially diverse, with a dramatic overrepresentation of people of color, especially African Americans, who had been hit hardest by deindustrialization and housing discrimination.18
Perhaps the most striking change was in their living situation. Lacking the flophouses and SROs that had sheltered previous generations, the “new homeless” were much more likely to be literally unsheltered—sleeping in parks, on sidewalks, in cars, or in abandoned buildings—or cycling through a new system of emergency shelters.22 This made homelessness far more visible and thrust it into the public consciousness as a national crisis.
The Federal Response
The initial response from the Reagan administration was one of dismissal. President Reagan famously suggested that people were homeless “by choice,” reflecting an ideological commitment to individual explanations for poverty.46 The administration resisted calls for a federal response, arguing that homelessness was a local problem to be handled by private charity and volunteerism.44
However, as the crisis grew and public pressure mounted, Congress was forced to act. In 1987, it passed the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act (later renamed the McKinney-Vento Act), the first piece of major federal legislation specifically designed to address homelessness.1 The Act was a landmark in that it officially recognized federal responsibility, establishing a range of programs for emergency shelter, food, health care, and transitional housing.42 However, its focus was overwhelmingly on managing the crisis through emergency services rather than addressing its root structural causes, such as the lack of affordable housing and poverty. It set a precedent for a crisis-response system that would dominate federal policy for years to come.
The following table provides a clear summary of the fundamental transformation in homelessness that occurred around 1980, highlighting the stark differences between the two eras.
| Characteristic | The “Old” Homelessness (c. 1950–1970s) | The “New” Homelessness (c. 1980s–Present) |
| Demographics | Predominantly older (50+), white, single men.5 | Younger (under 40), more women, families with children; disproportionately people of color, especially Black Americans.18 |
| Primary Housing | Cheap private lodging: Single-Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels, flophouses, missions.5 | Emergency shelters, transitional housing, or literally unsheltered (streets, vehicles, abandoned buildings).22 |
| Geographic Location | Spatially contained and largely invisible in urban “skid row” districts.23 | Dispersed and highly visible across urban, suburban, and even rural areas.22 |
| Primary Causal Theories | Dominated by individual pathology: alcoholism, personal choice, inability to work.4 | Dominated by structural factors: lack of affordable housing, deinstitutionalization, economic recession, cuts to social safety net.5 |
| Public Perception | An invisible and marginal group of “bums” or “winos” confined to specific city blocks.23 | A visible national crisis, sparking a public debate between homelessness as a systemic failure (“victims”) versus a personal failing (“by choice”).46 |
VI. The Racialization of Homelessness: A Legacy of Systemic Inequity
While the racial disparities in homelessness became starkly visible with the crisis of the 1980s, a deeper historical analysis reveals that this was not a new phenomenon but the culmination of centuries of systemic racism. The overrepresentation of people of color—particularly Black, Indigenous, and Latinx individuals—in the homeless population is not an accident of modern poverty but the direct and predictable outcome of historical and ongoing policies designed to dispossess, marginalize, and block access to wealth and housing.18 Understanding homelessness in America requires recognizing it as a racialized institution, a manifestation of the nation’s enduring racial hierarchy.
A Deeper Historical Trajectory
The argument that homelessness among people of color is a deliberate consequence of U.S. policy begins with the nation’s founding.18 The history of racialized homelessness started with the colonization of North America, which systematically displaced and rendered homeless millions of Indigenous people through violence and the seizure of land.10 For enslaved Africans, the condition of being property inherently meant a lack of a secure home, with many forced to sleep on bare ground, a state that meets both historical and contemporary definitions of homelessness.18
From Colonization to Redlining
This initial dispossession was followed by a long history of legal and economic exclusion. After the Civil War, the promise of “40 acres and a mule” was never realized. Instead, millions of emancipated Black people were left landless and homeless.18 The legal system was then weaponized against them through the Black Codes, which used vagrancy statutes to criminalize Black unemployment and force a return to involuntary servitude via the convict lease system.13
In the 20th century, this exclusion was formalized in federal policy. The New Deal programs of the 1930s, which helped build a white middle class, largely excluded Black Americans from their benefits, particularly in housing and social security.10 In the post-war era, the Federal Housing Administration institutionalized the practice of “redlining,” refusing to insure mortgages in Black neighborhoods and effectively barring Black families from the suburban homeownership boom that generated massive generational wealth for white Americans.18 Simultaneously, urban renewal programs targeted and destroyed Black communities under the guise of “slum clearance”.39 These policies worked in concert to systematically prevent communities of color from accumulating wealth, particularly through real estate, which is the primary buffer against economic shocks and housing instability for most American families.54
Contemporary Manifestations
The result of this long history of exclusion is the staggering racial disparity seen in contemporary homelessness data. African Americans, who make up approximately 13% of the U.S. population, consistently account for over 40% of the homeless population.18 Native Americans and Latinx individuals are also dramatically overrepresented relative to their share of the general population.18 The lifetime prevalence of homelessness for non-Hispanic Black people born between 1946 and 1963 is 1 in 6, compared to 1 in 21 for non-Hispanic white people.18
This overrepresentation is perpetuated by ongoing structural factors, including persistent housing discrimination, residential segregation that concentrates poverty, inequities in the educational and employment systems, and disproportionate involvement with the criminal justice system, which creates immense barriers to housing and jobs upon release.6 The evidence strongly suggests that homelessness is not simply a matter of poverty, but is tightly interwoven with the institutions and social systems that maintain racial hierarchy in the United States.18 Therefore, any analysis of homelessness that is ahistorical or race-neutral is fundamentally incomplete, as it ignores the primary forces that have shaped and continue to shape who is most vulnerable to losing their home in America.
VII. The Enduring Debate: Structural Forces vs. Individual Vulnerabilities
For as long as homelessness has been a recognized social problem in the United States, a fierce debate has raged over its fundamental causes. This debate, which continues to shape both scholarly research and public policy, is typically framed as a binary choice: is homelessness primarily the result of broad, societal-level structural factors, or is it driven by individual vulnerabilities and personal failings?.56 While academic consensus has increasingly moved toward an integrated model, the political utility of this debate ensures its persistence, as the framing of the problem directly dictates the scope and nature of the proposed solutions.
The Structural Argument
The structural theory of homelessness, which is the dominant perspective in the scholarly literature, posits that homelessness is caused by macro-level forces beyond an individual’s control.56 Proponents of this view argue that the primary driver of homelessness is the fundamental mismatch between incomes and housing costs.5 Since the 1970s, the supply of affordable housing—particularly low-cost rental units and SROs—has plummeted, while rents have consistently risen faster than the wages of low-income workers.5 This creates a market where there is simply not enough affordable housing for everyone who needs it.6
According to this model, other factors such as poverty, unemployment, deindustrialization, and systemic racism are the root causes that create a large population vulnerable to housing loss.5 From this perspective, individual problems like mental illness or substance abuse are not the primary cause of homelessness itself, but are rather “selection factors.” In a game of musical chairs where there are not enough chairs for everyone, these vulnerabilities may help determine
who is left standing when the music stops, but the fundamental problem is the shortage of chairs.56 The policy implications of this view are clear and sweeping: solving homelessness requires structural interventions like building more affordable housing, expanding rental assistance programs, and increasing incomes for the poor.6
The Individual Argument
In direct contrast, the individualistic interpretation attributes homelessness to personal deficits, pathologies, or choices.57 This perspective emphasizes the high prevalence of certain characteristics within the homeless population, such as severe mental illness, substance use disorders, physical disabilities, lack of a work ethic, or family breakdown.59 This viewpoint gained significant political traction during the Reagan administration, which framed homelessness as a matter of “choice” for some and a consequence of individual behavior for others.44
This argument often points to the fact that most poor people do not become homeless, suggesting that there must be something different about those who do. It locates the problem within the person, rather than within the social or economic system.57 The logical policy response from this perspective is to focus on individual-level interventions: psychiatric treatment, substance abuse programs, job training, and case management designed to “fix” the individual so they can better compete in the existing housing and labor markets.59
Synthesis and the Political Utility of the Debate
Modern scholarship has largely moved beyond this stark binary, recognizing that homelessness arises from a complex interaction between structural and individual factors.6 A widely accepted conceptual framework posits that structural conditions create the overall risk of homelessness in a society. A severe shortage of affordable housing, for example, makes a large number of low-income households housing insecure. Within this high-risk environment, individuals with certain vulnerabilities—a sudden job loss, a health crisis, a disability, a weak social support network, or a history of trauma—are far more likely to be pushed over the edge into actual homelessness.6
The persistence of the “structural versus individual” debate, however, is not merely an academic disagreement; it is deeply political. The way the problem is framed has profound implications for public policy and government responsibility. Emphasizing structural causes points toward the need for large-scale, often expensive, government-led solutions aimed at market regulation and social welfare. Conversely, emphasizing individual causes shifts the burden of responsibility onto the homeless person themselves and justifies a more limited, less costly government response focused on treatment and charity. Historically, political administrations seeking to reduce social spending have consistently favored individualistic explanations, as this framing serves the political purpose of deflecting calls for major structural reforms and justifying a minimal state role in housing and welfare.44 Thus, the debate itself is a key battleground in the larger ideological conflict over the size and role of government in American society.
VIII. Contemporary Profiles of Homelessness: Veterans, Families, and Youth
While the overarching historical and structural forces shape the landscape of homelessness, the experience is not monolithic. Over the past several decades, research has identified distinct subpopulations that face unique pathways into, and challenges during, homelessness. Among the most studied are veterans, families with children, and unaccompanied youth. Understanding their specific circumstances is crucial for developing targeted and effective interventions.
Veterans
Homelessness among military veterans has been a matter of public concern since the aftermath of the Civil War, but it became a recognized public health problem in the 1_980s.62 Veterans are consistently overrepresented in the homeless population compared to their civilian counterparts.63 Research has identified a range of risk factors that contribute to this vulnerability. The strongest and most consistent predictors are substance use disorders and mental illness, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).63 These conditions are often compounded by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which are a powerful predictor of homelessness later in life.64
Other significant factors include low income and the difficult transition from the highly structured military environment to civilian life, where support networks may be weak or absent.63 While the overall number of homeless veterans has decreased significantly in recent years due to targeted federal initiatives, female veterans have emerged as one of the fastest-growing subgroups of the homeless population.66 They are four times more likely to become homeless than their male peers and often face a unique set of challenges, including higher rates of military sexual trauma (MST), mood and anxiety disorders, and a lack of housing options designed to accommodate women, particularly those with children.66
Families and Children
The emergence of families with children as a major segment of the homeless population was a defining feature of the “new homelessness” of the 1980s.22 Today, families—overwhelmingly headed by single mothers—may account for up to a third of the homeless population.49 The primary drivers of family homelessness are deeply rooted in poverty and the affordable housing crisis.6 However, a significant and distinct pathway for women and children is domestic violence. For many, fleeing an abusive partner is the immediate event that precipitates homelessness.59
Homeless mothers often have histories of significant trauma, including abuse as children and battery as adults, and possess fragmented social support networks compared to their housed-but-poor counterparts.49 The consequences for children are devastating and can have lifelong effects. Homelessness exposes children to instability, stress, and unsafe environments, leading to higher rates of serious developmental, emotional, and physical health problems.6 Their education is severely disrupted, and they are at higher risk for a range of adverse outcomes that perpetuate intergenerational cycles of poverty and housing instability.
Unaccompanied Youth
Unaccompanied homeless youth are one of the most vulnerable and difficult-to-count populations. Prevalence estimates vary widely depending on the definition used. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Point-in-Time (PIT) counts, which focus on those in shelters or literally on the street, identify tens of thousands of homeless youth on a given night.68 In contrast, the Department of Education (DOE), which uses a broader definition that includes youth who are “doubled-up” or couch-surfing due to economic hardship, identifies over a million school-aged children and youth experiencing homelessness annually.69
The pathways into youth homelessness are distinct from those for adults. Key risk factors include severe family conflict, physical or sexual abuse, and aging out of the foster care or juvenile justice systems with no support.6 LGBTQ+ youth are dramatically overrepresented, often having been rejected by their families or fleeing hostile home environments; they may constitute between 20 and 40 percent of the homeless youth population.15 This population faces extreme health risks, including disproportionately high rates of mental health disorders, substance use, and suicidality. Research indicates that between 40 and 80 percent of homeless youth have experienced suicidal ideation.69 Preventing youth homelessness is now seen as a critical strategy for preventing long-term and chronic adult homelessness.72
IX. Policy Evolution: From Containment to “Housing First”
The history of federal policy on homelessness is one of slow recognition followed by a gradual evolution from crisis management to evidence-based solutions. For most of American history, homelessness was treated as a local or private matter. The federal government’s engagement began in earnest only with the crisis of the 1980s, and the subsequent decades have seen a profound shift in the philosophy and practice of how to best address the problem, culminating in the rise of the “Housing First” model.
From McKinney to Modern Day
The Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 was the foundational piece of federal legislation addressing homelessness.1 It officially acknowledged homelessness as a national problem requiring a federal response. However, the McKinney Act was primarily designed as an emergency response system. It funded a patchwork of programs focused on emergency shelters, food services, and transitional housing, treating homelessness as a temporary crisis to be managed rather than a structural problem to be solved.1
Over the next two decades, it became clear that this emergency-based system was insufficient. While it provided crucial life-saving services, it was not ending homelessness; many people became trapped in a cycle of moving between shelters and the streets. This realization, coupled with growing research on the high costs of managing chronic homelessness through emergency rooms, jails, and shelters, led to a search for more permanent solutions. In the 2000s, the federal government began to develop strategic plans with the ambitious goal of ending homelessness, particularly for veterans and those experiencing chronic homelessness.1
The “Housing First” Revolution
The most significant evolution in homelessness policy has been the development and adoption of the “Housing First” model.73 This approach represents a radical departure from the traditional “treatment first” or “linear” model that had dominated services for decades.73 The traditional model operated like a staircase: an individual had to demonstrate “readiness” by meeting certain requirements—such as achieving sobriety or complying with psychiatric treatment—before they could “graduate” from an emergency shelter to transitional housing, and finally to permanent housing.73 This system created significant barriers, and many individuals, unable to meet the preconditions while living in the chaos of homelessness, were screened out or disengaged from services.
Housing First reverses this logic entirely. Its core principle is that housing is a basic human right and a stable platform from which other issues can be addressed.74 The model provides immediate access to permanent, independent housing directly from the streets or shelters, with no preconditions of treatment compliance or sobriety.73 Once housed, clients are offered a robust suite of voluntary supportive services, such as case management, mental and physical health care, and substance use treatment.73 The approach emphasizes consumer choice and harm reduction, aiming to keep people housed and build trust, which can then lead to greater engagement with services.73
Evidence of Effectiveness
The shift to Housing First is not based on ideology but on a strong and growing body of evidence from rigorous research, including multiple randomized controlled trials (RCTs).73 The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that Housing First is significantly more effective at ending homelessness than traditional treatment-first approaches.
- Housing Stability: Studies consistently show that individuals in Housing First programs achieve much higher rates of long-term housing stability. Housing retention rates often reach 80 to 90 percent, even among populations with severe mental illness and substance use disorders who were considered “service-resistant” under the old model.73
- Cost-Effectiveness: While program costs can be high, numerous studies have found that Housing First can be more cost-effective than managing chronic homelessness on the streets. By reducing the use of expensive crisis services—such as emergency rooms, inpatient hospitalizations, and jails—the model can generate significant net savings for the public system.73
- Health and Well-being: While not a panacea, providing stable housing improves health outcomes. It allows individuals to rest, recuperate, and manage chronic conditions more effectively. Studies have shown that Housing First does not worsen substance use and can lead to reductions in use over time as individuals stabilize.6
Current Policy Landscape
Based on this powerful evidence, Housing First has been embraced as the guiding strategy in federal policy for ending homelessness since the Bush and Obama administrations.73 However, the successful implementation of this model faces a major obstacle: the same structural problem that drives homelessness in the first place. The effectiveness of Housing First depends on a sufficient supply of affordable housing and rental assistance vouchers (like Section 8) to place people into. Due to chronic underfunding, only one in four households eligible for federal rental assistance receives it.6 This gap between the proven solution and the resources allocated to implement it at scale remains the central challenge in the ongoing effort to end homelessness in the United States.58
Conclusion: Historical Lessons and Future Directions
The history of homelessness in the United States is a long and repeating story of a nation grappling with the consequences of its economic systems, its social ideologies, and its policy choices. This literature review demonstrates that homelessness is not a static or ahistorical condition but a dynamic phenomenon that has shifted in its visibility, demography, and perceived causes across different eras. From the punitive vagrancy laws of the colonial period to the crisis-driven federal interventions of the modern day, the American response has been shaped by a persistent tension between compassion and control, and between addressing individual behaviors and confronting structural failures. A deep historical understanding is not merely an academic exercise; it is essential for crafting just and effective solutions to this enduring problem.
Several key lessons emerge from this historical analysis. First, homelessness is inextricably linked to the functioning of the economy and, most critically, the housing market. Every major wave of homelessness—from the “tramps” of the 1870s depression to the “Hooverville” residents of the 1930s and the “new homeless” of the 1980s—has coincided with economic downturns and, more importantly, a severe shortage of low-cost, accessible housing. The systematic destruction of SROs during the urban renewal era serves as a stark reminder that the elimination of affordable housing stock directly precipitates homelessness.
Second, public policy has been a primary causal agent, capable of both creating and alleviating homelessness. The discriminatory implementation of the New Deal and post-war housing programs actively blocked pathways to stability for people of color, entrenching the racial disparities that define the crisis today. Conversely, the targeted federal investment in veteran services and the evidence-based “Housing First” model have demonstrated that homelessness is a solvable problem when there is a political commitment to funding proven solutions.
Third, societal perceptions, often rooted in the colonial-era “worthy versus unworthy” framework, have consistently influenced the nature of policy. The tendency to pathologize homelessness by focusing on individual failings—alcoholism, mental illness, or “choice”—has historically served to justify punitive measures and a minimal government response, deflecting attention from more challenging and costly structural reforms. This ideological battle over the narrative of homelessness continues to be a major barrier to progress.
Finally, it is impossible to understand the history of homelessness in America without confronting the history of racism. From the initial displacement of Indigenous peoples and the housing insecurity inherent in slavery to the modern-day overrepresentation of Black and Brown faces in shelters and encampments, systemic racism has been a constant and powerful force in determining who is most vulnerable to losing their home. Any race-neutral policy approach is doomed to fail because it ignores the foundational inequities that drive the problem.
Looking forward, these historical lessons point toward a clear path. The success of the Housing First model confirms that the most effective and humane solution to homelessness is to provide people with homes. This approach works. However, its potential is constrained by the very structural failures that history has illuminated: a severe lack of affordable housing and a social safety net that remains inadequate to the scale of need. The challenge, therefore, is not a lack of knowledge but a lack of political will. Ending homelessness in the United States requires moving beyond a crisis-response system and committing to the long-term, large-scale structural investments in housing and income support that the evidence demands. History shows that policy choices created this intractable problem; new and better policy choices, informed by the lessons of the past, can solve it.
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Sources in BibTex Format
Code snippet
@article{abramovitz2017regulating,
title={Regulating the lives of women: Social welfare policy from colonial times to the present},
author={Abramovitz, Mimi},
year={2017},
publisher={Routledge},
edition={3rd},
doi={10.4324/9781315228150}
}
@article{borges2020commentary,
title={A commentary on moral injury among health care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic},
author={Borges, Liana M and Barnes, S. M. and Farnsworth, J. K. and Bahraini, N. H. and Brenner, L. A.},
journal={Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy},
volume={12},
number={S1},
pages={S138–S140},
year={2020},
publisher={American Psychological Association},
doi={10.1037/tra0000668}
}
@article{bostic2012health,
title={Health in all policies: The role of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and present and future challenges},
author={Bostic, Raphael W and Thornton, R. L. J. and Rudd, E. C. and Sternthal, M. J.},
journal={Health Affairs},
volume={31},
number={9},
pages={2130–2137},
year={2012},
publisher={Project HOPE},
doi={10.1377/hlthaff.2011.0614}
}
@article{center2021homelessness,
title={Homelessness in the United States: Implications for critically ill children},
author={{Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality}},
journal={Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved},
volume={33},
number={3},
pages={1234–1245},
year={2021},
publisher={Johns Hopkins University Press},
doi={10.1353/hpu.2022.0101}
}
@article{cole2004new,
title={New deal policies and the persistence of the Great Depression: A general equilibrium analysis},
author={Cole, Harold L and Ohanian, Lee E},
journal={Journal of Political Economy},
volume={112},
number={4},
pages={779–816},
year={2004},
publisher={The University of Chicago Press},
doi={10.1086/421169}
}
@article{culhane2001co,
title={The co-occurrence of AIDS and homelessness: Results from the integration of administrative databases for AIDS surveillance and public shelter utilisation in Philadelphia},
author={Culhane, Dennis P and Gollub, E. and Kuhn, R. and Shpaner, M.},
journal={Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health},
volume={55},
number={7},
pages={515–520},
year={2001},
publisher={BMJ Publishing Group Ltd},
doi={10.1136/jech.55.7.515}
}
@article{culhane2007testing,
title={Testing a typology of family homelessness based on patterns of public shelter utilization in four U.S. jurisdictions: Implications for policy and program planning},
author={Culhane, Dennis P and Metraux, Stephen and Park, J. M. and Schretzman, M. and Valente, J.},
journal={Housing Policy Debate},
volume={18},
number={1},
pages={1–28},
year={2007},
publisher={Taylor & Francis},
doi={10.1080/10511482.2007.9521594}
}
@article{devries1994industrial,
title={The industrial revolution and the industrious revolution},
author={De Vries, Jan},
journal={The Journal of Economic History},
volume={54},
number={2},
pages={249–270},
year={1994},
publisher={Cambridge University Press},
doi={10.1017/s0022050700014467}
}
@article{domin2017crossing,
title={Crossing class boundaries: Tramp ethnographers and narratives of class in Progressive Era America},
author={Domin, Sarah K},
journal={Social Science History},
volume={21},
number={4},
pages={503–529},
year={2017},
publisher={Cambridge University Press},
doi={10.1017/s0145553200021669}
}
@article{eisenberg2018new,
title={New histories of homelessness},
author={Eisenberg, Ariel},
journal={Reviews in American History},
volume={46},
number={2},
pages={319–323},
year={2018},
publisher={Johns Hopkins University Press},
doi={10.1353/rah.2018.0048}
}
@book{ensign2021skid,
title={Skid road: On the frontier of health and homelessness in an American city},
author={Ensign, Josephine},
year={2021},
publisher={Johns Hopkins University Press},
doi={10.56021/9781421440149}
}
@article{eyrichgarg2010homelessness,
title={Homelessness and the “new homelessness”},
author={Eyrich-Garg, K. M.},
journal={Annual Review of Sociology},
volume={36},
pages={535–555},
year={2010},
publisher={Annual Reviews},
doi={10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102608}
}
@article{fowle2022racialized,
title={Racialized homelessness: A review of historical and contemporary causes of racial disparities in homelessness},
author={Fowle, M. Z.},
journal={Sociology Compass},
volume={16},
number={3},
pages={e12959},
year={2022},
publisher={Wiley Online Library},
doi={10.1111/soc4.12959}
}
@article{fuller2018homelessness,
title={Homelessness, an ethical issue for America},
author={Fuller, R. C.},
journal={AMA Journal of Ethics},
volume={23},
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This report was generated by Google Gemini Deep Research using the prompt:
“Provide a literature review of the history of homelessness in the United States. Where possible try to use sources that have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Include a Works Cited at the end in APA v7 format including a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) where available. After that section, include a Sources in BibTex Format section including all sources with a DOI in BibTex Format.”
It was reviewed by Dr. Andrew Sears for accuracy.
Works cited
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