Where the homeless come from: A study of the prior address distribution of families admitted to public shelters in New York City and Philadelphia

Abstract

This study investigates hypotheses regarding the association of census tract variables with the risk for homelessness. We used prior address information reported by families entering emergency shelters in two large U.S. cities to characterize the nature ofthat distribution.

Three dense clusters of homeless origins were found in Philadelphia and three in New York City, accounting for 67 percent and 61 percent of shelter admissions and revealing that homeless families’ prior addresses are more highly concentrated than the poverty distribution in both cities. The rate of shelter admission is strongly and positively related to the concentration of poor, African‐American, and female‐headed households with young children in a neighborhood. It is also correlated with fewer youth, elderly, and immigrants. Such areas have higher rates of unemployment and labor force nonpartici‐pation, more housing crowding, more abandonment, higher rates of vacancy, and higher rent‐to‐income ratios than other areas.     

Patterns and determinants of public shelter utilization among homeless adults in New York City and Philadelphia

Administrative data on public shelter utilization among homeless adults from New York City (1987–1994) and Philadelphia (1991–1994) are analyzed to identify the relative proportion of shelter users by length of stay and rate of readmission, and to identify the characteristics that predict an exit from shelter. Survival analyses reveal that half of adult shelter users will stay fewer than 45 days over a two-year period (combined stays), and that approximately one half of men and one third of women will experience a readmission within two years of the first admission. Results also document the size and relative resource consumption of a long-term sheltered population, finding that 18.2 percent of New York shelter users stay 180 days or more in their first year, consuming 53.4 percent of the system days for first-time shelter users. Discrete-time logistic hazard regression analyses reveal that, in general, being older, of black race, having a substance abuse or mental health problem, or having a physical disability, significantly reduces the likelihood of exiting shelter. In both cities, people entering shelter in later years are staying longer, although individuals have shorter episodes on subsequent admissions. The implications of this study for the analysis and management of emergency shelter system utilization are discussed.     

Inner‐city concentrated poverty and neighborhood distress: 1970 to 1990

Abstract

Tract‐level data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 censuses of population are used to identify poverty neighborhoods, extreme poverty neighborhoods, distressed neighborhoods, and severely distressed neighborhoods within the nation's 100 largest central cities. Changes in demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of these neighborhoods are documented, including racial/ethnic composition; poverty population concentration; school dropout rates; and rates of joblessness, single‐parent households, and welfare receipt.

Results show that despite some encouraging individual city turnarounds in the Northeast (especially in New York, Newark, and Philadelphia), urban poverty concentration and neighborhood distress worsened nationwide between 1980 and 1990. The greatest deterioration occurred in midwestern cities, particularly in Detroit. Southern cities, whose neighborhoods and cities typically improved during the 1970s, slipped during the 1980s; conditions in western cities also deteriorated. Blacks fared worse than whites and Hispanics during the 1980s in terms of increased concentration of poor in poverty tracts and distressed urban neighborhoods.     

Nativity differences in neighborhood quality among New York city households

Abstract

This article adds to the literature on locational attainment of immigrants by evaluating how immigrant households in New York City compare with native‐born households with respect to neighborhood characteristics. It also examines whether the relationship between immigrant status and neighborhood quality varies by race/ethnicity and place of birth.

Overall, foreign‐born households are more likely than native‐born households to live in neighborhoods with less access to medical care, higher rates of tuberculosis, and higher concentrations of poverty. Multivariate analyses reveal that all but one of these disadvantages disappear for foreign‐born households as a group. However, island‐born Puerto Ricans and immigrants—especially Dominicans, Caribbeans and Africans, and Latin Americans—are more likely to reside in lower‐quality neighborhoods than native‐born white households. Equally important, native‐born blacks and Hispanics are also disproportionately disadvantaged relative to native‐born whites, suggesting that a racial hierarchy exists in the locational attainment of households in New York City.     

Counting homeless persons with surveys of users of services for the homeless

Abstract

Because of their comparative economy, the most commonly used methods for counting the homeless focus on users of shelters, food lines, health clinics for the homeless, and other services for the homeless. This paper argues that surveys restricted to shelter users are of limited usefulness, but that joint surveys of food‐line, shelter, and clinic users include very substantial proportions of the homeless in many communities. Such comprehensive surveys can provide an accurate basis for research on the homeless in communities with reasonably capacious service systems. The reliability of such surveys has grown as service systems for the homeless have improved. Groups of the homeless that tend to be missed in service user surveys include homeless youths on their own as well as substantial portions of the rural homeless population and of the doubled‐up or institutionalized homeless populations. Surveys of homeless persons sleeping in known places “on the streets” can be used to supplement surveys of service users. Research in Colorado suggests that such supplemental surveys of the street population provide a practical basis for comprehensive estimates of the homeless street population.     

Civil liberties and the left

Mzwanele Mayekiso, Township Politics: Civic Struggles for a New South Africa. Monthly Review Press: New York. 1996. pp. 288. (foreword by Mel King)

Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England, Edited by Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky. (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995)

Modernization and the Production of Power

Kevin A. Yelvington, Producing Power: Ethnicity, Gender, and Class in a Caribbean Workplace (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 286 pp.

Milagros Pena, Theologies and Liberation in Peru: The Role of Ideas in Social Movements (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 222 pp.

Partha Chatterjee (ed), Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 220 pp.

Carol A. Breckenridge (ed.), Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in South Asia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 261 pp.

Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right‐Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States. (New York: The Guilford Press, 1995. pp. 445. $19.95.)     

Revitalizing inner‐city neighborhoods: New York city's Ten‐Year Plan

Abstract

This article examines the impact of New York City's Ten‐Year Plan on the sale prices of homes in surrounding neighborhoods. Beginning in the mid‐1980s, New York City invested $5.1 billion in constructing or rehabilitating over 180,000 units of housing in many of the city's most distressed neighborhoods. One of the main purposes was to spur neighborhood revitalization.

In this article, we describe the origins of the Ten‐Year Plan, as well as the various programs the city used to implement it, and estimate whether housing built or rehabilitated under the Ten‐Year Plan affected the prices of nearby homes. The prices of homes within 500 feet of Ten‐Year Plan units rose relative to those located beyond 500 feet, but still within the same census tract. These findings are consistent with the proposition that well‐planned project‐based housing programs can generate positive spillover effects and contribute to efforts to revitalize inner‐city neighborhoods.     

The Use of Rental Housing Assistance by Immigrants in the United States and New York City

Abstract

The large influx of immigrants to the United States and New York City from poorer countries has sparked considerable debate as to whether immigrants are becoming a “public charge” to American society. Most arguments have centered around immigrants’ use of cash assistance programs. This article compares immigrants’ receipt of rental housing assistance with that of native‐born Americans.

Bivariate analyses reveal that immigrants, as a group, are no more likely than native‐born households to use any form of rental housing assistance. Indeed, in most instances immigrants are less likely than native‐born households to receive assistance, with two exceptions: immigrants who have been in the United States since 1970 and immigrants from the former Soviet Union in New York City. Multivariate analyses reveal similar results, except that immigrants who have been in the United States since 1970 are no more likely than other immigrants to receive housing assistance when we control for other factors.     

Public service reductions associated with placement of homeless persons with severe mental illness in supportive housing

Abstract

This article assesses the impact of public investment in supportive housing for homeless persons with severe mental disabilities. Data on 4,679 people placed in such housing in New York City between 1989 and 1997 were merged with data on the utilization of public shelters, public and private hospitals, and correctional facilities. A series of matched controls who were homeless but not placed in housing were similarly tracked.

Regression results reveal that persons placed in supportive housing experience marked reductions in shelter use, hospitalizations, length of stay per hospitalization, and time incarcerated. Before placement, homeless people with severe mental illness used about $40,451 per person per year in services (1999 dollars). Placement was associated with a reduction in services use of $16,281 per housing unit per year. Annual unit costs are estimated at $17,277, for a net cost of $995 per unit per year over the first two years.     

The emergence of stable racially and ethnically diverse urban communities: A case study of nine U.S. cities

Abstract

We examine the characteristics of 14 stable racially and ethnically diverse urban communities in 9 U.S. cities and point to policies that could strengthen these communities and encourage the growth of more diverse neighborhoods in American cities. The cities examined are Chicago; Denver; Houston; Memphis, TN; Milwaukee; New York; Oakland, CA; Philadelphia; and Seattle. University researchers and community leaders in each city collaborated on the research for this project.

We identify two types of stable diverse communities, “self‐conscious” and “laissez‐faire,” which have evolved for different reasons and with different characteristics. Stable diverse communities will not just happen, but they can be influenced by a number of policy recommendations stemming from our research. These include helping individuals and organizations take leadership roles in their communities, strengthening and enforcing fair housing and antidiscrimination laws, earmarking economic resources to encourage neighborhood diversity, and creating community safety and jobs programs.     

Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress

Seeking and speaking the truth

>William Blum, ROGUE STATE: A GUIDE TO THE WORLD'S ONLY SUPERPOWER (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 2000).

Johanna Brenner, WOMEN AND THE POLITICS OF CLASS (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000).

Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames, THE DISABILITY RIGHTS MOVEMENT: FROM CHARITY TO CONFRONTATION (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).

AND THEN, Vol. 10 (2001). Copies @ $5 may be ordered from Robert Roth, 210 West 10^th Street (# 3D), New York, NY 10014.     

Coca Eradication in the Andes: Lessons from Bolivia

Al Gedicks: The New Resources Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles Against Multinational Corporations. Boston: South End Press, 1993.

Richard Hofrichter, ed.: Toxics Struggles: The Theory and Practice of Environmental Justice . Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1993.

Raymond Bonner: At the Hand of Man: Peril and Hope for Africa's Wildlife. New York: Knopf, 1993.

Theodore Steinberg: Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.     

Book Reviews

Andrew Levine, Arguing for Socialism—Theoretical Considerations (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984).

Irving Howe, Socialism and America (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985).

Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Retreat from Class: A New “True” Socialism (London: Verso/American distributor: Shocken, 1986)

Joanne Barkan, Visions of Emancipation: the Italian Workers’ Movement Since 1945. (New York City: Praeger, 1984)

Carlos M. Vilas, The Sandinista Revolution: National Liberation and Social Transformation in Central America, trans. Judy Butler (New York City: Monthly Review Press, 1986)

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism—Property, Community, and the Contradictions of Modern Social thought (New York: Basic Books, 1986).

Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin, The Dialectical Biologist. (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1985).

Anthony Giddens, The Nation‐State and Violence: Volume Two of The Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985)

Bob Jessop, Nicos poulantzas. Marxist theory and political strategy, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985).     

An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital

Daniel P. Liston, CAPITALIST SCHOOLS: EXPLANATION AND ETHICS IN RADICAL STUDIES OF SCHOOLING (New York: Routledge, 1988), and Henry A. Giroux, SCHOOLING AND THE STRUGGLE FOR PUBLIC LIFE: CRITICAL PEDAGOGY IN THE MODERN AGE (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

Ernest L. Boyer, COLLEGE: THE UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA (New York: Harper &; Row, 1987; first paperback edition 1988).

Elzbieta Ettinger, ROSA LUXEMBURG: A LIFE (Boston: Beacon, 1986).

Stanley Aronowitz, SCIENCE AS POWER: DISCOURSE AND IDEOLOGY IN MODERN SCIENCE (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).

Shoshana Zuboff, IN THE AGE OF THE SMART MACHINE: THE FUTURE OF WORK AND POWER (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1988)

Carol Gould, RE‐THINKING DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM AND SOCIAL COOPERATION IN POLITICS, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Seyla Benhabib, CRITIQUE, NORM, AND UTOPIA: A STUDY OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF CRITICAL THEORY (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986)

Burton Zwiebach, THE COMMON LIFE: AMBIGUITY, AGREEMENT, AND THE STRUCTURE OF MORALS (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988)     

Signifyin' and Intertextuality: Killer of Sheep and Black Independent Film *

A Very British History—Without the Whingers * * Cf. the Oxford English Dictionary: whinge /winj/ colloq. v.intr. whine, grumble peevishly, vd. gripe.

Peter Hennessy, Never Again—Britain, 1945–1951 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993).

Industrial Cities and Their Working Class: Notes on a Time Gone By

Robert A. Catlin, Black Politics and Urban Planning: Gary, Indiana 1980–1989 (The University Press of Kentucky, 1993).

Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race and Industrial Pollution in Gary, Indiana, 1945–1980 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Anthony M. Orum, City‐Building in America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995).

Against Green Gloom

Gregg Easterbrook, A Moment on The Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism (New York: Viking, 1995).

Talking Class(room)

Frances A. Maher and Mary Kay Thompson Tetreault, The Feminist Classroom: An Inside Look at How Professors and Students are Transforming Higher Education for A Diverse Society (New York Basic Books, 1994).

Working Out

Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio, The Jobless Future: Scitech and The Dogma of Work (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).     

The development of Singapore and Malaysia in regional context

Singapore. City‐State in South‐East Asia, by Philippe Régnier. Hurst & Company, London, 1991. xv + 301 pp. £27.50. ISBN 1–85065–053–5.

Growth Triangle. The Johor‐Singapore‐Riau Experience, edited by Lee Tsao Yuan. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore, 1991. x + 119 pp. $23.95. ISBN 981–3016–11–6.

The Malaysian Economy. Pacific Connections, by Mohammed Ariff. Oxford University Press, Singapore, Oxford and New York, 1991. xx + 216 pp. £27.50. ISBN 0–19–588564–3.     

Social capital and crime in New York City's low‐income housing

Abstract

This article presents evidence that components of social capital can play a prospective role in preventing crime in low‐income housing. It develops a conceptual approach to crime prevention involving social capital, alternative forms of ownership, and environmental design considerations. The study compares five programs that house New York City's poorest, mostly minority residents. The effectiveness of social capital in preventing crime is assessed using data from surveys of 487 buildings in Brooklyn, NY, and crime data from the New York City Police Department.

Results of the analysis indicate that three components of social capital—basic participation in tenant associations, tenant prosocial norms, and a building's formal organization—were all related to reducing various types of crime in the buildings under study 6 to 12 months after social capital was measured. The effectiveness of social capital was related to alternative ownership structures, building characteristics, and housing policy.     

Book reviews

Michael Parenti. Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. 208 pp. Endnotes; index.

Vicente Navarro. Dangerous to Your Health: Capitalism in Health Care. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993. Pp. 127. $10.00 paper.

Mobilizing the Community: Local Politics in the Era of the Global City, (1993), edited by Robert Fisher and Joseph Kling, Urban Affairs Annual Review, v. 41, Newbury Park, Ca.: SAGE.

Howard L. Reiter. Parties and Elections in Corporate America. New York: Longman, 1993. 315p. $26.95 paper.

Marcuse: From the New Left to the Next Left, edited by John Bokina and Timothy J. Lukes. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.     

Reviews and notes

Visions of Emancipation: The Italian Workers’ Movement since 1945, by Joanne Barkan. New York: Praeger, 1984.

Socialism in History: Political Essays of Henry Pachter, edited by Stephen Eric Bronner (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984).

The Anatomy of Job Loss: The How, Why and Where of Employment Decline. Doreen Massey and Richard Meegan. (N.Y.: Methuen, 1982. Pp. viii + 258.)

Shutdown at Youngstown: Public Policy for Mass Unemployment. Terry F. Buss and F. Stevens Redburn. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983. Pp. xv + 219.)

The Fight Against Shutdowns: Youngstown's Steel Mill Closing. Staughton Lynd. (San Pedro: Singlejack Books, 1982. Pp. xx + 244.)

Critical Studies in Organization and Bureaucracy. Frank Fischer and Carmen Sirianni, eds. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984.

The Politics of Terrorism. Michael Stohl, ed. 2nd ed., rev. and expanded. New York and Basel: Marcel Dekker, 1983. 473 pp.

The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression. Michael Stohl and George Lopez, eds. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984. 202 pp.     

New York city and subsidized housing: Impacts and lessons of the city's $5 billion capital budget housing plan

Abstract

New York City has devoted far more resources to the development and rehabilitation of affordable housing than any other U.S. city, investing more than $4 billion from 1986 to 1997. This article surveys the impact, status, and implications of New York's housing programs. It looks at correlations between publicly funded housing starts and changes in the housing stock, welfare rolls, and crime and at the economic impact of the city's housing investments within low‐income neighborhoods.

New York's housing programs have transformed neighborhoods, replacing large swaths of abandoned shells and vacant land with new housing and preserving thousands of buildings at risk of abandonment. While these housing investments correlate most strongly with reductions in vacant units and vacant lots, they also show significant correlations with reductions in welfare rolls and violent crime, but uneven economic impacts as well. New York's housing programs are important nationally less for the specifics of particular programs than for the institutional collaborations on which they are founded.