Critics say that not enough of these were built, but Eide notes that CMHCs "served a different clientele with easier-to-treat maladies and, in some notable cases, didn't function as much of a medical facility but rather a center of political activism." While the number of mental health providers and spending on mental health vastly increased in the second half of the 20th century, much of this "went to people with milder mental health disorders." The idea originally was that those who were being served in psychiatric institutions would then make use of a new network of community mental health centers. So what has changed? The first is the prevalence of serious mental illness among the homeless due in large part to the widespread deinstitutionalization of the 1960s and '70s. Eide notes that "our focus on the connection between modern homelessness and drug addiction (crack was the concern in the 1980s, meth and opioids are now) can cause us to overlook how bad alcoholism was in former eras." Alcoholism and substance abuse have always been problems among the homeless. In a legally segregated society black people could not safely wander from place to place without shelter. Today's population is disproportionately black, while the homeless used to be almost entirely white. Indeed, the fact that these homeless of yore worked made them significantly different from today's homeless population, who are typically not employed. The hobos and tramps of the late nineteenth century took pride in having chosen to be homeless." "In our day homeless advocates strenuously deny that anyone chooses to be homeless. "These ‘knights of the tie and rail' eschewed steady work for independence and adventure," Eide writes. In earlier eras, hobos, tramps, and bums were all the subjects of sometimes humorous, sometimes romanticized portrayals in movies and music. Perhaps in part because homelessness was so common it was not thought of in the same way. In the late 19th century one historian estimated that between 10 and 20 percent of the populations had a family member who had used a homeless shelter. As Eide notes, "adjusted for population, any of those estimates would dwarf the current count of around 580,000." A researcher in the 1920s noted that the homeless population in Chicago alone was 30,000 in good times and 75,000 in hard times. Nationwide estimates in the early 20th century ranged from 500,000 to 5 million. The homeless population has always been predominantly men as it is today, but other aspects of it were different. To the substance: Eide first adds some important historical context to the debate. I hate to harp on a problem that is not entirely the fault of the author, but this is a topic that deserves broad (not just academic) attention and I might have skipped the 30-page bibliography in favor of spacing out the 150 pages of miniscule font a little more. The language is eminently readable unfortunately the actual text is not. (For instance, places like Detroit that have a much higher rate of crime also have much lower rates of homelessness.) Stephen Eide's new book, Homelessness in America: The History and Tragedy of an Intractable Social Problem, sheds new light on this issue. Though it is certainly true that population exodus during COVID and the retreat of law enforcement in the wake of the George Floyd protests contributed both to public disorder and violence in much of the country, the origins and expansion of homelessness in particular have a much longer and more complex history. The question of how we got to this point, though, is not as easily answered as it might seem. One friend had narrowly avoided a can of Redbull that was hurled at his head during a lunchtime stroll in midtown Manhattan. The effects have ranged from parks that reek of urine to people shooting up on street corners and pushing commuters in front of subway trains. As urban residents retreated from public spaces during the pandemic, homeless populations took over. Over the course of the past two years, cities across the United States have been dotted with people living on the streets. It's true, as they noticed, that the homeless encampments along the Potomac were more scenic and elaborately decorated than the ones in New York City. "Look, Mom, that one has a Christmas tree." That's what one of my kids yelled out while we were going with some friends to Teddy Roosevelt Island last winter.
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