The Homeless.

Christopher Jencks is a wellknown academic (in fact, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University) whose previous writing and editing credits include a number of impressive books, among them The Urban Underclass, Who Gets Ahead: The Determinants of Economic Success, and The Academic Revolution (which includes a lengthy and shall we say interesting chapter, "Catholics and Their Colleges"). Compared to those tomes of considerable heft, The Homeless, which Jencks acknowledges is his first solo bookwriting effort, is blessedly short; moreover, its appendix material and notes account for one-quarter of its total page count.

The author explains in his preface that this present volume grew out of a review assignment for The New York Review of Books. Upon reading the two-part NYRB article (April 21 and May 12, 1994) in conjunction with the book, one realizes that the periodical and hardcover versions of Jencks's essay more than occasionally echo each other word for word. Reading the NYRB pieces, therefore, may well be sufficient. Whatever form one chooses, Jencks's words, accompanied by tables and figures, are profoundly intriguing and well worth reading. Without ideological bombast or promises of quick fixes, he explores the causes of homelessness in the United States in the 1980s and offers some "partial solutions" for the future.

First, how the homeless got to be that way. Jencks says it best himself.

As far as I can tell, the spread of homelessness among single adults was a byproduct of five related changes: the elimination of involuntary commitment, the eviction of mental hospital patients who had nowhere to go, the advent of crack, increases in long-term joblessness, and political restrictions on the creation of flophouses. Among families, three factors appear to have been important: the spread of single motherhood, the erosion of welfare recipients' purchasing power, and perhaps crack.

That's homelessness during the early 1980s. He also suggests that the expansion of the shelter system and soup kitchens may have been a factor in the rising number of homeless in the late eighties.

The "number" of homeless people is itself a vexing issue because counting the homeless is no easy task. First, someone must decide what a home is (and thus what it means to be without one). Armed with a definition of homelessness, one must find people who meet the criteria, a project that involves a whole new set of variables--whether they're located during the day or at night, whether they'll emerge from hard-to-find tunnels and abandoned buildings, whether they're willing to cooperate with interviewers, etc. Jencks confines his book to what he calls the "visible homeless," street people and shelter or welfarehotel clients, who numbered a few hundred thousand in the late eighties, according to his estimate (contrary to the figure of 2 to 3 million put forth by well-intentioned advocates for the homeless such as the late Mitch Snyder, a figure that was picked up by the media).

As Jencks reveals, the media weren't alone in distorting facts about the homeless and related issues. For a multitude of reasons, including ignorance, liberal and conservative policymakers and private citizens have sometimes been just plain incorrect about what causes homelessness and what can prevent or reverse the phenomenon. In fact, Jencks's book is at its maddening best when he shows how opposite political camps, whatever their intent, have both been involved in increasing homelessness. The reader feels as though Lewis Carroll's Alice were leading a tour through a looking-glass house with all its contradictions, but the final stop is neither house nor home: it's the streets.

For example, Jencks does a superb job of illuminating the process by which deinstitutionalization of mental patients, championed by many liberals, combined with the creation of Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income, an increasing tolerance of atypical behavior, and tax revolt converged in such a way that the mentally ill found themselves with nowhere to live. In addition, the experience of homelessness may cuause mental illness in people who might otherwise be reasonably healthy. One must also remember that not all homeless people are mentally ill. Some citizens fear violence among the mentally ill homeless, but not all are violent. This convoluted subject allows Jencks the opportunity to display two refreshing qualities, his willingness to admit he doesn't know something and his desire to venture a guess nonetheless: "...while I know no statistics on the matter, I suspect that when the homeless mentally ill are involved in violence they are as likely to be victims as aggressors."

And on Jencks moves through topics such as rent control, drug abuse, family ties, bad luck, and the American "can do" mindset, pointing out correct assumptions and shooting down mistaken notions (one of which he calls "breathtakingly wrong") about the gestalt of housing and homelessness. Most of the book focuses on problems, but the final chapter proposes some solutions as well: improved housing for the homeless in return for greater responsibility on their part; expanded rentsubsidy programs for homeless families; a day-labor market that would allow workers sufficient money at least to eat and rent space in a cubicle hotel (which would mean rewriting municipal codes and building in nonresidential areas); changes in the way we deal with the mentally ill; and a performance-contracting and voucher system so that providers of services to the homeless would be held accountable to a degree they are not now.

Not everyone will agree with Jencks point for point; maybe the eight books that inspired this volume (cited in The Homeless) will provide further reading. And Jencks's clear indication in his preface that this is not a book about individuals is accurate but troubling. Anyone who has worked with the homeless or has provided at least temporary housing for a friend or relative who would otherwise be homeless knows that "homeless" is not a collective noun. The homeless are individuals. Until such time as academics and government officials spend more time directly with homeless people, we may be doomed to perpetuate the status quo in which those making or suggesting policy have insufficient knowledge of the true needs and responsibilities of those homeless.

Robert Frost wrote in "The Death of the Hired Man" (1914), "Home is the place where, when you have to go there,/They have to take you in." The homeless and those concerned about them no doubt wish it were all that simple at this end of the century.