The McKinney Act

Estimates of their returns varied widely, in the main because of the bother of counting the stateless; the usual range utilize in public debate in the late mid-eighties was between 300,000 and three million persons (Answers, 1989, p. 45). Sossin (1996) estimated that, in New York City, the add up of homeless persons increased by 350 percent in the eighties (p. 635).

Many factors contributed to the countermand of homelessness:

(1) The shortage of low-rent lodging combined with a growing inequality of income and wealth. According to Sowell (1994), the overall problem was the "difficulty of building new housing sufficiently inexpensive to be afforded by very poor people" (p. 77). Time (1987) utter that in the eighties "the average rent grew twice as fast as the average income" (p. 45). The general prosperity of the post-war level had created a housing boom, principally targeted at those who could afford to leveraging their own home or condominium or conduct moderate to high rents. In the process, Magnet (1987) said that " tinny housing is being demolished, gentrified, or abandoned" (

Other important factors include a rise of alcoholism and drug addiction, the latter the result largely of the find out cocaine epidemic. The Futurist estimated in 1994 that 85 per cent of the homeless were mentally ill or substance-addicted ("Long-term", 1994, p. 56). Other factors included the declining rate of marriage among young mothers and increasing numbers of hoyden teenagers (Jencks, 1994, p. 39).

p. 170). High interest rates in the early 1980s and the collapse of the deregulated savings and loan industry curtailed the availability of financial support for low-income housing construction (Savela, 1991, p. 309).

After saying that "an immediate and unexampled crisis due to the lack of shelter for a growing number of individuals and families" existed and that "states, units of local government, and private voluntary organizations have been unable to understand the basic human needs of all the homeless," thus necessitating national assistantance, Congress stated that "the Federal Government has a pass responsibility . . . to fulfill a more effective and accountable role to meet the basic human needs and to get under one's skin respect for the human dignity of the homeless" (42 U.S.C. ? 11301(a)). The stated theatrical role of the McKinney Act was to establish an Interagency Council on the Homeless, to coordinate resources and programs, and to fund programs to "assist the homeless, with special emphasis on elderly persons, handicapped persons, families with children, primeval Americans and veterans" (? 11301(b)). Savela (1991) comments that "the Act's purpose is to assist the deserving poor, rather than homeless persons with 'personal pathologies' much(prenominal) as mental illness, alcoholism, or substance abuse" (p. 304).

acquire controls discouraged new construction in poor areas of the cities. Incomes of the mediate class stagnated in the 1980s, reducing its upward mobility to better housing and reducing the available supply of cheaper housing units. Particularly in short supply were single-room-o
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