and homelessness. Homeless people are homeless because they do not have a place to live. Homelessness is rooted hard and deep in poverty. Homeless people are poor people, and they come, overwhelmingly, from poor families. This holds that homelessness is no longer a matter, if it ever was, of a few unfortunate winos or crazy people falling through the cracks of our vaunted safety net. The connection between homelessness and poverty points to major system failures at the lower and sometimes middle levels of our wage-labor hierarchy. The major failure is the inability of the system, even in the best of times, to provide jobs for all who are able and willing to work. Every day, many millions of would be workers are told that our society has nothing for them to do, they are not needed, they and their dependents are surplus.Here in New York we have many excellent universities and colleges with equally excellent students who are taking course in the political sciences. If the government were to cooperate with these universities and colleges and have them work in conjunction with the current research groups, then the answer to decrease the homeless population would be effectively answered. Also an appropriate and affordable housing for individuals and families-houses, apartments, single room occupancy hotels, group homes would do more than simply reduce the number of homeless persons. Appropriate and affordable housing would also contribute importantly to the treatment and privation of a variety of social ills and individual tragedies, including homelessness itself. Surely homeless children who are moved into decent housing are less likely to become parents of homeless children than children who grow up homeless. Surely people who are mentally ill or alcoholic or drug-addicted and have a place of their own are more likely to stand still long enough to profit from a program of treatment than someone living in shelters and on the street. An emp...
