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Housing
Contents
Apartment Houses > Before
the Tenement Housing Options in the 1860s > Tenements
> Public Housing > Housing Abandonment
> Gentrification >
Homelessness > Immigrant
Housing today > Housekeeping in the Tenements
Homelessness
Homelessness has been a presence in New York
City since the Dutch first settled Manhattan Island in 1626. During
the ensuing three and a half centuries, a variety of approaches
have been taken by churches, municipal government, and countless
private charities in an effort to address the problem.
Historians have long debated the nature of poverty in American history,
but most agree that no clear line separated ordinary working people
from those in need of help because of periodic destitution. The
result of great social and economic transformations, poor and homeless
families were most often those caught in the upheavals of a society
undergoing unprecedented changes in the nature of work. As a result,
homelessness was often temporary or irregular. Nevertheless, between
1865 and the 1930s, as the nation made the difficult shift from
a primarily agrarian society to an urban and industrial one, a greatly
enlarged homeless population appeared.
For many workers, employment was sporadic regardless of the general
health of the economy. In 1900, about one-fifth of all workers in
the United States were out of work from one to twelve months. In
an era that predates unemployment insurance and/or workers compensation,
periodic employment often equaled periodic homelessness. A certain
number became vagrants because of the surplus labor created by these
conditions. Seasonal labor, the introduction of new machinery, and
the replacement of adult workers by child labor all created unemployment.
The resulting demoralization undoubtedly led many men and their
families into homelessness.
Periodic economic depressions and recessions, which resulted in
sharp increases in unemployment, invariably led to an increase in
the number of homeless. This was undoubtedly the case in the 1870s,
1890s, and the 1930s, when economic crises befell the American people.
The contemporary homeless population has not only grown, but has
taken on new dimensions. It contains a much greater number of mentally-ill
individuals than ever before. Entire families lose their homes as
their breadwinners face long-term unemployment and as the low-income
housing in the marginal areas of the city that once provided them
with a safety net is lost or destroyed by gentrification and development.
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