Public Policy Issues Affecting the Homeless in America

The issue of homelessness symbolizes and incorporates some of the most urgent public concerns in the United States today, and for the next several decades. Homelessness represents an intersection of five major public policy areas: first, the issue of growing poverty in the face of industrial prosperity, a widening income gap between rich and poor, and the disparity between educational preparation and occupational requirements; second, the issues raised by lifestyle-related health epidemics such as drug addiction and multi-substance abuse; third, the issue of mental health, which stubbornly remains one of America's major unrecognized health problems, with literally millions of organic, cognitive, personality, and affective disorders left untreated; fourth, the issue of housing, and whether and how the provision of dwellings is central to American requirements for "a human community" and a basic right to "the pursuit of happiness"; and fifth, the multiple issues raised by aging and long-term care, because as the nation's population ages, more and more of the elderly will be at risk for becoming homeless and will exert enormous pressure on government to provide long-term care.