Homeless families in St. Louis: A report from the field
In May, June, and September of 1998, 169 residents of the largest homeless shelter in Missouri were surveyed in response to the Institute for Children and Poverty's February 1998 request to continue research on homeless families in other areas of the country. Our findings corroborate the New York City data of the Institute for Children and Poverty (ICP), with these notable differences: ” For the women in our study, the experience of childhood violence and abuse was significantly higher than that reported in the ICP study. ” The number of children in homeless single-parent families in which the parent is beyond childbearing years was higher than the ICP-reported average (2.7 children). ” Older respondents were more likely to have graduated from high school than younger respondents. ” Compared to the ICP´ is respondents, fewer of our survey's respondents had previously lived on their own and more had stayed with family and friends. ” Significantly more residents in our study had no medical insurance. In addition, ” We gathered information on how many non-high school graduates had earned their GED and how many had attended or graduated from college. ” Our respondents were asked in what career fields they wanted to work. ” We gathered data on nicotine, alcohol, and drug abuse among our residents. ” We asked respondents if their children had the same father. Based on this survey, we concluded that programs for homeless children aimed at keeping them in school, improving their education, and helping them to form and realize career goals—as well as services such as counseling and mentoring—are necessary to keep homeless children from becoming homeless adults.
The Women Outside: Meanings and Myths of Homelessness
Drawing upon four year's experience as a volunteer in a shelter, the author offers a portrait of homeless women. Taking us inside shelters, out on the streets, and deep into the lives and experiences of homeless women, this book uses a wide-ranging scholarship to integrate a number of perspectives - historical, sociological, psychological, literary and mythic - in an investigation of women whom society fears, ignores and rejects. In their own words, we hear about the experiences of a variety of women: Norma, committed to a mental hospital by her husband, keenly intelligent, but fluctuating between violent ups and downs that prevent her from keeping a job; Deborah, who grew up in a close-knit Jewish neighbourhood and was discovered 40 years later by an old playmate as a bag lady on the street; Ellen, who lived for three years in a box on Ninth Avenue and lost several fingers to frostbite before she was coaxed inside by a group of nuns. In discussing these women and the nameless others populating our streets, Golden gleans larger insights into the meaning of female marginality. In a cultural analysis that moves from the 17th century to the present, Golden explores the truth about the mythology surrounding the "deviant" women who have lived apart from family or home - hoboes, tramps, witches and prostitutes - women whose forbidden female power and sexuality made them appear uncanny and threatening. The author casts the contemporary homeless women as the modern witch, who, like all marginal figures, serves a definite function for society simply by not being in it. In a reinterpretation of a Grimm fairy tale, the author forces the reader to reconsider how familiar images in literature and art reflect society's deep fear and suspicion of women who do not conform to cultural prescriptions of feminity. Asserting that these fears have shaped policy decisions about homeless women, the author debunks current stereotypes about the so-called mental illness of homeless women and calls for new public policies recognizing that homelessness is by and large a result not of individual pathology, but simply of a lack of affordable housing.
'New poverty' in the European Community
This article will first examine the changing terms of the debate on poverty in the member states of the European Community: exploring, in particular, the sorts of claims made by different political actors that recent trends in poverty are significantly different or 'new'. It will then summarise the available evidence as to the restructuring of the map of poverty during recent years and the social and economic causes of these changes. This will make it possible to come to some assessment as to how 'new' is the 'new poverty' and what new challenges for policy makers it poses.