Homelessness

"Homelessness is the condition of people without a permanent dwelling, such as a house or apartment. People who are homeless are most often unable to acquire and maintain regular, safe, secure and adequate housing. The legal definition of homeless varies from country to country, or among different jurisdictions in the same country or region. The term homeless may also include people whose primary night-time residence is in a homeless shelter, a domestic violence shelter, long-term residence in a motel, a vehicle, squatting, cardboard boxes, a tent city, tarpaulins, shanty town structures made of discarded building materials or other ad hoc housing situations. United States government homeless enumeration studies also include people who sleep in a public or private place not designed for use as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings."
-- Wikipedia: "Homelessness"

This article focuses (so far) on cultural history of homelessness and related concepts, and a bibliography.

Historical studies of concepts / terms

Ocobock, Paul. (2008). "Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective." https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1rfsq2g.4. (Introduction to A. L. Beier, A. L., and Paul Ocobock, eds. (2008). Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective. Ohio University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1rfsq2g). [Open Access].

Glasser, Irene. (1994). Homelessness in global perspective. New York: G.K. Hall Reference. LC-93-25087. Available for checkout at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/homelessnessingl0000glas.

Hopper, Kim, and Jim Baumohl. (1996). "Redefining the Cursed Word: A Historical Interpretation of American Homelessness." in Baumohl, Jim, ed. Homelessness in America (1996). Available for online loan at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/homelessnessinam00jimb.

Toro, Paul A. (2007). "Toward an International Understanding of Homelessness." Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 63, No. 3, 2007, pp. 461--481. https://www.tigweb.org/action-tools/projects/download/16281.pdf.

'homeless' first use in English: describing Odysseus, in Chapman's translation (1598) of Homer's Odyssey. (see discussion below).

From nomadism to vagabondage: the Cain and Abel tradition

Variations of the Cain and Abel story have often been interpreted as reflecting ancient conflicts between older nomadic groups or social strata -- 'Abel' meaning shepherd -- versus newer, agricultural economy represented by 'Cain', etymologically related to maker, metalsmith, 'getter', farmer; and later possibly to 'city' in the sense of property-owner / rent-taker.

In this analysis, Cain's killing of Abel represents the new culture/society's persecution of the older nomadic culture and peoples [Allen 2012]. Cain is punished by, ironically, casting him out to the "Land of Nod", where 'Nod' is etymologically related to both 'wander' (and thus vagrant, vagabond) and to shaking or instability. Cain is cast out by Yahwey to be "a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth" (Genesis 4:14, KJV translation). Cain's nomadism is therefore a corrupted or fallen version of the pastoral nomadism associated with Abel, a banishment and punishment rather than original state of freedom.

Cain later, however, becomes a "founder of cities," representing the regime of property and land rent and fixed dwelling, in its next iteration from agriculture to urban economy. The cities, in today's US as in ancient Israel, tend to prohibit and exclude the 'transient' or people inclined to it. The city is the home of scribes and priests, and historically, the writers and compilers of the Biblical scriptures including Cain and Abel story, e.g. in the Babylonian Exile when this possibly-Sumerian originated story, likely among the oldest elements in the Hebrew scriptures, was redacted into the Torah books.

In the ongoing, ambivalent and ironic cycle of the Biblical account's moral narrative, however, Cain dies by his house collapsing upon him, expressing the judgment upon cities and settlement and 'enclosure'. This may prefigures or symbolically represent subsequent Judaic peoples' experiences of having their cities / temples destroyed, and being cast into exile and a nomadic state of suspension, banishment, or re-founding (e.g. the Exodus from Egypt, seeking the Promised Land).

Wandering for home: the Odysseus figure

The first published appearance of 'homeless' in English (according to [Webb 2014] is describing Odysseus, in Chapman's translation (1598) of Homer's Odyssey. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Works_of_George_Chapman_Homer_s_Ilia/zWlKAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=homeless.

infelix

ut sit, qui vix locum invenire potest ubi consistat

Odysseus is the classical world and classical tradition's exemplary "wanderer" figure. Here's the opening of the Odysseus, in Robert Fitzgerald's translation (1961?):

"Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end...
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home."
-Homer, Odyssey, opening lines, Fitzgerald translation.

Vagrancy & Vagabondage

Ribton-Turner, Charles James (1887). A history of vagrants and vagrancy, and beggars and begging. London: Chapman and Hall, 1887.

"we may safely assume that vagrancy did exist on an extensive scale in Saxon times, and that otherwise we should not find laws dealing with it in the Statute Book. The lowest classes of the population were at that time sunk in bondage, in slavery as absolute as it is possible to conceive, and under which they were liable to the uncontrolled tyranny of master or mistress without power of appeal. This population was, as we have already seen, composed of several nationalities and tongues—the Anglo-Saxons proper, themselves divided into numerous dialects and tribes ; the races subject to them ; and later on, towards the close of the eighth century, the Danes and Norsemen."

"Slaves or theows were of two classes, those who were so by birth and those who became so as captives in war, or were reduced to slavery through crime, insolvency, gambling, superior legal power, voluntary surrender, or illegal violence... But the next in rank above the slave, the freedman or ceorl, suffered also from disabilities which he must often have desired to shake off."

"At the earliest period of Anglo-Saxon history a freedman became the 'man' of the master who had emancipated him, and had no right of choosing another lord."

"In Domesday Book [of William the Conqueror, after 1066] the privilege of leaving his land and changing his lord is spoken of as one of the distinguishing marks of the gesithcundman, or demi-noble."

"Vagrancy must consequently have been a natural result of such a state of things. The fugitive, with the brand of Cain on him, was a vagrant of necessity, hunted to death like a wolf...Add to this the restless desires of many to change their lot or to see something of the outer world, and we can form some idea of the leading causes of vagrancy."

"The first of these laws of which we have any record is that of Kings Hlothoere and Eadric, who respectively reigned in Kent from 673 to 685, and from 685 to 686. This law enacts that 'If a man entertain a stranger for three nights at his own home, a chapman [general dealer or itinerant shopkeeper], or any other that has come over the march, and then feed him with his own food, and he then do harm to any man, let the man bring the other to justice, or do justice for him.' The host therefore who entertained a stranger did so at the risk of incurring responsibility for any offence he might subsequently commit."

"a good many ceorls and a large number of theows were without doubt of Celtic race, and would therefore have a common bond of antipathy to the Saxon lord." (p.6-7).

"Though absolute slavery, that is the power of disposing of the body of the bondman in the open market apart from the property to which his services attached him, appears to have been forbidden by the law, it nevertheless con- tinued to exist as an article of traffic with foreign countries, prin- cipally owing to the connivance of the officers who ought to have put a stop to it, and partly possibly owing to the willingness of many to exchange their lot in the hope of bettering it."

"From the period of the Conquest the ceorl and the theow become the villanus or nativus, and the first law we meet with under William the Conqueror (1066—1087) deals with both classes under one title, that of the nativus or born servant or bondman."

"'It will be easily understood that when travelling was beset with so many inconveniences, private hospitality would be looked upon as one of the first of virtues, for people were often obliged to have recourse to it, and it was seldom refused. In the country every man's door was open to the stranger who came from a distance, unless his appearance were suspicious or threatening. In this there was a mutual advantage; for the guest generally brought with him news and information which was highly valued at a time when communication between one place and another was so slow and uncertain. Hence the first questions put to a stranger were, whence he had come, and what news he had brought with him.' -Wright." [attributed to source 'Wright' that is not further explained].

"we may here therefore appropriately review the condition of vagabondage as it existed from the date of the [Norman] Conquest. The evidence shows that the causes of vagrancy were numerous and varied. Some adopted it to escape slavery, some to save themselves from starvation or torture, some were compelled to adopt it through being deprived of the means of existence by the incursions of the Scotch and Welsh, or by those of armed bands of their own countrymen; some were driven to it by the royal and baronial exactions; some by the afforestation of their lands and the harsh forest laws; some were compelled or incited by their superiors to embark with them in a course of robbery and plunder and some no doubt adopted a nomadic life from the force of evil example or innate love of wandering or plundering.

"To set against all these incitements to vagrancy were two social gains, the cessation of the foreign slave trade and the acquisition of freedom from servitude to which villeins became entitled if they had lived unclaimed a year and a day in a town.*

* 'Also if slaves shall have remained unclaimed for a year and a day in our cities, boroughs, walled towns or castles, from that day let them be made free and remain free from the yoke of their slavery for ever.' Laws of William the Conqueror, xvi. (De Servis)."

"'The severity of the old forest laws of England has become a byword, and no wonder when we know that with the Conqueror a sovereign's paternal care for his subjects was understood to apply to red deer, not to Saxon men; and that accordingly of the two, the lives of the former alone were esteemed of any particular value. But it was not the severity merely that was, after the Conquest, introduced (whether into the spirit or into the letter of the forest laws is immaterial), but also to the vast extent of fresh land then afforested, and to which such laws were for the first time applied, that gave rise to so much opposition and hatred between the Norman conquerors and the Saxon forest inhabitants and that in particular parts of England infused such continuous vigour into the struggle commenced at the invasion, long after that struggle had ceased elsewhere. The Conqueror is said to have possessed in this country no less than sixty-eight forests,and these even were not enough; so the afforesting process went on, reign after reign.' -C. Knight." p.30.

"The concept was introduced by the Normans to England in the 11th century, and at the height of this practice in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, fully one-third of the land area of southern England was designated as royal forest." -Wikipedia, "Royal forest."

Vagrancy has been a term in use, and object of criminalization, since late Saxon times in England.

in English-language Bibles

Luke 9:58 King James Version (KJV)

58 And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

Hobos and tramps

'Hobo' and 'tramp' came from post-Civil War era, having different connotations, latter used more in UK.

'Traveller' is sometimes used as less-pejorative term, associated with and sometimes specifically meaning Gypsy or Roma-identified groups.

Rise of 'Homeless[ness]' usage in 1890s: cosmopolitanism and modernity

'Homeless' prior to the 1980s did not necessarily imply unhoused, but mostly meant disaffiliated. '

"I look at the emergence of the term homeless. I demonstrate that it was a term with no analytical meaning but a way to talk about urban problems; it arose in journalistic and activist responses to the urban boom. The term was first used to describe the city itself. The city was homeless because it embodied all that was other to the idea of the Christian home, which was itself the ideal locus for the bourgeois family. This family was ostensibly the last remnant of the Gemeinschaft, the rest of which the city had destroyed." [Webb 2014].

"I conclude this chapter by looking at some of the processes of rationalizing the city to redress its homelessness. The family and its locus in the home provided the solution to the problems of slums. The ordering processes were not just semantic—there were institutional, spatial, and political processes as well. The discourse on homelessness was part of the semantic restructuring of the city. In the third part of the chapter, we shall see that the processes of rationalizing the city first divided the city into a series of binaries and then, as we shall see in the next chapter, turned to myth to provide the means for othering the 'other half.' These efforts of ordering the city emanated from bourgeois reformers who sought to avert the urban explosions that had plagued New York City and Chicago in the form of riots and had plagued Paris in revolutionary uprisings." [Webb 2014].

"The spatial necessities for forming a Christian home extend beyond the domestic space to include the balance of this private space with the appro- priate uses of public space. The failure to maintain this division establishes a line that comes to distinguish the homeless population from the normative bourgeois subjectivities."

"After a year in the bustling multicultural metropolis of New York, Isabel and the children return briefly to their old home in Boston. They wandered through streets of puritanical orderliness and New England homo- geneity but found their South End house—which they had rented out to tenants—feels alien. The encounter of urban cosmopolitanism transformed the Marches and made a return to a simpler way of life impossible—a trans- formation of which the Marches were aware in this return trip:

"The Boston streets seemed very queer and clean and empty to the children, and the buildings little; in the horse-cars the Boston faces seemed to arraign their mother with a down-drawn severity that made her feel very guilty. She knew that this was merely the Puritan mask, the cast of a dead civilization, which people of very amiable and tolerant minds were doomed to wear, and she sighed to think that less than a year of the heterogeneous gayety of New York should have made her afraid of it . . . she was glad to go back to him [Basil] in the immense, friendly homelessness of New York, and hold him answerable for the change in her heart, or her mind, which made its shapeless tumult a refuge and a consolation."

"the homeless object (1) moves from the city to people and (2) begins to become the normative term for social displacement. This emergence as the categorical term for displacement begins in the fin-de-siècle period as homeless starts to subsume a range of older terms like vagrant or vagabond (as well as some newer ones like hobo or tramp). This second process is not completed until the Depression."

"Because of his far reach as essayist, journalist, lecturer, and reformer, [jacob] Riis’s work on the homelessness of the metropolis and homelessness in the city is foundational to subsequent discourse on homelessness. Riis both documented the problems and conditions that he called homeless and proposed responses for social activists and policy makers. His central importance to the discourse on homelessness rests in developing a vocabulary for new urban problems, documenting the conditions to be considered as homeless, invoking mythic tropes in his analyses of the homeless city...and in helping to set up the institutional responses that subsequently codified homelessness as a problem of social science and (eventually) policy."

"For in his time, 'homelessness' was as much (though not exclusively) a condition of the city as one of the individual. As a locus that brought together vice, poverty, greed, and unassimilated immigrants, the city, in Riis’s accounts, created the conditions of homelessness. This early homelessness is quite ambiguous. The term does not correspond to the groups it will ultimately describe in the process of becoming the normative category for social displacement (e.g., tramps, bums, and vagrants). Another ambiguity arises from the term’s role as a privative. At the time, the term was explicitly used as a negation of home—a connection that has been obscured by time."

"The early discourse on homelessness was always tied to social programs—it emerged from a normative project of making the city safe for the family."

Disaffiliation

Disaffiliation, or being disaffiliated from family and other social networks, has also been used in research studies back to earlier 20thC, especially in social-science contexts, pioneered by [University of] Chicago School in sociology. 'Transient' is a usage going back many decades, particularly associated with criminal classification and enforcement against the homeless, and now generally deprecated.

Houseless

Today, many advocates or people with experience of homelessness deprecate use of 'homeless', e.g. "homeless people", on the idea that it is defining people's identity based on what is only a transitory and inessential condition. Also, there is an idea that 'home' is something different than having housing, and a person without conventional housing may feel they have a 'home' in a certain location or community. (this actually revives in a way the earlier-20th concept that 'homeless' may not mean unhoused').

Some prefer 'unhoused' or 'houseless', others in more careful/official contexts may prefer "people experiencing homelessness, or abbreviated, PEH. 'Houseless' has the advantages that it can often be substituted in place of 'homeless' while sounding similar and maintaining 'H'-using acronyms. For example, there is an advocacy group/term HouselessFirst which may be referencing and implicitly critiquing the 'Housing First' model of homelessness response.

'Homelessness' doesn't really fall under the same criticism as 'homeless' does, because it describes a state rather than an identity. Nonetheless, some still don't like it and instead use e.g. 'houselessness'.

Looking at it in a larger context, of course many to most humans in our species' history have lived in what we would call transient or migratory patterns. That may be permanently nomadic, as has survived into modern times in Central Asia and Africa and subgroups like Roma / Traveller groups. Often it was seasonal migratory, possibly with homesteads and partial or full structures left in place in the off-season locations. Or, food-source migratory, following migrating animal herds or relocation of food-producing lands as climate and fertility shifted.

The portion of humanity living in what are considered displaced or refugee situations has now reached its highest point in history since the previous height just after WWII. It's now often predicted that climate-change disruption will increase this displacement to a higher level than ever in recorded history. Some, however, argue, that this will be essentially returning to a geological-scale terrestrial norm of wide climate fluctuations, after an anomolously-stable few millennia which gave rise to our present civilization of fixed agriculture, settlement, cities, and landed property.

Cultural history

Some view mobile vs fixed living as a fundamental cultural conflict that continues to play out, for example in discriminatory attitudes/laws regarding mobile and manufactured housing, more vs less permanent building forms, and residents of the less fixed, site-built, or permanent housing forms. (mobile/manufactured housing is largely disallowed in Portland, e.g.!). The founder of "landscape studies," John Brinckerhoff Jackson, is associated with this view, from his studies of mobile and light-weight housing forms in the U.S., e.g. classic essay "The Movable Dwelling and How It came to America." [Jackson 1984].

Homelessness, vagrancy in literature

- "romantic vagrancy"

Langan, Celeste. (1995). Romantic Vagrancy: Wordsworth and the Simulation of Freedom. Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 9780521035101.

- Whitman. "Song of the Open Road."

Crane, Stephen. (1890). Maggie, a Girl of the Streets.

Howells, William Dean. (1890). A Hazard of New Fortunes.

"the Anglo-Saxon home, as we know it in the Anglo-Saxon house, is simply impossible in the Franco- American flat—not because it’s humble, but because it’s false.”

1980s Relaunch of 'homeless'/'homelessness' terms

Molinar:

"The newer homelessness, especially since the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, is defined against and associated with stable, material housing and home as a place. Particularly, today’s conceptualization of homelessness evokes lack of affordable housing. 'Older' manifestations of what is now called homelessness, whether vagrancy, disaffiliation, or the 'forgotten man', bore a greater connection to lack of family and community rootedness, rather than to lack of a house. This was especially the case when 'homelessness' was seen mostly as a rural phenomenon. (DePastino 2003; Webb 2014)."

1990s on: Homelessness increasingly conflated to "chronic homeless[ness]"

Willse.

Other terms

In the UK, "rough sleeping" is commonly used to describe being unsheltered.

Marginality

On the concept of marginality see:

Robert E. Park, "Human Migration and the Marginal Man." American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 33 (1923), pp. 881-893;

E.V. Stonequist. The Marginal Man: A Study in Personality and Culture (New York: Scribners, 1937) ;

"There was a continuing decline in the economic need for unattached men" ... until in the public view they were considered unnecessary for the maintenance of the economy ... The unattached men of skid row effectively set apart from the rest of the community, ecologically isolated, and labeled deviant. Defined as inferior, alien or malicious, the skid row men were placed outside the network of contractual obligations and emotional controls of the community. Despite the retention of economic roles by many of them, their predominant status changed from worker to outcast."

J. F. Rooney, "Societal Forces and the Unattached Male: An Historical Review," in H. M. Bahr (ed.), Disaffiliated Man: Essays and Bibliography on Skid Row, Vagrancy and Outsiders (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), p. 21.

The located nature of "correct" activity is discussed at length in:

Erving. Goffman. Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings (New York: Free Press, 1963);

also Goffman (1971),

Federal Transient Program (1933-35)

The short-lived Federal Transient Program was the first, and until 1980s the only, US Federal program addressing homelessness issues.

"Shortly after taking office, President Roosevelt and the newly elected Democratic Congress created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which included the first federal program specifically for the homeless: the Federal Transient Program (FTP)." Terminated after 2 years.

"In replacing FERA with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Social Security, the Roosevelt administration shifted its focus from alleviating immediate suffering to helping struggling households remain intact, with men as breadwinners and women as caregivers."

"The result of this gender-based policy shift was an almost instantaneous revival of the transient crisis that had plagued the nation during the early 1930s. Breadlines, shantytowns, and hobo jungles sprang up like mushrooms, while lines of overloaded jalop- ies and freight trains filled to capacity with human cargo crisscrossed the continent."

Housing First

see main article: Housing First

from December, 2016 literature review and commentary [Kertesz et al 2016]:

"Advocates for ending homelessness have increasingly turned to a financial argument, claiming that permanent supportive housing will deliver net cost savings to society." "We believe the cost-savings argument is problematic and that it would be better to reframe the discussion to focus primarily on the best way to meet this population’s needs." "Higher-quality randomized, controlled trials...haven’t demonstrated net cost savings." "Staking the future of Housing First on the expectation that it will save money could undermine efforts to deliver an effective intervention to the majority of the population it’s intended to serve."

[Baxter et al 2019]:

"the data included in this review were exclusively from North America and the participants were all selected on the basis of complex health needs (such as mental illness, substance abuse or chronic physical illness) as per the principles of HF.16 17 This may limit the generalisability of our findings internationally, as well as to homeless people without complex health needs."

"Our systematic review found that HF resulted in large improvements in housing stability; with unclear short-term impact on health and well-being outcomes. For mental health, quality of life and substance use, no clear differences were seen when compared with TAU [Treatment As Usual].. HF participants showed a clear reduction in non-routine use of healthcare services, over TAU. This may be an indicator of improvements in health."

"Housing First approaches do not appear to consistently improve or harm health in the short-term, but long-term impacts are unknown."

Writings / work by the houseless

International Network of Street Papers

Homeless-run newspapers (street paper):
StreetRoots, Portland; and 100+ other cities.

Israel Bayer of Portland, longtime editor of Street Roots, is now working for INSP to launch a North American Bureau.

Faces of Homelessness Speakers’ Bureau

a program of the National Coalition for the Homeless

Invisible People / Mark Horvath

Doreen Traylor

a resident of coastal Washington State, Doreen has a background in urban studies and housing, and lived experience with homelessness, offers writing/editing services (see About page) and publishes about homelessness and related issues online in various places, including:

Note from Doreen:

"Here's another blog by a homeless person (I have read only part of one page, no clue how good most of it is)
https://nilskidoo.blackblogs.org/throwing-stones-at-the-mossbacks-gathered/." [page not loading when we tried it 11 Sept 2019].

Portland homeless shelters and housing

see main article Portland homeless shelters and housing

References

Films / recordings

City Club of Portland. "The Street Truth: What it Really Means to be Homeless in the Portland Region." City Club of Portland, Friday Forum event, March 14 2019.

John Tapogna, president of ECONorthwest, will share new research commissioned by Oregon Community Foundation, about the trends and causes of homelessness in the Portland region, and what these findings tell us about the outlook ahead. Our expert panel will take questions from the audience as we dive into the center of the housing crisis in our region, and seek the best path forward.
Event page & speaker/panelist information: http://www.pdxcityclub.org/calendar/?eid=11092.
Event video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YqDhJAnepo.
The event included showing of a short video from Street Roots and what is introduced as a then-new group, Here Together. This is the group/coalition that created the Metro Supportive Housing Services Ballot Measure.
Speakers:

Leo Rhodes is a Street Roots vendor and former board member, as well as a community organizer experienced in organizing tent cities in both Seattle and Portland. He co-founded Right 2 Dream Too and founded the annual Pitch a Tent event in Portland. He is a member of the Pima Tribe.

Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street Roots.

John Tapogna is President of ECONorthwest

Barbra Weber is committed to breaking stereotypes and misinformation about homelessness, and a committed advocate on issues regarding hygiene access for all. She is a Street Roots vendor and involved with many other organizations, including Sisters of the Road, Right 2 Survive, the Western Regional Advocacy Project, Trash for Peace, and Gather:Make:Shelter.

Moderator: Dani Ledezma is a senior advisor to Portland Public Schools. She comes to PPS from the Coalition of Communities of Color, where she had served as interim Executive Director.

Krantz, Christian (2015). Homefree: PDX - A Documentary on Homelessness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QZ2XCNF7c0. Made in 2015 when Krantz was a junior at La Salle High School, Portland.

Krantz, Christian. (2016?). Relying on Kindness - Homelessness In Portland Today. (documentary, 43 minutes.). Posted Sep 4, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uaIKO7lJY0.

Yates, Pam, and Peter Kinoy. Takeover. (1990). https://vimeo.com/42778583.

"Synopsis: We're dying in the streets — that should be against the law is the no-holds-barred attitude of the homeless men and women who are taking control of their lives and taking over empty houses in Pam Yates and Peter Kinoy's tough, effective film. Funded by Bruce Springsteen, Takeover was shot simultaneously in eight U.S. cities on May 1, 1990 as homeless people risked arrest occupying properties foreclosed by the Federal government." PBS Premiere: Aug. 10, 1992.

Articles/papers

Allen, John J. (2011). "The Mixed Economies of Cain and Abel: An Historical and Cultural Approach." Conversations with the Biblical World, Vol 31. https://www.academia.edu/5122071/The_Mixed_Economies_of_Cain_and_Abel_An_Historical_and_Cultural_Approach.

Baxter AJ, Tweed EJ, Katikireddi SV, et al [Baxter 2019]. "Effects of Housing First approaches on health and well-being of adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials." J Epidemiol Community Health 2019;73:379-387. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jech-2018-210981.

Blanchard, Dave. [2012]. "Designing for Homelessness." [interview with Linly Bynam, Teddy Cruz, & Sergio Palleroni]. OPB Think Out Loud, October 3rd 2012. https://www.opb.org/radio/programs/thinkoutloud/segment/architecture-homeless/. MP3: https://www.opb.org/audio/download/?f=tol/segments/2012/100303.mp3

Burman, Kara Grace. "Liminal Dwelling: Support for Street Residents, a Place of Re-integration and Transition." M.Arch thesis, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. March 2017. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h0cHFZRzSixeT_MzozrEY2iELeuORwqb/view?usp=sharing.

Burt, Martha, et al. (2001) "Helping America's Homeless: Emergency Shelter or Affordable Housing?" 7 (2001).

Burt, M. R. (2003). "Chronic Homelessness: Emergence of a Public Policy." Fordham Urban Law Journal 30(3) pp.1267–79.

Butigan, Ken. "Olympia’s homeless win struggle for permanent housing." ["With the opening of Quixote Village, an innovative compound of 30 small cottages and a community center in Olympia, Wash., the six-year struggle of the homeless has finally paid off"]. Waging Nonviolence, January 3, 2014. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2014/01/olympias-homeless-win-housing/.

Canadian Observatory on Homelessness (COH). “Canadian Definition of Homelessness.” 2012, revised 2017.
http://www.homelesshub.ca/homelessdefinition.

Coalition on Homeless, Dilara Yarbrough, and Chris Herring (2015). "Punishing the Poorest: How the Criminalization of Homelessness Perpetuates Poverty in San Francisco." https://www.academia.edu/13087174/Punishing_the_Poorest_How_the_Criminalization_of_Homelessness_Perpetuates_Poverty_in_San_Francisco.

Cohen, Rebecca, Will Yetvin, & Jill Khadduri, for Abt Associates (2019). "Understanding Encampments of People Experiencing Homelessness and Community Responses: Emerging Evidence as of Late 2018." US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, January 7, 2019. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Understanding-Encampments.pdf.

Corinth, K., 2017. “The impact of permanent supportive housing on homeless populations.” Journal of Housing Economics 35: 69–84.

Council of Economic Advisers. "The State of Homelessness in America." September 2019. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/The-State-of-Homelessness-in-America.pdf.

Culhane, Dennis P. & Stephen Metraux. "Rearranging the Deck Chairs or Reallocating the Lifeboats? Homelessness Assistance and Its Alternatives." Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol 74, Issue 1, 2008, pp111-121. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360701821618. [full text available].

Dinh, Tran and Brewster, David and Fullerton, Anna and Huckaby, Greg and Parks, Mamie and Rankin, Sara and Ruan, Nantiya and Zwiebel, Elie (2018). "Yes, In My Backyard: Building ADUs to Address Homelessness. University of Denver Sturm College of Law Homeless Advocacy Policy Project, May 3, 2018. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3173258 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3173258.

Evans, Krista (2020). "Tackling Homelessness with Tiny Houses: An Inventory of Tiny House Villages in the United States." The Professional Geographer, 29 Apr 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2020.1744170.

Evans, William N., David C. Philips, and Krista J. Ruffini. [Evans 2019] "Reducing and Preventing Homelessness: A Review of the Evidence and Charting a Research Agenda." Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab / NBER Working Paper 26232, September 2019. http://www.nber.org/papers/w26232; https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sJ5FSfrtx5YE0i_AuacH7Yz_JNMOIfRn/view?usp=drivesdk.
https://www.povertyactionlab.org/sites/default/files/publications/reducingpreventing-homelessness-review-research-agenda.pdf.

Feldman, Leonard C. (2004). Citizens without Shelter: Homelessness, Democracy, and Political Exclusion. Cornell University Press, 2004.

Gans. Herbert J. (1972). "The Positive Functions of Poverty." The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 2. (Sep., 1972), pp. 275-289. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/225324. PDF: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WKowlKxe89TBf4HWMCgipAY_-c9a_YLR.

"Abstract: Mertonian functional analysis is applied to explain the persistence of poverty, and fifteen functions which poverty and the poor perform for the rest of American society, particularly the affluent, are identified and described. Functional alternatives which would substitute for these functions and make poverty unnecessary are suggested, but the most important alternatives are themselves dysfunctional for the affluent, since they require some redistribution of income and power. A functional analysis of poverty thus comes to many of the same conclusions as radical sociological analysis, demonstrating anew Merton's assertion that functionalism need not be conservative in ideological outlook or implication."

Glasser, Irene. (1994). Homelessness in global perspective. New York: G.K. Hall Reference. LC-93-25087. Available for checkout at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/homelessnessingl0000glas.

Goodman, S., P. Messeri, and B. O’Flaherty. 2017. “Homelessness prevention in New York City: On average, it works.” Journal of Housing Economics 31: 14–34.

Gragg, Randy. "Guerrilla City." Architecture, May 2002. https://saveferalhumanhabitat.wordpress.com/2002/12/27/guerrilla-city-a-homeless-settlement-in-portland-has-its-own-government-urban-plan-and-skyline/.

“In its ‘permasite’ configuration, Dignity Village could potentially be a working model for a new type of truly sustainable, high density and mixed use, organically developing urban village model. If developed according to Dignity Villages wishes, the village would enhance Portland’s reputation as being the most green city in America. ... Dignity Village hopes to become a demonstration site for solar and wind power, permaculture, environmental restoration, stormwater and greywater reuse and innovative use of recycled materials and alternative building techniques for construction.

Hayes, Ted. "History of JHUSA" [Justiceville/Homeless, USA - i.e. Dome City, Los Angeles]. http://www.tedhayes.us/domevillage/JHUSA.html. Accessed 18 October 2019.

Heben, Andrew (2011). “Inside Tent Cities,” Planning Magazine, 2011.

___. (2012). “From Camp to Village.” Communities Magazine, 2012.

___. (2013). "Opportunity Village: for and by the homeless.” The Global Urbanist, 2013.

___. (2014b). "It Takes a Village" Tiny House Magazine, 2014.

___. (2014a). Tent City Urbanism: From Self-Organized Camps to Tiny House Villages. (2014).

Hayes, Ted. "History of JHUSA" [Justiceville/Homeless, USA - i.e. Dome City, Los Angeles]. http://www.tedhayes.us/domevillage/JHUSA.html. Accessed 18 October 2019.

Herring, Christopher (2014). "The New Logics of Homeless Seclusion:Homeless Encampments in America's West Coast Cities." City & Community, 23 December 2014. https://doi.org/10.1111/cico.12086. PDF: https://www.academia.edu/15061831/The_New_Logics_of_Homeless_Seclusion_Homeless_Encampments_in_America_s_West_Coast_Cities_2014_City_and_Community_Vol_13_No._4_285-309.

Herring, Christopher (2015a). "The Roots and Implications of the USA's Homeless Tent Cities." City, Vol. 19, No. 5, 689-701, 2015. (co-authored with Manuel Lutz): https://chrisherringdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/herring-and-lutz-2015-city.pdf.

Herring, Christopher (2015b). "Evicting the Evicted: Five Misleading Rationales for Homeless Camp Evictions." Progressive Planning Magazine, Fall 2015, 29-32. https://chrisherringdotorg.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/ppm_fall2015_herring.pdf.

Herring, Christopher (2015c). "Tent City, America." Places Journal. December 2015. https://placesjournal.org/article/tent-city-america/.

Herring, Christopher (2015d). "Sheltering Those in Need: Architects Confront Homelessness" (Introductory Essay for the 2016 Berkeley Prize). https://www.academia.edu/16404074/Sheltering_Those_in_Need_Architects_Confront_Homelessness_2015_Introductory_Essay_for_the_2016_Berkeley_Prize.

Herring, Christopher, and Dilara Yarbrough, Lisa Alatorre (2019). "Pervasive Penality: How the Criminalization of Poverty Perpetuates Homelessness." Social Problems, 2019, 0, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spz004. https://www.academia.edu/38928064/Pervasive_Penality_How_the_Criminalization_of_Poverty_Perpetuates_Homelessness_2019_Social_Problems.

Holtzman, Ben. "When the Homeless Took Over." ["As the homeless and affordable housing crises become a focus on local and national campaigns, we must remember the rich history and critical contributions of homeless organizers."]. Shelterforce, October 11, 2019. https://shelterforce.org/2019/10/11/when-the-homeless-took-over/.

Hopper, Kim, and Jim Baumohl. (1996). "Redefining the Cursed Word: A Historical Interpretation of American Homelessness." in Baumohl, Jim, ed. Homelessness in America (1996). Available for online loan at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/homelessnessinam00jimb.

Jackson, John Brinckerhoff (J.B.). "The Movable Dwelling and How It came to America." New Mexico Studies in the Fine Arts, 1982; reprinted in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, Yale University Press, 1984. "the%20movable%20dwelling"&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=l0J4gVZFpqEC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PR7&vq=%22the%20movable%20dwelling%22&pg=PA89#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Jencks, Christopher. (1994). The Homeless. Harvard University Press, 1994.

Kavick, Ray. "First week at Camp Quixote." Works In Progress (Thurston County Rainbow Coalition), March 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20140605060803/http://www.olywip.org/archive/page/article/2007/03/02.html.

Kerouac, Jack. "The Hobo in America", in Lonesome Traveller.

Kertesz, S. G., and G. Johnson. 2017. “Housing First: Lessons from the United States and Challenges for Australia.” Australian Economic Review 50, no. 2: 220–28

Kertesz, Stefan G. Kertesz, M.D., Travis P. Baggett, M.D., M.P.H., James J. O’Connell, M.D., David S. Buck, M.D., M.P.H., and Margot B. Kushel, M.D. "Permanent Supportive Housing for Homeless People — Reframing the Debate." New England Journal of Medicine 2016; 375:(article). https://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1608326. Full text.

Levinson, David, ed. (2004). Encyclopedia of Homelessness. http://1.droppdf.com/files/uMBPZ/encyclopedia-of-homelessness.pdf. Some entries particularly noted (these have individual authors, to be noted):

"Abeyance." (p.29) - a term borrowed from historical sociology.
"Autobiography and Memoir." - (p.51)
- Tom Kromer. Waiting for Nothing (1935)
- Lee Stringer. Grand Central Winter.
- Eighner, Lars. (1993). Travels with Lizbeth.
- David Wojnarowicz, The Waterfront Journals.
- Orwell, George. (1933). Down and out in London and Paris.
"Homelessness, International perspectives on." (p. 239)
"Images of Homelessness in Contemporary Documentary Film." (p.289)
"Images of Homelessness in Narrative Film, History of." (p.291)
"Images of Homelessness in 19th and 20th Century American Literature." (295)
"Liminality." (p.354)
"Literature, Hobo and Tramp." (p.356)
"Marginality." (p.393).
"Mobility." (p.413)
"Municipal Lodging Houses." (p.421)
"Poorhouses / poor relief." (p.480).
"Right to Shelter." (p.360).
"Self-Help Housing." (p.519).
"Skid Row Culture and History." (p.534)
"Vagrancy." (p.608).
"Appendix 1: Bibliography of Autobiographical and Fictional Accounts of Homelessness." (p.650)
"Appendix 2: Filmography of American Narrative and Documentary Films on Homelessness." (p.654)
"Appendix 4: Documentary History of Homelessness."

Loftus-Farren, Zoe (2011). "Tent Cities: An Interim Solution to Homelessness and Affordable Housing Shortages in the United States." California Law Review, Vol. 99, No. 4 (August 2011), pp. 1037-1081. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uVh5h2ApWpUkutmo224euDMyodPmQSYY.

Lubenau, Anne-Marie. "Site Visit: A Tiny House Village in Olympia Offers a New Model for Housing the Homeless." ["Quixote Village is a self-managed community that provides permanent, supportive housing for homeless adults"]. Metropolis Magazine, April 20, 2015. https://www.metropolismag.com/architecture/residential-architecture/site-visit-a-tiny-house-village-in-olympia-offers-a-new-model-for-housing-the-homeless/.

Lucas, D. S. 2017. “The impact of federal homelessness funding on homelessness.” Southern Economic Journal 84, no. 2: 548–76. Manuscript.

Abstract:
"Federal spending on homelessness has increased significantly in recent years. I estimate the relationship between federal homelessness funding and homeless counts in 2011, 2013, and 2015 cross sections. I instrument for funding using a community’s pre-1940 housing share, a key variable in an originally unrelated funding formula borrowed for homelessness grants. Funding increases sheltered homelessness; meanwhile, funding is unrelated to unsheltered homelessness. Lower bound estimates suggest that the minimum cost of reducing unsheltered homelessness has increased over time, from $16,400 in 2011 to $20,800 in 2013 to $50,000 in 2015. In 2013, an additional $1 thousand dollars corresponds to a .309 higher homeless rate per 10,000 people. The effect is larger for families than individuals. Funding is positively related to chronic homelessness and is unrelated to youth and child homelessness. My results suggest limitations on federal funding’s ability to reduce homelessness among some of the most marginalized groups in society."

Ly, A., and E. Latimer. 2015. “Housing first impact on costs and associated costs offsets: A review of the literature.” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 60, no. 11: 475–87.

Marcuse, Peter. (1988). "Neutralizing Homelessness." Socialist Review, 1988. issue 1.

McCormick, Tim (2015). "Tiny Houses for the Homeless in San Francisco?" Medium, Nov 18, 2015. https://medium.com/@tmccormick/tiny-houses-for-the-homeless-in-san-francisco-5c87ca5625db.

Mingoya, Catherine. (2015). “Building Together. Tiny House Villages for the Homeless: A Comparative Case Study.” Unpublished master’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. https://dusp.mit.edu/sites/dusp.mit.edu/files/attachments/news/mingoya_2015.pdf.

Mitchell, Don. (2011). "Homelessness, American Style." Urban Geography, 32:7, 933-956, https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.32.7.933.

Mitchell, Don. "Tent Cities: Interstitial Spaces of Survival." in Brighenti, Andrea Mubim ed. Urban Interstices: The Aesthetics and the Politics of the In-between. Ashgate Publishing, 2013. [reprinted with minor changes in Mean Streets: Homelessness, Public Space, and the Limits of Capital(2020)]. [see also Don Mitchell for discussion/excerpts].

Mosher, Heather Irene, "Participatory Action Research with Dignity Village: An Action Tool for Empowerment Within a Homeless Community" (2010). Portland State University, Dissertations and Theses. Paper 36. http://doi.org/10.15760/etd.36.

National Coalition for the Homeless. "Hoboes, Bums, Tramps: How Our Terminology of Homelessness Has Changed." June 14, 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135708/http://nationalhomeless.org/hoboes-bums-tramps/.

NCH - National Coalition for the Homeless (2010). "Tent Cities in America: A Pacific Coast Report." https://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/Tent%20Cities%20Report%20FINAL%203-10-10.pdf. Acknowledgements: "Many thanks to the staff, fellows, interns and volunteers of the National Coalition for the Homeless who helped prepare this report. Special thanks to:

Christopher Herring, Research Fellow
Lauren Tatro, Student Intern, College of the Holy Cross, class of 2010
Katherine Streit, Student Intern, American University, class of 2011
Lindsey Merritt, Student Intern, James Madison University, class of 2010
Michael Stoops, Director of Community Organizing, National Coalition for the Homeless
Neil J. Donovan, Executive Director, National Coalition for the Homeless

NLCHP - National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (2017). "Tent City, USA: The Growth of America’s Homeless Encampments and How Communities are Responding." https://nlchp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Tent_City_USA_2017.pdf.

NLCHP - National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (2019). "Housing Not Handcuffs 2019: Ending the Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities." December 2019. http://nlchp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/HOUSING-NOT-HANDCUFFS-2019-FINAL.pdf.

Ocobock, Paul. (2008). "Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective." https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1rfsq2g.4. (Introduction to A. L. Beier, A. L., and Paul Ocobock, eds. (2008). Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective. Ohio University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1rfsq2g). [Open Access].

O’Flaherty, Brendan. 2019. “Homelessness Research: A Guide for Economists (and Friends).” Journal of Housing Economics 44 (2019): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhe.2019.01.003. Accepted manuscript: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gxVex3Ph82h6sRVilNkfWzvS4GsB6gGN.

Ortiz, Javier and Dick, Matthew and Rankin, Sara. "The Wrong Side of History: A Comparison of Modern and Historical Criminalization Laws." (May 4, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2602533 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2602533.

Parr, Evanie and Rankin, Sara (2018). "It Takes a Village: Practical Guide for Authorized Encampments." Seattle University Homeless Rights Advocacy Project, May 3, 2018. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3173224.

Parsell, Cameron. "Homelessness, Identity, and our Poverty of Ambition." Keynote address at 14th European Research Conference on Homelessness. 20 September 2019, Helsingborg, Sweden. Presentation slides: https://www.feantsaresearch.org/public/user/Observatory/2019/2019_conference/ppts/Plenary_-_Cameron_Parsell_-_Keynote_Europe_September_2019.pdf. Video: https://www.facebook.com/FEANTSA/videos/515174705720867/ (2:40 - 33:20).

"We overserve people who are experiencing homelessness, and this overservicing represents one of the key barriers to actually ending it." (near start). "Homelessness exists in Australia and increases because actually we pity them, we pity them as someone deficient, as the downtrodden, as a group of people that we want to exercise our compassion towards. Whereas a few years ago we were talking about justice, we were talking about evidence, we were talking about ending homelessness, this is what we're doing in Australia now: we're actually giving brand new vans and washing machines, and driving around washing their clothes."

Parsell, Cameron, and Beth Watts. Charity and Justice: A Reflection on New Forms of Homelessness Provision in Australia. European Journal of Homelessness, Vol 11, No. 2, December 2017. https://www.feantsaresearch.org/download/think-piece-12032277176126500690.pdf.

"Abstract: Charity directed at people who are homeless is invariably portrayed as positive. The good intentions of the provider of charity are not only lauded, but equated with positive outcomes for the receiver. The often severe material deprivation experienced by those who are homeless appears to justify the celebration of an extremely low bar of resource provision. Extending what has been the historic provision of food, drinks, blankets, and other day-to-day means of survival, contemporary charity in Australia also includes the provision of mobile shower, mobile clothes washing, and mobile hair dressing facilities. The emergence of similar ‘novel’ interventions to ‘help the homeless’ are seen in a wide range of other countries. In this paper we examine the consequences of providing charity to people who are homeless; consequences for the giver, receiver, and society more broadly. Drawing on the ideas of Peter Singer and the ‘effective altruist’ movement as a possible corrective to this prevailing view of charity, we suggest that such charitable interventions may not only do little good, but may actually do harm. We further argue that justice is achieved when inequities are disrupted so that people who are homeless can access the material condition required to exercise autonomy over how they live, including the resources required to wash, clothe and feed themselves how and when they choose."

Przybylinski, Stephen. (2020). "Securing legal rights to place: mobilizing around moral claims for a houseless rest space in Portland, Oregon." Urban Geography. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2020.1719307. [focuses on Right 2 Dream Too rest area].

Pleace, Nicholas. "The Ambiguities, Limits and Risks of Housing First from a European Perspective." European Journal of Homelessness, Vol 5, No. 2, December 2011. https://www.feantsaresearch.org/download/think-piece-1-38189457923603932070.pdf.

Quigley, John M, Stephen Raphael, and Eugene Smolensky. "Homelessness in California." Public Policy Institute of California, 2001. http://www.ppic.org/publication/homelessness-in-california/. Moulton, S. 2013. “Does increased funding for homeless programs reduce chronic homelessness?” Southern Economic Journal 79, no. 3: 600–20.

Quigley, J. M., S. Raphael, S., and E. Smolensky. 2001. “Homeless in America, Homeless in California.” Review of Economics and Statistics 83, no. 1: 37–51.

Rankin, Sara K. Rankin 2015. "A Homeless Bill of Rights (Revolution)." https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1532.

Rankin, Sara K. "Hiding Homelessness: The Transcarceration of Homelessness," (Posted 26 Dec 2019; Last revised: 25 Feb 2020. Forthcoming in California Law Review. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3499195).

Seattle Weekly Editorial Board. “There’s Lots to Love About Mike O’Brien’s RV Ordinance.” Seattle Weekly, 16 Aug 2017. http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/theres-lots-to-love-about-mike-obriens-rv-ordinance/.
"The proposal forces a much needed conversation about those living in cars in Seattle."

Sisson, Patrick. "Can real estate crowdfunding help the homelessness crisis?" Curbed, 22 Dec 2017.
https://www.curbed.com/2017/12/22/16810524/portland-homeless-crowdfunding-real-estate.
[on Jolene’s First Cousin project in Portland which offers a new, community-supported strategy to tackle homelessness].

Sparks, Tony (2009). As Much Like Home as Possible: Geographies of Homelessness and Citizenship in Seattle’s Tent City 3 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 2009). https://geography.washington.edu/printpdf/research/graduate/tony-sparks-phd.

Sparks, Tony. "Citizens without property: Informality and political agency in a Seattle, Washington homeless encampment." Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. September 20, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16665360. from Abstract:

"This article attempts to broaden and deepen the conversation on informal dwellings in the US by focusing on the tent encampment as a site of creative political agency and experimentation. Drawing upon a body of work referred to by some as “subaltern urbanism”, I examine how everyday practices of camp management produce localized forms of citizenship and governmentality through which “homeless” residents resist stereotypes of pathology and dependence, reclaim their rational autonomy, and recast deviance as negotiable difference in the production of governmental knowledge. Consideration of these practices, I argue, opens up the possibility of a of a view of encampments that foregrounds the agency of the homeless in the production of new political spaces and subjectivities."

Sparks, Tony. (2016). "Neutralizing Homelessness, 2015: Tent cities and ten year plans." Urban Geography, 38(3), 348–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2016.1247600.

Toro, Paul A. (2007). "Toward an International Understanding of Homelessness." Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 63, No. 3, 2007, pp. 461--481. https://www.tigweb.org/action-tools/projects/download/16281.pdf.

Tucker, William.¹ (1990). "The Source of America's Housing Problem: Look in Your Own Back Yard." Policy Review (The Cato Institute), February 6, 1990. https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa127.pdf. ¹William Tucker is a former media fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of The Excluded Americans: Homelessness and Housing Policies, Regnery Gateway 1990).

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. "Robert Martin v. City of Boise, No. 15-35845." Opinion issued September 4, 2018. https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2018/09/04/15-35845.pdf.

USICH - United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (2012). "Searching Out Solutions: Constructive Alternatives to the Criminalization of Homelessness." June 2012. https://www.usich.gov/tools-for-action/searching-out-solutions/.

USICH (2015). "Ending Homelessness for People Living in Encampments Advancing the Dialogue." August, 2015. https://www.usich.gov/resources/uploads/asset_library/Ending_Homelessness_for_People_Living_in_Encampments_Aug2015.pdf.

Books

Anderson, Nels. The hobo; the sociology of the homeless man (1923). Full text at Internet Archive.

Baumohl, Jim, ed., for the National Coalition for the Homeless (1996). Homelessness in America. Oryx Press, 1996. Google Books preview: https://books.google.com/books/about/Homelessness_In_America.html?id=9QGNV5dXevcC.
Chapters:

"Redefining the Cursed Word: A Historical Interpretation of American Homelessness" (Kim Hopper and Jim Baumohl)
"Homelessness: Definitions and Counts" (Martha R. Burt);
"The Causes of Homelessness" (Paul Koegel, M. Audrey Burnam, and Jim Baumohl);
"Housing Policy: A General Consideration" (Cushing N. Dolbeare);
"Why the Road off the Street is Not Paved with Jobs" (Bristow Hardin);
"Income Maintenance: Little Help Now, Less on the Way" (Mark H. Greenberg and Jim Baumohl).
"Rural Homelessness: A Synopsis" (Laudan Y. Aron and Janet M. Fitchen).
"Material Survival Strategies on the Street: Homeless People as Bricoleurs" (David A. Snow, Leon Anderson, Theron Quist, and Daniel Cress);
"Homeless Veterans" (Robert Rosenheck, Catherine A. Leda; Linda K. Frisman; Julie Lam, and An-Me-Chung).
"Homeless Families are Different" (Marybeth Shinn and Beth C. Weitzman);
"Homelessness among African Americans: A Historical and Contemporary Perspective" (Kim Hopper and Norweeta G. Milburn);
"Homelessness and the Latino Paradox" (Susan Gonzalez Baker). Part 3, "Responses to Homelessness," includes:
"Public Attitudes and Beliefs about Homeless People" (Bruce G. Link, Jo C. Phelan, Ann Stueve, Robert E. Moore, Michaeline Bresnahan, and Elmer L. Struening);
"Municipal Regulation of the Homeless in Public Spaces" (Harry Simon);
"The Federal Response: The Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act" (Maria Foscarinis);
"Responses by the States to Homelessness" (Vicki Watson);
"Responding to the Needs of Homeless People with Alcohol, Drug, and/or Mental Disorders" (Deirdre Oakley and Deborah L. Dennis);
"Preventing Homelessness" (Eric N. Lindblom); and
"Dilemmas of Local Antihomelessness Movements" (Rob Rosenthal). An appendix presents information clearinghouses, national organizations, and state organizations.

Baxter, Ellen, and Kim Hopper. Private Lives / Public Spaces (1981).

Beier, A. L., and Paul Ocobock, eds. (2008). Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective. Ohio University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1rfsq2g. [Open Access].

Blau, Joel. The Visible Poor: Homelessness in the United States (1992). Boden, Paul, et al (2015). House Keys Not Handcuffs. Freedom Voices, 2015.

Borges, Sofia, and R. Scott Mitchell (2018). Give Me Shelter: Architecture Takes on the Homeless Crisis. ORO Editions, February 1, 2018)

"Give Me Shelter documents the work of the MADWORKSHOP Homeless Studio at the USC School of Architecture and their solutions for tackling the Los Angeles homeless crisis through design, compassion, and humanity. The book features exclusive content from leaders in the field including Michael Maltzan, Ted Hayes, Betty Chinn, Gregory Kloehn, Skid Row Housing Trust, and many more. Paired with a forward by Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, Give Me Shelter provides an in-depth look at how design can bridge the gap in services to get people off the streets and into housing sooner."

Burt, Martha M. (1993). Over the Edge: The Growth of Homelessness in the 1980s. Russell Sage, Foundation, 1993. ISBN 9781610440998.

Burt, Martha R. Over the Edge: The Growth of Homelessness in the 1980s. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992.
Amazon preview: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0871541785/. Google Books preview: https://books.google.com/books?id=doK4BgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false/.

DePastino, Todd (2003). Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America. University of Chicago Press, 2003. http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=7AE2D6F25EA8B48C1CF022A588C15B2B.

Desmond, Matthew. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016). PDF. ePub.

Eighner, Lars. (1993). Travels with Lizbeth.

Ellen, Ingrid Gould, and Brendan O'Flaherty, Editors. How to House the Homeless (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010).

Summary, Table of Contents, from publisher.
Chapter 1: Introduction, by Ingrid Gould Ellen and Brendan O’Flaherty. PART I HELPING PEOPLE LEAVE HOMELESSNESS
Chapter 2: "Service Models and Mental Health Problems: Cost-Effectiveness and Policy Relevance." by Robert Rosenheck. In Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=Gr5WAwAAQBAJ.
Chapter 3 "Housing First: Ending Homelessness, Promoting Recovery, and Reducing Costs." by Sam Tsemberis. PDF. PART II USING HOUSING POLICY TO PREVENT HOMELESSNESS
Chapter 6: "Housing Market Regulation and Homelessness." by Steven Raphael
Chapter 5: "Fundamental Housing Policy Reforms to End Homelessness." by Edgar O. Olsen
Chapter 4: "Rental Subsidies: Reducing Homelessness." by Jill Khadduri PART III MANAGING RISK
Chapter 7: Homelessness as Bad Luck: Implications for Research and Policy." by Brendan O'Flahert

Feldman, Leonard C. Citizens without Shelter: Homelessness, Democracy, and Political Exclusion. (Cornell University Press, 2006).

Heben, Andrew. Tent City Urbanism: From Self-Organized Camps to Tiny House Villages (2012).

Glasser, Irene. (1994). Homelessness in global perspective. New York: G.K. Hall Reference. LC-93-25087. Available for checkout at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/homelessnessingl0000glas.

Gowan, Teresa. Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco. (University of Minnesota Press, 2010).

Hailey, Charlie (2003). "Camp(site): architectures of duration and place." Ph.D dissertation, University of Florida, 2003. https://archive.org/details/campsitearchitec00hail.

Hailey, Charlie (2008). Campsite: Architectures of Duration and Place. Louisiana State University Press, 2008. https://www.amazon.com/Campsite-Architectures-Duration-Place-Voices/dp/080713323X.

Hailey, Charlie. Camps: A Guide to 21st-Century Space. (MIT Press, 2009).

Heben, Andrew. (2014a). Tent City Urbanism: From Self-Organized Camps to Tiny House Villages. (2014).

Hopper, Kim. Reckoning With Homelessness. (Cornell University Press, 2002).

Jencks, Christopher. (1994). The Homeless. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Available for checkout from Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/homeless0000jenc/.

Katz. The Undeserving Poor (1st edition 1989).

Kromer, Tom. (1935). Waiting for Nothing.

Kusmer, Kenneth L.. (2001). Down and Out, on the Road: The Homeless in American History. Oxford University Press, 2001.

Langan, Celeste. (1995). Romantic Vagrancy: Wordsworth and the Simulation of Freedom. Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 9780521035101.

Levinson, David, ed. (2004). Encyclopedia of Homelessness. http://1.droppdf.com/files/uMBPZ/encyclopedia-of-homelessness.pdf. Some entries particularly noted (these have individual authors, to be noted):

"Abeyance." (p.29) - a term borrowed from historical sociology.
"Autobiography and Memoir." - (p.51)
- Tom Kromer. Waiting for Nothing (1935)
- Lee Stringer. Grand Central Winter.
- Eighner, Lars. (1993). Travels with Lizbeth.
- David Wojnarowicz, The Waterfront Journals.
- Orwell, George. (1933). Down and out in London and Paris.
"Homelessness, International perspectives on." (p. 239)
"Images of Homelessness in Contemporary Documentary Film." (p.289)
"Images of Homelessness in Narrative Film, History of." (p.291)
"Images of Homelessness in 19th and 20th Century American Literature." (295)
"Liminality." (p.354)
"Literature, Hobo and Tramp." (p.356)
"Marginality." (p.393).
"Mobility." (p.413)
"Municipal Lodging Houses." (p.421)
"Poorhouses / poor relief." (p.480).
"Right to Shelter." (p.360).
"Self-Help Housing." (p.519).
"Skid Row Culture and History." (p.534)
"Vagrancy." (p.608).
"Appendix 1: Bibliography of Autobiographical and Fictional Accounts of Homelessness." (p.650)
"Appendix 2: Filmography of American Narrative and Documentary Films on Homelessness." (p.654)
"Appendix 4: Documentary History of Homelessness."

London, Jack. The Road (1903).

Mitchell, Don. Mean Streets: Homelessness, Public Space, and the Limits of Capital. University of Georgia Press, 2020. [see also Don Mitchell for discussion/excerpts].

O'Flaherty, Brendan. The Economics of Homelessness (Harvard University Press,1998).

Okin, Robert L. Silent Voices: People with Mental Disorders on the Street (2014).

Orwell, George. (1933). Down and out in London and Paris.

Piven, Francis, and Richard Cloward. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (1971).http://libgen.is/search.php?req=piven+regulating+the+poor.

Ribton-Turner, Charles James (1887). A history of vagrants and vagrancy, and beggars and begging. London: Chapman and Hall, 1887.

Rossi, Peter H. (1991). Down and Out in America: The Origins of Homelessness. University of Chicago Press, 1991.
http://libgen.is/search.php?req=rossi+down+and+out+in+america.

Shinn, Marybeth, and Jill Khadduri (2020). In the Midst of Plenty: Homelessness and What To Do About It. Wiley-Blackwell, April 2020. ISBN: 9781405181259.

Stringer, Lee. Grand Central Winter.

Teixeira, Lígia, and James Cartwright, eds. (2020). Using Evidence to End Homelessness. Bristol University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv10kmc3j. [Open Access version available].

Toro, Paul A. (2007). "Toward an International Understanding of Homelessness." Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 63, No. 3, 2007, pp. 461--481. https://www.tigweb.org/action-tools/projects/download/16281.pdf.

Tucker, William (1990). Excluded Americans: Homelessness and Housing Policies. Regnery Press, 1990.
http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=F58A23B817EC5E11F7F70BEBCDE53179.

Webb, Philip. (2014). Homeless Lives in American Cities: Interrogating Myth and Locating Community. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. ISBN 9781349476893.

White, Richard W.,Jr. (1992). Rude Awakenings: What the Homeless Crisis Tells Us. https://archive.org/details/rudeawakeningswh00whit/page/n14/mode/1up

Whitman, Walt. "Song of the Open Road."

Willse, Craig. The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United States. (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=EB79F8AF2C442CD805D80384FD4D098E.

Wojnarowicz, David. The Waterfront Journals.

Historical studies of concepts / terms

From nomadism to vagabondage: the Cain and Abel tradition

Wandering for home: the Odysseus figure

Vagrancy & Vagabondage

in English-language Bibles

Hobos and tramps

Rise of 'Homeless[ness]' usage in 1890s: cosmopolitanism and modernity

Disaffiliation

Houseless

Cultural history

Homelessness, vagrancy in literature

1980s Relaunch of 'homeless'/'homelessness' terms

1990s on: Homelessness increasingly conflated to "chronic homeless[ness]"

Other terms

Marginality

Federal Transient Program (1933-35)

Housing First

Writings / work by the houseless

International Network of Street Papers

Faces of Homelessness Speakers’ Bureau

Invisible People / Mark Horvath

Doreen Traylor

Portland homeless shelters and housing

References

Top recommended readings / overviews

Films / recordings

Articles/papers

Books