It is common for people who are concerned with problems of housing insecurity and houselessness to focus resources and programming on fixing the personal problems of people who are unhoused. Many shelter and housing programs offer social support, motivational coaching, counseling and even “life skills” classes. When we consider that many people who are unhoused have experienced trauma, mental health crises and substance use disorder prior to becoming homeless, this approach makes sense. It makes even more sense when we become aware of the trauma, alienation, mental health crises and substance use patterns that can develop while people are unsheltered. Many people who are unhoused are often in need of robust social and therapeutic support as they make their way back to stability.

Many housing advocates and unhoused people themselves view the “what’s-wrong-with-the-homeless” perspective as deficit-based. They argue that this approach obscures the real reasons for our current housing crisis – not enough affordable housing. In this section we will look at how social research has sometimes contributed to deficit-based perspectives, and we will look at ground-breaking research that illuminates how unhoused people themselves sometimes internalize these perspectives.

4.4.1 Poverty, “Degeneracy” and Migrants

Questions about poverty and poor people have been popular topics of social sciences inquiry for as long as scientists and philosophers have been trying to make sense of inequality. In the late 19th century, many social scientists were taken with the idea of degeneracy. That is that certain people were naturally predisposed by heredity to low intelligence, poor moral character and mental instability. These “poor unfortunates” were destined to lives of poverty, moral failures and crime.

The 1875 book by Robert Dugdale, The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and Heredity was the first of many studies of so-called “degenerate families”. A group identified as the Juke family actually was a colorful collection of about 40 loosely related families, Some of these people were not actually related to each other. However, because of repeated imprisonment and institutionalization, they were reported as having cost the State of New York over a million dollars. This study selectively documented members of a “family” of uneducated rural folks. Because they were poor, they turned to sex work, gambling and other survival crimes. Contemporary readers would recognize the impacts of generational poverty, limited resources and trauma in the case studies. At the time, however, this line of questionable research influenced social theory and popular opinion about poor people. It was the first of several similar research projects that added fuel to an emerging eugenics movement.

Eugenics is a pseudo-scientific set of theories that tried to demonstrate that “traits” such as pauperism, mental disability, dwarfism, promiscuity, and criminality were inherited, and that a more perfect white race could be created through selective breeding. The movement which also inspired Hilter’s pursuit of a master race. Some early sociologists from the Chicago School of Sociology were heavily influenced by eugenics for a time. Eugenics was discredited in the mid-twentieth century, but its influence has been longer lasting. In section 4.4.3 we will recognize echoes of degeneracy in contemporary narratives about why people are unhoused. First, let’s look at how social research has also served to humanize unhoused people.

4.4.2 Hobos and Tramps

Figure 4.10 Depression-era images like the one above documented poverty and displacement.

In the early 20th Century, most unhoused people were migrant laborers. Many of the ideas that American society holds about homeless people and a so-called culture of homelessness can be traced back to research on migrant workers, whose numbers exploded prior to and during the Great Depression (1929–1939) as more individuals and families were compelled to leave their homes in search of employment. The novels of John Steinbeck, the photographs of Dorothea Lange (figure 4.10) and the music of Woody Guthrie all contributed to a romanticized notion of that some of these wanders choose a life of wandering over working, even as they documented the limited choices and harsh economic realities faced by migrant workers and impoverished families.

In 1923, American sociologist Nels Anderson conducted ethnographic research with migrant laborers in Chicago, whom he identified as hobos. This groundbreaking work humanized a misunderstood population and demonstrated that the transient lifestyle was the result of their status as temporary workers with limited resources. He also documented an ecosystem of exploitation, gambling, drugs, and crime that preyed on vulnerable migrants. Andersons’s subsequent work expanded his inquiry to include, “the juvenile and the tramp, the unattached migrant, and the family” (Anderson 1923).

While many unhoused people experience mental illness and substance use disorder, the idea that people are unhoused because of drugs, criminality, and mental illness does not bear up to the research. For example, there are many people who live with substance use disorder and mental illness who are able to maintain stable housing because they have access to social and financial capital. Similarly, many people who commit serious crimes use their ill-gotten resources to live lavishly to protect themselves from the consequences of their actions. So it can be argued that poverty itself is a social problem, complicated by mental illness, substance abuse, and stigma.

4.4.3 Narratives of Homelessness

Narratives about homelessness are shared stories that hold a powerful place in our collective understanding about who is unhoused and why. In Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco, Teresa Gowen documented the stories that unhoused people tell about themselves. She found that many unhoused people have internalized some of these harmful narratives of either sin or sickness.

A sin narrative is one of personal failure and low morals. People who have internalized the sin narrative tend to believe that it is their fault they are unhoused. Many of these people struggle daily to be better people, to seek out recovery services and spiritual fellowship, and hold on to the hope that if they can fix the broken thing inside of them, they can be more stable. Some of the people Gowen describes as adopting a sin narrative, eventually give up on trying to be better, and surrender to the punishment of houselessness they have come to believe they deserve. Interventions based on a sin narrative tend to be either redemptive or punitive.

A sick narrative is similar to the sin narrative, except that instead of leaving the individual to fend for their own redemption, the unhoused person is understood to be unable to help themselves and in need of treatment. It may not be an unhoused person’s fault that they have a substance use disorder or a behavioral health disorder, therefore, so the narrative goes, they deserve treatment and therapeutic support in order to maintain housing stability. Many housing-first interventions, which prioritize harm reduction and social support, are grounded in a sick narrative.

Many unhoused people, however, do not use drugs or break the law. The third narrative Gowen identified is a system narrative. Unhoused people who hold to a system narrative understand housing security to be an economic issue, not a moral one. Many formerly unhoused people who continue to advocate for an end to housing insecurity mobilize around challenging and changing unjust housing policies, and refuting sin and sickness narratives.

Unlike sin or sick narratives of houselessness, sociologists most commonly look for structural reasons to explain who has a home. These structural explanations depend on a solid understanding of social stratification. We looked at how social class, race and gender relate to housing instability in section 4.3. Many of the structural causes of poverty also impact whether a person has a home. Let’s explore more in section 4.5 Structural Causes of Houselessness.