It is common for people 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 before 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.

However, many housing advocates and unhoused people view the “what’s-wrong-with-the-homeless” perspective as deficit-based, focusing on the problems or limits of people who are houseless. 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 sometimes internalize these perspectives.

6.4.1 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 tried to make sense of inequality. In the late 19th century, many social scientists were concerned with degeneracy. That is the idea 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 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. However, this line of questionable research influenced social theory and popular opinion about poor people at the time. 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. This movement also inspired Hilter’s pursuit of a master race. Some early sociologists from the Chicago School of Sociology were heavily influenced by eugenics. Eugenics was discredited in the mid-twentieth century, but its influence has lasted longer. In the section Narratives of Houslessness, 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.

6.4.2 Hobos and Tramps

Figure 6.14. Depression-era images like the one of these men documented poverty and displacement. How have the stories we tell and the images we capture of people who are poor changed over time?

In the early 20th Century, most unhoused people were migrant laborers. They were typically White men (Kim 2017). 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 before and during the Great Depression (1929–1939) as more individuals and families were compelled to leave their homes in search of employment. If you want to, you can absorb the novels of John Steinbeck, the photographs of Dorothea Lange (Figure 6.14), and the music of Woody Guthrie, who all contributed to a romanticized notion 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. It also demonstrated that the transient lifestyle resulted from 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 1998).

While many unhoused people experience mental illness and substance use disorder, the idea that people are unhoused because of drugs, criminality, and mental illness is not supported by research findings. For example, many people with substance use disorder and mental illness can 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 is a social problem complicated by mental illness, substance abuse, and stigma.

6.4.3 Narratives of houselessness

6.15. Sociologist Teresa Gowan wrote Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco. How does her research differ from the historical “sin” or “sickness” narratives?

Narratives about houselessness are shared stories that hold a powerful place in our collective understanding of who is unhoused and why. In Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco, British-born sociologist 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 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 as 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 the section Houselessness, Housing Insecurity and Social Location. Many of the structural causes of poverty also impact whether a person has a home. Let’s explore more in the section HouseStructural Issues of Houselessness.

6.4.4 Licenses and Attributions for Personal Problems — “Sin” or “Sickness”

Open Content, Original

“Personal Problems – ‘Sin’ or ‘Sickness’” by Nora Karena is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

Figure 6.14. “Photo” by Dorthea Lange, Wikipedia is in the Public Domain. Courtesy of The Library of Congress.

All Rights Reserved Content

Figure 6.15. “Photo” of Dr. Teresa Gowan © Lisa Miller, Regents of the University of Minnesota is all rights reserved and included with permission.