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Nov 15, 2025
Creating a Science of Homelessness During the Reagan Era
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4364434/
The 1984 Campaign
In 1984, homelessness became a presidential campaign issue. In a televised interview aired in January of that year, a reporter asked President Reagan about criticism that his policies favored the rich. He responded by referring to “the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice.”10(italics added) Meanwhile, mayors and governors reported that homelessness was surging around the country even as economic indicators pointed to a strong recovery from the 1981 recession.88(pA3) This situation provided an opportunity for the Democrats to strike the president at a vulnerable spot. In January 1984, the Democratic-led House Committee on Government Operations began a series of hearings on the federal response to homelessness, some of which were held at Washington, DC, homeless shelters. Many Democrats seized the opportunity to highlight the administration’s inattention to the issue.14
In reaction to these moves, the Reagan administration publicly questioned the need for any federal response to homelessness, even the one that had already been launched. In October 1983, HHS had established the Federal Interagency Task Force on Food and Shelter for the Homeless to coordinate its efforts in this area with those of 14 other agencies. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which had been assigned to coordinate the emergency food and shelter program with the United Way and other voluntary groups, along with the Department of Defense, ADAMHA, and other agencies, participated actively in the project.14(pp1-2) Although the HHS task force programs used existing budgetary resources and relied on private organizations to distribute surplus government material, John A. Svahn, the commissioner of Social Security who had earlier defended the administration’s inaction on homelessness in his reply to a constituent, reportedly expressed concern that HHS was “hyping” the homelessness issue in organizing the task force.89 In a February 23 memo echoing Svahn’s concerns, presidential aide Donald Clarey underlined the administration’s view that homelessness was the fault of negligent states and individuals:
The whole question of the homeless, in my opinion, should be addressed from a different angle, namely, that well over 50 percent of these people are released mental patients and victims of terrible neglect by states (New York is by far the worst). Most of the others are alcoholics and drug abusers. Very few are there as a result of unemployment alone. These states have found it expedient to let them roam the streets with no supervision or support mechanisms because it is cheaper to put them on SSI (federal disability benefits). Most of the people who sleep on grates are eligible for SSI but probably don’t want to participate.90,91
This memo, along with President Reagan’s comment about homelessness “by choice,” reflected the long-standing tendency to blame individuals for homelessness that had permeated social science and popular opinion from the days of tramps and hobos through the era of urban renewal. This deep-rooted belief, together with the assumption that closing the state hospitals had caused contemporary homelessness among people with mental illness, served to justify the administration’s inaction on the issue.
In April 1984, President Reagan seemed to depart from this stance by holding a meeting with an administration official to discuss homelessness.92,93(p23),94(pA23) In this meeting, with HHS Secretary Margaret Heckler, he requested that she prepare a report for him on the subject.92 In mid-August, Heckler delivered the report, which suggested addressing homelessness through public and private partnerships and better coordination among existing agencies.95 But presidential aides explicitly ordered that her report not be transmitted to Congress.96 Perhaps this was because it indicated that “the Federal government can do more to make sure the homeless receive the benefits to which they are entitled and to provide technical and other assistance to local groups which provide direct services.”92(italics added)
HHS officials, however, either did not receive or simply did not obey the directive from the president’s aides to keep the report away from Congress, suggesting a possible split within the administration on the issue. When Ted Weiss, the liberal New York City congressman leading the House hearings, requested the report in September, the assistant HHS secretary for legislation sent it to him.97 Weiss’s committee quickly released it to the public on October 3.14(p19) The HHS officials subsequently backpedaled, sending the committee a second document, which committee reports described as “a quickly written analysis which refutes and rebuts every major recommendation contained in the document.” When HHS official Harvey Vieth, who chaired the task force that drafted the original HHS report to the president recommending more action on homelessness, later testified during the hearings, he denied ever having read it.14(p17)
During the hearings, Democratic congressmen lambasted HHS for this mixed message and for failing to direct sufficient resources toward homelessness. But they reserved their worst criticism for HUD.14(p22) The agency, which had sharply curtailed its budget requests for and expenditures on low-income housing during the first years of the Reagan administration, had not explicitly addressed homelessness until releasing its first report on the issue in May 1984.98(pG1),99 This report estimated the homeless population of the United States at between 250,000 and 350,000. After its release, the acting assistant housing secretary, Benjamin F. Bobo, was publicly quoted as saying that the report indicated homelessness “is not as widespread a problem as previously had been thought.”100(pC6) These comments and the report’s findings sparked outraged responses by Mitch Snyder’s CCNV and other activist groups.101(p12) The CCNV’s leaders, who were not trained researchers, had conducted a telephone survey of homeless shelter providers in 1980 and estimated based on this survey that the United States had a homeless population of 2.2 million to 3 million.13 Snyder repeatedly cited this figure in interviews with the news media, and after HUD released its report, he filed a lawsuit against the agency demanding a retraction of the report.100(pC6) Meanwhile, congressional Democrats held a hearing at which they alleged that the HUD report represented the Reagan administration’s attempt to evade responsibility for addressing homelessness.102(pA15) News reporters meanwhile continued to report CCNV rather than HUD estimates or reported both estimates as the upper and lower boundaries of the US homeless population.45(p107)
A Changed Climate
After President Reagan’s 1984 landslide reelection victory, partisan battles over homelessness cooled somewhat. Some Republicans began to publicly acknowledge that homelessness, especially among people with severe mental illness, was a national problem.103(pC6) But after the 1986 midterm elections, the Reagan administration was seriously weakened: Democrats now controlled the House and Senate, and an embarrassing scandal surfaced over the administration’s secret arms dealings with Iran and payments to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels (Iran-Contra), thereby undermining the administration’s credibility even with some Republicans.104(pA9) In this changed climate, a comprehensive bipartisan proposal to address homelessness began to take shape, despite the administration’s lack of support for it.105,106(pA6) The substance abuse treatment and prevention sector also worked to secure funding in the bill for new NIAAA- and NIDA-sponsored research on substance abuse among homeless populations (interview with Lubran). The NIMH found allies from both parties to support the expansion of its research on homelessness and mental illness. Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, whose daughter had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 17, and Senator Al Gore’s wife, Tipper, who was becoming an outspoken advocate on homelessness and for the humane treatment of mental illness, became key allies of the NIMH program.107,108(pA10) Levine met with Domenici’s wife, Nancy, at teas hosted by Mrs. Gore in downtown Washington, and they began collaborating with an active network of congressional wives to ensure that the seedling programs Mrs. Domenici had nurtured could receive enough funding to grow into larger research efforts (interview with Levine; interview with Loretta Haggard, November 23, 2010).
Others involved in early efforts to develop health care programs for homeless populations also strongly influenced this legislation. The Health Care for the Homeless Program (HCHP), funded with $25 million by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts, had begun establishing clinics in 1984 as demonstration programs in 19 cities.69 Run by Philip Brickner, a New York City community physician who had been serving SRO and shelter populations since the late 1960s, the HCHP was collecting data on 100,000 people who attended the program’s clinics.109 Even though the program evaluation and data collection were not complete in 1987, HCHP advocates were able to convince congressional leaders to include in the legislation a federally funded expansion of the program.110(p173)
In July 1987, a lame-duck President Reagan reluctantly signed the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act (McKinney Act), the first landmark piece of federal homelessness legislation. Although pushed through by a Democratic Congress, it was named for its chief Republican sponsor, Representative Stewart B. McKinney of Connecticut, who had died of AIDS that May.111,112(pB4),113 This legislation included more than $1 billion in funds to dramatically expand an emergency shelter grant program administered by HUD; to create housing demonstration programs; and to fund health care, education, and job training for people experiencing homelessness.114(pA1) The HCHP, administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), was awarded $44.5 million for 109 projects in 43 states to fund mental health, substance abuse, and physical health care services, and served more than 230,000 people in 1988 alone.115 The NIMH, NIAAA, and NIDA also were awarded funds for research demonstration projects on programs addressing mental illness, alcoholism, and drug abuse among homeless populations (interviews with Levine and Lubran). Subsequently, the NIAAA and NIDA demonstration projects implemented and evaluated alcohol and drug treatment programs for these populations.116(p1) The NIMH demonstration programs included 9 local efforts to administer mental health services to adults experiencing homelessness and 3 to serve the needs of homeless children with “emotional disturbance.”67(p45) The McKinney Act also tasked NIMH with administering block grants to states for homeless mentally ill populations. For this legislation, the total funding for NIMH, NIAAA, and NIDA programs related to homelessness grew to $74 million by 1990.117(p39)
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Today and yesterday saw the homeless, in fact I see them most days! I gave my dollars to a young man by the Bank, yesterday, and another young man today by Vons’ market, feeding his cat! Today it is raining in California! What happend to the Party of FDR? The utterly Bankrupt New Democrats and the Republican Party of Trump all owned by AIPAC!
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