Homelessness Amid Affluence: Structure and Paradox in the American Political Economy

(Hardback)

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Approaching the problem of homelessness from a broad public policy perspective, Lang focuses on the American political economy and how it permits community development patterns based on racism and self-interest. This interdisciplinary study challenges the belief that homelessness is entirely due to the Reagan administration's cutbacks. Instead, it suggests the need for reform in US housing and employment policies. The book reviews competing socioeconomic paradigms that can explain why meaningful and effective programs are difficult to enact. "Homelessness Amid Affluence" discusses housing, community development patterns, economic segregation and problems of the urban underclass, as well as proposed solutions. This volume is divided into five sections. The first section provides a conceptual overview. Section two deals with the urban policy context from which a solution to homelessness must emerge. Section three covers low-cost housing while section four deals with specific policies and programs developed in response to the needs of the homeless. A case study based on the author's experience with the efforts of Camden County, New Jersey is included. The last section analyzes some new policy approaches and ends with an assessment of the likely policy outcomes to emerge from this continuing debate.

Reviews

. . . Lang has written a good book--well organized and researched--that can be usefully employed in a graduate-level course in which some attention is given to the problem of the homeless. In this age of widespread cynicism, one has to admire Lang's clarion call that much more action needs to be taken on behalf of those who roam the streets of our core cities looking for a place to hang their hat.'-Perspectives on Political Science
The book is actually a primer on the sad history of ill-informed housing policy (and the frequent abscence of policy) in the U.S. Homelessness is described as a result, in large part, of the defeat of the welfare state in the post-WW II US. The pernicious impacts of deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients; the rise of female-headed, single-wage-earner households; shifts of federal funding to blocks grants; and the channeling of dollars into middle-class entitlement programs are all damningly described. There is a thorough description of a wide range of creative housing policy alternatives. The book is dry but well written and thoroughly documented. It will serve well as an introduction to housing policy and its context for readers at any level, or as an easily readable review for public policy students.-Choice
." . . Lang has written a good book--well organized and researched--that can be usefully employed in a graduate-level course in which some attention is given to the problem of the homeless. In this age of widespread cynicism, one has to admire Lang's clarion call that much more action needs to be taken on behalf of those who roam the streets of our core cities looking for a place to hang their hat.'"-Perspectives on Political Science
"The book is actually a primer on the sad history of ill-informed housing policy (and the frequent abscence of policy) in the U.S. Homelessness is described as a result, in large part, of the defeat of the welfare state in the post-WW II US. The pernicious impacts of deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients; the rise of female-headed, single-wage-earner households; shifts of federal funding to blocks grants; and the channeling of dollars into middle-class entitlement programs are all damningly described. There is a thorough description of a wide range of creative housing policy alternatives. The book is dry but well written and thoroughly documented. It will serve well as an introduction to housing policy and its context for readers at any level, or as an easily readable review for public policy students."-Choice

Author Bio

MICHAEL H. LANG is the Chair of the Department of Urban Studies and Community Development and Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Public Policy at Rutgers University. The author of Gentrification Amid Urban Decline, he has also published numerous articles on low-cost housing.