conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD), released in 1984, esti-
mated that there were between 250,000 and 350,000
homeless in the United States on any given night.
Local Los Angeles County activists, however, esti-
mated that there were between 50,000 and 75,000
homeless people in Los Angeles alone. The wide
range is indicative of the difficulty of counting a pop-
ulation defined by its lack of fixed address. HUD de-
fined the homeless as those residing in emergency
shelters and public and privates spaces not designed
for shelter. Other estimates, based on various defini-
tions of homelessness, often fell between these fig-
ures.
One area of agreement was that the number of
people seeking emergency shelter during the 1980’s
had begun to grow. In New York City, the nightly av-
erage number of individuals in city-run shelters dur-
ing January increased from about twenty-seven hun-
dred in 1981 to just over ten thousand in 1987.
Homeless families in city shelters increased these fig-
ures by nearly one thousand in 1981 and nearly
forty-seven hundred in 1987. Similar trends were
seen in other urban areas, both in the United States
and Canada.
Reasons for the Increase As homelessness in-
creased during the 1980’s, numerous studies to un-
cover its causes were undertaken in the United States
in an effort to find solutions. Canada had homeless
trends similar to those in the United States during
the 1980’s, but the research effort there lagged by
nearly a decade. The research that was conducted
had two main objectives: One was to identify the
characteristics of homeless individuals that caused
them to be homeless, and the other was to identify
societal or structural changes that might be causing
homelessness to increase.
The characteristics of homeless individuals varied
in different urban areas, but they fit general pat-
terns. Widely reported estimates found about one-
third of homeless people to be substance abusers,
about one-third to be suffering from severe mental
illness, and about one-third of homeless males to be
veterans. Since these groups are not mutually exclu-
sive, individuals could be included in more than one
classification. The average age of homeless adults
was estimated to be about thirty-five; however, given
the high number of homeless children, the overall
average age was significantly lower. Single males ac-
counted for approximately 50 percent of the home-
less, single females about 10 percent, and families
accounted for about one-third. A small percentage
comprised children living on their own. About 50
percent of homeless adults had a high school di-
ploma, and approximately 25 percent had some
type of employment. During the 1980’s, families rep-
resented the fastest-growing segment of the home-
less population. In comparison with the pre-1980’s
homeless, the homeless of the 1980’s were younger
and more racially diverse, including increasing num-
bers of African Americans and Hispanics.
Since roughly one-third of homeless individuals
were diagnosed with severe mental illness, it was ar-
gued that one structural factor contributing to the
increase in homelessness was deinstitutionalization—
the release of patients from mental institutions—
and changes in the legal requirements to have some-
one institutionalized involuntarily. In the mid-1950’s,The Eighties in America Homelessness 479
A homeless man sits by his belongings in a public plaza in New
York City.(Colin Gregory Palmer/cc-by-a-2.0)