Wmbledon final, McEnroe came back to win the title
in 1983 and 1984. The year 1984 was a banner year
for McEnroe: He won not only Wimbledon but also
the U.S. Open. However, he lost to Lendl in a mara-
thon match at the French Open. During 1984, Mc-
Enroe compiled a record of eighty-two wins to only
three losses, and he won thirteen singles titles. By the
late 1980’s, McEnroe was no longer the force he had
been earlier in the decade.
Impact John McEnroe will be remembered for be-
ing a fiery champion who demanded the best from
himself and those around him. He was a student of
the game of tennis and was very vocal about how the
game should be played and evolve. While his antics
on the court alienated him from many, it was his
forthrightness that pushed tennis to become a more
professional sport. During his career, he captured
seventy-seven singles titles and seventy-eight doubles
titles. In 1999, he was inducted into the Interna-
tional Tennis Hall of Fame.
Further Reading
Adams, Tim.On Being John McEnroe. New York: Crown,
2003.
Evans, Richard.McEnroe: Taming the Talent.2drev.
ed. Lexington, Mass.: S. Greene Press, 1990.
McEnroe, John, with James Kaplan.You Can’t Be Seri-
ous. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2002.
Jeffr y Jensen
See also Navratilova, Martina; Sports; Tennis.
McKinney Homeless
Assistance Act of 1987
Identification Federal legislation
Date Signed on July 22, 1987
This federal legislation addressed homelessness, a major
public concern in the 1980’s, by providing shelter, food,
and health care.
Historically, Americans have addressed homeless-
ness at the grassroots level. The presidential admin-
istration of Ronald Reagan sought to continue this
pattern with the argument that states and localities
were best equipped to solve their own homeless
problems. Nevertheless, Stewart B. McKinney (1931-
1987), a Republican from Connecticut who had
served in the U.S. House of Representatives since
1971, had a long-standing interest in housing prob-
lems. As homelessness worsened in the 1980’s, Mc-
Kinney sought federal aid to address the problem.
McKinney began to lobby in 1986 for passage of
the Urgent Relief for the Homeless Act to provide
emergency provisions for shelter, food, health care,
and transitional housing. A study prepared in Sep-
tember, 1986, by the Department of Health and Hu-
man Services had cited “eviction by landlord” as the
prime cause of homelessness, while another major
cause was the release of mentally ill people from in-
stitutions into communities that lacked services for
them. McKinney’s bill sought to address these prob-
lems. Large bipartisan majorities in both houses of
Congress passed the legislation in 1987. McKinney
then died in office in that May. In tribute, the legisla-
tion was renamed in his honor. President Reagan re-
luctantly signed the bill into law on July 22, 1987.
The McKinney Homeless Assistance Act provided
$550 million nationwide for dealing with problems
related to homelessness. It supported affordable
housing, emergency shelters, rent subsidies, food
distribution, health and mental health care, job
training, and treatment of drug and alcohol abuse.
The legislation represented a large infusion of fed-
eral funds to address homelessness as well as an at-
tempt to deal with its root causes. It also required
that homeless children be provided transportation
to school and other educational opportunities.
Problems with the legislation appeared fairly
quickly. No one knew exactly how many Americans
were homeless. Many who lived on the streets did
not register for government services, and no clear
definition of “homeless” existed. While the National
Bureau of Economic Research suggested that, at any
given time, between 250,000 and 400,000 Americans
had no home, the National Coalition for the Home-
less claimed that, over the course of a year, three mil-
lion people were homeless.Impact The Interagency Council on the Homeless,
the federal government’s chief coordinating agency
for homeless assistance programs, subsequently came
under heavy attack for being inadequate and inef-
fective. The council, under the Housing and Urban
Development umbrella, had been established as a
clearinghouse for information about federal gov-
ernment programs. It was faulted as an apologist for
the Reagan administration’s failure to implement
the McKinney Act. The McKinney legislation re-606 McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 The Eighties in America