Catalog Descrip |Dept Home | D. Wright Homepage
Course Description: This course will focus on the issue of homelessness in America with special emphasis on society responding to the problem, social and public policy considerations, and the future of the issue.
Office Hours: 8:00 - 9:00 am, Daily
Readings: To be provided student and/or secured in the library
Assignments: Students are expected to read the materials assigned prior to the day of the class. You will be given a series of questions that are to be answered prior to the next class period. You will be expected to be prepared to answer these questions during the next class period. You will also be expected to "hand-in" the answered questions (approximately one page per answer) to the instructor at the end of the assigned day. Late assignments will not count toward the final grade.
On Tuesday you will receive a question or series of questions that are to be answered and submitted in the form of a written paper on Friday. This exercise will provide a way to tie the daily questions together and develop a synthesis of key issues concerning homelessness.
Your grade will be determined on the basis of (a) class participation, (b) quality of answers provided for the daily questions, and (c) your final assignment.
Daily Assignments and Topics
Monday
May 18 Can there be a Sociology of the Homeless?
- Who are the homeless?
- Where do they come from?
- What are their lives like?
- How did they get to where they are?
- How do they manage to survive physically, socially, and psychologically
- in this nether world of the streets that is so alien to most Americans.
- How do they manage to make sense of lives that strike most of us as walking
- nightmares.
- Theory and the study of homelessness and the homeless
- Research and methodologies of addressing homelessness.
- History of homelessness
- Homelessness in the past
- Changing definitions of homelessness
- Responsibilities for homelessness (causes and consequences)
- Homelessness and the Great Depression
- Changes in the 1970s and 1980s
- Homeless as a legal issue in modern America
- Being illegal to be homeless
- Jailing the homeless
- Prisons are America's newest public housing program
- Where do you go once you get out?
- "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison" (Rieman)
- The medicalization of the homeless
- Deinstitutionalization
- Mental Illness and homeless
- Alcohol and drugs and the modern homeless
- Destroying self-esteem
- Abusive history and standard of living
- The Underclass in America
- Struggling for a definition
- Categorizing social stratification
- Making the poor a frightening group
- We have to do something about them ... or else
- Bad companions
- Gangs and the struggle to be a child and then young
- How Many Homeless are there Today?
- Methodologies for enumerating the homeless
- Errors in counting the homeless
- What does it mean to count the homeless?
- Homeless Children
- What causes homelessness among children
- Homeless children and intervention
- What are the potential solutions to the problem?
- Homeless Families
- Why are there so many?
- What are the causes?
- What are the solutions?
- Homeless as a problem of families ... extended into nuclear
- Domestic and child abuse as contributions to homelessness
- Teen pregnancy and the male role model
- Homeless Individuals
- Men on the Street
- Hobos, Bums, and Tramps
- Attribution of Responsibility
- Pluribus versus Unum
- A poverty of dependence?
- Stereotypes in the welfare system ... welfare queens and other myths
- Does welfare become a way of life
- Homelessness in Rural America
- How is rural homeless unique?
- How do rural values differ?
- Support for poverty programming in rural America
Tuesday
May 19 Typologies of homelessness and the homeless ... into the 21st century
Wednesday
May 20 Wage Labor and Institutionalized Assistance
- Wage Labor
- Day Labor
- Institutionalized Assistance
- Minimum income guarantees
- Egalitarianism and the American myth
- Shadow Work
- Selling and Trading
- Soliciting Donations in Public Places
- Scavenging
- Theft
- Welfare State versus Market Economy and Homelessness
- Approaches to Providing Assistance
- Conservatism versus Liberalism
- Government Programming
- AFDC - FIP
- Supplemental Security Income
- Food Stamp Program
- Unemployment Insurance
- General Assistance
- Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act
- Housing Programs
- Measuring Levels of Poverty
- Incomes versus Subjective Indicators
- What Kind of Work and Where
- Government as a Source of Work
- Boots before bootstraps
- Welfare Reform
- History of welfare reform
- What has happened in the past three years
- Family Reconciliation Act
- Workfare
- The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America
- Work as a Focus of Programming
- Bad luck to better luck
- The government as lottery pimp
- Some day I'll hit it rich ... and then ....
- If I could just go back home again
- All you need is a good break and a lot of luck
- Subrosa Economy
- An underground economy
- Getting by day by day
- Getting it done ... cheap
- Sheltering the homeless
- Housing as a solution to homelessness
- Changing housing in America
- Traditional versus modern housing
- How much housing and what kind?
- Affordable housing ... what does this term mean?
- Bridges to Suburbia
Thursday
May 21 Tenuous Ties
Friday
May 22 Pathways to the Street