from their families, either by choice or circumstance, and homelessness is a symptom of that distance. The effects of homelessness on social relationships can be devastating, because the reciprocity that sustains kinship and friendship is difficult without a home and without resources. In other words, the situation leading to a person's homelessness is, in turn, worsened the longer a person is homeless. Obviously, social services intervention must be provided if the homeless person is going to be re-linked with friends and family.
If homelessness is defined as the state of being without a home, then, by the same design, joblessness would be defined as the state of being without a job. However, while it may be argued that society can curb joblessness by providing its members with jobs, one cannot argue that homelessness can be curtailed by providing the homeless with homes. Statistics compiled by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1992, showed that 27 percent of the homeless were mentally ill, 48 percent were substance abusers, and 9 percent had AIDS (Washington Times, 1993, p. A6). This is a statistical snapshot of the homeless condition. Homelessness is less a cause of the above conditions than it is a result of them.
Others will argue that the social roots of homelessness lie in the economy's ability to provide adequate income to all through employment or at least affordable housing. A vicious cycle is created when people become unemployed through the failure of their social supports or because of their disabilities, mental or physical. As a result, the homeless show high levels of substance abuse, disrupted ties to kin and friends, and chronic mental illness, especially schizophrenia. It should be pointed out that if one is not mentally disturbed before becoming homeless, he or she soon will be disturbed. Therefore any resolution of the "which comes first" argument with regard to homelessnes...