look into the hypocrisy present when dealing with this type of problem in a wealthy country.
As a social problem, homelessness is quickly assuming major proportions throughout the United States. In almost every city, people are confronted with the homeless, and it serves to remind one of the fragility of contemporary culture. In a sense, the homeless represent a portion of the underclass that the sociological functioning of society tends to dismiss, yet the homeless that one sees on the street are but a fraction of the total number (Wiegand, 1985).
Paradoxically, in 1988 for instance, America had the highest standard of living of any industrial country. Unemployment had receded to a fifteen year low, and most Americans were so well housed that many deemed one bedroom for every American (Tucker, 1990). Nevertheless, American culture has formed two dominant themes regarding the homeless: the vagabond and the vagrant. Both are seen as people who, either through their own personal misfortune or by choice, have taken to the streets. However, in both cases, homelessness has become their way of life. Additionally, sociologists often classify these people as deviant; "that is, they and their way of living are stigmatized by most people, even as they are pitied or envied by some" (Redburn and Buss, 1986, p. 4).
One must then attempt to deal with the myriad of causes of homelessness, even though to answer such a question involves looking at the very fabric of American society itself. Some have indicated that homelessness is not a single problem, but many integrated sociological symptoms (Smith, 1985). It is a housing problem, a substance abuse problem, a criminal justice problem, a family violence problem, a problem created by cutbacks in social welfare spending, a problem resulting from the decay of the traditional nuclear family, and a problem intimately connected to the recent increase in the number of persons living below ...