New Book: Homelessness in America by Stephen Eide

NEW YORK, NY – The world is entering a post-pandemic new normal, but one issue remains more pressing than ever: homelessness. Despite billions of public resources over the past decades, little progress ever seems to be made. In fact, as the U.S. looks to rebuild its cities and economies in the aftermath of the virus, the problem of homeless seems more widespread than ever.

While the South Bronx was once synonymous across the globe for “slum,” now, San Francisco and Los Angeles are just as internationally notorious for their homelessness crises. Indeed, the same cities with the worst homelessness crises rank among America’s most successful. One of the crisis’ more perplexing features is how cities that have met with so much success with respect to economic development, crime and public education have failed to even ease their homelessness crisis, much less end it.

In Homelessness in America: The History and Tragedy of an Intractable Social Problem (Rowman & Littlefield, June 2, 2022), Manhattan Institute senior fellow Stephen Eide examines the history of and governmental and private responses to homelessness and offers policy suggestions for a new way forward.

The history of homelessness, Eide argues, is bound up with industrialization and urbanization, the closing of the West, the Great Depression, and the post WWII decline and subsequent revival of great American cities. Though we’ve used different terms to describe the homeless over the years (some of which we thankfully no longer use, like “vagrant,” “hobo,” “bum”), homelessness has always been with us and the debate over causes and solutions has always involved conflicts over fundamental values. After explaining why homelessness persists in America and correcting popular misconceptions about the issue, Eide offers concrete recommendations for how we can do better for the homeless population.

By exploring the intersection of homelessness with policy areas such as education, urban development, criminal justice reform, and mental health, Homelessness in America aspires to provide a comprehensive account of the challenge it poses and shows that there isn’t a one-size fits all solution. It will require working the problem at multiple angles.

Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He has written widely on homelessness and related issues such as mental illness, including articles in National Affairs, the New York Daily News, The Hill, and the Los Angeles Times.

Join us for a special live event in Manhattan on June 16 to hear Stephen Eide discuss the book. Click here to learn more.

Praise for Homelessness in America

"Stephen Eide’s sweeping, comprehensive analysis explains why “homelessness” encompasses not a single problem calling for a single solution, but a diverse array of paradoxes and pathologies that can be handled better but not solved. His illuminating history of homelessness shows that good intentions are at times in tension with good policy." — R Shep Melnick, Thomas P. O'Neil, Jr. professor of American Politics, Boston College

"Stephen Eide has brought a fresh approach to a stale and seemingly endless problem. Homelessness, he emphasizes, is neither new nor unitary. Rather it is a common outcome of multiple problems – housing, substance abuse, mental illness, poverty, unemployment, domestic violence, single-parent households, street crime, public disorder and more. Proposing a single solution for homelessness is fatuous as the author illustrates by thoughtful proposed solutions to the various pieces of the puzzle. Strongly recommended, especially for those who think there is a single solution to these problems." — E. Fuller Torrey, MD, author of American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System

"Stephen Eide’s brilliant research within this book shines the spotlight of truth on one of America’s most challenging public policy issues of our time." — Robert G. Marbut Jr., formerly America’s Federal Homelessness “Czar"

"From the first page, where Eide challenges the term “homelessness”, this book takes a close look at sources of the problem that are rarely discussed in public, like the disappearance of SROs and mental hospitals, the lapsed use and misuse of vagrancy laws, the failure of “outreach” and “Housing First” programs, homeless-on-homeless violence, and the very useful role that police officers can and should play. He also looks skeptically at whether “advocacy” groups are really helping people who live on the streets." — Dan Biederman, Place-making and Redevelopment executive

"This is the best primer on homelessness to date. His startling and counterintuitive recommendations for addressing the problem include disbanding homeless service systems and focusing less on housing but more on employment and mental health. These and others are buttressed by his careful analysis of its history and attempts at ending homelessness. For anyone who has stumbled upon a homeless person and wondered what could be done, this book has some profound answers." — Peter Cove, author of Poor No More: Rethinking Dependency and the War on Poverty