Homeless Women

The author conducted interviews for over five years with 20 homeless and addicted women with different experiences of sexual abuse and sexism and racism. They vividly demonstrate how both neo-conservative and neo-liberal prescriptions for solving their problems are unworkable. The work considers the linkage of homelessness and addiction, provides profiles of the interviewee, and outlines methodology used in the research.

Would a good mother sleep with her children in a car parked on a city street in the dead of winter? Would a good mother send her child to school in shoes two sizes too big because that's all she could find? Would a good mother tell her child to shut up and behave or the whole family will be out on the street again? Does the woman with no money, no home, and no help have any chance at all of being a good mother, according to the model our society sets up? This is the woman whose voice, so rarely heard and so often ignored, resonates through this book, which follows the lives of mothers on the margins and asks where they fit in our increasingly black-and-white picture of the world.

At once an anthropologist in the field and a social worker on the job, Deborah R. Connolly is ideally placed to draw out these women's life stories, the stories that our culture tells about them, and the revealing contradictions between the two. In their own words, by turns awkward and eloquent, poignant and harsh, these homeless,mothers map the perilous territory between the promise of childhood and the hard reality of motherhood on the street, between "We're never gonna get married, we're never gonna have kids" and "God, how did we end up like this?"

What emerges from these stories is a glimpse of the cultural imagination of class and gender as it revolves around the lives of mostly white homeless mothers. Attending to both everyday lives and cultural norms, while exploring and interpreting their interdependencies and tensions, Connolly makes these mothers and their plight as real for us as the headlines and stereotypes and the cultural paranoia that so often displace them and consign them to silence.

Through interviews with homeless people, Bulman provides readers with a unique perspective on homelessness. Conducted in soup kitchens, in homeless shelters, and on the street, the interviews reveal the human face of homelessness, which is often obscured by statistics. Chapter one explores the underreported link between domestic violence and homelessness through interviews with women who became homeless when they fled from their abuser. Homeless teenagers are interviewed in chapter two. Chapter three documents the link between crime and homelessness through interviews with homeless crime victims. In chapter four, people who became homeless because of economic factors, such as the loss of a job or of health insurance, are interviewed. Addicts are interviewed in chapter five, and chapter six covers those who have been homeless for some time. In chapter seven, the author turns to those who have found permanent housing after being homeless.

The 1980s have witnessed a dramatic increase in homelessness among impoverished and dependent persons, particularly in major metropolitan areas. In this in-depth study, Carol, L.M. Caton and her colleagues synthesize the available information on this alarming trend, providing a comprehensive discussion of the causes and historical antecedents of homelessness and answering such questions as: Who are the homeless and what are their day-to-day lives like? What can be done to help the homeless and ensure that society meets its responsibility to them? How many homeless are there and why are their numbers increasing? In addressing these questions Homeless in America describes various public and private shelter programs and, utilizing a unique scientific approach, discusses social and economic policy innovations aimed at independent living. The result is an invaluable resource for students in the social sciences, medicine, law, public policy, and social work, as well as for mental health professionals.