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From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Street lives: an Oral History of Homeless Americans
Steven Vanderstaay
New Society £11.99
The fact that, with 50,000 homeless in Detroit in 1991, the state of Michigan cut its welfare spending completely is an obscene indictment of the American dream.
In New York city there are an estimated 90,000 homeless people, a third of whom are HIV positive. On top of the ‘official’ homeless are those who live in ‘welfare hotels’ or who ‘double up’ with other families in overcrowded apartments (in 1986 there were 235,000 families doubling up in New York alone).
Steven Vanderstaay’s Street Lives is a series of conversations with some of the people who make up the statistics.
Contrary to the myth that views all homeless people as an underclass, the people in Street Lives are ex-nurses, mechanics, masons, plumbers and other workers who could not earn enough to live on – faced with spiralling housing and utility costs. Some are mentally ill, some are veterans, some live in families. All are denied the basic need of a permanent roof over their heads.
Over 24 percent of the homeless work, many through labour pools – casual labour with no protection and barbaric conditions.
One man, a skilled mechanic for 17 years, tells horror stories of this kind of work:
‘I was using a hydraulic blaster to clean railway tracks ... it’s got 7,900 pounds of pressure coming through it. The whole son of a bitch exploded: took out two teeth, broke my jaw, busted my glasses ... they replaced my glasses and paid the hospital bill. That was it. Pitiful. And I couldn’t work. I was laid up, penniless, for two months.’
But Street Lives is more than just tragic tales. It is clear on the economic nature of homelessness, it rejects the reactionary stance of Bush (who was president when the book was written, but all criticism applies equally if not more so for Clinton) on welfare. Far from ‘welfare queens’ living high on benefits, by 1987 over half of all children in female-headed families lived below the poverty line. Vanderstaay talks to whole families living in shelters who ended up there despite both parents working full time.
He also dismisses the right wing idea that welfare increases irresponsibility and ‘feckless’ behaviour, citing several studies to say that welfare ‘does not encourage out of wedlock births, family disintegration or unemployment.’
There is real anger in the book – at society and at politicians. An injured veteran of the Second World War who receives no assistance has been protesting outside the Capitol in Washington for 13 years and says:
‘I want people to know what the United States thinks about you losin’ your health helpin’ to save a country like this. It ain’t worth savin’, and it wasn’t worth savin’ then. Like some of the guys said in Europe, maybe we’re fightin’ the wrong people.’
Unfortunately the solutions presented in the book are weak. It focuses on communities ‘reaching out’ to the homeless and puts the emphasis on individuals taking responsibility for the problem.
Street Lives is basically a sociology book with a difference. It is moving and the accounts pull no punches in their condemnation of American society, and it’s full of useful statistics. It leaves you angry at the way people in the richest nation on earth are forced to live.
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Last updated: 18 November 2017