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Homeless in America, Homeless in California

2001; The MIT Press; Volume: 83; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1162/003465301750160027

1530-9142

John M. Quigley, Steven Raphael, Eugene Smolensky,

Housing Market and Economics

It is generally believed that the increase d incidence of homelessness in the United States has arisen from broad societal factors, such as changes in the institutionalizatio n of the mentally ill, increase s in drug addiction and alcohol usage, and so forth.This paper presents a comprehensive test of the alternate hypothesi s that variation s in homelessnes s arise from changed circumstance s in the housing market and in the income distribution .We assemble essentiall y all the systematic information available on homelessnes s in U.S. urban areas: census counts, shelter bed counts, records of transfer payments, and administrative agency estimates.We estimate similar statistica l models using four different samples of data on the incidenc e of homelessness , de ned accordin g to very different criteria.Our results suggest that simple economic principles governin g the availability and pricing of housing and the growth in demand for the lowest-qualit y housing explain a large portion of the variation in homelessness among U.S. metropolita n housing markets.Furthermore, rather modest improvements in the affordabilit y of rental housing or its availability can substantiall y reduce the incidenc e of homelessnes s in the United States.