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Sociology 498: Homelessness
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Sociology 498: Homelessness
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Rossi: Down and Out in America
Reading Questions |
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Rossi's is the earliest book we will read.
The others often refer to it.
There are a couple of different research strategies Rossi uses,
but we will concentrate on the survey he did of the Chicago homeless.
Trying to apply standard survey methods to a population as amorphous
as the homeless may seem like an attempt to count and interview
the birds in the air.
But Rossi's efforts pay off with some comparisons that can only be
made with systematic observations. How are the homeless different from
the housed? from people who are also very poor but not homeless?
How are the long-term homeless different from the short term?
Rossi begins his book with vignettes to give some concrete
examples for the statistics he will use throughout the rest of the
book. We have already read Liebow; we hardly need any
more concrete examples.
There is some interest here in what Rossi notes that Liebow doesn't,
and vice-versa, but those differences will become even more apparent
as we work our way through the survey statistics.
So, just skim the vignettes.
Unlike Liebow, Rossi states a clear central thesis right up front.
Be able to summarize this central thesis.
How does it relates to our
list of possible causes
of homelessness?
[I'd like to tell you that the whole book is well organized
around this central thesis, but, alas, by the time he finishes the
book he seems to have changed his mind!]
A second idea we will pay close attention to is Rossi's contention
(page 10) that "the line between homelessness and having a home is
fuzzy". What does Rossi mean by this?
What is Rossi's definition of homelessness?
List five types of people whose homelessness is ambiguous.
What is some evidence that homelessness had become a more noticeable
social problem by the time Rossi wrote? What do you guess would
be our conclusion now, almost two decades later, based on similar
observations?
How does Robert Frost's definition of homelessness differ from
Rossi's? How does it point to a different emphasis from our list of
causes?
Rossi is a champion of "science"; most undergraduates are impressed
that he takes a more "scientific" approach to studying homelessness
than Liebow. But there is much to question in Rossi's science.
Don't be snowed by the aura of science.
Here is the problem Rossi confronted. Suppose you want to make some
systematic comparisons of homeless people and the "domiciled".
How can you get a representative sample of the homeless?
Or, suppose you want to compare homelessness rates in your city
over time and
want a method that, when you use it over and over, will give you
some idea whether homelessness is getting worse or better.
How do you do it?
Rossi describes five ways of counting/estimating the number of
homeless in any city.
He sets this up as a justification for his eventual study so don't
be surprised if some of these ways seem really stupid.
Be able to describe these five methods and what is an
a disadvantage with each?
What is an advantage (why would anybody dream of studying the
homeless this way)?
Which method seems best to you seems best to you?
[Careful here, Rossi has his favorite, but the consensus that
developed later was one of the other methods.]
If you want to peek ahead, read Jencks' chapter 2 (pages 8-13) for
quite a different view.
One of the difficult paradoxes to explain is that while the average
person who becomes homeless is only homeless for a short time,
the average homeless person you meet is likely to have been homeless
for quite a while.
If you can understand this paradox, you are an expert!
Rossi's section on "prevalence" and "incidence" estimates begins
to help us understand this paradox.
Why is the "point estimate", the number of people homeless on a
given day, different from the "annual estimate", the number of
people homeless sometime during the year?
Which population has a higher percentage of long term homeless?
Which population would you use to estimate whether homelessness is
primarily a short-term homelessness problem or primarily a long-term
homelessness problem?
What is Rossi's definition of the "extremely poor" from which the
homeless are recruited? What is the ratio of these extremely poor
to the number of literally homeless? How did the number of the
extremely poor change between 1970 (table 3.5) and 1987 (table 3.4)?
Analysis of surveys depends on comparisons. To analyze
homelessness we need to compare Rossi's sample of the homeless with
a sample of the non-homeless. Only then we can ask whether the
homeless are more often mentally ill, alcoholic, unemployed, etc.
than the non-homeless. Usually in surveys, the comparison group
comes from the same sample as the study group; but Rossi's survey
only interviewed the homeless, so he has a problem of to whom to
compare the homeless.
What kinds of samples does Rossi use as a
comparison group to his homeless survey respondents?
One kind of comparison Rossi can make using only his own data is to
compare the shelter homeless with the street homeless. This helps
answer the question of what causes shelter use among the homeless.
That is not our main interest (we want to know what
causes
homelessness in general),
but it has a secondary interest. The first half of chapter 4 (pages
87-104) answers the "who uses shelters?" question.
First, we need to get an idea of the overall rate of shelter use.
There are two distinct and interesting parts to this question:
We will also compare Rossi's results with results from the 1996
HUD survey.
Next, we need to ask what are the causes of shelter use?
What is a)the relationship and
b) the causal interpretation of
the relationship between shelter use and:
How do Rossi's results compare with the
HUD survey?
Embedded within the analysis of who uses shelters, is an analysis of
how long homeless people are homeless. This turns out to be a
difficult question to answer. What are the problems with answering
the question of what is the average duration of homelessness?
The second half of the chapter (Rossi has really stuck together two
separate chapters into one) is an analysis of work and income.
So the information here may help answer Uncle Harry's complaint
that the homeless are just lazy bums.
The data will be also useful in our evaluation of the causal
role of poverty and unemployment in homelessness.
We are especially interested in how the homeless
differ from the non-homeless in:
This chapter works its way through a long list of comparisons. Don't get
overwhelmed by the number of these comparisons. We will try to impose some
order on this list by discussing how each of these relationships sheds light
on our
list of six causes
of homelessness.
For each of the following factors, what is
The first page of this chapter gives
an overview of Rossi's causal analysis
thus far. Notice how he has changed his tune since
chapter one.
He also gives a
hint of where he will finally end up in the last chapter
when he talks about the difference between explaining who becomes homeless
and fluctuations in societal levels of homelessness.
This will be an important theme in our own causal analyses.
Much of this chapter discusses the relationship between mental illness and
homelessness. We need to understand Rossi's argument, but in class I will
argue that Rossi's evidence is much weaker than we would expect. So,
reviewing this chapter should be an exercise in critical reading: What is
wrong (or more accurately, what is weak) with Rossi's analysis?
First (page 144), there is an important
warning about causal interpretations
of any association between disabilities and homelessness.
Make sure you understand and can use this warning.
For each of the following:
In the last section "The Accumulation of Troubles",
Rossi argues how these various micro-level
factors combine to cause homelessness.
This theme will be picked up later by Jencks.
The argument that Rossi makes is probably more convincing than his
evidence. What is his argument about "the accumulation of troubles"?
What is weak about his evidence?
Finally, his last paragraph in this chapter outlines a brilliant
theory of how all the micro factors discussed thus far are
linked together
to produce homelessness.
The importance here is that we are not left with just a list of causes
as we began the semester with, but an understanding of how one cause links
to another to show how, together, they produce homelessness.
Here, Rossi shifts from his survey analysis to a broader consideration of the
causes
of homelessness. Alas, his analysis here is almost totally
different from the previous six chapters! It's almost as if somebody else
wrote this chapter.
The difference, I think, is that in this chapter, without telling us,
Rossi shifts from his previous micro-level analysis (Which individuals
become homeless?) to a macro-level analysis (What explains national levels
of homelessness?). So this is an appropriate introduction to some of the other
reading this semester (city differences, Jencks, O'Flaherty) which is almost wholly
macro-oriented.
Rossi has already hinted in the last chapter how he wants to combine the
micro factors studied in his survey with the
macro causes he reviews in this chapter.
Rossi works his way through four macro causes from our
list of six causes.
What is his argument about their importance? his evidence?
Which of our list of possible causes has been left out of this list? Why
has Rossi dropped these now?
What are Rossi's
policy recommendations?
You should be able to list about eight.
How are these derived from his
causal analysis?
We want to evaluate these policies along three dimensions:
Chapter 1: On the Bottom and Out on the Fringe
Chapter 3:Counting the Homeless
Chapter 4: Location and Economic Circumstances
These two questions are answered in tables 4.1 and 4.3 (especially panel B
of 4.3). Be sure you understand the difference between these two tables.
Most of these are evaluated in Rossi's table 4.8.
By the end of this chapter, what factors from our original causal
list have received support so far?
Chapter 5: Demography
Chapter 6: Vulnerability: Disabilities and Homelessness
Chapter 7: Why homelessness?
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| Last updated February 15, 2007 |
comments to: Reeve Vanneman.
reeve@cwmills.umd.edu
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