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OverviewThe homeless have the legal right to exist in modern American cities, yet antihomeless ordinances deny them access to many public spaces. How did previous generations of urban dwellers deal with the tensions between the rights of the homeless and those of other city residents? Ella Howard answers this question by tracing the history of skid rows from their rise in the late nineteenth century to their eradication in the mid-twentieth century. Focusing on New York's infamous Bowery, Homeless analyzes the efforts of politicians, charity administrators, social workers, urban planners, and social scientists as they grappled with the problem of homelessness. The development of the Bowery from a respectable entertainment district to the nation's most infamous skid row offers a lens through which to understand national trends of homelessness and the complex relationship between poverty and place. Maintained by cities across the country as a type of informal urban welfare, skid rows anchored the homeless to a specific neighborhood, offering inhabitants places to eat, drink, sleep, and find work while keeping them comfortably removed from the urban middle classes. This separation of the homeless from the core of city life fostered simplistic and often inaccurate understandings of their plight. Most efforts to assist them centered on reforming their behavior rather than addressing structural economic concerns. By midcentury, as city centers became more valuable, urban renewal projects and waves of gentrification destroyed skid rows and with them the public housing and social services they offered. With nowhere to go, the poor scattered across the urban landscape into public spaces, only to confront laws that effectively criminalized behavior associated with abject poverty. Richly detailed, Homeless lends insight into the meaning of homelessness and poverty in twentieth-century America and offers us a new perspective on the modern welfare system. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Ella HowardPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.80cm , Length: 22.90cm Weight: 0.748kg ISBN: 9780812244724ISBN 10: 0812244729 Pages: 288 Publication Date: 21 February 2013 Audience: College/higher education , Tertiary & Higher Education Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. The Challenge of the Depression Chapter 2. A New Deal for the Homeless Chapter 3. Skid Row in an Era of Plenty Chapter 4. Urban Renewal and the Challenge of Homelessness Chapter 5. Operation Bowery and Social Scientific Inquiry Chapter 6. The End of the Skid-Row Era Conclusion. Whither the Homeless Notes Index AcknowledgmentsReviewsThrough thorough research, sound use of secondary sources, and a shrewd focus on America's first and largest skid row, the Bowery, Howard has produced a book that will be essential reading for scholars of homelessness and social welfare. -Todd DePastino, author of Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America Howard seamlessly weaves larger issues of urban renewal, housing, alcohol research, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and gentrification into her history of the Bowery, which serves as a touchstone to which she returns. The result is a history of American policy on homelessness at the federal, state, and municipal levels that remains grounded in the lived experience of homeless men and women in the middle decades of the twentieth century. -Eric Schneider, author of Smack: Heroin and the American City ""Through thorough research, sound use of secondary sources, and a shrewd focus on America's first and largest skid row, the Bowery, Howard has produced a book that will be essential reading for scholars of homelessness and social welfare."" * Todd DePastino, author of <i>Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America</i> * ""Howard seamlessly weaves larger issues of urban renewal, housing, alcohol research, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and gentrification into her history of the Bowery, which serves as a touchstone to which she returns. The result is a history of American policy on homelessness at the federal, state, and municipal levels that remains grounded in the lived experience of homeless men and women in the middle decades of the twentieth century."" * Eric Schneider, author of <i>Smack: Heroin and the American City</i> * Through thorough research, sound use of secondary sources, and a shrewd focus on America's first and largest skid row, the Bowery, Howard has produced a book that will be essential reading for scholars of homelessness and social welfare. * Todd DePastino, author of <i>Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America</i> * Howard seamlessly weaves larger issues of urban renewal, housing, alcohol research, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and gentrification into her history of the Bowery, which serves as a touchstone to which she returns. The result is a history of American policy on homelessness at the federal, state, and municipal levels that remains grounded in the lived experience of homeless men and women in the middle decades of the twentieth century. * Eric Schneider, author of <i>Smack: Heroin and the American City</i> * Howard seamlessly weaves larger issues of urban renewal, housing, alcohol research, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and gentrification into her history of the Bowery, which serves as a touchstone to which she returns. The result is a history of American policy on homelessness at the federal, state, and municipal levels that remains grounded in the lived experience of homeless men and women in the middle decades of the twentieth century. -Eric Schneider, author of Smack: Heroin and the American City Through thorough research, sound use of secondary sources, and a shrewd focus on America's first and largest skid row, the Bowery, Howard has produced a book that will be essential reading for scholars of homelessness and social welfare. -Todd DePastino, author of Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America """Through thorough research, sound use of secondary sources, and a shrewd focus on America's first and largest skid row, the Bowery, Howard has produced a book that will be essential reading for scholars of homelessness and social welfare."" * Todd DePastino, author of <i>Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America</i> * ""Howard seamlessly weaves larger issues of urban renewal, housing, alcohol research, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and gentrification into her history of the Bowery, which serves as a touchstone to which she returns. The result is a history of American policy on homelessness at the federal, state, and municipal levels that remains grounded in the lived experience of homeless men and women in the middle decades of the twentieth century."" * Eric Schneider, author of <i>Smack: Heroin and the American City</i> *" Author InformationElla Howard teaches urban history and material culture at Armstrong Atlantic State University. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |