""William Dickens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>" wrote: > If someone knows of a study showing that homelessness is voluntary I would lo > ve to see it. Here's a link to comprehensive study done by the Urban Institute (careful, document is all in one page, over 500KB): http://www.urban.org/housing/homeless/homeless.html I would call the readers attention to Fig. 2.8, "Most Important Thing Respondent Thinks is Preventing Exit from Homelessness". Of all respondents, 30% say "Insufficient Income" and a different 24% say "Lack of Job". Supporting demographic info: * About 75% of the homeless are above age 18. (Table 2.3) * Around 90% of homeless adults with progeny do NOT have custody of their children. (Fig. 2.7) * Occurrence of mental health problems: Lifetime 57%, past year 45%, past month 39%. (Table 2.4) * Occurence of drug and/or alcohol problems w/o mental illness: Lifetime 30%, past year 29%, past month 27% (Table 2.4) Therefore, given the excellent performance of the economy at the time the data was collected (1996, 1997), we can infer: * A significant portion of the homeless are mentally ill, and that may prevent them from holding down jobs. * Around around 30% have substance abuse problems _not_ as a result of mental illness. This substance abuse may prevent them from holding down jobs, as well. * The rest, around 15-30%, don't want jobs bad enough. Thus, you can draw one of two conclusions: * If you believe that substance abuse is a choice, then 45-60% of the homeless are that way as a direct result of their choices. * If you believe that substance abuse is a disease, then only 15-30% of the homeless are that way as a direct result of their choices. Since I believe the former, my view that for many homelessness is a choice is supported by this study. I do not see any figures for what fraction of those mentally ill refuse treatment; if it is signficant, then there is yet another large subgroup for whom homelessness is at least somewhat of a choice. Regards, Sourav Mandal ------------------------------------------------------------ Sourav K. Mandal [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ikaran.com/Sourav.Mandal/ "In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse." -- Edgar Allan Poe, "The Poetic Principle"
