WHERE WILL THEY SLEEP TONIGHT?

by Kim Dartnell

1 On January 21, 1982, in New York City, Rebecca Smith froze to death after living for five
months in a cardboard box. Rebecca was one of a family of thirteen children from a rural town
in Virginia. After graduating from high school as the valedictorian of her class and giving birth
to a daughter, she spent ten years in mental institutions, where she underwent involuntary
shock treatment for schizophrenia. It was when she was released to her sister’s custody that
Rebecca began wandering the streets of New York, living from day to day. Many social
workers tried unsuccessfully to persuade her to go into a city shelter, and she died only a few
hours before she was scheduled to be placed in protective custody. (Hombs & Snyder,
1982:56).
2
Rebecca Smith’s story is all too typical of those of the increasing number id homeless
women in America. Vagrant men have always been a noticeable problem in American cities,
and their numbers have increased in the 1980s. Vagrancy among women is a relatively new
problem of any size, however. In 1979, New York City had one public shelter for homeless
women. By 1983, it had four. Los Angeles has recently increased the number of beds
available to women in its skid-row shelters (Stoner, 1983: 571). Even smaller communities
have noticed an increase in homeless women. It is impossible to know their number, or the
extent of their increase in the 1980s, but everyone that has studied the problem agrees that it
is serious and that it is getting worse (Hombs & Snyder, 1982: 10; Stoner, 1984: 3).
3 Who are these women? Over half of all the homeless women are under the age of forty.
Forty-four percent are black, forty percent are white. The statistics for homeless men are
about the same (Stoner, 1983: 570). These women are almost always unemployed and poorly
educated, unlike Rebecca Smith, and few are homeless by choice. An expert in the field has
written, “Homeless women d not choose their circumstances. They are victims of forces over
which they have lost control” (Stoner, 1983: 568, 569). The women try in various ways to cope
with their dangerous lifestyle. To avoid notice, especially by the police, some have one set of
nice clothes that they wash often. They shower in shelters or YWCAs and try to keep their
hairstyle close to the latest fashions. An extreme is the small number of women who actually
sleep sitting up on park benches to avoid wrinkling their clothes. On the other end of the
spectrum are the more noticeable “bag ladies”, who purposely maintain an offensive
appearance and body odour to protect themselves from rape and robbery ((Stoner, 1983:
568).
4 Why has there been such an increase in the number of vagrant women? There are
several causes for this trend. For one thing, more and more women are leaving their families
because of rape, incest and other forms of abuse. To take one example, the Christian Housing
Facility, a private organization in Orange County, California, that provides food, shelter, and
counselling to victims of abuse, sheltered 1,536 people in 1981, a 300 percent increase from
the year before (Stoner, 1983: 573). It is unclear whether such increases are due to an actual
increase of abuse in American families or whether they result from the fact that it is more
socially acceptable for a woman to be on her own today. Another factor is that government
social programmes for battered women have been severely cut back, leaving victims of abuse
no choice but to leave home.
5
Evictions and illegal lockouts force some women onto the streets. Social welfare
cutbacks, unemployment, and desertion all result in a loss of income. Once a woman cannot
pay her rent, she is likely to be evicted, often without notice.
6 Another problem is a lack of inexpensive housing. On today’s homeless women, over 50
percent lived in single rooms before they became vagrants. Many of the buildings containing
single-room or other cheap apartments have been torn down to make way for more profitable
use of the land or renovated into more expensive housing. Hotels are being offered new tax
incentives that make it economically unfeasible to maintain inexpensive single rooms. This is
obviously a serious problem, one that sends many women out into the streets every year.
7 Alcoholism has been cited as the major reason for the increase in the number of
homeless women. However, it is not really a major contributing factor. First, there has not
been a significant general increase in alcoholism to parallel the rise in homeless women;
second, alcoholism occurs at all levels of financial status, from the executive to the homeless.
 Rather, it might be suggested that alcoholism is usually a result of homelessness rather than a
cause.
8
Probably the biggest single factor in the rising number of homeless women is the
deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. One study estimated that 90 percent of all vagrant
women may be mentally ill (Stoner, 1983: 567), as was the case with Rebecca Smith. The last
few years have seen an avalanche of mental patients released from institutions. Between
1955 and 1980, the number of patients in mental institutions dropped by 75 percent, from
about 560,000 to about 140,000. There are several reasons for this decline. New psychotonic
drugs can now “cure” patients with mild disturbances. Expanded legal rights for patients lead
to early release from asylums. Government-funded services such as Medicare allow some
patients to be released into nursing or boarding homes. The problem is that many of these
women have not really known any life outside the hospital and suddenly find themselves thrust
out into an unreceptive world, simply because they present no threat to society or are
“unresponsive to treatment.” Very few of them are ever referred to community mental health
centres, as deinstitutionalized policies assumed. Instead, many go out straight onto the
streets. Others may live with family or in some other inexpensive housing at first, but sooner or
later they are likely to end up in the streets as well.
9
Although deinstitutionalization seems to have been the biggest factor in the increase in
vagrant women, there is some evidence that the main cause is economic. Unemployment hit
10.1 percent in 1982, the highest it has been since 1940. Yet that same year saw $2.35 billion
cut from food-stamp programmes. Reductions in another welfare programme, Aid to families
with Dependent Children (AFDC), hit women particularly hard because four out of five AFDC
families are headed by women, two-thirds of whom have not graduated from high school
(Hombs & Snyder, 1982). Together with inflation, unemployment, and loss of other welfare
benefits, these cuts have effectively forced many women into homelessness and can be
expected to continue to do so at a greater rate in years to come.
10
The United States may be one of the word’s prosperous nations, but for Rebecca Smith
and others like her, the American dream is far from being fulfilled.

References
Hombs, M. E. & M. Snyder (1982) Homelessness in America. Washington, DC: Community for
Creative Non-Violence.
Stoner, M. R. (1983) The plight of homeless women. Social Service Review, 57, 565 – 581.
Stoner, M. R. (1984) An analysis of public and private sector provisions for homeless people.
Urban and Social Change Review, 17, 2 – 10.