HOMELESS AFRICAN-AMERICAN VETERANS IN TENNESSEE

Homeless African-American Veterans in Tennessee

Table of content

CHAPTER 15

Introduction5

Homelessness5

The new homeless of the 1980s8

Homeless Social Policy11

Counting The Homeless14

Challenges To Counting The Homeless15

National Estimates Of The Homeless17

Homelessness Among African-Americans21

Poverty23

Review of the Background Literature26

Defining Homelessness26

Determining Population Numbers29

Homelessness Routinized34

Homelessness in the United States44

Veteran Homelessness in the United States47

Veteran Homelessness Research50

Organization of the Dissertation55

Relevance to Social Work56

CHAPTER 259

REVIEW OF LITERATURE59

Review Methods59

The United States Armed Forces61

Overview of the United States Military61

Overview of Military Culture65

How do Military Branches Differ?71

Service Utilization by Veterans who are Homeless72

Introduction72

Service Utilization by Veterans who are Homeless73

Rates and Patterns of Service Use74

Outcomes of Veteran Service Utilization77

CHAPTER 3- Proposed Methodology83

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK83

Theoretical Model of Service Utilization83

Behavioral Model of Health Services Use83

Hardiness and Service Utilization84

Military Service and Hardiness85

Social Identity Theory and the Military Role-Identity87

Lazarus' Model of Stress and Coping90

Synthesis of Theoretical Framework92

Research Sub-Hypothesis93

PROPOSED METHODS94

Setting94

Participants97

Sampling and Sample Size97

Instrumentation99

Demographic Characteristics / History of Military Service99

Service Utilization100

Hardiness101

Physical and Mental Health Functioning102

History of Substance Abuse104

Proposed Procedures107

References113

Homeless African-American Veterans in Tennessee

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Homelessness

President Lyndon B. Johnson's “war on poverty” arguably had a profound influence upon the illumination of the real and vast life differences between persons who have wealth and those who struggle with the vicissitudes of poverty. The predictors of poverty, access to education, jobs and a sustainable wage were hotly debated. Ultimately, policy arose from these debates which was said to be aimed at the eradication of poverty. Missing from the debate about poverty were discussions concerning homelessness in America. Homelessness as a concept was not included in 1960's social and economic discourse. In 1964 while the nation waged a “war on poverty” the notion of homelessness did not exist in the national vocabulary and there would be a passage of nearly two decades before the nation's homeless became abundantly visible.

The visibility of homeless people increased in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when nearly a half-million hospitals beds were closed nationwide in state-run mental hospitals and their occupants were shipped for community care to neighborhood-based institutions. A great many of the people who were evicted wound up without shelter, living on city and suburban streets. This unfortunate occurrence continued into the 1980s (Marciniak, 2001). On the heels of deinstitutionalization, the decade of the 1980s ushered in economic upheaval that would affect most citizens. The people who were most negatively affected by these economic hard times were those who lived near the margins of economic survival. As time wore on many of these citizens would find themselves unable to provide for the most basic of necessities, shelter.

Poverty exploded in the inner cities of America during the Reagan years, claiming children as its principal victims. The reason for this suffering was that programs targeted to low-income families, such as AFDC, were drastically cut. As a result of cuts in such targeted programs-including school lunches and subsidized housing-federal benefit programs for households with incomes of less than $10,000 a year declined nearly 8% during the Reagan first term.

Prior to the decade of the 1980's those persons who found themselves without a home were labeled skid row ...