ABSTRACT
The author looks at the long-term trends in political alienation in the Survey Research Center (SRC) surveys. Poverty in America has become visible again, both as a phenomenon and as a public policy issue. As a presentational convenience, it is useful to begin by imagining a sample of a thousand homeless people, drawn at random, let us say, from the half million or so homeless people to be found in America on any given evening. Studies show homeless veterans to be slightly older and proportionally more white than homeless non-veteran men; compared to the national veteran population, Vietnam-era veterans are over-represented. The distinction between the worthy and unworthy poor goes back for centuries and still defines the national discourse about the poor, hungry, and homeless. The homeless research program started out as an evaluation of the Johnson-Pew national Health Care for the Homeless demonstration program.
