-Caveat Lector- ----Original Message Follows---- From: Grassroots Media Network <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: undisclosed-recipients:; Subject: [generalnews] homelessness is out of fashion in the media Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 23:06:58 -0500 (CDT) Homelessness is out of fashion. WASHINGTON _ Driving home late on Christmas Eve, I stopped for a traffic light at the corner of 14th Street and Constitution Avenue _ a few blocks from the White House, in journalistic terms _ and watched a man settling in for the evening on a steam grate. It was well past midnight, bitter cold, and the streets were nearly deserted. So there, I thought, is someone who, in the famous words of Edwin Meese III, is truly ``homeless by choice.'' In fact, on my Christmas Eve journey, this was not the only homeless man I encountered. There were a few huddled close by the Commerce Department, and several across the street from the Department of State _ all traditional gathering places. Outside a subway stop on 12th Street, just a minute's walk from the Providence Journal bureau, a young man was begging for money. He held a sign identifying himself as a Vietnam veteran _ which, given his age, was highly unlikely _ but he certainly appeared to be homeless. It is difficult to walk too many steps in the nation's capital without encountering someone stretched out on a bench, waving a cup under your nose, or talking very loudly to no one in particular. It is a generally accepted fact that there are more homeless people in Washington than there used to be. This may well be true, although accurate statistics are hard to obtain. There were certainly bums on the city streets in my childhood: While standing at bus stops, I got to know the harmless, and the rather menacing, specimens. Their numbers surely increased when state mental institutions _ the famous ``snake pits,'' vestiges of the unenlightened past _ were closed down in the 1960s and '70s. Throughout the 1980s, when cities sought to compel homeless men and women to enter shelters at night, the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations successfully fought to preserve their right to sleep _ and squat, urinate, defecate, panhandle, etc. _ on the sidewalk. So, in whatever numbers, and at whatever rates of increase, here they are. And yet, so far as the media are concerned, they are not. The Village Voice recently surveyed the press on the subject, and found that homelessness is no longer a story: ``In the fall of 1988, The New York Times devoted 50 stories to the homeless, including five front-page pieces. This year (1998) the Times has run only 10 pieces in the same period; none have begun on A-1.'' The cynic in me has an obvious explanation: In 1988, instead of a compassionate Democrat, there was a heartless Republican in the White House. Indeed, if you track press attention to homelessness, you will find a dramatic leap in coverage beginning in the early 1980s _ when Ronald Reagan took office. When I worked in the Carter State Department, I used to walk around the same men who were sleeping on the nearby steam grate when it became the Haig State Department. But somehow, after Jan. 20, 1981, The Washington Post, and other news organizations, suddenly awakened to their existence. Throughout the 1980s, and into the early '90s, homelessness was ubiquitous in the media: The networks contrasted the nouveau riche with the suddenly impoverished, and the newspapers explained that lack of ``affordable'' housing, or ``deep cuts'' in federal expenditures, had swollen the ranks of people inhabiting the streets. There were profiles of suburban high school students donating blankets to downtown shelters, and photo ops of movie stars nurturing the less fortunate. And then suddenly, it came to an end. A good part of the explanation is political, no doubt: Once Bill and Hillary Clinton took up residence in the White House, it was no longer feasible to compare the glittering world of the presidency with the harsh reality of nearby sidewalks. And of course, when a Democratic administration yields prosperity, no one is left behind. But the evidence suggests otherwise: The streets of the nation's capital are full of people who haven't gotten the news from Wall Street, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors reports that the demand for emergency shelters has increased by 11 percent in the last year alone. Homelessness may no longer be a story, but the homeless are still with us. More than a third of the homeless men in America are black, and yet President Clinton's staunchest black defenders in Congress _ John Lewis, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, Sheila Jackson Lee _ have little to say on the subject. Can anyone imagine this would be the case if Bob Dole were in the White House? The problem with homelessless is that, for too long, it has been an issue of partisan convenience. It is not Republican spending policies that caused the explosion in homelessness, but the progressive vision of closing down state mental institutions, the rise in drug and alcohol abuse, and the loss of any stigma attached to subsisting in the streets. The press fell in love with the symptom of homelessness in the 1980s, but grew quiet in the subsequent decade. Perhaps in the next few years it will come to grips with the cause. X X X (Philip Terzian is the associate editor of the Providence Journal. Write to him at: Providence Journal, 1325 G Street NW, Suite 250, Washington, D.C. 20005.) X X X (c) 1999, The Providence Journal. 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