
Alone and Homeless, ‘Shutouts’ of Society Sleep in Doorways (1971) - dredmorbius
http://www.nytimes.com/1971/10/26/archives/alone-and-homeless-shutouts-of-society-sleep-in-doorways.html
======
dredmorbius
The article relates to a question I've been wondering: when did the homeless
crisis really emerge, and what, if anything, was "homeless" called before it
was "homeless"?

The Google Ngram Viewer shows a massive spike in the term in the 1980s, which
corresponds roughly to my awareness. Previously, there were "street people",
"vagrants", or "bums", and going back even earlier, "hobos" and other terms.

The term "homeless" _is_ used previously, but it is almost always associated
with _a specific event_ \-- going through the NY Times archives, I've seen
multiple headlines referring to a specific disaster or tragedy, almost always
a fire, occasionally a major storm, with a count of those "made homeless",
usually in the 2-3 digit range.

The article I've submitted here is the first I've found that clearly discusses
homelessness _not_ as a temporary and acute condition, but as a chronic one,
and with the term _describing the associated class of people_.

The question I'm trying to get at is whether or not this represents a change
in situation (though as the article notes, "How long has this been going
on?... Long enough for someone to do something about it."), of terminology, or
of awareness.

