McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987
The McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 was a significant piece of legislation aimed at addressing homelessness in the United States during a period when the issue was becoming increasingly severe. Initiated by Congressman Stewart B. McKinney, the Act sought to provide federal assistance for emergency provisions, including shelter, food, healthcare, and transitional housing. It was developed in response to alarming statistics indicating that eviction and inadequate support for mentally ill individuals were primary contributors to homelessness.
Passed with bipartisan support, the Act allocated $550 million for various programs related to homelessness, such as affordable housing, health services, and job training. It also included provisions to ensure that homeless children had access to educational opportunities. However, the implementation of the Act faced challenges, including an unclear definition of homelessness and difficulties in measuring the actual number of homeless individuals.
Despite these issues, the McKinney Act established the Interagency Council on the Homeless to coordinate federal efforts, although it faced criticism for its effectiveness. Amendments to the Act were made in subsequent years, and it continued to influence homelessness policy into the following decades, reflecting ongoing efforts to tackle this complex social issue.
McKinney Homeless Assistance Act of 1987
Identification Federal legislation
Date Signed on July 22, 1987
This federal legislation addressed homelessness, a major public concern in the 1980’s, by providing shelter, food, and health care.
Historically, Americans have addressed homelessness at the grassroots level. The presidential administration of Ronald Reagan sought to continue this pattern with the argument that states and localities were best equipped to solve their own homeless problems. Nevertheless, Stewart B. McKinney (1931-1987), a Republican from Connecticut who had served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1971, had a long-standing interest in housing problems. As homelessness worsened in the 1980’s, McKinney sought federal aid to address the problem.
McKinney began to lobby in 1986 for passage of the Urgent Relief for the Homeless Act to provide emergency provisions for shelter, food, health care, and transitional housing. A study prepared in September, 1986, by the Department of Health and Human Services had cited “eviction by landlord” as the prime cause of homelessness, while another major cause was the release of mentally ill people from institutions into communities that lacked services for them. McKinney’s bill sought to address these problems. Large bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress passed the legislation in 1987. McKinney then died in office in that May. In tribute, the legislation was renamed in his honor. President Reagan reluctantly signed the bill into law on July 22, 1987.
The McKinney Homeless Assistance Act provided $550 million nationwide for dealing with problems related to homelessness. It supported affordable housing, emergency shelters, rent subsidies, food distribution, health and mental health care, job training, and treatment of drug and alcohol abuse. The legislation represented a large infusion of federal funds to address homelessness as well as an attempt to deal with its root causes. It also required that homeless children be provided transportation to school and other educational opportunities.
Problems with the legislation appeared fairly quickly. No one knew exactly how many Americans were homeless. Many who lived on the streets did not register for government services, and no clear definition of “homeless” existed. While the National Bureau of Economic Research suggested that, at any given time, between 250,000 and 400,000 Americans had no home, the National Coalition for the Homeless claimed that, over the course of a year, three million people were homeless.
Impact
The Interagency Council on the Homeless, the federal government’s chief coordinating agency for homeless assistance programs, subsequently came under heavy attack for being inadequate and ineffective. The council, under the Housing and Urban Development umbrella, had been established as a clearinghouse for information about federal government programs. It was faulted as an apologist for the Reagan administration’s failure to implement the McKinney Act. The McKinney legislation required that excess federal property be offered as temporary, emergency sanctuaries for homeless people, but seventeen months after Reagan signed the law, only two federal sites had been so used. Despite difficulties in implementing it, the McKinney Act, amended several times in subsequent years, remained in effect as of 2008.
Bibliography
Alker, Joan. Unfinished Business: The Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act After Two Years. New York: National Coalition for the Homeless, 1989.
Liff, Sharon R. No Place Else to Go: Homeless Mothers and Their Children Living in an Urban Shelter. New York: Routledge, 1996.