On the last Sunday in November 1993, as the temperatures plummeted into the low 30s, a woman lay down on a bus bench in the nations capital covered only by an old blanket and the cloak of night. She was alone. She was homeless. When she lay down to sleep that cold night, she was anonymous. Today we know her name---Yetta Adams. She was 43 years old, the mother of 3 adult children (Jencks 98). Sometime during that night as she lay on that bench, she died. Yetta Adams was not the first person to succumb to death on a cold street, and she will not be the last. Her death however, was marked because she died across the street from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development which just a few weeks prior, had committed to making homelessness in America a top priority.
             Homelessness has been a major national issue since the early 1980s and the questions that surround its actual causes are highly debated. The main focus centers primarily around the question of whether social !
             and economic conditions are responsible, or whether the homeless themselves are responsible for their plight. We will examine some of the causes of homelessness in America which include: lack of affordable housing, mental illness, lack of efficient government intervention, the lowering of the standard of living, and finally, personal choice.
             A massive emptying of state mental institutions called deinstitutionalization, is thought to be a major cause of homelessness among the mentally ill (Bender and Leone 74-76). Thousands of patients were discharged to unprepared and unreceptive urban communities before any support systems could be put into place. The impact of deinstitutionalization was seen not only in the many patients that were discharged without after care, but also in the mentally ill patients that were denied access to long-term care in hospitals because of strict admission policies. Unable to negotiate the complexities of the mental health and soc...