About the Author: Jeffrey Grunberg
While he earned a doctorate in sociology in the early 90’s, it was years earlier in 1977, while doing fieldwork towards his master’s degree in psychology, that the author began his work with the homeless. Through the years, he worked in a number of settings, establishing and running programs aimed at alleviating the suffering that comes with living on the street, detached and alone.
His research interests in the barriers homeless people faced piqued in 1986 when, recruited by Columbia Presbyterian‘s Department of Psychiatry, he served as the hospital’s only non-physician Program Director, working to help mentally-ill homeless men living in the 1000-bed Fort Washington Armory. Appointed as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University, his program was an interdisciplinary teaching effort and he participated in numerous research projects.
In 1988, he was invited by a business district to devise programs to address the needs that homeless people had living on midtown streets, and that is when the work that became the heart of this book began. He helped establish the country’s largest overnight drop-in-center with over 2000 guests monthly, offering multiple services from dozens of agencies, employment driven outreach programs, a street newspaper, and making thousands of temporary and permanent housing placements. He resigned this position just after securing a permanent new drop-in center with a ten-year contract for continued funding from the city. He went on to establish the nation’s first homeless soccer program taking teams all over the world. Soon after, he took a position at Dutchess Community College where he currently serves as an adjunct sociology instructor while maintaining a private practice helping people in crisis.
Comprising a number of short essays, 'Why the Homeless Have No Chance: The Dismantling of Success' documents a sociological journey through the homeless services industry and describes today’s wrong-headed approach to this lingering social problem.
Told from the vantage point of thirty years of personal experience helping homeless people in a number of settings, these adventures largely took place in midtown Manhattan in the early 90’s. Over a seventeen-year period, our singularly successful approach was dismantled “slow-mo” by way of political advocacy and media complicity. We had decried the housing approach, frustrated that it was going nowhere, instead calling for employment programming. However, what is referred to as “The Board,” the putative head of the homeless industry, would have none of it. We were accused of heinous crimes, all made up. For it all, even after those charges were proven to be “fanciful,” the damage had been done - we were taken down and our funding went right into the coffers of The Board, while the homeless, unemployed again, were back on the street.
Never told were the reasons for what one investigator called our “unparalleled success.” Why were we able to bring thousands of homeless men and women indoors? Why were we able to help so many into employment? What can be done to stem today’s tide of homelessness?
Our programs drew the attention of a number of important New Yorkers, pro and con among them, but in the end, they came to a halt. While this is a story that was partially documented in the media, staccato style, still it has remained a story never fully told.
