comes for those who lost Supplemental Security Income when addiction was elim-
inated as a qualifying impairment for Social Security disability benefits.
the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, where he co-directs the
Center for the Study of Issues in Public Mental Health. He also lectures at the
Columbia University Schools of Public Health and Law. Since 1979, he has done
ethnographic and historical research on psychiatric care and on homelessness,
chiefly in New York City. Active in homeless advocacy efforts since 1980, he
served as President of the National Coalition for the Homeless from 19911993.
He is author of the forthcoming Reckoning with Homelessness (Cornell University
Press), a stocktaking of two decades of research, advocacy, and theoretical work
in that field. His current research interests include the reconfiguration of public
mental health (the so-called "de facto" system in place), cross cultural, long-term
follow-up studies of psychotic disorder, modalities of coercion, and dimensions of
recovery and support in severe mental illness.