The Ecology of Welfare Housing and the Welfare Crisis in New York City

The basic ecology of human groups—the relationship between the distribution of population and material resources and the resultant social and cultural patterns—is a subject which has occasioned far more talk than down-to-earth research. Filling this gap, George Sternlieb and Bernard Indik consider one dimension of human ecology— the interplay between housing and outlook, between the physical realities of a dwelling unit and the attitudes and responses of its inhabitants. Their book, The Ecology of Welfare, presents a detailed description of the housing and housing problems of one special subgroup-New York City's welfare recipients in the 1970's.