Marvin Olasky

The academic who’s gained the biggest rewards for writing about homelessness is Harvard and Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond. An above-average writer, Desmond received in 2015 a MacArthur “genius grant” of $625,000 and, following publication of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, a 2017 Pulitzer Prize. The prize came with this explanation: “For a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty.” Desmond deserves credit for living in two poor areas of Milwaukee as he researched his book, but discredit journalistically because he mentions that “the names of tenants, their children, and their relatives, as well as landlords and their workers, have been changed to Read More ›

Last week I reviewed academic research regarding homelessness and foster care from this century’s first decade. Scholars debated the circumstances within which people develop executive function: planning ahead and giving up immediate rewards for long-term benefits. How do people on long losing streaks avoid “learning helplessness,” the fatalistic sense that, regardless of what we do right, everything goes wrong? The consensus developed during the second decade is that ACEs (“adverse childhood experiences”) go wild: ACEs such as suffering abuse or neglect, witnessing violence in the home or community, or having a family member attempt or die by suicide, undermine senses of safety and stability. Substance use and mental health problems also deal ACEs. Many U.S. adults experience at least one Read More ›

As this century began, journalist Fred Barnes quoted four discouraging words found in some illustrious newspapers: “First of a series.” Journalist Mickey Kaus defined the typical newspaper series as a “bloated journalistic project driven by egos and internal institutional needs.” But one thing is even more discouraging than most newspaper series: a series of articles from academic journals. Nevertheless, here are some journal articles about the relationship between homelessness and foster care. One, by Heather Taussig in 2002 in Child Abuse and Neglect, had the scintillating title, “Risk behaviors in maltreated youth placed in foster care: A longitudinal study of protective and vulnerability factors.” Taussig noted that “for many maltreated children, the experience of trauma does not cease when they Read More ›

The Safe Families dinner and Rob Henderson memoir I wrote about last month got me thinking more about “the relationship between foster care and homelessness”: That’s the title of a paper delivered at a 1996 conference hosted by the American Public Welfare Association and based on client files and case data from 21 homeless service organizations located in every region of the United States. Of the 1,134 homeless individuals covered by the study, 36 percent had a foster care history. The paper’s authors, Nan P. Roman and Phyllis B. Wolfe, determined that “the foster care system can fail to deal adequately with problems caused by sexual abuse, physical abuse, or troubled or dysfunctional families — that is to say, with Read More ›

Rob Henderson’s Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class (Gallery Books, 2024) is well worth reading. I’ll give you two reasons Henderson’s life and book are not exceptional, then two reasons why they are. 1. Sad to say, Henderson’s background does not make his book exceptional these days. Mother: drug addict. Father: nowhere in sight. Number of foster care placements: ten, more than the national average of seven or eight. Once a child gets past three he often lives with dread, the word Henderson says best summarizes his feelings while growing up and sliding down. He dreads “suddenly being moved somewhere else. . . . The dread was sharp — I’d see an unfamiliar car outside or Read More ›