Marvin Olasky

Barry Meyer slept for a month and a half in a port-a-potty near the Lynchburg public library: “It was a big one, I could do a twisting stretch-out with the toilet seat and my stuff.” He said it didn’t smell bad because “they cleaned it twice a week.” Of course, his sense of smell, maybe his sense of everything, was off because each day he typically consumed eight “tall boys” (25-ounce beers) and a pint of whiskey. He favored Earthquake High Gravity Lager with its aroma of corn syrup and wet hay. Its fans say Earthquake “will get you buzzin’ like a chainsaw… It’s like putting your finger between the sprocket and chain on a motorcycle and then having your Read More ›

Johnny Cash sang, “On the Sunday morning sidewalks/ Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned/Cause there’s something in a Sunday/ That makes a body feel alone.” I saw on a recent Saturday and Sunday morning that sleeping under a New Orleans expressway might really make a body feel alone. Periodically during the past decade the homeless humans in this verdant city coalesced into a big tent city, an anarchic community of sorts—and police swept it away. Times-Picayune, 2012: “About 55 people who had been staying under the Pontchartrain Expressway were told they must leave the area and move into shelters.” Two years later, the New Orleans City Council gave police the right to remove tents, furniture, and other items “that obstruct Read More ›

Last week we concluded one look at homelessness in Jackson, Tennessee, with the story of Tracey King, 50, and her back-and-forth relationships. First she married, had a daughter, and divorced. Next she married a police officer and gave birth to twin boys. She divorced the police officer and then remarried him. King said he began taking drugs so they divorced again and she “lost everything.” When drinking and smoking pot no longer numbed her emotional pain, she snorted fentanyl. Stints at seven different drug treatment centers — in Nashville, Savannah, and elsewhere — failed to bring healing. In February 2022, she moved in with her mother, who also battled addiction, King said. Two months later, her mother kicked her out. Read More ›

As Stephanie Woodley, 42, sat last month in the dayroom of Area Relief Ministries (ARM) in Jackson, Tenn., she said the stabbing of her ex-husband was no big deal. “The gash is only this big,” she said as she extended her right thumb and index finger to demonstrate a one-incher.  Woodley said her ex-husband tried to push their daughter, Maddie, down the stairs, so Maddie stabbed him. Maddie moved in with her aunt in Memphis, and Woodley was sleeping on the streets in Jackson, 88 miles away. Woodley’s dark almond eyes teared up: “I miss my daughter.”  Woodley showed the homescreen on her phone: a picture of Maddie standing next to a pink agapanthus flower. She said Maddie has offered Read More ›

Last week on Fix Homelessness and in my monthly OlaskyBooks newsletter, I gave highlights and lowlights from Andrew Scull’s Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness (Harvard University Press, 2022). He notes that many mentally ill people are now homeless and on the streets instead of in state-funded mental hospitals. (Those institutions, like Michigan’s Lapeer State Home and Training School, housed sufferers. Then the 1960s brought in new drugs and new Washington-paid health plans, Medicare and Medicaid.) I didn’t have room last week to dive into an important question: Which came first, medical panaceas (that turned out not to be so) or money incentives? Scull says money, in many instances: “In at least seventeen states, inpatient censuses had Read More ›