Fix Homelessness How to rebuild human lives

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city of Los Angeles at night

How Much Do You Know About Homelessness?

Six in ten, defined as “sheltered homeless,” sleep in emergency shelters, safe havens, or transitional housing programs. These sites are often unpleasant but usually not dangerous. Four in ten are unsheltered, some in tents or cars not for recreational reasons but because they have no alternative. Read More ›
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Woman hand holds wooden house against the sun
Woman hand holds wooden house against the sun

Assessing Alternatives to Homelessness

Homeless people given their own apartments are often the same. We are apparently made for community with at least one other person. Read More ›
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Discovery Institute Joins North America Recovers Coalition to Combat Homelessness

With support from Discovery and other coalition partners, North America Recovers has launched a public campaign calling on lawmakers to embrace addiction recovery for Americans, not addiction enablement. Read More ›
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Examining the Scholarly Record

The academic journal literature on homelessness is vast, but during the past decade oversimplification has ruled. The Obama administration made “Housing First!” the official U.S. policy, with homeless people to be given their own apartments. Programs that emphasized “Clean and Sober first” became ineligible for federal aid, and mental health issues became secondary. Typical academic analyses of homelessness found — surprise! — that “Housing First!” is great. A lot of scholarly research up to 2009, though, revealed homelessness complexities. Here are four examples:  Key insights:Homeless adults who are alcoholics have “unusually high levels of mental health symptomatology…. Adults with alcohol problems are so debilitated that they readily become homeless (as compared to being domiciled under very trying circumstances) when also Read More ›

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Distorted image of a town street on a rainy day with rare ray of sun shining through crystal ball
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A Different View of Homelessness

The relationship of homelessness and mental illness is complex. Some disorders precede time on the streets and some result from it, but Ullman is right to note that “individuals who spend long periods living unsheltered have a very high prevalence” of serious mental illness and debilitating substance-use. Read More ›
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People crowd shadows lined up against a red brick wall. They are in a queue for changes in life. Social distance, covid and immigration issue concept
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Varieties of Homelessness

After seven months of getting back into the flow of writing about poverty, my New Year’s resolution is to continue doing ground-level or historical columns, but to try as well to map out the overall debate and see what each side has to contribute. Read More ›
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Schizophrenic man holding his head
Schizophrenic man holding his head

Hearing Voices

Julius Caesar began his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars with a sentence that Latin students once memorized: Translated literally into English, it reads, “Gaul is a whole divided into three parts.” When delving into homelessness causes, it’s useful to keep in mind that homelessness is both a whole and a hole into which people fall for three main reasons: mental illness, alcoholism/addiction, and housing costs. Many journalists emphasize housing costs, partly because many live in expensive coastal cities. Off the coast, with the exception of a few cities like Austin, it’s different. As I learned in Flint and Pontiac, Michigan — columns to come — apartment cost is not a big factor in many cities that have lost population in Read More ›