Blog | Page 6

The following is a press release for the new documentary Fentanyl: Death Incorporated. Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness initiative is proud to partner with filmmaker Stephen Wollwerth in the production of this documentary that explores the fentanyl crisis in depth. The documentary is produced by Senior Fellow Dr. Robert G. Marbut, Jr., the former Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness under both the Trump and Biden administrations. Senior Fellow and journalist Jonathan Choe also contributed and is featured in the documentary. San Antonio, Texas (September 24, 2024) — American citizens are the world’s top consumers of illicit synthetic Fentanyl that is often laced with other illicit drugs, including horse tranquilizers. The size of two grains of salt is Read More ›

After criticizing some scholarly articles and books, I have three books to recommend. First, here’s a tribute to 86-year-old psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, author of American Psychosis: How the Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment System (Oxford University Press, 2013). I first met Torrey in 1989 and heard about what was going wrong. Thirty-five years later, it’s even clearer that the federal panaceas have not panned out. Torrey shows how local and state charities and governments cared for mentally ill individuals, sometimes poorly but often adequately, until 1940, by which time state mental hospitals housed 423,445 individuals. During World War II half of the hospitals’ professional staff members were in the armed forces. Torrey: “The hospitals were grossly overcrowded Read More ›

The following press release for the new documentary “Behind Closed Doors” is from ChangeWA. ChangeWA and Ginny Burton are friends of Discovery Institute. Our work on homelessness is featured in “Behind Closed Doors” in an interview with our program coordinator Caitlyn McKenney. ChangeWA has teamed with filmmaker V Ginny Burton to produce “Behind Closed Doors,” a shocking 30-minute documentary which exposes the unsafe and drug-filled conditions within King County’s low-barrier housing and provides strong evidence that these are not conditions where formerly homeless individuals “can get their lives back,” as King County Executive Dow Constantine has repeatedly promised. Burton’s interviews with residents and workers from several of King County’s housing projects reveal that most residents continue to use illegal drugs, Read More ›

I was critical of sociologist Matthew Desmond in my last two columns, but I do appreciate that he based his research in Milwaukee. The Midwest is often overlooked in discussions about homelessness. Journalists more often write about California, home to about half of all unsheltered homeless people in the U.S., and New York, flush with immigrants. “Housing First” became a familiar slogan partly because of journalistic near-sightedness: High housing prices in some coastal cities make it easy for coast-based reporters to argue that finances are central to the homelessness problem — but the middle of the country looks very different. Fact: 60 U.S. cities with more than 100,000 residents — many in the north central sector stretching from Buffalo to Read More ›

I summarized last week reviews of Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, a book published in 2016 that uses Dickens-like characters and won a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. Two months ago, the New York Times even put Evicted in 21st place on its list of 100 books of the 21st century. A Chronicle of Higher Education writer called Desmond “sociology’s next great hope.” One problem, though, is that Evicted offers almost no hope. Based on my experience, I’d say that those who talk about personal causes of poverty and those who talk about structural/societal causes are both right: People are poor for both reasons, and the proportion varies from individual to individual, but I’ve never seen it 100% one way or the other Read More ›

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 ›