Homelessness

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Tents set up outdoors on a city street
Image Credit: ds17 - Adobe Stock

Homelessness in America Increases to Highest Number on Record

Homelessness reached the highest number on record nationwide in 2024 according to a report the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released on December 27 in a likely attempt to avoid public attention. Dr. Robert Marbut, Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and former Federal Homelessness Czar, says, “HUD spent over 3.16 billion on homelessness in 2024 and continues to attribute rising homelessness to unavailable housing and systemic racism, while ignoring the fentanyl epidemic and untreated mental illness.” Read More ›
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A man is rowing a boat in the ocean
Image Credit: Alexandr - Adobe Stock

Boats Against the Current

After writing weekly columns about homelessness for two-and-a-half years, I'm ready to put what I've learned into book form. It will be my 30th book and maybe my last, although (as chapter 12 of Ecclesiastes states) "of making many books there is no end." But since I have written a lot, I'll paraphrase the opening of the Declaration of Independence: "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires" that I declare the reason for writing a book on homelessness when a bunch already exist. Read More ›
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Top down view at group of volunteers giving out simple meals to people in need at soup kitchen
Image Credit: Seventyfour - Adobe Stock

Sentimentality vs. Compassion

I almost let 2024 slip away without a column about the 30th anniversary of The Homeless, an important book by scholar Christopher Jencks published in 1994. It included these sentences: "The homeless are indeed just like you and me in most respects. . . . But important as such similarities are, our differences are also important. To ignore them when we talk about the homeless is to substitute sentimentality for compassion." Read More ›
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Homeless people sleeping in sleeping bag and cardboard in a street, concept of financial crisis, unemployment, lose job, vulnerable groups.
Image Credit: JW Studio - Adobe Stock

In the Life of a Homeless Man

With Christmas coming, I'm taking a timeout from my usual columnizing to send greetings to Tony, a homeless man in Colorado. He is 67 years old and may be sleeping in a North Face sleeping bag within an abandoned 144-square-foot wooden structure adjacent to a cemetery. (His summer bed has been a picnic bench about a third of a mile from a Safeway/Starbucks.) Read More ›
Housing Featured Images

As Region Faces Shortage, Seattle Needs to Preserve its Existing Housing 

According to a 2024 report on housing production from Up For Growth, the metro area encompassing Seattle, Tacoma, and Bellevue is facing a shortage of 71,060 homes. That amounts to 4.2% of the region’s total housing stock. While the production of new homes is vital to closing the gap between supply and demand, so is the preservation of existing housing, especially affordable housing. Read More ›
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Poor homeless or refugee barefoot man sleeps on the street in the shadow of the building
Image Credit: Srdjan - Adobe Stock

Eighty Years of Homelessness Realism, 1914-1994

I've written in recent weeks about the non-sentimental view of homelessness that was common in the late nineteenth century. For much of the twentieth century, that realism carried over into academic work as well. Read More ›
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jewish holiday Chanukah/Hanukkah family selebration. Jewish festival of lights. Children lighting candles on traditional menorah over glitter shiny background
Image Credit: biotin - Adobe Stock

The Rarity of Homelessness in Judaism

Christmas Eve this year is also the beginning of Hanukkah, an eight-day Jewish festival — and Jews are less likely to be homeless than non-Jewish Americans. That's not a new phenomenon. Between 1880 and 1914, about 1.5 million Jews (including my grandparents) emigrated from czarist Russia to North America. They lived apart from the mainly Christian charity networks, yet observers at the time noted very little Jewish homelessness. Why? Read More ›
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Addiction Treatment Should Look Like This

In this episode of Restorations, Caitlyn McKenney is joined by the founder of Battlefield Addiction Art Dahlen. As a former addict, Art shares personal insights on addiction treatment, the policy environment in Seattle, and the power of language. Learn more about Battlefield Addiction at battlefieldaddiction.com Join the conversation on X @CaitlynMcKenney or @DiscoveryCWP. Episode Summary: In this episode of Restorations, host Caitlyn McKenney speaks with Art Read More ›