Fix Homelessness

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cheerful boy play game or closeup of playing cards in kid hand indoor

A Fistful of ACEs

An ideological war about homelessness is raging. Many on the right say substance abuse and mental illness cause homelessness. Many on the left emphasize the cost of housing. Those factors are real, but while living among and interviewing 80 men and women who had suffered long-term homelessness in Missouri, California, and Colorado, I learned more about what both sides underestimate: the impact of ACEs (“adverse childhood experiences”). Read More ›
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Drug addict smoking opium on tin foil

Feds Flub Homelessness by Ignoring Addiction

The federal government is hoping you, the public, won't notice that homelessness in America reached an all-time high last year. That was the impression given by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) when it quietly released the 2024 annual homelessness report on the Friday between Christmas, Hannukah, and New Year's. Nationwide, 771,480 people were experiencing homelessness in 2024, an 18 percent increase from the year before and the highest number on record. Read More ›
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Tents set up outdoors on a city street

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

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

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.

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 ›