Austin Copes With Displaced People

Last week, House the Homeless (HtH) brought up a vexed question: When the nation’s infrastructure is renovated, what will happen to the estimated 100,000 Americans who live beneath bridges and overpasses? The topic is of major importance right now in Austin, where...

Anything for a Roof in America

House the Homeless looked at the worldwide dilemma of people who commit crimes for the specific purpose of being locked up. Jail or prison may be just as dangerous as the streets, but at least there are laws requiring that inmates be fed. Then, we zeroed in on the...

Prison As Shelter in the U.S.A.

In Wisconsin Death Trip, Michael Lesy retrieves true news about America in the late 1800s. Even then, an arsonist who didn’t get caught might have to turn himself in, because the whole point of the crime was to get in out of the weather and be fed. House the Homeless...

Prison As Shelter — A Worldwide Problem

Recently, Kathryn Phelan wrote about the tragedy that brought so many immigrants to America: Forty percent of Ireland’s population died in the mid-1800s, in the Great Famine. Men stole food, either to feed their families or in the hope of going to jail, where they...

State of the Year

Last month, at Austin’s 25th Homeless Memorial, participants read the names of 187 poverty-stricken people who died in Austin this year. Earlier this month, the Austin American-Statesman published a commentary by House the Homeless president Richard R. Troxell. He...