Perceptions and Poverty

Associated Press reporter Hope Yen recently wrote about a telephone survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in December of 2011. More than 2,000 adults were questioned about class tensions, which researchers conclude are at their most intense in 25 years. The...

The Mentally Ill Homeless: Cause and Effect

In Looking Up at the Bottom Line, Richard R. Troxell suggests that the arrangements made decades ago for the care of America’s mentally ill have resulted in another case of good intentions gone wrong. It was a reform movement, concerned with disability rights and...

Brain Injury, Neglect, and Self-Destruction

When Andrea Ball recently wrote about Austin’s anti-homeless ordinance, a reader commented, There is less sympathy for veterans as homeless. They were provided a job by the government, received training worth $thousand to $hundred thousands, have significant...

Los Angeles and the Vets

A journalist’s first instinct is always to quote statistics, and there is nothing wrong with that. For instance, the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans says, “107,000 veterans are homeless on any given night” [link is ours]. USA Today says...

Meanest Streets, Part 1

A 2005 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless listed what were, at the time, the 20 meanest cities, the ones with the worst records in terms of anti-homeless laws, selectivity of enforcement, severity of penalties, and their general political...