homelessness

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Man with addiction sharing mental health issues with group at aa meeting, talking to therapist. People having conversation about depression and rehabilitation at therapy session.
Marvin Olasky
January 17, 2025
Homelessness

Wednesday, 6:30 a.m. at Springs Rescue Mission in Colorado Springs

Marvin Olasky
January 17, 2025
Homelessness
My columns over the next few weeks will become part of an eventual book, but before too long goes by, it’s time to describe how I spent part of my summer vacation in 2024. The summer prior, I had enjoyed the great beauty of the Colorado Springs area, including the Garden of the Gods, with its beautifully soaring red rock sandstone formations at 6,400 feet above sea level. It’s the number one park in the United States, according to Trip Advisor, but my Colorado Springs sojourn this past summer was on run-down Las Vegas Street. Read More ›
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Center on Wealth & Poverty
January 17, 2025
Homelessness

Robert Marbut Discusses Seattle’s Homelessness Crisis on the John Curley Show

Center on Wealth & Poverty
January 17, 2025
Homelessness

In Seattle, the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness is on track to double in just the next three years. Robert Marbut appeared on KIRO Newsradio’s John Curley Show to discuss the policies that have exacerbated the crisis and the solutions available to the city and county. Discovery Institute released a report last November detailing our policy recommendations for the Read More ›

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cheerful boy play game or closeup of playing cards in kid hand indoor
Marvin Olasky
January 10, 2025
Homelessness

A Fistful of ACEs

Marvin Olasky
January 10, 2025
Homelessness
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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Tents set up outdoors on a city street
Discovery Institute
January 6, 2025
Homelessness

Homelessness in America Increases to Highest Number on Record

Discovery Institute
January 6, 2025
Homelessness
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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Poor homeless or refugee barefoot man sleeps on the street in the shadow of the building
Marvin Olasky
December 13, 2024
Homelessness

Eighty Years of Homelessness Realism, 1914-1994

Marvin Olasky
December 13, 2024
Homelessness
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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Unrecognizable woman hand helping man to stand up
Marvin Olasky
November 29, 2024
Homelessness

Gurteen and Lowell: Nineteenth Century Views on True Charity

Marvin Olasky
November 29, 2024
Homelessness
One Buffalo pastor, S. Humphreys Gurteen, said poverty was a problem, but an underlying cause was not material. He worried about the “concentrated and systematized pauperism which exists in our larger cities.” Gurteen wrote regarding “paupers” — those among the poor who had given up on working — that, “If left to themselves and no kind hand is held out to assist, they will inevitably sink lower and lower, ’til perchance they end their course in suicide or felony.” Read More ›
Rat_Pit_image_Wikimedia_Commons
Image by Edward H. Savage, no known copyright restrictions exist, accessed at Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Police_records_and_recollections,_or,_Boston_by_daylight_and_gaslight_-_for_two_hundred_and_forty_years_(1873)_(14780252001).jpg
Marvin Olasky
November 22, 2024
Homelessness

Jerry McAuley’s Nineteenth Century Homelessness Ministry

Marvin Olasky
November 22, 2024
Homelessness
In 1872, McAuley rented a small Water Street room with funds provided by church leaders who admitted the failure of their plan to import middle-class ecclesiastical style into the Rat Pit. McAuley's services were different than anything Water Street, or other mean streets, had seen. He invited in homeless men and others for cheap but hot food, and lots of hot stories. Read More ›