Homelessness: A Blight On Our Streets and a Blot On Our Conscience.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The annual conference of the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) is going on in Washington Monday through Thursday. Mike Bloomberg spoke there today, announcing a new, more aggressive approach to street homelessness in New York City. As reported by the Times, he brushed aside the widely held view that homelessness is a stubborn feature of urban life, to be managed but not eradicated:

“Our view is that any level of street homeless, no matter how reduced in scope and visibility, is an inexcusable civic failure that consigns our fellow human beings to lives tragically shortened by exposure to the elements, to the ravages of disease, and to their own self-destructive behavior. Such chronic homelessness remains a blight on our streets and a blot on our conscience.”

Well said.

As best anyone can tell, around 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children (PDF), are likely to experience homelessness in a given year, and the number of homeless has been rising over the past 20-25 years (PDF), thanks largely to a growing shortage of affordable rental housing and a simultaneous increase in poverty (in turn a function of eroding work opportunities). Homelessness in New York is down from its high three years ago. (I’m not aware of research finding the same trend nationally.)

Bloomberg’s administration has committed to creating thousands of new units of supportive housing and providing more services (job training, day care) to keep the formerly homeless from sliding back. Good moves. Mother Jones published an article last year about an approach to supportive housing pioneered in New York City in the 1990s. Called Pathways to Housing, the program is premised on the idea that reversing the order of services to put housing first produces much better results with no greater costs. And it works! Since it launched, Pathways has moved hundreds of mentally ill and homeless New Yorkers into apartments.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate