How Can the U.S. End Homelessness?
A&Q is a special series that inverts the classic Q&A, taking some of the most frequently posed solutions to pressing matters of policy and exploring their complexity.
On any given night in the United States, half a million people are homeless. Some of them sleep in shelters, others on the streets; roughly one-quarter are children.
About 15 percent are so-called chronically homeless, which means they haven’t had a permanent home in years, and often cycle through jails, hospitals and homeless shelters in search of a place to lay their heads.
The government has tried to tackle the problem of homelessness on nearly every level, but comprehensive solutions have proven elusive, despite billions spent over time. The federal government has set a series of goals of ending homelessness for veterans by 2015, chronic homelessness by 2017, and homelessness for families with children and youth by 2020. But reaching these benchmarks appears to be much further off.
Seemingly every policy group that works on this issue has ideas about how to solve it for good. But what really works to
