Search Results for: homeless

A Choice for Recovering Addicts: Relapse or Homelessness

Longreads Pick

A New York Times investigation into a system of housing called “three-quarter homes” run by a company called the “Back on Track Group,” which profits off the poor and desperate.

Author: Kim Barker
Published: May 30, 2015
Length: 29 minutes (7,277 words)

The Shockingly Simple, Surprisingly Cost-Effective Way to End Homelessness

Longreads Pick

In the past 9 years, Utah decreased the number of homeless by 72 percent. Their tactic is shockingly simple: provide housing, with no strings attached. Can the Housing First model be replicated across the country?

Source: Mother Jones
Published: Feb 18, 2015
Length: 25 minutes (6,270 words)

The Best-Selling, Billion-Dollar Pills Tested on Homeless People

Longreads Pick

The reporter speaks with people living in shelters—many of which have mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder—about their experiences with participating in pharmaceutical studies for money.

Source: Medium
Published: Jul 28, 2014
Length: 25 minutes (6,460 words)

Longreads Best of 2013 Postscript: Monica Potts on the Homeless Families of ‘The Weeklies’

Longreads Pick

Monica Potts is a senior writer for The American Prospect.

Source: Longreads
Published: Dec 11, 2013

Longreads Best of 2013 Postscript: Monica Potts on the Homeless Families of 'The Weeklies'

The Weeklies

Monica Potts | The American Prospect | March 2013 | 29 minutes (7,360 words)

Monica Potts is a senior writer for The American Prospect.

I did the reporting for ‘The Weeklies,’ about homeless families living in a suburban hotel outside of Denver, Colorado, a year ago. I lived with in the Ramada Inn alongside the weeklies during December 2012, and five of the families there shaped my story. Two of them are still living in hotels.

In May, the Ramada Inn was upgraded and converted into a Super 8 Motel. It became more expensive. Bonnie, Andy, and their son Drew, the main subjects of the story, moved into an Extended Stay closer to Drew’s school in Denver. Bonnie and Andy have been telling me since last spring that they’re doing renovation work on a rental property owned by a family friend, and that they will move in when it’s done. They don’t have a firm date, however.

After the story was published, I heard from a lot of people who said they saw school buses in their towns picking up school kids in hotel parking lots. Schools nationwide have reported a rise in student homelessness: some states have seen it double. The housing crash and the recession that followed had the odd effect of creating both vacant housing and a homelessness crisis, neither of which is likely to be solved soon.


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Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life

Longreads Pick

An incredible story about the system failing our children—through the eyes of one of New York’s 22,000 homeless children:

Dasani’s own neighborhood, Fort Greene, is now one of gentrification’s gems. Her family lives in the Auburn Family Residence, a decrepit city-run shelter for the homeless. It is a place where mold creeps up walls and roaches swarm, where feces and vomit plug communal toilets, where sexual predators have roamed and small children stand guard for their single mothers outside filthy showers.

It is no place for children. Yet Dasani is among 280 children at the shelter. Beyond its walls, she belongs to a vast and invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression, in the most unequal metropolis in America.

Published: Dec 9, 2013
Length: 88 minutes (22,000 words)

Homelessness in the Age of Bloomberg

Longreads Pick

We had four options: join Ready Willing and Able’s program, which prepared men to become street sweepers and janitors; sign up for a Bloomberg administration program which presents participants with a one-way ticket out of town, so long as the applicants could provide a contact person in the destination city who would agree to host them; enter the city’s shelter system, which the liaison accurately portrayed as a horror show, with gang-and-drug-infested death traps like Wards Island (Said one of my brethren, “Yo, I was at Wards Island one night, woke up and a dude was laying there dead, all cut the fuck up.”); or hop in the van with him to tour Brooklyn’s three-quarter sober houses, which were private residences that sounded a lot more promising than a shelter.

Published: May 21, 2011
Length: 10 minutes (2,518 words)

Designer Shades, Quiet Hustle: The Entrepreneurs of the New York City Homeless Shelter

Longreads Pick

It’s a secret because homelessness is the one condition they find shameful. An inner-city hustler’s entire life is devoted to either rising above his station or projecting the illusion of same. So when the drug abuse or prison term or unemployability send him into the street, he needs a hiding place. Homeless shelters are a place for him to hide his shame. What I discovered at various shelters in New York City is that they are also the place where hustling goes into overdrive.

Published: May 13, 2011
Length: 7 minutes (1,812 words)

Milking the Poor: One Family’s Fall Into Homelessness

Longreads Pick
Source: The Atlantic
Published: Oct 12, 2009
Length: 7 minutes (1,927 words)

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Red-tailed hawk about to land. (Getty Images)

Here are five stories that moved us this week, and the reasons why.

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1. The Last Days Inside Trailer 83

Hannah Dreier | The Washington Post | October 17, 2021 | 4,400 words

Hannah Dreier spent a month on the ground reporting this story about a California couple on the verge of being kicked out of FEMA housing, their refuge in the wake of 2018’s devastating Camp Fire. With the clarity and compassion that are the hallmarks of her work, Dreier bears witness to what it means to suffer on the front lines of climate change, to grapple with a thinning social safety net, and — after all that — to stare down homelessness. She portrays the couple’s frustration and anger, as well as their love and resilience. But why, Dreier asks, is this happening at all? Doesn’t the government owe the displaced more, and better, than this? It’s a pressing question: More Americans will be soon displaced by fires, floods, and extreme weather. This is a quiet, intimate story, and seemingly small in scope, but don’t let it fool you — it offers a terrifying glimpse into the future. —SD

2. The Enumerator

Jeremy Miller | Harper’s Magazine | October 19, 2021 | 5,535 words

Out of financial necessity during the pandemic, reporter Jeremy Miller becomes a census enumerator in Richmond, California, for $25 an hour. In August 2020, after five months of lockdown and with little training, he sets out as a “fully deputized agent of the federal government” to follow up on those who have not completed their census forms. This piece is fascinating for Miller’s insight into trying to communicate with members of a community living in lockdown. His attempts are often futile, scary, and yet unexpectedly endearing. How many people live in the United States? With a broken census process that’s a hot target for political manipulation, no one will ever really know for sure. Some, wary of their immigration status, evade or avoid participation, understandably suspicious of government interest. —KS

3. A Very Big Little Country

Katherine LaGrave | AFAR | October 13, 2021 | 3,766 words

Ever heard of Westarctica? Neither had I. Comprising 620,000 square miles of Antarctica, since 2001 it has been “ruled” by His Royal Highness Travis I, Grand Duke. This is a micronation — a political entity whose members claim they belong to an independent state. What they lack in legal recognition they make up for in enthusiasm. Members bestow elaborate titles upon themselves and engage in heated discussions about how to govern. Westarctica is not alone: There are nearly 100 active micronations around the world. While physical landmasses have been claimed, these micronations largely exist online. Westarctica started as “a basic Yahoo website with a god-awful teal-blue background, project name, and email address.” There is a fun fantasy vibe: Westarctica’s legal tender is ice marks, “with banknotes featuring McHenry, penguins, and the Westarctican coat of arms.” However, micronations also have serious statements to make. Obsidia is a feminist-only nation with a two-pound rock as its territory and is “intent on using awareness to increase visibility for ‘femme / feminist / LGBTQ people and explore concepts for an ideal governance.’” Since 2018 Westarctica has also developed an important mission in becoming a nonprofit focused on fighting climate change. So take a dive into LaGrave’s fascinating article — and literally discover a whole other world. —CW

4. Eat, Prey, Love: A Day with the Squirrel Hawkers of East Texas

Wes Ferguson | Texas Monthly | October 15, 2021 | 2,033 words

Birds fascinate me. When I saw Wes Ferguson’s piece at Texas Monthly, I took a tern for it immediately and I have no egrets. Much more than a delightfully nerdy history of falconry and an overview of the sport in Texas, Ferguson lets us shadow falconer Charlie Alvis as he hunts with Calypso, his three-year-old red-tailed hawk. Alvis, who has a clear and deep respect for Calypso and birds in general, took up falconry in part as a way to cope with the death of his young son. Forging a deep bond with the bird has given structure and purpose to Alvis’ life. A general warning, gentle reader: This story contains violence. Hawking is hunting, after all. “Every squirrel she kills is gradually fed back to her.” —KS

5. How a McDonald’s Knockoff Became the Immigrant Dream

Omar Mouallem | Vice | October 15, 2021 | 4,044 words

I’ve always been fascinated by restaurant chains. It’s less the food than the minutiae: iconography; decor; how far a branch or franchise owner can stray from the standards and practices of corporate decree. (For years, a McDonald’s in Brooklyn kept a neon sign in its window that said MICKI DEES. It’s gone now, but I still think about it all the time.) Omar Mouallem’s piece on Burger Baron, a chain only in the loosest sense of the word based in the Canadian province of Alberta, is a doozy. “To begin with, the logo—a colourful fat knight with double-Bs in his shield—often appears on signs as a crudely drawn copy of the original,” writes Mouallem, who made a documentary about the chain that aired on Canadian television this year. “The mascot sometimes looks emaciated or downright mutilated, if he appears on the sign at all. The restaurants themselves range from drive-thru burger shacks to sprawling steakhouses.” But even if you come for the spectacle, you’ll stay for the surprisingly touching story of how Burger Baron became a lighthouse for the Lebanese immigrant community in and around Edmonton. Does it mean I ever want to try the mushroom burger? Reader, it does not. But I can still love this story. —PR