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An upsurge of abandoned, foreclosed homes in Chicago’s poor neighborhoods has inspired an activist group called the Anti-Eviction Campaign to fix up the properties and provide them to homeless families: “The idea for the Anti-Eviction Campaign actually came from South Africa. Toussaint Losier had traveled there to study the direct-action tactics of an organization called […]

Deinstitutionalization moved thousands of mentally ill people out of hospitals and into the prison system. States are cutting mental-health funding. A look at America’s mental health care crisis: “‘Homelessmentallyilldeinstitutionalized was one noun in the media at the time,’ says SAMHSA’s Roth, who is the source of the oft-cited data point that a third of America’s […]

In the summer of 2012, a homeless man named William Greer Jr. was bludgeoned to death in a park in Austin, Texas. Greer’s case remains unsolved, and his daughter is determined to find answers: “In the weeks that followed her dad’s death, Tangie drove to Austin three times: once to speak to police, once to […]

Inside the lives of homeless families who are staying at a Ramada Inn in the Colorado suburbs: “At any given time, roughly 20 to 40 guests are staying long term. Since they pay by the week, they call themselves ‘weeklies.’ To score the cheap rates, $210 for individuals and slightly more for families, they must […]

Two friends meet up in Bangkok and talk about what became of their childhood friends from the wealthy Seattle neighborhood where they grew up: “Tim keeps naming mutual acquaintances, and they keep having the same dire fates. There’s Pete Stanton, who in seventh grade had a mustache and was the biggest 13-year-old on the planet. […]

A former state legislator considers how the laws he helped pass ultimately harmed his mentally ill son: “If you were to encounter my son, Tim, a tall, gaunt man in ragged clothes, on a San Francisco street, you might step away from him. His clothes, his dark unshaven face and his wild curly hair stamp […]