HOMELESSNESS

The writer Jerusalem Demsas has been chronically the issues of income inequality for some time. Recently, she joined the Atlantic and has written a series of articles about one of the biggest upshots of an income unequal society - homelessness. 

Her take is rather simple. Our current homelessness is not caused by a sudden and new surge in mental illness or drug abuse. Neither can one blame liberal, blue state policies. Rather, homelessness is simply a function of an inadequate supply of affordable housing in cities where large numbers of people wish to live and where one financial disaster can mean the end of their precarious housing situations. 

I found her arguments quite persuasive, and she cited Houston as a role model for a city that has reduced homelessness by 60% in the past decade by aggressively building more housing and placing vulnerable people in those homes. Not in my backyard (NIMBY)-ism seems to be at the heart of the housing crisis facing so many communities as local homeowners are given carte blanche to veto new construction - often affordable houses or apartments - in their backyards.

I am not sure whether we have the will to build more affordable housing in so-called "destination" cites on the west coast and the south. Perhaps the answer is to grow the economies where housing and land is plentiful in large swaths of the middle part of the U.S. We'll see if there is a will, but for now I am staying put in lovely Ann Arbor - flyover country and all!