Turns out the 2008 recession didn’t increase the number of homeless while at the same time the number of sheltered homeless didn’t expand during or since the recession.
Nonetheless, the renewed effort since 2007 to count the number of homeless has ushered in a lot of politics into the issue of homelessness, a number that has not been optimally measured since the 1990s through today.
So what is the definition of homeless and what is its cause? Economics? Mental health care access? Drug abuse? Dissolution of families?
Kevin Corinth, a research fellow in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a former lecturer at the University of Chicago investigating this troublesome phenomenon in America, discusses how public policy is addressing this problem and the best way to acknowledge a homeless individual’s humanity.
