No Way Home: The Crisis of Homelessness and How to Fix It with Intelligence and Humanity

(Hardback)

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In San Diego, not far from the gates of the fantasy world of Disneyland, tent cities lining the freeways remind us of an ugly reality. Homeless individuals are slowing rail traffic between Sacramento and the Bay Area and swarming subway trains in Los Angeles in search of a place to sleep when theyre not languishing on Skid Row. Drug use among the homeless is plaguing communities, with discarded needles threatening children playing at public parks. And every day across California, thousands of homeless youth who lack safe and stable housing struggle to stay in school, to perform well academically, and to form meaningful connections with their teachers and peers.

Since the 1980s, countless research studies have been published on the topic of homelessness in America. Too often, however, social science research on homelessness is narrow in scope, mired in politics, and reliant on questionable assumptions about the root causes of the problem. The severity of the homeless crises afflicting cities requires innovative solutions backed by credible data and objective research.

This book examines the causes of homelessness with a focus on unaffordable housing, poverty, mental illness, substance addiction, and legal reform. It examines the state and local policy environment to determine ways in which housing policy, social service programs, and employment opportunities interact to exacerbate, perpetuate, or reduce homelessness. The book also evaluates different strategies being used at the state, county, and local levels to prevent or reduce homelessness. Finally, the authors provide a mix of long-term policy solutions based on their findings that have the greatest potential to reduce homelessness.

Reviews

The homeless crisis calls for a comprehensive effort that attacks the problem on all fronts: substance addiction and mental illness, housing affordability, and legal reform. The Pacific Research Institutes team of experts addresses these issues and offers practical and humane reforms. An important book for those who want to understand and address homelessness in California and the nation.Jim Palmer, President, Orange County Rescue Mission

Homelessness is one of the most vexing problems that California and the nation face today. There are no simple solutions, but we can embrace effective and humane policies that mitigate the problem, help those living on the streets, and protect the public and the public purse. It starts with recognizing that homelessness is not merely about housing it touches on myriad social problems including addiction and mental health. This book does yeomans work putting this crisis into perspective and charting a more productive path forward.Steven Greenhut, Western region director for the R Street Institute and a columnist for the Southern California News Group

Over 150,000 people are homeless in California. Homelessness in California is now a 50-year-old problem, the fault of the states political leaders who have wasted enormous resources trying to paper over the problem, efforts that are politically expedient and are ultimately perpetuating homelessness. No Way Home is a beautiful new book that highlights the untold tragedies that the homeless face and offers clear and compelling regulatory and legal solutions. If you read one book about California homelessness, this is it. Incredibly detailed, thought-provoking, and forceful after reading No Way Home you will be so angry with politicians that you will demand substantial and immediate change to end this senseless human tragedy.Lee Ohanian, Professor of Economics, UCLA, and Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

Homelessness has become the social issue of the twenty-first century, especially in California. No Way Home addresses the problem in painfully clear terms. Prepare to be infuriated, then motivated. The authors meticulously outline the role elected officials have played in creating the ever deepening disaster. Readers will soon understand the astonishing waste and callousness of the current system and the reasons more people than ever are living and dying on the streets. No Way Home provides the fascinating backstory of why communities in grand cities like San Francisco have descended into growing slums. Is all lost No. No Way Home gives real hope, offering a strategy that can turn the crisis around with creative, rational, and feasible solutions.Erica Sandberg, author and columnist

Author Bio

Kerry Jackson, an independent journalist and opinion writer, is a leading commentator on Californias homeless crisis. A fellow with the Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), Kerry writes weekly on statewide issues and occasional books and policy papers.

Christopher F. Rufo is an adjunct fellow at PRI, a filmmaker, writer, and policy researcher. Director of the Discovery Institutes Center on Wealth and Poverty and a contributing editor at City Journal, Christopher graduated from Georgetown University and was a Claremont Institute Lincoln fellow.

Joseph Tartakovsky is the former deputy solicitor general of Nevada, an attorney specializing in constitutional and appellate law, and author of The Lives of the Constitution. He is a PRI fellow in legal studies and has published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times.

Wayne Winegarden, PhD, is a senior fellow in business and economics at PRI and director of PRIs Center for Medical Economics and Innovation. Also the principal of an economic advisory firm, he has published in the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Investors Business Daily, Forbes.com, and USA Today.