Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Helping the Homeless

The February 13-20 edition of The New Yorker has a terrific article entitled Million-Dollar Murray about homelessness. Murray is was (he died) a homeless person in Reno, Nevada who, it is estimated, has accumulated some $1 million in unpaid medical bills from having been taken to the hospital so often.

The main point of the article is that only about 10% of homeless people are chronically homeless. The largest group of homeless people is only homeless for 1 day; the second largest group is homeless for 2 days, etc. The article suggests that the best approach for the chronic group is to do whatever it takes to solve - not treat - their problems. That includes handing them a key to an apartment and telling them the apartment is theirs if they follow a few rules.

posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 11:31 AM

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

">