New York City has long had a homeless prevention program, enabling people who are about to be homeless to reach out and receive assistance, perhaps legal advice, cash assistance or housing referrals. It is not perfect, but it exists. The program has even shown that helping people before they become homeless is more effective and costs less. Several cities and states have homelessness prevention programs too. According to Google so does Los Angeles, but that’s not quite so. In one of the largest homeless population in the US, homeless prevention is scant, and an op-ed by Adam Murray, executive director of Inner City Law Center, calls for shifting our focus from helping the homeless to preventing homelessness. Preventing homelessness is (more…)
July 2016
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Global Education: 124 Millions Without
In the US we have problems with schools, asking if they are educating our kids or if they are as good as they ought to be. We do not ask whether schools should exist or whether kids should attend. That’s a key reason our problems with schools set us apart from those in a number of countries in East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, where almost 124 million children and adolescents, mostly between the ages of 6 and 15, are not able to go to school. The figures come from a recent Human Rights Watch report which was compiled using UNESCO Institute statistics and is based on HRW studies of 40 countries for some 20 years. The report (more…)