I just wrote an entire essay as a comment before reading this… But another city that succeeded is Houston who was part of this program. But many other cities put a huge amount of red tape up.

I was listening to a NYT Daily podcast episode about the homelessness problem in Houston. They were one of the few places that was getting this money and actually producing real results, mostly through housing-first policies. Housing-first means giving homeless a place to stay as a first step so that they can actually get their lives together.

When the woman running the program was asked what she thought made her program succeed so much compared to all the other cities getting federal funds for similar programs she gave an answer that was painful to hear. To paraphrase, most programs getting the money don’t seem to really be interested in helping homeless people. There are many cities that put so many restrictions on the program for the types of homeless who could be helped that no one qualified. It takes an administrator and team that actually believe in the goal and mission to get results. Simply pushing money and paper around doesn’t solve problems.

If you’re interested in this subject I highly recommend finding the NYT podcast episode about it.

Look up cask ales. They were the traditional style of beer in England.

I personally enjoy them, but it is a noticeable change of pace.

There are news stories about this on every reputable source of journalism from Bloomberg to Al Jazeera.

On my way home from work today I was listening to NPR and their reporter based in Shanghai said that there was a point in the day when she searched Beijing on Weibo there were only 900 results from all time.