Ending homelessness

The United States is a land of extremes. Over the past decade I have travelled to Washington, New York and Boston to visit homelessness projects and the American experience has never failed to both inspire and appal.   In 2003, supported by a grant from the London Housing Foundation, I visited New York with a group from London to investigate how not-for-profit organisations working with the City Authority were tackling homelessness. In a crowded week we ricocheted between the distressingly dreadful and the utterly uplifting. On Manhattan’s East Side we visited the 850-bed Bellevue shelter, an intake shelter for New York’s most chaotic and vulnerable people. Security guards outnumbered support staff. Under blankets, in crowded dormitories men moaned and whimpered.   Whist speaking to the manager in her office, one of those moments arrived which encapsulates an experience.   A resident, eyes caste down in embarrassment, entered to request the loan of a toilet roll. This...