Warning: this episode contains strong language. In Austin, Texas, a local businessman has undertaken one of the nation’s biggest and boldest efforts to confront the crisis of chronic homelessness. Lucy Tompkins, a national reporter for The Times, takes us inside the multimillion-dollar experiment, to understand its promise and peril. Guest: Lucy Tompkins, who reports on national news for The New York Times.
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From the New York Times, I'm Michael Balbaro.
This is the Daily In Austin, Texas, a local businessman has undertaken one of the nation's biggest and boldest efforts to confront the crisis of chronic homelessness.
Today, Lucy Tompkins takes us inside the multimillion dollar experiment to understand both its promise and its Peril.
It's Friday, December, December 6th.
Lucy, thank you for coming to the studio.
Thanks for having me, Michael.
So I want to start by asking you, how did you come to the story of this social experiment that's been happening in Texas?
Yeah.
So I write about homelessness, and I think it's fair to say in this topic and in journalism in general, a lot of the stories are very focused on what's going wrong, how intractable this problem is, how it's growing.
But part of my job is also to look for examples of where we're making progress.
And I moved to Austin a few years ago, and as I started talking to people about homelessness there, I kept hearing about this community on the outskirts of town that people said was a really creative and successful and impressive way of housing, some of the most difficult to house people who live on the streets, the chronically homeless.
And just describe that population, what that.
Word really means, that's a federal definition, and it refers to people who have a disability, like mental illness, addiction or a physical disability, and who've lived on the streets for more than a year or repeatedly.