Unnatural Selection, The New Yorker
The ocean holds many wonders, but perhaps none are more precious and more fragile than its tropical coral reefs. Coral, at first sight, appears to be a lifeless rock, but it’s actually a miniature animal that houses an even smaller plant inside its cells — a symbiotic relationship developed over millennia. Ruth Gates, a University of Hawaii marine biologist, is attempting to speed up that evolutionary process and create a “super coral” by exposing it to the harsher conditions expected by next century: warmer, more acidic water caused by climate change. It’s a new take on conservation — call it “assisted evolution” — that’s also being tested on forests in Syracuse, N.Y., where a professor is genetically engineering a fungus-resistant chestnut tree. Can these scientists do what Mother Nature couldn’t?
This Mayor Wants To Give Struggling Cities a Front-Row Seat in D.C., Next City
Standing at 6’8” with a shaved head and tattoos on his arms, the mayor of Braddock, a Pittsburgh suburb hammered by industrial decline, doesn’t look like your typical public official. Dubbed America’s coolest mayor, John Fetterman has implemented some of the brightest ideas for urban renewal, as he replaced a moribund steel industry with public art, urban agriculture, craft beer and other hipster fare. Now, Fetterman is competing in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s Senate seat (currently held by a Republican). If he wins, he’s promised a new Marshall Plan (like the billions invested in Europe after WWII) for America’s forgotten cities. In most election cycles, Fetterman would be written off as an outsider without a chance, but in this unpredictable year, this fresh candidate may just have a shot.
The Resurrection of St. Benedict’s, 60 Minutes
Up until 1967, St. Benedict’s Prep was your run-of-the-mill Catholic boy’s school, serving upper-middle class, white families in Newark, N.J. But when racial tensions exploded into bloody riots that summer, whites fled the city en masse. The school nearly collapsed (it closed for one year), but faculty member Edwin Leahy, then 26, quickly got it back on its feet. It reopened with one big change: students would run the school themselves, keeping each other out of gangs and competing for top marks. Of its 550 students today, nearly all from poor neighborhoods, only two percent don’t finish high school — in a city with a 30 percent dropout rate. Intellect isn’t the major problem in American education, Leahy, a Benedictine monk, argues; it’s all about making students’ realizing their own potential and see “the fact that they are a gift to somebody else.”
Tag: 60 Minutes
Yes It’s True. Subsidizing Housing for the Homeless Can Save Them — and Taxpayers’ Money
It’s so simple. If you really want to stop homelessness, start by giving people a place to live. That’s the mission of the 100,000 Homes Campaign, a national movement created by the nonprofit Community Solutions that works with communities across the country to connect the most vulnerable homeless individuals with housing. These apartments are highly subsidized — paid for mostly by the federal government, with contributions of 30 percent of any income these individuals receive as rent, no matter how much that amount changes over time. In return, the formerly homeless have a solid starting point to get back on their feet, along with a connection to any supportive services that they want or need — from addiction counseling and medical services to budgeting tools and more.
The idea of providing “housing first” has already proved itself in Utah, where the rate of chronic homelessness has been reduced by 74 percent over the past eight years, putting the state on track to eradicate homelessness altogether by 2015. In Atlanta, the same initiative moved 800 people off the street in 2013. And now the campaign is gaining momentum in Tennessee, where 200 individuals were placed in homes in just 100 days in Nashville. All together, participating communities have connected more than 83,000 Americans, including at least 23,000 homeless veterans, to apartments. And the best part? The program is actually saving taxpayers money.
MORE: Phoenix Just Became the First City to End Chronic Veteran Homelessness. Here’s How
Studies have shown that the public cost of providing permanent supportive housing for the most vulnerable homeless people — meaning those with addiction, mental illness or chronic diseases like cancer — is less than simply allowing these individuals to stay on the streets. The biggest reason is health care. Homelessness causes illness, as well as exacerbates existing mental and physical ailments and addictions, leading many individuals to seek out expensive medical services, much of it on the taxpayers’ dime. “The inability to tend to your basic healthcare needs results in people on the streets ending up in emergency rooms and ending up in in-patient hospitalizations. And one night in the hospital is a whole month’s rent on most places,” Becky Kanis, director of the 100,000 Homes Campaign, told Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes. “We are paying more as taxpayers to walk past that person on the street and do nothing than we would be paying to just give them an apartment.”
AND: This Hero Isn’t Just Alleviating Homelessness; He’s Preventing It
On its face, this movement may seem counterintuitive. As Cooper told Kanis, “It does seem like you’re rewarding somebody though, who’s — you know — drinking or doing drugs or just being irresponsible.” But Kanis disagrees. “I see it as giving them a second chance. And most people, given that second chance, do something about those behaviors.” Indeed, the 60 Minutes report cites a University of Pennsylvania study, which found that when homeless people in Philadelphia were given housing and support, more than 85 percent remained in homes two years later. These individuals were unlikely to become homeless again. While the program isn’t 100 percent successful — in fact the 60 Minutes report follows one individual who can’t seem to shake his addiction — the changes in those who take advantage of their second chances are nothing short of remarkable. Just look at the before and after photos. “There is something that’s really dehumanizing about living on the streets in so many ways. And then, really, in a matter of days, from having housing, the physical transformation is almost immediate,” Kanis says. “And I don’t think that there’s anybody, once they see that, that would say, ‘Well, let’s put them back on the streets again.’”
ALSO: How Can We Beat Homelessness? Predict It Before It Happens