(September 11) – Fighting homelessness has long been a mission driven by compassion, but now data is rising to the fore. It’s going to be difficult to get a successful mix of the two, but it is possible and necessary. Last week, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray released two reports that suggest ways the city and surrounding area can do a better job of reducing homelessness, and both reports emphasize relying on data to judge the effectiveness of programs and to make an unwieldy system of responses more manageable. That’s all good.

(September 9) – Tiny homes have become popular with minimalist young professionals in big cities and homeowners who are passionate about sustainable living. But they’re also a growing solution to the homelessness epidemic. A community of small houses is being constructed in Detroit to give formerly homeless people and those with low incomes affordable homes that they will have the opportunity to own. Developers Cass Community Social Services unveiled the first completed house Thursday.

(September 8) — Maybe you think America needs to do drastically more to help the poor. Maybe you don’t. But my guess is you will probably agree that, at the very least, the government should not be in the business of taxing workers into poverty. And yet that’s exactly what happens to some 7.5 million childless Americans who are pushed either below or further beneath the poverty line each year thanks to their IRS tabs.

(August 5) – Millennials are not some vast unsolvable mystery. According to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau, they earn $2,000 less than their parents did at a comparable age, they are more likely to live in poverty, and they are more likely to live at home. But Baby Boomers and Gen Xers still seem to find it hard to believe that basic economic math can explain much of the younger generation’s behavior.

(August 4) – The Mission of Hope in Stillwater, OK offers homeless individuals and families supportive housing, food, case management, transportation, laundry facilities and life skills training. Housing options include emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing and permanent supportive housing for veterans.

(August 4) – Proportionally speaking, Americans living in poverty pay more for basic necessities. On energy bills, the poorest 20 percent of Americans spend more than seven times the share of their income than do the wealthiest.

(August 4) – Obama says “the extraordinary rate of incarcerations of nonviolent offenders has created its own set of problems.” He says communities have been ravaged, leaving kids without parents and perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

(August 3) – I served for 10 years as a police officer in North Texas. During that time, I became interested in the grand scope of crime and common criminal profiles. Plenty of studies have investigated the people who commit the most atrocious crimes. But what about the person who chooses to burglarize a home for $200? What motivates him, I wondered. Eventually, I started to see the common denominator among the majority of offenders I dealt with: Poverty.

(August 1) – President Obama announced the U.S. has cut the number of homeless veterans by 47 percent during a speech at the Disabled American Veterans convention in Atlanta today. “We have just about cut veterans homelessness in half. We’ve helped bring tens of thousands of veterans off the streets, but we’re not slowing down,” he said. “We will not stop until every veteran who fought for America has a home in America.”

(August 1) – When Donald Trump says almost four in ten black American youths live in poverty, he’s technically correct. According to the official poverty measure, 36 percent of African-Americans under the age of 18 fell below the poverty line in 2014. The problem with that statistic is that the official poverty line is a flawed measurement.