Ask someone who hasn’t been to the Tenderloin lately to meet you there, and they’re apt to have one of two reactions — excitement or the side-eye. Why? The long-sketchy neighborhood is the city’s newest hot spot. Business owners priced out of Union Square (up to $1,000 per square foot), SoMa, the Mission and Mid-Market are finding opportunities in the Tenderloin, which real estate experts consider a well-located neighborhood ripe for redevelopment (at $40 per square foot and climbing).

I have been talking about the criminal-justice system at colleges recently and encountering the inevitable claim from students (picked up from their professors) that poverty causes crime. This video throws that exculpatory narrative into doubt. Gang leader Thaddeus Jimenez is driving his convertible Mercedes through a Chicago neighborhood on the Northwest Side looking for someone to shoot.

The U.S. economy added a healthy 235,000 jobs in February, according to government data released Friday morning, surpassing economists’ expectations and likely clearing the way for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this month. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.7 percent, compared with 4.8 percent in January, and wages rose by 6 cents to $26.09 in February, after a 5-cent increase the month before.

Affordable housing is hard to find, but what’s even harder to find is affordable housing with enough room to fit a whole family. In order to fix this, Washington, D.C. Councilmember and Chair of the Committee on Business and Economic Development Kenyan R. McDuffie introduced new legislation, called the Family Unit Amendment Act of 2017.

Sometimes Mother Nature has an interesting way of getting her point across. Last month, when members of the Cuomo administration were scheduled to testify before state legislators about the impact of the governor’s budget proposal on the homelessness crisis gripping our state, a major winter storm forced lawmakers to postpone the hearing.

Many reacted with disbelief, others with dismay, at last month’s assertions by Chad Mayes, California Republican Assembly leader, that California has “the highest poverty rate in the nation.” According to Politifact California, “The Supplemental Poverty Measure, which does account for cost-of-living, including taxes, housing and medical costs … is considered by researchers a more accurate reflection of poverty.” Using this measure from the U.S. Census Bureau, California has the highest poverty rate at 20.6 percent, with Florida close behind at 19 percent.

Let me begin by sharing with you the story of an inner-city Cleveland family of seven, two adults and five children all under the age of 11. The family did not own a home. They were renters. As the family grew, it became ever more difficult to find rent. At one point the old car in which they roamed the city in search of rent became their living quarters. Evenings, the father and mother and a newborn slept in the car’s front seat, and the four other children, in the back.

Mayor Bill de Blasio gave a major speech on homelessness on Tuesday, promoting a plan he calls “Turning the Tide.” This was interesting because, as we know, not even kings can turn tides. If he had called it “Lowering Expectations” or “Treading Water,” he might have more accurately conveyed reality, though the speech would have lost some of its aspirational quality.

President Trump’s plea this week to get millions of welfare recipients back to work sounded like a Republican clarion call from the early 1990’s. After all, sweeping welfare reform under the Clinton Administration in 1996 has sharply reduced the nation’s welfare rolls.

Annie Mae Noel has been on the streets since her Denver house, which had been in her family for more than a century, went into foreclosure in 2015. She also happens to smoke pot. “I use marijuana to treat my MS, it has nothing to do with me not having a home,” she said recently, standing outside the Denver Rescue Mission.