Daniel Neiditch’s Blog
Can Corporate Philanthropy End Homelessness?
Where the public sector falls short, private philanthropy through individual or corporate donors has stepped in to give vital support. In areas like community development, education, and humanitarian aid, corporate philanthropy has demonstrated real value in helping stem the major problems of today. Maybe because it lacks glamor of the arts or the universality of education, or perhaps because it’s such a seemingly insurmountable problem, but homelessness hasn’t historically been the most popular target for large-scale corporate philanthropy. Therefore, it’s been up to cities and states to legislate the issue, with mixed but mostly negative results. The homelessness scourge persists to the detriment of our [...]
Homeless Youth – The Invisible Problem
The years between age 18 and 25 are often thought of as the defining times of our lives. These are the years when young people begin to find their place in the world, whether in education, meaningful employment, or starting their own families. Sadly, there’s an overlooked cohort of this age group who are simply struggling to survive. Among the stories of exciting new opportunities for young people, recently released studies by the University of Chicago have found that one in ten young people nationwide experienced some degree of homelessness in 2016. It’s a damning statement about the state of the fight against homelessness when [...]
New York’s Homeless Grade Schoolers: a Growing Concern
A mention of New York City’s homeless problem will most likely conjure up an image of a grown man huddled in a corner or sitting on the sidewalk, begging for change. While this may represent the most visually present cohort of the city’s homeless, a disconcertingly fast-growing number of the city’s homeless don’t fit this description at all. While the vast majority of them may not be on the street, the city’s homeless children suffer greatly. In the last five years, the number of homeless public school students in the city has jumped to over 110,000, more than two-thirds of the statewide homeless child population. [...]
How the Homeless Get By When Disaster Strikes
Catastrophic natural disasters like the ones we’ve seen over the past few weeks frequently leave millions of Americans without their homes. This level of destruction and displacement often serves as a great shock to the country at large and millions of charity and governmental dollars go toward helping rebuild what was lost for so many families. While this is, of course, a noble pursuit and an appropriately empathetic response, it’s easy to forget that many of the citizens of these stricken regions had already tenuous living arrangements or no place to call home at all. For those disadvantaged residents, the dangers of extreme weather events [...]
NYC’s Newest Homeless Numbers and What They Mean
This post was originally featured on HuffingtonPost.com It might not come as a surprise, but it’s deeply troubling nonetheless. Our city’s recent push towards a more comprehensive assessment of the homeless population has provided the latest set of results and they are far from positive. The survey from the Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE) has the number of homeless New Yorkers at 3,892, an increase of over 1,000 from the same time in 2016. At a time when there seems to be more money in the city than ever, these statistics are a painful reminder that not all citizens are fortunate enough to meet our basic needs. [...]
An International Look at Fighting Homelessness
This post was originally featured on HuffingtonPost.com We often think of homelessness as a local issue, but it can be easy to forget that just about every country has a homeless problem of its own, with a number of different potential solutions. While serving a homeless population affects localities most immediately, this problem extends into every nation across the world and is thus takes on an international scale. According to United Nations data, 1.6 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate housing, nearly a quarter (21.3%) of the global population. This issue is common to nearly every country, and the long-existing nature of the problem illuminates the need to [...]