How Ten Global Cities Take on Homelessness

Jay Bainbridge ’86, BA ’87

Bainbridge, an associate professor of public administration at Marist College, helped develop New York City’s first street count of unhoused people when he worked at the city’s Department of Homeless Services. Here, he and his coauthors explore how 10 cities—Los Angeles, Houston, Nashville, New York, and Baltimore in the U.S., plus Mexico City, Paris, Athens, Bogota, and Edmonton—have approached the issue, analyzing successes and failures by governments, nonprofits, and others. The book, from the University of California Press, is aimed to be accessible not only to academics and policymakers but to citizens advocating for change. “Finding ways to help struggling people in the face of flawed social service systems and inadequate affordable housing is a global quest,” they write in their introduction, adding: “Despite cultural, political, and economic differences, the universal conditions of sleeping rough are strikingly similar.” The London School of Economics Review of Books calls the volume a “valuable resource” that “offers a refreshing hands-on contribution that not only identifies the problems around homelessness but, crucially, provides specific examples and evidence from many different settings about what can be done to overcome it.”