After leaving Vector/Envisage, I had some extra free time and wanted a hard problem to work on. A friend asked me to join the Beacon board. Since joining, I've read a ton of books and gotten to know the Bloomington landscape a lot better. It is a multifaceted problem and Beacon is doing amazing work in the space. Donating to this campaign helps Friend's Place (you don't have to tell anyone you are homeless, you are staying at a Friend's Place), an emergency shelter that helps people get back on their feet and into long term housing.

History of Friend's Place - https://www.heraldtimesonline....

Best books on homelessness that I've read and would love to talk to you about:

The Book on Ending Homelessness by Iain de Jong (focuses on strategies that move people out of homelessness rather than growing the emergency shelter industry - Beacon is doing these things in cooperation with the City, County and Heading Home Coalition)

Homelessness is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain US Patterns by Clayton Page Aldern and Gregg Colburn (statistically compares cities to determine what factors account for regional variations and why higher poverty rates actually have lower homelessness rates regionally (!!) - data that shows that rates of drug use, mental illness, poverty and polical party do not account for the regional variation, but rent prices and places available to rent do)