Column: The root causes of homelessness
Andrew Gunn | April 25Early in the afternoon during the summer of 2017, 50-year-old Lou Molzhon was sleeping on a mattress under the Interstate 40 overpass at 12th Street. Described by friends and acquaintances as a kindhearted man who was quick to share a smoke, he had been living on the streets of Albuquerque for over a year. Under the bridge downtown, Molzhon didn't give his life away — it was stolen from him. Police and witnesses say that two assailants soaked him in gasoline and set him on fire. Molzhon later died of his injuries at the University of New Mexico Hospital. His attackers have yet to be apprehended. This is but a microcosm of the threats facing those experiencing homelessness in the United States, and the crisis is only getting worse. Homelessness has tripled in New York City since the turn of the century, according to the Coalition for the Homeless. A proposed homeless "navigation center" in an affluent waterfront neighborhood in San Francisco is facing immense backlash from residents, even as City Supervisor Aaron Peskin says the city's homelessness situation has reached a "boiling point".
