Why does the richest country on earth have more than 770,000 people sleeping outside on a single night — and why is it five times worse in California than in West Virginia? No Fixed Address is an 11-part ReThink History series that tests one stubborn question: is homelessness driven by the economy or by mental illness? The measured answer is both, but at different levels — rent and housing supply set the scale of the crisis, while mental illness, trauma, and addiction shape who falls through and who ends up on the street. The series opens in a 1981 courtroom, where a young doctor watched a judge free a gravely disabled man living under a freeway bridge because he could, technically, seek shelter. From there it traces the whole arc: the emptying of the asylums, the housing-cost research that reframed the field, the hard truth about addiction and mental illness, the law of the 72-hour hold, and the solutions that are actually working — Housing First, Houston's 63% drop, Finland's near-elimination and its 2025 reversal, Japan's hidden homeless, and the 2024 Grants Pass ruling that turned the country toward the sweep. It ends on the first national decrease in nearly a decade, the veterans who prove it can be done, and what it would take to give that man under the bridge a different ending. Steelmanned on every side. A measured, sourced deep dive, narrated by AI voices from human-reviewed research.
No Fixed Address: Why America Can't House Its People — and Who Finally Is
Claim This Podcastby Nick Mackenzie
Podcast Overview
Why does the richest country on earth have more than 770,000 people sleeping outside on a single night — and why is it five times worse in California than in West Virginia? No Fixed Address is an 11-part ReThink History series that tests one stubborn question: is homelessness driven by the economy or by mental illness? The measured answer is both, but at different levels — rent and housing supply set the scale of the crisis, while mental illness, trauma, and addiction shape who falls through and who ends up on the street. The series opens in a 1981 courtroom, where a young doctor watched a judge free a gravely disabled man living under a freeway bridge because he could, technically, seek shelter. From there it traces the whole arc: the emptying of the asylums, the housing-cost research that reframed the field, the hard truth about addiction and mental illness, the law of the 72-hour hold, and the solutions that are actually working — Housing First, Houston's 63% drop, Finland's near-elimination and its 2025 reversal, Japan's hidden homeless, and the 2024 Grants Pass ruling that turned the country toward the sweep. It ends on the first national decrease in nearly a decade, the veterans who prove it can be done, and what it would take to give that man under the bridge a different ending. Steelmanned on every side. A measured, sourced deep dive, narrated by AI voices from human-reviewed research.
Language
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Publishing Since
7/2/2026
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Recent Episodes
July 2, 2026
Can We End Homelessness? What Actually Works
Can we actually end homelessness — and would the man under the bridge have a different ending today? The finale returns to where the series began. In 2025, homelessness fell for the first time in nearly a decade, and veteran homelessness reached a record low through targeted, funded Housing First — proof of what happens when a society decides to pay to end it. Housing cost set the scale, illness and addiction shaped the individual fate, and ending it needs both a roof and a hand.
July 2, 2026
Grants Pass, Encampment Sweeps, and the Right to Shelter
Can a city punish people for sleeping outside when there's nowhere for them to go? In 2024 the Supreme Court said yes in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, overturning Martin v. Boise. We walk the ruling and the enforcement wave that followed — encampment sweeps, California's task force, New York's contrasting right to shelter — plus the emerging tools of tiny-home villages and direct cash transfers. Both cases steelmanned, closing on what the outcome data support.
July 2, 2026
Japan's Hidden Homeless and the Problem With Counting
Japan reports almost no homelessness — just a few thousand people, down roughly 90% since 2003. But the count captures only people visible outdoors. Beneath it are 'net-café refugees,' aging day-laborer districts, couch-surfers, and people kept off the street by shame and bureaucratic barriers to welfare. We use Japan to expose the universal measurement problem — including how HUD's count undercounts families, youth, and the doubled-up in the U.S.
11 total episodes available
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