Alastair Boone
Pacific Standard
Washington, DC, United States
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Past articles by Alastair:
Why Can't We Get an Accurate Count of the Homeless Population?
HUD requires communities to send out volunteers to tally homeless individuals one by one, often undercounting the number of people experiencing homelessness. → Read More
The Problem With HUD's Point-in-Time Homeless Count
I hit the streets for HUD’s Point-in-Time homeless count to help get a snapshot of Oakland’s growing unsheltered homeless population. But one thing was missing. → Read More
How an Airport Fence Has Sparked a Debate Over Honoring Victims of Japanese Internment
In Tulelake, California, a municipal airport was built on the site of a former internment camp, and now it is at the center of a serious debate over preserving the historical significance of the land. → Read More
San Francisco's Race For a Mayoral First
The campaign has become as much about candidate biographies, super PAC money, and the city’s unique ranked choice voting system as it is about issues like homelessness and property crime. → Read More
The California Airport Atop a Japanese 'Segregation' Center
The plan to build a fence around a small airport that sits atop part of a former Japanese incarceration camp, has sparked debate about preservation and respect in Northern California. → Read More
The California Airport Atop an American 'Segregation' Center
In Northern California, a debate is raging about a plan to build a fence around the small airport sitting on a site where people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom were American citizens, were forcibly interned. → Read More
Race and Place May Decide Your Health
A new county-by-county report finds that blacks and Native Americans have the most dire health statistics in the United States. → Read More
The Weirdest Ways That U.S. Cities Are Celebrating Earth Day
From group oyster-shell bagging to a naked bike ride, some Earth Day events are more colorful than the standard festivals and tree plantings. → Read More
One New York Police Chief Is Upending Conventional Drug Enforcement
The police chief of Chatham, New York, has a revolutionary strategy for policing the opioid epidemic. → Read More
How One Small Town Ended Its Drug War
In tiny Chatham, New York, police chief Peter Volkmann turned the town’s cops into drug treatment counselors. → Read More
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is even bigger than we thought
What’s 1.6 million square kilometers, weighs 80,000 metric tons, and is three times the size of continental France? That would be the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — the enormous collection of detritus that floats in the Pacific Ocean → Read More
Where Smoking Kills, and Why
The Tobacco Atlas shows how even non-smokers feel the public health impacts of the industry. → Read More
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Growing
New research reveals the true scale of the enormous collection of plastic ocean detritus. It's not pretty. → Read More
The Fight for Nuclear Deterrence Goes Local
Some cities and states are taking their own initiative to protect the world from a U.S. trigger finger. And they’re mostly led by women. → Read More
'They Can Either Go With It, or They Can Get Out'
The high schoolers who rallied against gun violence in Washington, D.C., had a very explicit message for lawmakers. → Read More
Airbnb Is Coming for Your Neighborhood
In New York City, Airbnb has raised rents, removed housing from the rental market, and fueled gentrification—and its effects are being felt elsewhere too. → Read More
Do Two-Way Streets Help a City's Economy?
There’s more than one way for neighborhoods to respond to two-way street conversions, new research suggests. → Read More
What Airbnb Did to New York City's Housing Market
A report suggests that home sharing has raised rents, fueled gentrification, and removed housing from the rental market. But the company's numbers tell a somewhat different story. → Read More
All Kinds of U.S. Communities Have Suffered Mass Shootings
These tragic events happen in communities of all sizes, income levels, and racial and ethnic composition. → Read More
"Queering the Map" Visualizes LGBTQ Spaces Worldwide
When a design student launched an interactive project to map LGBTQ spaces in Montreal, it went viral. Then it went dark. → Read More