The idea of “lived experience” exerts wide sway across many areas of social policymaking today, from homelessness to mental illness to addiction. Those crises have deepened in recent years, even as lived experience’s influence has continued to grow.
Task forces, nonprofit boards, conferences, and congressional committee hearings frequently reserve slots for people in recovery, formerly incarcerated or homeless individuals, and “consumer survivors” of psychiatric care.
Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a 2024–25 Public Scholar at The City College of New York’s Moynihan Center.
