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Homelessness

Minneapolis Residents Are Building Yurts To Shelter Homeless Neighbors

September 16, 2024 Lorena Bally, Next City. , , , ,
Christin Crabtree walked out of St. Paul’s Church in Southern Minneapolis feeling hope on the morning of July 24. An organizer with the local unhoused resident outreach project Camp Nenookaasi, she left the community meeting believing that locals would work together with the 80 people living in Nenookaasi’s three small encampments to help keep each other safe. But at 6:30 a.m. the next day, residents at all three camps woke to police-enforced evictions. Officers arrived with heavy machinery to heave residents’ tents, bikes, blankets, mattresses and clothing into a garbage truck. Within minutes, residents lost access to medical records, identification, cellphones and other belongings.

Takeover! A Human Rights Approach To Housing

September 13, 2024 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Cheri Honkala and the Poor People’s Army, also known as the Poor People’s Campaign for Economic Human Rights, produced their book about how to take over abandoned federal properties. In the City of Philadelphia, where the Poor People’s Army is based, scholar Elsa Noterman reports that there are 10 abandoned properties for every single homeless person. Nevertheless, the wait times to receive public housing are years long. Their neighborhood, Kensington, has been devastated by factory closures since the passage of NAFTA. “Call to Movement: The Politics of Love,” the first section of the introduction to TAKEOVER!, is inspiring, heartrending and, like the rest of the book, beautifully written.

Radical Municipalism Is Paving The Way For Direct Democracy In LA

August 24, 2024 Justin A. Davis, Waging Nonviolence. , , , , , , ,
Home to almost 10 million residents in 2022, Los Angeles County can sometimes seem like a vast political paradox. Known as a quintessential example of urban sprawl, it is also the most overcrowded county in America. Over the past 20 years, robust grassroots organizing built multiracial movements for organized labor, immigrant rights and housing justice while electing multiple self-identified leftists to L.A. City Council. At the same time, brutal overpolicing, ethics scandals and rising gentrification have been constant challenges for organizers and activists there. This summer, L.A.’s controversial efforts to reduce homelessness have reentered the national spotlight.

Supreme Court’s Grants Pass Decision Fired Up Homeless Advocacy Groups

August 9, 2024 Roshan Abraham, Next City. , , ,
The Supreme Court’s momentous June ruling in the Grants Pass v. Johnson case removed a key protection for unhoused people, allowing criminalization even when there is no available shelter. While some Democrats condemned the decision, several leaders on the West Coast, where unsheltered homeless encampments are more pronounced, quickly moved to embrace it. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued an order for “hazardous” encampments to be dismantled, and San Francisco Mayor London Breed has declared that she will launch “aggressive” homeless sweeps that could include criminal penalties.

Migrants And Homeless Expelled From Paris Ahead Of Olympic Games

July 25, 2024 Ana Vračar, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , ,
One of the latest communities at risk of forced displacement is a Roma encampment in La Courneuve, Seine-Saint-Denis, located on the route of the Paralympic marathon scheduled for September. About 200 people, most of whom moved from worse living conditions in a nearby camp, now live in fear of eviction, with no clear relocation plan proposed by the local authorities.

Ruling On Homelessness Raises Risks For Domestic Violence Survivors

July 1, 2024 Jennifer Gerson, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has ruled in the case of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson, to uphold a law enacted by a small Oregon town that bars those experiencing homelessness from using blankets, pillows and cardboard boxes while sleeping outdoors within city limits. Those who are found doing so can impose fines for camping in public on first-time offenders and up to 30 days of jail time for repeat offenders. It’s a case that has major implications for survivors of domestic violence, experts say. Lawyers for the plaintiffs in this case have argued that barring camping on public property effectively criminalizes people for being unhoused.

Why Housing First Failed In Canada

June 30, 2024 Laurence Braun-Woodbury, Canadian Dimension. , , , ,
Every day more Canadians are being pressed into homelessness. Shelters are overflowing. Tent cities are ubiquitous. Diseases more commonly associated with refugee camps have popped up with alarming frequency in inner-cities across the country. The numbers are devastating: up to 300,000 Canadians will experience homelessness this year—a substantial increase from the 235,000 who were homeless in 2016. Cities are scrambling to find solutions; sanctioned encampments, increased shelter capacity, forced removal by police. Nothing is working. It’s a crisis the federal government has been trying to solve.

When You’re Unsheltered, ‘Public Safety’ Doesn’t Include You

April 24, 2024 Dionicia Roberson, Next City. , , , , , ,
I’m going to tell you something you already know: Every human being is entitled to a roof over their head and a place to sleep at night. This is an indisputable truth, part of the catechism of humanistic virtue. In a world that lived up to its self-professed ideals of opportunity, any condition of homelessness would be rare, brief and non-recurring. The reality is cultural attitudes toward impoverished people – fueled by toxic portrayals, fear mongering in the media and systematic dehumanization – have made homelessness not a community problem to be solved, but an individual offense to be punished, and defines those who suffer this condition as enemies to the idyllic peace of ‘good (read: housed and well-fed) people’.

SCOTUS Is Set To Make A Watershed Ruling On Homelessness

April 14, 2024 Mandy Chapman Semple and Nathaniel Fields, Next City. , , ,
This month, the Supreme Court will begin to hear one of the highest-profile court cases about homelessness in generations. City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Gloria Johnson considers whether a local government can outlaw sleeping outside if adequate shelter is not accessible. If the Court sides with Grants Pass, cities will be able to rely on punitive policies that do little to nothing to decrease homelessness and often cause worse outcomes for unhoused people in the process. If it favors Johnson, local governments will be required to demonstrate adequate shelter is available for an individual before resorting to harsh enforcement tactics.

I’ve Been Unhoused; It Could Happen To You, So Let’s Stop Criminalizing It

March 3, 2024 Eleanor Goldfield, Truthout. , , ,
For a period in 2005, I was one of the more than 740,000 people who were experiencing homelessness at that time in the U.S. On an eastern section of Sunset Boulevard where tourists never venture, there’s the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic — less chic than it sounds. Still, they had services ranging from medical care to showers, and for those seeking the latter, they’d give away those little test packets of shampoo and conditioner that used to come in magazines and in the mail. Herbal Essences was a favorite. After a quick rinse and a change of clothes, I could walk out of the clinic being treated like a real person until some indication of my situation betrayed me.

Denver City Council Upholds Mayor’s ‘No Freezing Sweeps’ Veto

February 26, 2024 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
On the afternoon of February 12, the Denver City Council again voted on the “No Freezing Sweeps” bill in their chambers, but this time the vote was to potentially override Mayor Mike Johnston’s veto of the Council’s passage of the bill. When the roll call took place, each council member voted exactly as they did on January 29 — seven ayes, six nays — yet this time, that vote count resulted in the official failure of the bill. At least nine “aye” votes were needed for a successful override. “Each and every one of ya’ll that voted ‘no,’ ya’ll just voted to kill people!” Jerry Burton of Housekeys Action Network Denver (HAND), a local advocacy group for houseless people and their rights, was one of a few people who stood up and yelled at the City Council after the bill was officially voted down.

An Upcoming Supreme Court Case Threatens To Criminalize Homelessness

February 1, 2024 Adam Mahoney, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
As America’s affordable housing crisis grows, especially for those of retirement age, Black folks continue to be pushed into homelessness at a disproportionate rate. Advocates argue that an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling may make it even more dire. Earlier this month, the court announced that it would hear a case that will essentially decide if people experiencing homelessness can be issued jail time, tickets, and fines for sleeping on the streets — even if there are no shelter alternatives available for them. The case will be heard either this spring or in the fall.

Our Housing Crisis Is Literally Killing People

January 31, 2024 Fran Quigley, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Last week, my students and I worked with several unhoused persons who had been recently living in dangerous, unhealthy apartments or homes in our community of Indianapolis. One, a young mother of a toddler with another baby soon on the way, had just left a home where eight people across three generations were living. The house had no central heat, so space heaters were the only source of warmth during a month when the temperature dipped below zero for several days. Those heaters and everything else electrical in the house were linked to a complex web of extension cords connected to a solitary working outlet.

A Beacon Of Hope To The Unhoused Faces Eviction

December 17, 2023 Ellie Zimmerman, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Minneapolis, MN — Camp Nenookaasi is throwing the subject of Minneapolis’ encampment policies into the spotlight again as it faces eviction on December 19. The camp’s supporters are waging the latest skirmish in a longer fight between the city’s prohibition of encampments and those who claim that allowing encampments to remain intact is the most humane approach to the issue, as well as a crucial first step toward getting people into stable housing and recovery programs. On Dec. 8, a group of activists arrived at Mayor Jacob Frey’s office to deliver an eviction notice to his door, symbolically evicting him from the city in an attempt to draw his attention to the issue and sway his decision to further displace the unhoused.

The Squatters Asking Why Chicago’s Public Housing Is Filled With Vacancies

October 13, 2023 Roshan Abraham, Next City. , , , ,
In late August, a group of Chicago residents were forcibly removed from a building they called home, a longtime-vacant property owned by the Chicago Housing Authority. The residents were part of a rotating group of squatters who had occupied the home for 20 months, a group that included a housing activist and people who had been living in tents in a nearby homeless encampment. For two years prior to the occupation, the home—a picturesque two-story property in the quickly gentrifying Humboldt Park neighborhood—had been vacant. It’s one of more than 2,000 housing units under the Chicago Housing Authority’s ownership that lie empty, according to city data.
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