Homelessness

Homeless For The Holidays – A Man and His Companion – Part IV

January 7, 2015 John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us Educate! Holiday, Homelessness

Anthony, 47 years old, is friendly as he greets me as I pass through McPherson, on Christmas. “What have you got for me,” he asks? His companion, ‘Chico’, is an obedient mixed Pit Bull and looks up suspiciously as I go through my bag to find something for him to eat. Chico stands close to him, eyeing me with a worried look and afraid to leave Anthony’s side.Screen Shot 2015-01-07 at 9.34.27 AM The street has been harsh to Both Anthony and Chico, who has a human like quality and wears his master’s suffering on his face. Anthony agrees to let me take his picture but only if I’ll give him something other than food.

Homeless For The Holidays – A Man & His Companion – Part III

January 5, 2015 John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us Educate! Homelessness, Human Rights

Anthony, 47 years old, is friendly as he greets me as I pass through McPherson, on Christmas. “What have you got for me,” he asks? His companion, ‘Chico’, is an obedient mixed Pit Bull and looks up suspiciously as I go through my bag to find something for him to eat. Chico stands close to him, eyeing me with a worried look and afraid to leave Anthony’s side. The street has been harsh to Both Anthony and Chico, who has a human like quality and wears his master’s suffering on his face. Anthony agrees to let me take his picture but only if I’ll give him something other than food. “Everyone is giving out food but I need money and clothes,” he says.

Homeless for the Holidays – Helping Hands – Part II

January 3, 2015 John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us Educate! Holiday, Homelessness

Its dusk on Christmas Eve. A white van of Samaritans stops at the corner of Eye Street. On queue the men shuffle to its hatch and line up. She opens its side door at the curb. At McPherson the men linger late into the night, waiting for food, gloves, hats, and tonight’s menu: steamy soup and flowered biscuits. In it they find temporary salvation. The soup steams in the night and smells sweet with rosemary. Samaritans leave a few extra portions on the ledge of the escalators for the latecomers, but most of it is abandoned or left for pigeons. Later on the subway cleaning staff will discard it.

Homeless For The Holidays – McPherson Park — Part I

January 1, 2015 John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us Educate! D.C., Holiday, Homelessness, Washington, Washington D.C.

They occupy alleys and benches, the side doorways of office buildings and dead spaces behind dumpsters. They hobble along sidewalks, looking for change, food and clothing. “Can you spare quarters, dimes, nickels?” A homeless man asks each night near McPherson Park. Others linger near the metro entrance waiting for the van from Martha’s Table to serve dinner. By the thousands, Washington, DC bears witness to the displaced who congregate in its parks and sidewalks. They wait for meals and clothing that are delivered by civic groups after the last of the rush hour traffic has dribbled back to the suburbs.

France: Council Removes Anti-Homeless Cages After Outcry

December 28, 2014 Staff, www.euronews.com Resist! France, Homelessness

The local council in the French city of Angouleme has backtracked on a decision to cage public benches to stop homeless people using them. The fences were put up on Christmas Eve sparking outrage that the move could be so lacking in Yuletide spirit While many shopkeepers had welcomed the cages, saying homeless people brought down the number of customers, locals had responded in solidarity. Two teenagers climbed inside the cages and refused to move out. One said: “we were quite outraged , like everybody, I think. And so we said to ourselves: we absolutely have to do something” The cages have been temporarily removed but the mayor of the right leaning UMP council, Xavier Bonnefont, said no final decision had yet been made. “We will continue to reflect on this in January with the shopkeepers and the residents of Champs de Mars square, in order to find a satisfactory solution,” he declared.

Activists Go On Hunger Strike Against Homeless Laws

November 25, 2014 Mark Douglas, www.wfla.com Resist! Florida, Homelessness, Hunger Strike, Protest

Tampa activists Dezeray Lyn and Chris Mince are joining two South Florida food sharing activists on a hunger strike to protest a recent crackdown on feeding the hungry in Ft. Lauderdale. "There's nothing that would stop me from expressing my humanity for the people I've grown to live,"said Lyn. The arrest of 90-year-old Arnold Abbott, a longtime social activist who feeds the homeless in Ft. Lauderdale, has sparked national attention and outrage among people who routinely organize food sharing in parks. Lyn says one of her fellow activists in South Florida has now gone without food for 22 days and another hasn't eaten anything in 11 days to protest the food sharing crackdown.

Homeless Advocates: Stop Criminalizing Homelessness

November 21, 2014 Andrew Klein, www.truth-out.org Resist! Homelessness, Protest, San Francisco

The names of the five individuals shot and killed by police officers of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) emanated from a bullhorn at a recent San Francisco rally, protesting BART's treatment of the city's homeless. For the activists lining the walls of the Powell Street BART Station on this Saturday morning in November, the BART police shootings underscored the injustice of an institution, which, for its detractors, has become synonymous with racial profiling, police brutality and abuse of power. The rally, which its organizers labeled a "sleep-in," centered on a policy ratified in July 2014, which allows BART police to arrest or issue citations to anyone resting or sleeping against the walls of BART stations. Those in attendance were aiming to reverse that specific policy, but they located their campaign within a broader effort to both reform the conduct of BART police and combat the general marginalization of San Francisco's poor.

America’s Youngest Outcasts

November 18, 2014 National Center On Family Homelessness, www.homelesschildrenamerica.org Educate! Children, Education, Homelessness

America’s Youngest Outcasts looks at child homelessness nationally and in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, ranks the states from 1 (best) to 50 (worst), and examines causes of child homelessness and solutions. The report uses the newest federal and state data related to child homelessness, including the most recent annual count of homeless children in public schools made by the U.S. Department of Education (2012-2013 school year; released in September 2014) and U.S. Census data. The report notes that while progress has been made in reducing homelessness among veterans and chronically homeless individuals, no special attention has been directed toward homeless children, and their numbers have increased.

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Managed Democracy, Expendable People

October 26, 2014 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Climate Change, Criminalization, Democracy, Ferguson, Fracking, Homelessness, Michael Brown, Oil & Gas, Poverty

As the elections draw near, the plutocracy and crisis of democracy become more visible. There are reports of ‘dark money’ in record amounts influencing races. An obvious example of this took place in Richmond, CA, home of a large Chevron refinery, last week when Chevron funded a ‘new non-profit’ that hosted a ‘civil rights icon’ to stump for pro-business candidates. Steve Early called him “big oil’s reverend for rent.” We’ve written before about the studies which show that the interests of the wealthy are represented in our public policy instead of the needs and interests of the public. For example, on October 19, several IRS whistleblowers exposed that corporations are being allowed illegally to avoid paying billions in taxes while individuals and small businesses are punished. And Drs. Bruno and Burns describe how Coca Cola has infected medical associations and undermined reform. Sheldon Wolin wrote about this in “Democracy, Inc.”

Criminalisation Of Homeless In U.S. Criticised By UN

September 5, 2014 Carey L. Biron, www.ipsnews.net Educate! Homelessness, Human Rights, UN

A United Nations panel reviewing the U.S. record on racial discrimination has expressed unusually pointed concern over a new pattern of laws it warns is criminalising homelessness. U.S. homelessness has increased substantially in the aftermath of the financial downturn, and with a disproportionate impact on minorities. Yet in many places officials have responded by cracking down on activities such as sleeping or even eating in public, while simultaneously defunding social services. The new rebuke comes from a panel of experts reviewing the United States’ progress in implementing its obligations under a treaty known as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, commonly referred to as CERD or the race convention. “The Committee is concerned at the high number of homeless persons, who are disproportionately from racial and ethnic minorities,” the CERD panel stated in a formal report released on Friday, “and at the criminalization of homelessness through laws that prohibit activities such as loitering, camping, begging, and lying in public spaces.” This was only the second time that the United States’ record on race relations and discriminatory practices, and particularly the federal government’s actions in this regard, have been formally examined against the measuring stick of international law.

Vancouver Tent City Occupants Have Law On Their Side

July 31, 2014 Harsha Walia, www.westcoastnativenews.com Resist! Homelessness, Law, Vancouver

Vancouver city councillor Kerry Jang, appointed to the housing committee, has been slandering in recent interviews the people in Oppenheimer tent city as mobs and mischief-makers who are breaking the law. However, tent city residents are quite well-versed in the law, citing the B.C. Court’s Adams decision, the Supreme Court of Canada’s Tsilhqot’in decision, and inherent indigenous law as a defence for their stand. The city claims that camping and structures are not allowed because they “create barriers for other residents who want to use and enjoy the park space.” These seemingly innocuous bylaws about structures in parks and public enjoyment of green spaces, in effect, criminalize poverty. “The majestic quality of the law forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets and steal bread,” Anatole France said in the early 1900s. Pivot Legal Society launched a legal challenge two years ago to the city’s bylaws that prohibit homeless people from sleeping and sheltering outdoors. Instead of adhering to the significant Adams court decision — which ruled that Victoria bylaws that prohibited homeless people from sheltering outdoors when there is a lack of indoor shelter space were unconstitutional — our municipal government is considering increasing fines for homeless people sleeping outdoors to $10,000 per ticket.

American Cities Criminalizing Homelessness

July 21, 2014 Liz Dwyer, www.takepart.com Educate! Homelessness, Poverty

The latest report from the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty reveals that most municipalities believe in criminalizing, not helping, the down and out. For the report, the organization studied laws in 187 cities. Seventy-six percent of towns prohibit begging in specific public places, a 20 percent increase since 2011. However, the most dramatic uptick, the authors write, “has been in city-wide bans on fundamental human activities” such as sleeping in your car. A full 43 percent of cities prohibit people from sleeping in vehicles, an increase of a shocking 119 percent since 2011. And 53 percent of cities prohibit people from parking themselves on a curb or against a building. That’s down 3 percent since 2011, but at a time when the number of homeless people is expected to rise in 2014 and affordable housing is in short supply, these ordinances and laws come off as draconian.

F-35 Spending Could Buy Every Homeless Person A Mansion

July 12, 2014 Hayes Brown, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Budget, Corruption, Homelessness, Wars and Militarism

Just days before its international debut at an airshow in the United Kingdom, the entire fleet of the Pentagon’s next generation fighter plane — known as the F-35 II Lightning, or the Joint Strike Fighter — has been grounded, highlighting just what a boondoggle the project has been. With the vast amounts spent so far on the aircraft, the United States could have worked wonders, including providing every homeless person in the U.S. a $600,000 home. It’s hard to argue against the need to modernize aircraft used to defend the country and counter enemies overseas, especially if you’re a politician. But the Joint Strike Fighter program has been a mess almost since its inception, with massive cost overruns leading to its current acquisition price-tag of $398.6 billion — an increase of $7.4 billion since last year. That breaks down to costing about $49 billion per year since work began in 2006 and the project is seven years behind schedule. Over its life-cycle, estimated at about 55 years, operating and maintaining the F-35 fleet will cost the U.S. a little over $1 trillion. By contrast, the entirety of the Manhattan Project — which created the nuclear bomb from scratch — cost about $55 billion in today’s dollars.

Skid Row Residents: Heart Of Hope

June 15, 2014 David Bacon, www.equalvoiceforfamilies.org Organize! Gentrification, Homelessness, Housing, Poverty

As he, Sabo and other tenants organized similar committees in other hotels, they all began to develop a greater sense of themselves as a low-income community. That victory was one of several partial ones at the Frontier from about 2003 to 2008. Together, the tenants also succeeded in getting Los Angeles to pass a hotel preservation ordinance that requires no net loss of low-income housing, covering 17,000 to 18,000 units citywide. That includes about 8,000 downtown. The final ordinance gained approval in 2008. Diaz, who now works for LA CAN, points out that at the Alexandria all the rooms are covered by Section 8, the federal government’s low-income rent subsidy program, and rents start at $56 a month.

Leaving Homeless Person On The Streets: $31,065. Giving Them Housing: $10,051.

May 29, 2014 Scott Keyes, www.thinkprogress.com Educate! Florida, Homelessness

Even if you don’t think society has a moral obligation to care for the least among us, a new study underscores that we have a financial obligation to do so. Late last week, the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness released a new study showing that, when accounting for a variety of public expenses, Florida residents pay $31,065 per chronically homeless person every year they live on the streets. The study, conducted by Creative Housing Solutions, an Oklahoma-based consultant group, tracked public expenses accrued by 107 chronically homeless individuals in central Florida. These ranged from criminalization and incarceration costs to medical treatment and emergency room intakes that the patient was unable to afford. Andrae Bailey, CEO of the commission that released the study, noted to the Orlando Sentinel that most chronically homeless people have a physical or mental disability, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. “These are not people who are just going to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job,” he said. “They’re never going to get off the streets on their own.”

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