Homelessness

Manhattan: A City Of Empty Luxury Condos And Overflowing Homeless Shelters

January 24, 2020 Staff, Boingboing.net Educate! Homelessness, Housing, Inequality, New Economy

New York's luxury real-estate market has been in freefall for years, and now the city's super-luxe buildings are sitting empty -- even as property prices in the city remain stubbornly high, prompting 300 New Yorkers to move out of the city every day, and filling the homeless shelters to capacity and beyond. New York -- like most overpriced cities -- has failed to build enough low- and middle-income housing of the sort that people use to live in, and has grossly oversupplied itself with the kinds of safe deposit boxes in the sky that oligarchs use as a form of medium-term asset class, possibly without ever occupying it.

Arrests Made During Protests Against Las Vegas Homeless Ordinances

January 22, 2020 Staff, Tasnimnews.com Resist! Homelessness, Protests, Repression

A new law allowing Las Vegas to designate sidewalk cleaning periods and criminalizing camping in those areas during cleaning time takes effect Sunday, allowing police to arrest anyone sitting, sleeping, or camping in those public spaces. Anyone caught doing so could face a $1,000 fine, six months in jail or some combination of the two, according to reports. The legislation, Bill No. 2019-44 sponsored by Mayor Carolyn G. Goodman, says in part: During such designated and noticed hours of cleanin...

Police Assault Solidarity Camp With Unsheltered People

January 19, 2020 By J.M. Straughn, Worker's World Educate! Homelessness, Police abuse

In Salt Lake City, the Take Shelter Coalition set up an encampment here of about 80 people on Jan. 2 to enforce demands to end the brutal treatment of unsheltered members of the working class. The camp was located around the Salt Lake City-County Building in Washington Square. The Salt Lake City Police Department in full riot gear assaulted protesters Jan. 5 with shotgun “flexible baton rounds” and hand batons, arresting 17 and issuing citations to 13. This is the second brutal attack by cops suffered by protesters in the city in recent months. The largest shelter in the city for unhoused people, The Road Home, was closed Nov. 21 as temperatures dropped and months of subfreezing temperatures and storms lay ahead.

Finland Ends Homelessness And Provides Shelter For All In Need

January 9, 2020 Kathrin Glosel, Scoop.me Create! Affordable Housing, Finland, Homelessness

In 2008 you could see tent villages and huts standing between trees in the parks of Helsinki. Homeless people had built makeshift homes in the middle of Finland’s capital city. They were exposed to harsh weather conditions. Since the 1980s, Finnish governments had been trying to reduce homelessness. Short-term shelters were built. However, long-term homeless people were still left out. There were too few emergency shelters and many affected people did not manage to get out of homelessness...

Supreme Court Signals Homeless People Have Constitutional Right To Sleep In Public Spaces

December 24, 2019 Stephan Johnson, Big Think Create! Homelessness

The Supreme Court on Monday effectively said it shouldn't be a crime by declining to hear an appeal of the case City of Boise vs. Martin. That case, filed in 2009, involved 10 homeless people suing the city of Boise after they were ticketed approximately $150 for doing things such as resting near a homeless shelter, sitting on a riverbank with a backpack, and putting down a bedroll in the woods. The plaintiffs claimed that the ordinance violated the Eighth Amendment, which protects against excessive fines and cruel and unusual punishment. In 2018, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. Now, the Supreme Court is letting that ruling stand.

Beneath Las Vegas’ Glittering Strip, Homeless People Live In Storm Tunnels

December 19, 2019 John L. Smith, Huffpost.com Educate! Homelessness, Housing, Inequality, Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS – Donovan looked out on the swanky casino looming in the distance. Traffic whizzed along the nearby highway overpass. He stood, sockless in tennis shoes, at the mouth of the concrete tunnel where he lives, a five-minute walk from Caesars Palace hotel. Graffiti covered the tunnel walls that disappeared into darkness behind him. After arriving in America’s gambling capital from California in 2013, Donovan had planned on working, but things didn’t turn out well. “It all went downhill, and here I am,” he said. Like others in this story, he agreed to be identified by first name only.

These Parking Lots Turn Into Safe Havens For Homeless People At Night, With Spectacular Results

December 4, 2019 Elias Marat, Themindunleashed.com Create! Homelessness, Housing

(TMU) — Around the world, the problem of homelessness has only grown over the last several years. The roots of the problem are social in nature: rising housing prices in large cities are leading to mass evictions and displacing communities, while poor access to health care and medical health services overlaps with a number of other public health crises. To make matters worse, once people end up without housing—by and large through no fault of their own—they are at the mercy of not only society in general, but a number of brutal health risks such as exposure to weather and disease.

Homeless Mothers, Activists Take Over Vacant Oakland House

November 21, 2019 By Marisa Kendall, Mercurynews.com Resist! Homelessness, Housing, Mothers, Oakland, Sexism

OAKLAND — Sick of struggling with homelessness under a system they say hasn’t helped them, two Oakland mothers took matters into their own hands Monday — by taking control of a vacant West Oakland house. In front of a crowd of supporters, community members and media, 34-year-old Dominique Walker and 41-year-old Sameerah Karim moved their belongings into a house on Magnolia Street that they say has been sitting empty for two years.

The Solution To Homelessness Is Staring Us In The Face

September 16, 2019 Robert Scheer, Truthdig.com Create! Affordable Housing, Homelessness, Inequality

It’s no secret that homelessness in the United States, especially in California, has reached critical levels. That the wealthiest state in the wealthiest nation in the world is dealing with a crisis that stems so clearly from inequality and neglect should have its predominantly left-leaning residents up in arms. And to some extent, they are. Becky Dennison, executive director of Venice Community Housing in Los Angeles, who speaks with Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer in the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” has dedicated her life’s work to helping address homelessness...

Austin Groups 3-D Print Tiny Homes To Help End Homelessness

September 15, 2019 Cindy Widner, Curbed Austin. Create! 3D Printing, Affordable Housing, Homelessness, New Economy

Community First Village, run by Mobile Loaves and Fishes to provide permanent, personal housing and services for homeless people in Austin, had quite the breakthrough day Monday. Partnering with Austin-based Icon and Cielo property group, it opened the second phase of its development with a 3D-printed prototype house that will serve as a welcome center for the community. The 500-square-foot building took a total of 27 hours to print. That was only the beginning, according to said Alan Graham, founder and CEO of Mobile Loaves & Fishes: “ICON is pushing the envelope and is technologically laying out a new way of looking at how we build homes,” he said. “One of our desires is that this partnership with ICON will grow so deep that we’re able to leverage this technology to someday build all of our microhomes in future phases of the village.”

Apartment Complex Built Exclusively For The Homeless Opens In San Jose

September 9, 2019 By John Vibes, Truth Theory Create! California, Homelessness, Housing, New Economy

A new apartment complex built exclusively for the homeless was recently opened in San Jose, California. The development is called Second Street Studios, and it is the first property of its kind in the city. The unprecedented effort is in response to a growing homeless population across the bay area. According to CBS, a recent survey suggested that there was a 42% increase in homelessness in San Jose in the past two years, with an estimated 6,000 people living without shelter in the city.

The Plan For A National Homes Guarantee

September 8, 2019 The Next System Project. Create! Homelessness, Housing, New Economy, Reparations

Everyone living in the United States should have safe, accessible, sustainable, and permanently affordable housing: a Homes Guarantee. People’s Action, with the assistance of Democracy Collaborative policy associate Peter Gowan, has published a 20-page report outlining a bold plan to address the nation’s housing crisis. Right now, our country falls woefully short of delivering on this promise. The federal government has not made a large scale investment to address affordable housing shortages since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which created public housing for civilians. Now, we need action beyond that scale. The country’s housing crisis is untenable, and it must end. We need a Homes Guarantee that will...

Federal Court: Cities Cannot Criminalize Homelessness

April 19, 2019 Chris Teale, Smartcitiesdive.com Resist! Courts, Criminalization, Homelessness

The likes of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have come out hard against anti-homelessness laws in cities nationwide. The organization derided laws encouraging homeless people in Houston to go to shelters — which are often full — as rules that "are ineffective, waste limited public resources, violate basic human and constitutional rights, and strip homeless Houstonians of their dignity.” In an interview with Curbed, Eve Garrow, a homelessness policy analyst at the ACLU, said the organization plans to start an education campaign making sure cities are aware of the ruling and how they can ensure they are not in violation.

Homelessness Crisis Is Deepening In The United States

October 28, 2018 By Laura Tyson , Lenny Mendonca, Project Syndicate Educate! Homelessness, Housing

Despite strong GDP growth and an extraordinarily low unemployment rate, more than a half-million people in the United States are homeless on any given night. And with housing prices rising while median wages remain stagnant, the problem will get worse unless policymakers intervene.

All Laws That Make It A Crime To Be Homeless Should Be Repealed

October 18, 2018 By John Tharp and Maria Foscarinis, Otherwords.org Create! Criminalization, Homelessness, Legislation

When San Diego resident Gerald Stark’s rent increased and he couldn’t afford another apartment, the retired union pipefitter moved into his RV. But because he lacked an address, San Diego law made it almost impossible for him to park his RV legally. Soon the city confiscated it, leaving him out on the streets. There, he was ticketed for violating another law prohibiting sleeping in public. Faced with thousands of dollars in fines and fees he was unable to pay, Stark lived every day in fear of being arrested — for simply trying to survive. He’s not alone. There isn’t a single county in the United States where you can rent a two-bedroom, market-rate apartment working a full-time, minimum-wage job.

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