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POPSMore people on SF streets are newly homeless More: Twenty of 21 cities surveyed for a new report from U.S. Conference of Mayors reported an increase in requests for food, and 59 percent of those requests came from families. In addition, 16 of 25 cities reported a significant increase in homeless families, with San Francisco among the leaders. "Monday we had 136 families on the waiting list for a shelter," said Dariush Kayhan, the city's homeless policy director. "That's 50 percent more than we had on the list one year ago." What's more concerning is that, according to the city's Human Services Agency, 62 percent of those on the waiting list are new to the system. They haven't been homeless in San Francisco before… Indications are that we are only seeing the beginning of what the faltering economy will do to those living on the edge of homelessness…single men, particularly returning veterans, continue to be most likely to end up on the street.
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POPSFighting For The Welfare State This makes me really proud to be Danish. Anyway, why ARE we so happy? Well... we all know how we are all are in the grip of the worldwide economic crisis at the moment, right? Well, despite this, a huge number of Danes are now calling for the government to please let us pay more taxes! "Please raise taxes, so we can afford more!". :p .Now... I know this might seem odd and counter-intuitive to some, but please lend me your ear and I'll try to explain.... :) In a society like for example the US, where Wall Street reigns supreme and the gap between rich and poor just grows every day, how can it be expected that there is anything in it all, for the little guy? Capitalism is all good and fine, but money shouldn't be the goal, but merely the means. It's not about how much you have, but how much you give.
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POPSConvert The UN Building Into NYC Homeless Shelter
wallowing in desperate poverty, with crime so rampant and violent that the police won’t even venture into them. And you have the nerve to come here and investigate us ? The United Nations has become nothing less than a shabby podium used by corrupt third-world demagogues to do what they could never do in any other way - attempt to destroy and bring into disrepute the United States. We’re being nibbled to death by ducks. And we’re letting it happen. Not only that, we’re paying for it. I’d like to see the Obama Administration tell the U.N. to pound sand (but they won’t). Take your investigation to somewhere that needs it, and that list is endless. North Korea, Darfur, Tibet, Cuba….I could go on almost ad infinitum about third world hell holes where people have no rights whatsoever, where food is something that may or may not come your way today - or tomorrow. Where “housing” consists of whatever you can scrape together to try to keep out the cold, where women . .
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POPSAmericans are being sacrificed on the altar of big business First manufacturing, then IT. And, even in midst of the worst "recession" since the Depression, it continues on. Yet we, the still employed, don't care. We stock our homes with foreign made goods and spend our money with companies that are slaughtering our middle class. The irony is starting to show itself. Good luck to our children with the future. They are going to need it.
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POPSThe Housing Crisis Ann Arbor Why do individuals have to result to such when there's enough land and money in this nation to serve everyone equally, What will it take for everyone to put their differences aside and address these issues as one to the corporate profit driven government.
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POPSCanadian City Uses Feces to Repel Homeless
It's tough to believe that anyone -- especially a city official -- actually thought this was a good idea. But it's downright bizarre that a plan so ridiculous, so "bird-brained" was actually implemented; city officials located the dung, transported it, spread it, so on and so forth. It was only after the negative press that the city manager had it cleared (and deodorized the area, apparently). To many, this bird dung story will be kind of funny, really nasty, or completely outraging. But to me, it's just really sad. Sad for the people who usually sat outside of those city buildings, most likely because they had nowhere else to sit. Now the whole world knows what city officials really think of them, perhaps even what they equate them to. Sad that it takes an extreme story of such hate and ignorance to bring the issue of homelessness to the front of people's minds. And sad because this story really isn't about homelessness at all. Because homelessness should be about not ha
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POPSIs It Now a Crime to Be Poor? The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz., carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance. By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong-color skin. There’s no minimum age for being sucked into what the Children’s Defense Fund calls “the cradle-to-prison pipeline.” Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, a community organization in Los Angeles, suspects that “poor people have become a source of revenue” for recession-starved cities, and that the police can always find a violation leading to a fine. The safety net, or what’s left of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.
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POPSOne Small County In Michigan Ilsadago1 wrote: "coffeesnob wrote:" "In the year 2000: 85,000 people died (alcohol related) 17,000 people died (ALL illicit drugs usage combined) What is not "realistic" about that? Numbers are numbers, dead people are dead people." It's not always about how many deaths there are. It's the crimes committed to get, make, distribute and buy the drugs. It's the children permanently made ill by inhaling the fumes produced by a meth lab. It's the cost of medical, dental, substance abuse and mental health care. It's about the loss of employment, inability to care for children financially, hunger, homelessness and lack of basic needs. It's the lengths people will go to to feed the habit - it's not about getting 'high', it's about not getting dope sick. They will do ANYTHING to not get 'sick'. Death is the least of the problems.
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POPSFlorida City Caught Criminalizing the Homeless When I worked in downtown San Diego during a visit by then Pres. Clinton, the cops rounded up all the homeless in the downtown area and shuttled them up to LA. Presumably so the Pres would not have to see any of his ‘subjects’ living on the street. Sadly, this kind of cruelty towards people who are homeless is not restricted only to St. Petersburg. Take a glimpse at the list of the Top 20 Meanest Cities: http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/meanest.html See if your town is on the list.
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POPSForeclosure Crisis Hits Poor Renters Hard: Evicted Families Have to Fight to Live Together "The National Alliance to End Homelessness has predicted that at the current rate, the recession will result in 1.5 million additional homeless people within two years". Why is there always enough money to wage wars and give handouts to big business yet working people and their kids - through no fault of their own - are left to fend for themselves on the streets. It's absolutely shameful.
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POPSVeterans make up 1 in 4 homeless This is a shameful travesty. The mental health toll from war is enormous. With the spotlight on the plight of Iraq veterans, they hope more will be done to prevent homelessness and provide affordable housing to the younger veterans while there's a window of opportunity. "People get tired of it. It's not glitzy that these are young, honorable, patriotic Americans. They'll just be veterans, and that happens after every war." said John Keaveney, a Vietnam veteran and a founder of New Directions in Los Angeles, which provides substance abuse help, job training and shelter to veterans. A big problem is that military training does not translate to civilian jobs. What is combat specialist supposed to do? Honorable veterans should never face this situation.
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POPSFemale Vets Struggling to Get Treatment for PTSD The veteran's service organization Swords to Plowshares says female Iraq war vets are the fastest growing population of homeless. "There numbers in terms of homelessness is growing exponentially. There are very few services for them because homeless veterans services, VA services have grown up serving a male cliental," said Swords to Plowshares Amy Fair-Weather. These vets are hoping sharing their stories through pictures and books will help make the road to recovery easier for the women currently serving in Iraq.
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POPSAdmiral says war veterans will suffer for years The government better ante up on this and insure they take care of our Vets. This prediction from the Adm is nothing different from what our Vets faced in Vietnam. In both cases there was no reason to send our troops into harms way and it sounds like again our government is not going to help those who were sent there to fight. This is another example of the absurdity of how those in top power of the government use our military and just toss aside those who have erved their country. We all need to help these folks returning home.
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