A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
I just love the language used to describe homeless people: Drunk, crazy, helpless, ad nauseum. It’s also shrouded in industry-specific terms like “experiencing substance abuse issues.”
Alphabet soup of acronyms that only a handful of insiders know. My all-time favorite though is “service resistant.” Google the term. There is no definition for it except when applied to the homeless. Common sense leads one to conclude that there is a whole army who resist services.
Raise your hands if you’re in favor of housing homeless people and programs that make it possible.
Now, raise your hands if you support laws imposing bans on sleeping outside or panhandling.
Chances are, in this scenario, you’d see the same set of hands raised favoring both approaches to homelessness. According to a pair of political scientists, that’s not unusual.
Scott Clifford of the University of Houston and Spencer Piston of Boston University studied this phenomenon of dueling impulses by commissioning a public opinion poll.
On any sunny Saturday, hundreds of people fill the Mission’s Dolores Park with their friends, pets, music—and their trash. Current anti-littering laws do little to combat this latter phenomenon, as on most days, police officers in Dolores Park can be seen standing at the top of the hill, surveying the park for violent or egregious misconduct but doing nothing about the wrappers, cigarettes, bags, and other refuse being left by the park’s attendees. While the officers watch along the perimeters,
Over 100 people gathered in front of San Francisco’s City Hall to protest the $6.2 billion in federal cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Trump’s proposed figurative and literal walls. Accompanied by a five-person band, the Brass Liberation Orchestra, the group marched down Market Street with colorful signs that depicted Trump’s wall and business improvement districts, and to the federal building on seventh and mission streets. Once at the federal building,
In San Francisco, thousands of homeless people find shelter on street corners wrapped in sleeping bags or shielded by the thin canvas of tents. Tent cities have popped up around the Bay Area and around the country, a response to an economy that has abandoned poor and homeless people. Rather than offer people housing and respite from the inhospitable and unlivable conditions of the streets, the city has responded with brutal encampment sweeps,
West Oakland Punks with Lunch.
Misfits fight Homelessness
Oakland, CA
A group of self-described misfits are spending their own money to help combat the crisis of homelessness. As politicians debate and talk about solutions, every Sunday, Punks With Lunch assemble 80 to 180 healthy meals of sandwiches, fresh fruit, water and snacks, then head out to encampments at 35th and Peralta streets at 3:30 p.m.
When is a housing subsidy not a housing subsidy?
When it subsidizes homeownership.
When is a housing subsidy economic stimulus and not charity?
When the money supports bankers, real estate agents and developers.
In 2017, the federal government subsidized homeownership to the tune of $140.7 billion dollars; it is estimated 75 percent of this allocation went to households earning over $100,000.00.
I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. The first part of my life was pretty violent. My dad was an alcoholic drug dealer and he was a very violent man, but the second part was pretty cool. Me and my stepdad spent a lot of time working on getting and feeling better, but I was already traumatized. My stepdad had a hard time with me, because I never told anyone about my trauma, and I had a lot of trauma in my early years of life.
Insufficient income taxes on the rich, cash-starved local governments, and opportunistic developers constitute the ingredients for a particularly bitter pill for low-income people: higher rents.
So says Peter Moskowitz, who has written a new book exploring gentrification and its impacts on American cities. But what particularly worries him is the fact that young white people moving to cities—those urbanites who contribute to gentrification while also suffering the effects of it—fail to recognize they can be part of a badly needed mainstream political movement for housing.
Grassroots movements of people organized under the banner of Black Lives Matter have put law enforcement under a whole new level of scrutiny. The public outcries and unrest of the communities of Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles have unleashed a new push toward a different kind of relationship between communities and law enforcement. One that employs new technologies and techniques. The United States Department of Justice has recommended that local law enforcement explore reducing the use of force,
