How can we count the homeless
if the police are taking them to jail?
As counties across Florida prepare for their annual homeless count, Hillsborough will wait another month.
Too cold? Too many transients?
Not exactly. Homeless advocates fear police will arrest so many homeless to clear the streets for the
Super Bowl that any count would be inaccurate.
* "It's happened during other big events when there are a lot of out-of-town visitors," said Rayme Nuckles, chief executive officer of the
Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County. "But we know it's occurring now because some of our providers heard from a (police) captain at a meeting that they were arresting homeless people and holding them in jail."
Tampa police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said there is no such mandate.
Sara Romeo, executive director of
Tampa Crossroads, a homeless advocacy group, and a former state representative, said she knows police are conducting homeless sweeps right now.
"I'm sure homelessness hurts the image of every city that has a Super Bowl," she said. "But if we addressed this issue the other 364 days prior to Super Bowl, we wouldn't have so many homeless people to round up and hide."
Read the
St. Petersburg Times article
here.
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* People in jail do not count as "homeless" under the official federal definition of "homeless."
A glimpse of how hell could look
The “UNICEF-Photo of the Year” shows a girl in
Cité Soleil, the largest slum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.
Cité Soleil has long been a poster child for the poorest of the poor. People live unprotected in stinking and burning waste, without work, without reliable sources of energy, without drinkable water, without clean air to breath, without money for their next meal. The poorest of the poor resort to eating dirt simply to fill their stomachs. But in the past few years, it also has become one of the most dangerous poor places in the Western Hemisphere. Armed gangs roam the streets and murder, rape, kidnapping, looting and shootings have become common.
In the midst of this hell, photographer
Alice Smeets found a girl (an angel?) wearing a clean white dress with matching ribbons in her hair whilst walking barefoot through the mud.
The 21-year-old photographer, from the city of Eupen in the German-speaking part of East Belgium, is the youngest winner in the history of the contest.
See the gallery of honored photos
here.
Motivation for killing was "straight-up personal dislike
and a little bit of crazy"
John McGraham, seen in April 2006, was doused with gasoline and burned to death Oct. 9 in Los Angeles. More than 300 people packed the church for his funeral.
A 30-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murdering a homeless man who was doused with a flammable liquid and set ablaze on a street corner last year.
The arrest of Benjamin Mathew Martin caps a nearly four-month search for suspects in a killing that outraged Los Angeles.
LAPD Deputy Chief Charlie Beck said Martin's alleged motivation for the killing appears to be "straight-up personal dislike and a little bit of crazy."
John Robert McGraham, 55, who once worked nearby as a bellman at the
Ambassador Hotel, suffered from depression. For two decades he repeatedly spurned efforts of family members and others to remove him from the streets and obtain treatment for him.
When he was set afire, residents and shopkeepers rushed to extinguish the flames but were unable to save his life. McGraham's clothes had been burned off, his face blackened and swollen, the tips of his clenched fingers sloughed off.
Read the
Los Angeles Times report
here.
West Palm Beach church back in court
over homeless shelter
"We've just begun to fight," says attorney Barry Silver.
For years,
Westgate Tabernacle Church has been fined for zoning and code violations by the county. Now the church is back in federal court, claiming its religious and civil rights are being violated by Palm Beach County. The lawsuit seeks injuctions to keep the county from levying fines and otherwise interfering with the church's use of its property to help the homeless.
"We just want our rights as a church to help those who are hurting in the community," says Westgate Tabernacle Bishop Avis Hill.
The church has been down this road before in state court, and lost. That case is still on appeal.
Homeless people continue spending the night at Westgate. Church officials say with no other shelters in the area, the county can't afford to close them down.
"They're sending homeless people to Westgate," says Silver. "How can in good conscious the county send people to Westgate and then at the same time fine them for taking in the homeless?"
Read the
Palm Beach Post article
here.
Update: Check out
Chosen Fast's post on this
here.
"Bored" men planned to bomb homeless man's campsite
Three "bored" men face criminal charges over their alleged plan to bomb a homeless man's campsite in a wooded area behind a church.
The men -- all in their early 20s -- were charged with possession of a destructive device, a felony carrying a standard 30-year prison term, and trespass, a misdemeanor.
They were arrested near a church in New Castle, Indiana, where police found what were described in a police report as "two homemade incendiary devices (Molotov cocktails)."
The men told police they were bored and admitted to going to the area specifically to harass the homeless man. They first threw rocks to see if he was inside his tent and said they planned to ignite their homemade bombs -- a gas-soaked rag inside a glass jar and another rag inside a plastic dishwashing soap bottle -- just to create a spark and scare him.
The planned bombing was averted because a police officer, on routine patrol, noticed fresh footprints in the snow approaching a locked gate.
Read the
Muncie Star-Press report
here.
It can happen to anyone
The
National Coalition for the Homeless has a new public service announcement, with soundtrack by Radiohead.
Read Advertising Age's report
here.
A flood of volunteers turns out
to help the homeless
Erin MacDevette, 7, Debbie Haruta and Debbie's children Grace, 7, and Jonathan, 5, help to convert an idle 12-story building into a homeless shelter.Three times as many people as expected showed up to repair, paint and clean a former hotel so that it can be a shelter for homeless women and their children.
“This is where we ought to be,” said volunteer Tom Duncan. “Otherwise, we would just be watching football.”
“We can't give financially, so we decided to give our time,” said volunteer Dana Baker.
More than 5,000 people in Charlotte, North Carolina, are homeless on a given night, but there are fewer than 2,000 shelter beds.
The building, which opened as Hotel Barringer in 1940 and featured penthouses and a Swiss chef, had sat empty for about a year.
Starting this week, it will house 20 families. Another 20 will be added each week until all 100 apartments are occupied. Families would stay until June, when they would move into their own permanent homes. Those who remain homeless would move into other shelters.
“I am surprised how many people gave up the day after New Year's Day,” said Connie Echols, a volunteer for
A Child's Place, which assists homeless children and raise money for the temporary shelter. “It's not great work. It's yucky.”
Read the
Charlotte Observer article
here.
Common sense prevails
Strong community opposition has led one city to put plans to clear out homeless camps on hold.
Merced, California, had planned to start enforcing a "no camping" regulation on Jan. 23 that would mean citations and jail for anyone living in a tent on city land who refused to move.
But community members and church volunteers complained that the ordinance does not address where those living on the street would go.
So the city postponed enforcing the ordinance until churches and other groups can develop a plan to shelter the homeless during the winter.
That's pretty much the whole story, but -- for the record -- it was published in the
San Diego Union-Tribune here.
The swankiest homeless shelter in the world
After a revamp by a concept artist, this building in Berlin has been dubbed the swankiest homeless shelter in the world.Italian wallpapers, gold trimmings, parquet flooring, red carpeting and crystal chandeliers have replaced the scruffy decor of a shelter for homeless men in Berlin.
The finished work of art, which concept artist Miriam Kilali said resembles a "living painting," is called Reichtum 2.
"It means wealth," she said. "It's a symbol, an attempt to give the 21 men who live here a sense of self-worth and a decent place where they might find dignity and respect -- wealth of sorts after all they've been through."
The smell of stale alcohol and tobacco lingers in the air, a reminder that the residents are chronic alcoholics, most of whom suffer from mental disorders and none of whom are likely to recover. "Nobody really has time for alcoholics," said Kilali. "Children and animals yes, but not aging alcoholic men."
"When we were trying to raise the funds there was a lot of tension over spending such a lot of money and questions as to why these men in particular should benefit. After all, what had they contributed to society?"
Kilali plans to transport her vagabond chic to New York next year where the third Reichtum project will be launched.
Read the
Guardian story
here.
