Homeless chased away, Jacksonville shelter warned about trash
For the last week, homeless people sleeping near Jacksonville's City Rescue Mission have been chased away from the sidewalk nearby. And then the mission itself was warned by city code enforcement about garbage left on the sidewalks outside its fence.
The mission says it was blindsided by the actions, because the few dozen people who sleep outside the mission's New Life Inn, which has been full for months and has seen a 33 percent increase in demand, have been doing so for over a year.
"Rarely from time to time, police would come by and ask them to move on, but never with the kind of intensity that we've seen recently," said Bill Duguid, City Rescue Mission's chief operating officer. "There seems to be a concerted effort at this point to remove people from Julia Street."
Duguid said that some of the "trash" on the sidewalk was actually the personal belongings of homeless people.
The actions come just days after Mayor John Peyton's pledge to do more to remove homeless people from the streets of downtown in anticipation of renovations to Laura Street.
A man found dead in a homeless camp south of Sanford was a homicide victim, authorities said.
Deputies were flagged down and by a man who told them someone was dead in a homeless camp in the woods behind the Quick Stop at U.S. Highway 17-92 and Collins drive, south of Sanford, said a spokesman for the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.
The victim has been identified as 56-year-old Albert Capps.
Capps, who was known to frequent the U.S. Highway 17-92 corridor in Sanford, has been arrested several times on charges such as disorderly intoxication, obstruction of public streets, trespassing and resisting arrest.
Florida suburbs were among the first to see the effects of the “Great Recession” translate into significant increases in poverty between 2007 and 2008.
It was the leading edge of a trend seen all across the country. By 2008, suburbs were home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population. Between 2000 and 2008, suburbs in the largest metro areas saw their poor population grow almost five times faster than primary cities. As a result, by 2008 large suburbs were home to 1.5 million more poor than their primary cities and housed almost one-third of the nation’s poor overall.
The Tampa Bay area's share of suburban poor grew by 7.2% between 2000 and 2008. That was the 11th largest increase in the nation. In 2008, 69.6% of the area's poor people lived in the suburbs.
In Orlando, the number of people living below the poverty level increased significantly in both the city and the suburbs, but the poverty rate stayed about the same. In 2008, 43,732 people in the primary city lived below of the poverty level, compared to 197,004 poor in the surrounding suburbs.
Suburban poverty increased significantly in Lakeland, both in total numbers and in the poverty rate. In 2008, 75,075 people lived below the poverty level in the suburbs, up 25,350 from 2000. And the suburban poverty rate rose to 15.8%.
In Miami, the number of suburban poor people increased significantly, growing by 44,117 to 596,772.
Cape Coral saw significant increases in the number of people living poverty in both the primary city and the surrounding suburbs.
The numbers were flat in both Jacksonville and Palm Bay.
Based on increases in unemployment over the past year, these metro areas are also likely to experience large increases in poverty in 2009.
Read the Brookings Institution report here and see the city profiles here.
People on public assistance are like stray animals, candidate says
A candidate for governor of South Carolina has compared giving people government assistance to "feeding stray animals."
"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed," said Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who is a Republican. "You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."
Jacksonville mayor endorses daytime homeless shelter
The creation of a daytime homeless shelter in the urban core is being supported by Jacksonville's mayor.
The shelter, proposed by area non-profits, would help the homeless and needy off the streets and into jobs. Mayor John Peyton says it would be located at the Sulzbacher Center and provide a location for individuals to do laundry, make phone calls and receive counseling.
Read The Florida Times-Union report here. And read the mayor's speech about his vision for Jacksonville here (the part about the daytime shelter is near the end, under the heading "Making Downtown More Appealing.")
Homeless convince city leaders to suspend no-camping law
A group of about 60 homeless people and their supporters convinced the Boulder City Council on Tuesday night to consider a moratorium on tickets for sleeping in parks, under bridges or in other public areas.
The City Council directed City Manager Jane Brautigam to bring back language within a few weeks for an emergency ordinance that would suspend enforcement of the no-camping rule.
The decision came after more than an hour of testimony and a protest by homeless people living on Boulder's streets, who pleaded for an end to $100 tickets for sleeping overnight in public without a permit.
Sister Cathy Gorman was in her 20s when she arrived at the wary farm-working community of Apopka. She quickly earned migrants' trust working beside them in the fields.
Sister Cathy Gorman touched the lives of thousands of migrant farmworkers and poor and disenfranchised families in Central Florida.
She died Jan. 5, two months shy of her retirement party, from heart failure. She was 65.
Working with other nuns, she helped launch the Office for Farmworker Ministry. They created a medical clinic, a food co-op, an AIDS outreach program, a low-income housing program and a credit union, where they had youths work as tellers and loan officers to learn about finance. In 2007, Gorman's dream came true. They opened the $1.7 million Hope CommUnity Center in Apopka after years of lobbying and fundraising.
Florida Legislature takes steps to add the homeless to hate-crimes law
Prompted by the 2006 homeless attack in Fort Lauderdale that gained worldwide notoriety, the Florida Legislature is moving to add the homeless as a protected class under state hate crimes laws.
Senate and House committees approved legislation that would make prejudice-driven attacks against the homeless a hate crime, meaning longer jail sentences for offenders. The issue will get more consideration during the legislative session, which starts March 2.
Florida has led the nation for four consecutive years in violent attacks against the homeless with 30 such incidents in 2008.
The Florida bill will likely run into opposition on several fronts.
Some oppose hate crimes laws in general, arguing that all victims should be treated equally. Given the state’s budget crunch, legislators are hesitant to increase criminal penalties – which add strain on overstuffed prisons. And even proponents of hate-crimes laws have objections, saying adding the homeless as a category would dilute the overall impact.
Would an "official" campground get homeless people out of downtown?
A plan is circulating to create a campground for homeless people somewhere in the Panama City limits, as a way to alleviate what some call the downtown homeless problems.
“This idea has worked in other areas, and I think it is something that could be applied to Panama City,” said Rick Dye, speaking of Pinellas Hope.
His hope is to get the influx of homeless people out of Panama City’s downtown and give them a place to sleep at night other than the woods surrounding the city.
To drum up support, Dye has crafted a business plan,* which dubs the project “Manger Campground,” showed it to select city leaders and presented the plan to the Downtown Improvement Board.
But the campground idea is opposed by the head of the city’s largest homeless shelter. The Rev. Billy Fox, executive director of the Panama City Rescue Mission, said providing campsites does not force those who are homeless to make the type of decisions that will better their situations.
“If we always make it to where they don’t have to make a better decision, they will always make a bad decision,” he said.
Read the Panama City News Herald report here. --------------- * There's a link to the business plan in the News Herald article. It opens a Word document, and I can't figure out how to link to it.
Florida does (surprisingly?) well in helping needy families
The total number of persons, both adults and children, receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families decreased in 22 states, says a new report from Legal Momentum.
In Florida, the total number of TANF recipients increased 22.2%, from 78,783 to 96,294. That's the seventh biggest increase among all the states.
The total national TANF caseload did increase 4.7% during the first 16 months of the recession, rising from 4,014,111 recipients in December 2007 to 4,202,957 recipients in March 2009. However, this increase was far less than the rise in the real need for assistance which is suggested by the increase over this same period of 20.2% in the number of Food Stamp recipients and of 70% in the unemployment rate.
The numbers underscore the urgent need for federal action to make TANF more accessible and responsive.
Acid bombs thrown at homeless in downtown St. Pete
Denny DeJesus shows where he and his fiancee were nearly hit by an acid bomb.
Police say someone threw three acid bombs at a group of homeless people in downtown St. Petersburg.
"These (homeless) people are already in poor circumstances, each has their own story and they're sleeping on the streets. Maybe the suspects consider this a prank but we take it very seriously," said police spokesperson Bill Proffitt.
The bombs were made using large plastic bottles and then filling them with acid. "It's hydrochloric acid, it's very corrosive, it would cause burns on your skin," Proffitt said
No one was injured when the bombs exploded, however one woman was sleeping under some blankets that did get sprayed by the acid.
The attack happened near the St. Vincent de Paul Society food center, where dozens of people sleep on the sidewalks.
It is winter. A third of the city is poor. And unworn clothing is being destroyed nightly.
At the back entrance of a New York City clothing store, awaiting trash haulers, were bags of garments that appear to have never been worn. And to make sure that they never would be worn or sold, someone had slashed most of them with box cutters or razors, a familiar sight outside H&M’s back door.
A few doors down, hundreds of garments tagged for sale in Wal-Mart — hoodies and T-shirts and pants — were discovered in trash bags the week before Christmas, apparently dumped by a contractor for Wal-Mart that has space on the block.
Each piece of clothing had holes punched through it by a machine.
They were found by Cynthia Magnus, who noticed the piles of discarded clothing as she walked to a subway station. She was aghast at the waste.
A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the company normally donates all its unworn goods to charities, and would have to investigate why the items found in Manhattan were discarded.
Officials for H&M, which is based in Sweden, did not respond to 10 inquiries made by phone and e-mail.
Directly around the corner from H&M is a big collection point for New York Cares, which conducts an annual coat drive.
Update: H&M says it won't happen again. The clothing retailer has promised to stop destroying clothing that it can't sell and will instead donate the garments to charities. Read The New York Times report here.
The dollars produced by red-light cameras are hard to ignore.
So the Coalition for the Homeless of Pasco County has been quietly shopping an idea around to a handful of county officials. Their proposal: Let the revenue pay for social service programs, particularly those aimed at the problem of homelessness.
The Homeless Coalition is working on a 10-year plan for ending homelessness. That plan is expected to include everything from creating emergency shelter space to helping people find employment and affordable rentals.
All those initiatives would need a revenue stream, especially if the county hopes to attract matching federal dollars, said Port Richey Mayor Richard Rober, who also serves on the coalition's board.
"I think it's something commissioners need to think about on a deep social level," said Rober. "What we wanted to do was go to them and say 'We need a funding source but we know you don't have a lot of revenue.'"
Read the St. Petersburg Times report here. In an editorial, the Times doesn't think this is such a great idea. "It is a revenue grab, plain and simple, even if the expected outcome would be a beneficial plan to help the needy." Check out the Times editorial here.
A cardboard box serves as a living room rug in a homeless camp under an interstate highway in Baltimore.
The days are numbered for an encampment that has been the site of Baltimore's downtrodden for years.
City officials say they will close down the camp this week.
About 10 pitched tents and three other makeshift forts -- some with walls made of rugs -- house the remaining few who plan to stay at the site they have come to call home until the end. City officials say the setup is dangerous, and they are seeking to find housing for the homeless through vouchers and other programs.
On a given night a few months ago, more than 40 people stayed beneath the highway; the number has dwindled to about a quarter of that. City officials say they have been successful locating places for many of them, but letting the others remain is not an option, especially during the winter.
"We've got people who slept out there in the snowstorm with absolutely freezing temperatures," said Greg Sileo, director of community outreach for Baltimore Homeless Services. "And the other thing that is extremely dangerous is that they're lighting fires under there to keep themselves warm. And they're surrounded by blankets and wood and all this stuff. If any of these things catch fire, all of these people would burn up. We can't have that on our hands."
A poverty lawyer (and, by the way, law professor) comments on social justice issues, news and court decisions ... with a few other random thoughts thrown in here and there
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