One out of every six Americans are now enrolled in government anti-poverty programs. More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid,a 17% increase since December 2007. More than 40 million people receive food stamps -- an increase of nearly 50% since the start of the economic crisis. And close to 10 million receive unemployment insurance, nearly four times the number from 2007.
Brazilian city makes food a basic right and ends hunger
Back in 1993, the newly elected city government of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, declared that food was a right of citizenship. At that time, the city of 2.5 million had 275,000 people living in absolute poverty, and close to 20% of its children were going hungry. Since the declaration, the city has all but wiped out hunger and spends only 2% of the city budget to do so.
2 men get life in prison for killing homeless man in $10 robbery
Vincent Simien died after he was stabbed in the chest by two men who came to a homeless camp to steal money from the people sleeping there.
That night, they stole $10 from another homeless man.
Now Willie Williams, 49, and Sheridan Smith, 36, are facing life in prison without parole.
Judge Thomas Reardon, who said he frequently conducts outreach with the city's homeless community, began to tear up as he sentenced Williams and Smith, saying their crimes were "cruel and vicious."
"It seems to me it was particularly brutal," Reardon said of the men preying on a homeless encampment.
Evidence presented during the trial showed that Smith and Williams walked to the homeless camp in Oakland, California, woke up four people and began to harass them. They took $10 from a man and then stabbed Simien, 39, in the chest with a sword that was outfitted to look like a walking cane.
As Simien lay dying, Smith grabbed his wife and raped her.
"One of the more egregious cases of robbing Peter to pay Paul"
Under growing pressure to prevent a pair of domestic spending bills from increasing the national budget deficit, Congress plans to offset new spending with unprecedented cuts to future food stamp funding.
The cuts to food stamp funding would finance a bill to help fund public sectors jobs at the state level and a proposed child nutrition measure.
These two measures are expected to save $14.1 billion over ten years, but the trade-off for families on food stamps would mean phasing out stimulus bill provisions that increased families' monthly food stamps during the recession. That means low-income households will, for the first time, see their benefits fall from one month to the next.
Florida Reps. Alcee Hastings and Alan Grayson, along with 106 other Democrats, signed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling the cut in stimulus food stamp funding to finance the state aid bill "one of the more egregious cases of robbing Peter to pay Paul."
YouTube joins the fight against homelessness today as InvisiblePeople.tv founder Mark Horvath guest curates the site's homepage with videos that smash stereotypes about America's most forgotten citizens.
The opportunity to curate YouTube's homepage coincides with the halfway point of InvisiblePeople.tv's 2010 Road Trip U.S.A., which is dedicated to helping homeless individuals and families in 28 cities tell their stories using online social media (including one with me!).
Armed with a hand-held video camera, laptop computer and smartphone, Horvath is posting unedited reports from the road trip on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.
"I'm honored and very grateful to YouTube for providing this unique opportunity for homeless people to share their stories with a massive global audience," Horvath said.
The videos that Horvath curates will be featured on YouTube's homepage for 24 hours, and permanently available on InvisiblePeople.tv's YouTube channel. In addition, a Q&A with Horvath is featured on YouTube's blog.
"Our goal is to use social media to expose the pain, hardship and hopelessness that millions of people face each day," Horvath added. "With YouTube's help, we're making the 'invisible people' in society more visible by bringing them out of the shadows where they are too often ignored."
A man who told police he is homeless was discovered living in the basement of a library after a custodian saw him peeking out a basement window after hours.
Charles A. Jones Jr., 26, told police he had been living in the basement of Ocean Township, New Jersey, library for almost two weeks unnoticed.
Jones was charged with burglary and theft, and later released on a criminal summons pending a court hearing.
Homelessness costs everyone, even if there's no specific tax or line-item to cover it.
We pay for it in higher insurance rates when hospitals treat people who wait until they're really, really sick to get help in the emergency room.
We pay for it when we fund the jail, and when tourists feel threatened by men and women hanging around businesses and don't stop to shop.
We pay for it when children who sleep on couches and don't eat right do poorly in school. We pay for it when their parents don't have a job and don't pay taxes.
But it is possible to put a price tag on some of the costs.
In 2008, a collaboration of government agencies and nonprofits picked 12 chronically homeless men and women living in Fort Collins, Colorado, and got them housing, mental health and substance abuse help. During the course of the year, emergency room costs for those 12 people dropped from $90,000 to $48,000, and jail costs went from almost $40,000 to $15,912.
"All of these costs drop dramatically when people get into a home," said Bryce Hach, executive director of Homeward 2020. "It just gets better and better and better, instead of the reactionary deployment of services."
Robbers beat homeless man to death with wooden plank
A 58-year-old homeless man was beaten with a wooden plank, robbed and left mortally wounded in the street of a South Dallas neighborhood this morning.
Officers found the victim lying in the street about 1:55 a.m. The victim, whose name was withheld until family members were notified, told police that two men walked up to him and began hitting him with the wooden plank.
When he fell to the ground, the assailants took $150 and ran away.
Social Security lifts 1 million elderly Floridians out of poverty
Social Security reduces elderly poverty dramatically in Florida (and every other state in the nation).
Without Social Security, the poverty rate for Floridians aged 65 and over would exceed 46%. With Social Security, the elderly poverty rate is slightly more than 10%.
Only California had more residents lifted out of poverty by Social Security.
Read the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report here.
"They chase us around, but there really is no place for us to go. They don't have shelter space for us," said Red, a participant in the protest. "They are prosecuting us for something we can't help. That's what the Jones decision was about."
One person was ticketed when a six-week protest of the Santa Cruz camping ban took up residence on the City Hall lawn.
The so-called Peace Camp 2010 changed tactics overnight when campers moved their demonstration from the county courthouse steps to the city property. Protest leader Christopher Doyon said they moved so they could better target the city ordinance that prohibits camping from 11 p.m. to 8:30 a.m.
Officers will return nightly to ticket demonstrators, Deputy Santa Cruz Police Chief Kevin Vogel said.
"We're not going to issue any warnings," Vogel said. "The people involved in this protest have been warned for the past six weeks."
The Peace Camp demonstration began July Fourth on a swath of county-owned land in front of the Santa Cruz County Superior Courthouse.
In 2006, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a Los Angeles ordinance criminalizing people who sleep on the streets when no shelter is available. The decision, issued in Jones v. City of Los Angeles, was later withdrawn as a result of a settlement with the city.
"The Eighth Amendment prohibits the City from punishing involuntary sitting, lying, or sleeping on public sidewalks that is an unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless without shelter in the City of Los Angeles," wrote Judge Kim Wardlaw.
Although sleeping bans have been ruled unconstitutional and overturned in several California cities, including San Diego, Laguna Beach and Los Angeles, it is still enforced vigorously in Santa Cruz.
If you've never heard of "learned helplessness," you probably don't understand why some homeless people say they don't want help.
A lot of people believe that many homeless people live on the streets by choice. Just read the comments to any newspaper article about homelessness. Okay, there are a few (but, in my experience, they're most likely to be woods campers).
For most of the people who say they like being homeless, it's just a defense mechanism. "No, I'm okay. Really."
In many cases, what that kind of comment means is that they've given up.
What you should remember, the next time you encounter "learned helplessness," is that we must never give up on them.
Homeless tour guides reveal the unseen city of London
A volunteer-based organiszation called the Sock Mob is focused on bringing about social change by bringing together people from different walks of life, and their spin-off social events branch has launched Unseen City Tours as part of this month's London Fringe Festival.
For five quid -- that's $8.75 -- you can take a 'hosted homeless walk' around either London Bridge or the bohemian neighbrhood of Shoreditch, and your guide will know the streets better than most, because he actually calls them home.
Similar to the social and creative ethos behind The Big Issue magazine enterprise, Unseen Tours is hoping to improve the lives of the homeless in London by training them, and allowing them to earn a living by sharing their stories. "These are tours with a social conscience, appealing to Londoners and visitors alike, and anyone who wants to connect with people from different walks of life," says the Sock Mob website.
The Sock Mob is a grassroots volunteer network engaging with homeless people in London, using the ice-breaking power of socks and conversation to reconnect them with society.
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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