Public officials and charity volunteers scrambled to bring thousands of homeless people in out of the storm Monday night in New York City, Boston, and smaller, harder-hit inland cities around New England. It doesn’t take a big storm for winter to kill homeless individuals. Hypothermia can set in at temperatures well above freezing, and many cities don’t…
The pit stop program — which just completed a six-month pilot and is expected to be expanded and extended Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors — offers what at last could be a solution. “It’s private, it’s clean, it has a sink, it has soap, it has seat covers, it has paper towels, it has a…
The Los Angeles homeless census is underway in the shelters and streets of L.A. County this week. Beginning Tuesday, 6,000 volunteers will head out over three nights to get a sense of how the county’s’ homeless population has changed in the past two years. Read More
La Times reports that over the last two years, street encampments have jumped their historic boundaries in downtown Los Angeles, lining freeways and filling underpasses from Echo Park to South Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a city-county agency, received 767 calls about street encampments in 2014, up 60% from the 479 in…
This report documents the increasing criminalization of homelessness in the United States, focusing on municipal laws banning sleeping and storing personal possessions in public areas, “camping,” begging, loitering and even feeding homeless persons. It points out that not only do these laws not address the causes or promote programs to end homelessness, they are in…
Ezzie Richey, a 57-year-old homeless veteran, was one of those who was given a duffel bag containing over 60 items, like food, blankets, clothing and toiletries. He not only was grateful for the bag, but for the love and hope that came with it. The moment so influenced his life that he is now off…
Shanty towns, built by the homeless during the Great Depression, were popularly named Hooverville’s, after blame for the nation’s depression was placed squarely on the shoulders of President Herbert Hoover. The term tent city is used to describe a variety of temporary housing facilities that often use tents. Authorized and unauthorized tent cities, created by…
Huffington Post (December 24, 2014) Across the United States, local governments are moving to prevent outdoor camping by the homeless, according to advocates for the nation’s nearly 600,000 homeless, estimated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development … Over a third of U.S. cities impose cit
Experts in fifteen EU Member States completed a questionnaire exploring the extent of statistical data on homelessness in their countries. The experts were also asked to summarize any relevant statistical research on homelessness published in their countries since 2009, the year in which the
According to a recent report by the National Coalition for the Homeless, since January 2013 twenty-one cities in the United States have passed laws banning or restricting non-profit organizations from sharing food with homeless populations in public places …