Free Republic

'...Visitors may wonder why one of the wealthiest cities in the world can’t cough up enough money to alleviate homelessness, but, in fact, San Francisco spends tremendous amounts of money on the problem. The city is allocating a record $241 million this fiscal year on homeless services, $84 million more than when Mayor Ed Lee took office in January 2011. But the city struggles to track exactly how all that money is being spent and whether it’s producing results. Eight city departments oversee at least 400 contracts to 76 private organizations, most of them nonprofits, that deal with homelessness. No...

“Just because you live on the street doesn’t mean you don’t have value.” – Ka Lani If you walk into the Coddingtown Starbucks, don’t be surprised to see a man with headphones quietly strumming an electric guitar and jotting down chords in a notebook. Meet Ka Lani, a homeless musician and Santa Rosa Junior College student. With 35 years’ experience playing the guitar, he earns money as a street musician while studying to become a substance abuse counselor. He wasn’t always homeless. In the 1980s he played guitar for The Crypts, a Marin punk rock band who opened for Black...

Three teenagers who were arrested Monday in the shooting deaths of two people at a Seattle homeless encampment called the Jungle are homeless brothers who live in another camp under an overpass. On Tuesday, a King County Juvenile Court judge ordered that the three, ages 13, 16 and 17, remain in custody while prosecutors decide on charges against them. The brothers were each being held on investigation of two counts of felony murder, three counts of first-degree assault and several firearms violations, the county prosecutor’s office said. Jeannine L. Zapata, 45, and James Q. Tran, 33, were killed and three...

Update 10:35 P.M. 1/19/2016 Without warning, dozens of public works employees raided Tent City. "They just coming in and taking all their personal stuff. People's life is in that box that they're throwing in that garbage can. Might mean nothing to nobody else, but it does to them," said Tim Walker. Walker lived in Tent City for years but was recently able to get an apartment through Covenant House. Tuesday, about 30 homeless were camped out on a strip of land which legally belongs to Waste Management. "Who knows what might be in there, your baby pictures, pictures of your...

A Texas woman, wanting to give a homeless guy some reprieve from the cold and a warm place to rest, invited him in to stay the night in her spare bedroom. -snip The 66-year-old woman, whose name was not released, lives alone with her two granddaughters in Houston. With a spare bedroom and a big heart, she offered the space to Thomas Smith, who had no place else to go. Everyone in the house had turned in for the night, or so the woman thought, when she was woken up by what Smith was doing, just after 1:30 a.m. According...

Why must we relegate the homeless, the unemployed, and the poor to ePodments, to tiny homes, to mini-homes, to dwellings made of junkyard scrap and other cheap materials, to dwellings the size of closets? The mark of a civilized society is how well the most helpless are treated—animals, children, the elderly, and those who are homeless. There is always room for improvement. We are plenty generous with people from other countries, but we miss the mark when it comes to helping our own chronic homeless, the veterans, babies in the womb, the elderly, and others who cannot protect themselves. It...

ALBANY, N.Y., Jan. 3 (UPI) -- On Sunday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order require all homeless people to seek shelter when temperatures drop below freezing. The order directs state agencies -- including police, social services and others -- to take "all necessary steps to identify individuals reasonably believed to be homeless and unwilling or unable to find the shelter necessary for safety and health in inclement winter weather, and move such individuals to the appropriate sheltered facilities." The directive goes into effect Tuesday. A 2015 count tallied 88,250 homeless people in New York, statewide -- the...

DENVER (KMGH) - A local nonprofit hit the streets of downtown Denver on Christmas Eve and gave away a thousand free, pre-rolled marijuana joints to the homeless and anyone else who wanted one. "Merry Christmas and a puff puff, New Year's," said one woman who accepted a joint. Nick Dicenzo, the founder of Cannabis Can and the one responsible for handing out the free weed, said they're trying to raise awareness about homelessness and encourage people to donate to their cause. The cause? To raise money to buy several RV's and provide restrooms and showers for those in need. Dicenzo...

..... Holloway's child, who was unhurt in the incident, is in protective custody, Lombardo said. The sheriff said investigators were trying to piece together Holloway's background. In the spring of 2012 Holloway received an award from a career-mentoring nonprofit in Portland for being a role model for high school students, according to The Skanner, a community website and newspaper published in the Pacific Northwest. The story recounts Holloway describing her mother as having "turned to alcohol, leaving Lakeisha to fend for herself." Holloway was homeless during her freshman year in high school, according to the newspaper, but had since graduated....

Vice President Joe Biden once compared it to a "Third World country" - but LaGuardia Airport has become so riddled with homeless that it could now even make some of those nations look good. The number of derelicts living at the airport has increased dramatically in the past year, turning the main terminal into the city's most popular de facto flophouse, where they sleep, eat and wash up while competing for space with passengers, according to Port Authority sources.

Elvis Summers has made it a full time job to put a roof over the head of some of Los Angeles’ homeless people by building tiny homes for them. He is helping people in need before the holidays so that they can have a home before the temperatures drop. Summers expressed fear that without shelter, people who were living on the streets would die...

New York City is more than capable of handling the homeless crisis — and Gov. Cuomo’s allegations otherwise are just “political posturing,” Mayor de Blasio said Monday. In his first comments since the governor’s office claimed he couldn’t “manage the homeless crisis,” de Blasio cited a slew of changes the city has made to deal with the problem — including $2.6 billion in funding for housing for the homeless.

The LA times has an article about a homeless man who was found in possession of two submachine guns a couple of magazines, a couple of pistols and an improvised suppressor.  From the picture it appears that the two submachine guns are a reactivated/remanufactured Sten in 9mm and a reactivated/remanufactured vz.26, which is normally chambered in 7.62x25 caliber, the common East block pistol and submachine gun round that is nearly identical to the 7.65x25 Mauser cartridge.  This ad shows the deactivated vz.26 as being available in the European Union for 95 Euros.  Parts kits have been available in the...

There's a lot of talk about what should be done to help our Veterans who have so selflessly given themselves to the service of the United States. Republicans will talk a good game and make-believe they are the ones who actually care about Vets, but in reality, they have voted against Veteran benefits more times than anyone would ever care to count. It wasn't until the Democrats passed the Post-9/11 GI Bill that we, as a nation, actually started to again look like we care about those who put everything on the line for our nation. Then, in 2010, President...

Traverse City's governing body recently passed a resolution that among other things could make it harder for libraries and other public facilities to enforce rules banning vagrants from using their facility as a place to hang out. “A Resolution Recognizing the Rights of Homeless Persons," as the document is titled, is the product of an arm of city government called the Human Rights Commission. Commission member Patricia Nugent said, “We’re trying to be proactive. The population has grown in the last few years and we don’t want to see bad things start to happen.” By “bad things,” Nugent means laws...

Maybe people need to start listening to NYC Police Commissioner Bill Bratton when he recently suggested that New Yorkers refrain from giving money to street beggars if they'd like to alleviate the panhandling epidemic brought on by the serially-misguided DeBlasio era.   Of course he was immediately attacked as some sort of heartless monster by the left with hashtags and worse... And while I can't prove how much heart the NYPD's head cop may-or-may-not have, he's got to have one hell of a lot more brains in his head than the 'progressive' NYers now inflicting their knee-jerk' 'caring' on the man: handing drunks...

Ending homelessness isn't just about finding a home. Sometimes, it's about finding a nice home — a place that's bright, modern and healthy to live in. That's the idea fueling the development of a number of buildings around the country, as communities try to move chronically homeless people off the streets. In downtown Washington, D.C., one of those buildings is currently going up right beside NPR's headquarters. Still under construction, the structure looks a little like four huge blocks, stacked atop each other and slightly askew. At 14 stories high, it will have a striking view of the U.S. Capitol...

In response to what the Seattle mayor calls a growing homeless crisis in the city, Ed Murray signed a proclamation declaring a civil emergency.More than 2,800 men, women, and children are without shelter on the streets of Seattle, which is a 21 percent increase from last year, according to the latest overnight count. "We are in a moment of our history where decades of service cuts, growing inequality, and untreated mental health and drug [addiction] has finally resulted in a human crisis seen in the history of our city -- indeed in the history of our nation," Murray said.(snip) Many...

Some Michigan high school students are redefining the term "extracurricular activity." In addition to club meetings, band practices and football games, University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy teens are also signing up to serve as pallbearers for homeless veterans. Six students recently volunteered to be pallbearers for three dead homeless veterans. Senior Joshua Gonzales is one of the student leaders who helped develop the program. He said this new opportunity for students is "meant to help dignify and respect the human being." The students' initial plan was to carry the caskets for homeless individuals, said the Rev. Karl...

I need some Prayers for my brother who despite what meager efforts my wife and I have been able to muster for him has been unable to pick himself up and get back on his own two feet. He has been struggling with esophageal cancer and lost his position in the Navy then his apartment. We had moved his belongings into a public storage while he transitioned to another apartment that never materialized. He has not been able to make any payments and soon the contents will go up for auction and his birthday is Friday.