Free Republic

As the U.S. economy slows down, those at the bottom of the economic food chain are being hit the hardest. Homelessness is surging, the number of Americans living in poverty is rising, and more Americans are considered to be among “the working poor” than ever before. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a historic economic shift right now, and economic conditions are only going to get even more harsh during the months ahead. Needless to say, that is really bad news for all of us. According to a report from Harvard University, approximately 650,000 Americans were homeless at some point last year....

A nonprofit that provides services to homeless people in San Francisco has been accused of $100,000 fraud and nepotism. The industry built on supposedly helping the homelessness in San Francisco means that those raking in money from donations want to keep the crisis going.

San Francisco's well-publicized homelessness crisis is emblematic of the problems facing many of America's big cities as they struggle to provide affordable housing against the backdrop of high interest rates and low inventory. This has led the city to employ a variety of methods to tackle the problem, but a recent plan to provide tiny houses for San Francisco's homeless population has residents furious over the cost. The units would cost a reported $113,000 each to construct. Considering that the average home in San Francisco costs nearly $1 million the $113,000-per-unit cost for the tiny houses seems in line with...

An unlikely friendship has formed between a nine-year-old Louisiana boy and a multimillionaire businessman after the child confused him for a homeless man and offered him his only dollar. When a fire alarm in his building awoke television personality and sporting goods brand owner Matt Busbice in April, he grabbed some random mismatched clothes and headed outside. After placing an order at a coffee shop down the street, Busbice went onto the patio to quietly pray, security footage from the shop, shared with WBRZ, shows. That was when Kelvin Ellis Jr. wandered by and saw Busbice standing in the corner...

ORTLAND, Ore. (KPTV) - The Portland Police Bureau has released the names of 30 people arrested Thursday as officers worked to clear out protesters who were occupying a library on the Portland State University’s campus. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators began occupying the Millar Library on the PSU campus Monday evening. Police moved in Thursday morning in an effort to clear protesters from the library and the park area out front. By 10:15 a.m. Thursday, police cleared out the library but protesters remained outside throughout much of the day. FOX 12 witnessed police leave the area outside the PSU library just after 5...

In the sanctuary city of Denver, Colorado, Mayor Mike Johnson (D) announced that "we will provide a long-term, sustainable response to address the migrant crisis. This program will offer six months of free housing, food assistance, workforce training and more to the migrants currently in the city's shelter system as they wait for federal authorization to work." Housing advocacy group Housekeys Action Network Denver (HAND) slammed Johnston, calling the City's efforts "inadequate." Willy Bastidas, a migrant, said "I think that it's insufficient. The mayor doesn't adequately represent immigrants' interests. He needs to listen to us and work with us toward...

Auditors have slammed a homelessness nonprofit in San Francisco for being 'careless and irresponsible' with $240 million of taxpayer money, in the latest scandal to rock California's bloated charity housing sector. HomeRise, one of the city's main providers of homeless housing, 'misused' funds, lacked financial controls and engaged in other practices that 'heightened the risk of fraud,' says a damning city report. It's the latest in a slew of revelations about waste in California's so-called 'homelessness industrial complex' — a gravy train of funders, officials, and shelter owners more keen on swallowing public funds than solving the problem.

All but two Massachusetts House Democrats voted against an amendment to provide statewide shelter priority to U.S. military veterans over migrants. On Friday, all 25 Massachusetts state House Republicans were joined by two others across the aisle in voting for Amendment 698 as part of House Bill 4600. The amendment introduced by Republican Minority Leader Bradley Jones, titled "Homeless Veterans Prioritization for Shelter Assistance," failed on a 27-129 roll call vote. 01:17 Massachusetts Asks Citizens to Take in Migrants Amid State of Emergency By Nick Mordowanec Staff Writer FOLLOW 72 All but two Massachusetts House Democrats voted against an amendment...

In a Supreme Court showdown Monday over whether the homeless have a "right" to camp in public, almost no one mentioned the actual victims of that crazy idea. Homeless advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, told the court that living on the streets is a "victimless" crime. Victimless? Everyone who has to step over needles and human poop and navigate around half-conscious humans while walking to work or taking their kids to school is a victim. Every store owner whose entrance is blocked by makeshift cardboard shelters is a victim.

Oral argument before the Supreme Court this week showed why it is nonsense to claim that anti-vagrancy laws violate the Constitution‘s Eighth Amendment provision against “cruel and unusual punishment.” Indeed, in the vernacular sense, what is cruel and unusual is a judicial edict that says law-abiding citizens must put up with public spaces featuring major health hazards, including even the plague. Yet that’s what some lower courts, bizarrely, say citizens must do. By any normal reading, the Eighth Amendment is intended to forbid overly harsh penalties, not to determine what sorts of conduct can or can’t be outlawed. Unfortunately, the...

Santa Monica, California, is preparing to construct an apartment building for the homeless that would cost roughly $1 million per unit. The apartment building, which will be built in Santa Monica and will be home to “122 apartments” and two levels of underground parking, will cost more than $123 million, according to the website for the City of Santa Monica. A second design concept on the website found that the project could cost even more, totaling more than $200 million for 196 apartments.

The city and state are in the planning stages to combine Chicago’s legacy homeless shelter system with its system for migrants, according to government officials, and turn it into a unified shelter structure, an idea advocates for the homeless have long championed. The “One System Initiative” will shift a “permanent shelter management to the non-profit workforce,” Illinois Department of Human Services spokesperson Daisy Contreras said in a statement. Currently, the city contracts with Favorite Healthcare Staffing, whose sizable overtime has contributed to tens of millions of dollars in city payments to the firm staffing the city’s migrant shelters. The state’s...

Santa Monica city officials last week approved a multimillion-dollar apartment unit for the homeless just days after the release of an audit which found California could not account for the $24 billion it spent on the state’s burgeoning homeless crisis. The 122-unit building for the homeless will include a mix of studio, one, two and three-bedroom apartments, along with ground floor retail and residential and commercial parking spaces. A design concept available on the city's website shows that the multi-apartment unit will cost more than $123 million, for a cost of just over $1 million each for the 122 apartments....

WASHINGTON (AP) — The most significant case in decades on homelessness has reached the Supreme Court as record numbers of people in America are without a permanent place to live. The justices on Monday will consider a challenge to rulings from a California-based appeals court that found punishing people for sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. A political cross section of officials in the West and California, home to nearly one-third of the nation’s homeless population, argue those decisions have restricted them from “common sense” measures intended to keep homeless encampments from...

By the end of the year, homelessness was up exponentially, with Inside Safe, her signature program to combat homelessness, only moving 255 people to permanent housing so far out of the 46,000 in LA, despite $67 million already going into the program.

Los Angeles voters were asked to back a “mansion tax” to raise money for homeless housing after passing a $1.2 billion bond measure to build the same. Now Mayor Karen Bass wants rich residents and businesses to pitch in more money. During her State of the City address, the mayor called on business leaders, charities and wealthy residents to donate money to get homeless Angelenos off the streets, the Los Angeles Times reported. Bass urged those with the means to help buy or lease buildings that can be converted into housing for L.A.’s 46,000 homeless residents. “We have brought the...

City urged to work harder to assess cost, impactOver the past three years, San Jose has failed to consistently track the more than $300 million spent to fight homelessness and cannot adequately ensure that the money is helping to alleviate the crisis, according to a much-anticipated state audit. The financial audit, released this week by the California State Auditor, also found that San Jose lacks clear goals for its homelessness programs and has no cohesive plan for building the affordable housing needed for its estimated 6,340 homeless residents. “The biggest conclusion that the auditors came back with is that there’s...

Police believe killer Joel Cauchi was 'targeting women' after fatally stabbing six people in a horror rampage at Westfield Bondi Junction. … The 40-year-old's motives have yet to be confirmed, but a police source claims investigators believe Cauchi was 'definitely targeting women'. The source explained police had viewed extensive footage of Cauchi's movements throughout the shopping centre and observed him selecting his victims. 'I don't think there's any other way to look at it,' the source told the Daily Telegraph. 'You can see on the footage he walks past other people. He just keeps moving past them and then attacks...

California lacks information on the costs or efficacy of its homelessness programs, despite allocating billions of dollars to them, a report released by the state auditor’s office on Tuesday found. California Interagency Council on Homelessness (ICH) is responsible for coordinating and evaluating the efforts of California’s state agency in reducing homelessness. ICH, however, “has not consistently tracked and evaluated” the state’s efforts to prevent and end homelessness and, as a result, California “lacks current information on the ongoing costs and outcomes of its homelessness programs,” according to a report from the California State Auditor. The homeless population in California has...

California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness over the past five years but didn’t consistently track whether the huge outlay of public money actually improved the situation, according to state audit released Tuesday. With makeshift tents lining the streets and disrupting businesses in cities and towns throughout California, homelessness has become one of the most frustrating and seemingly intractable issues in the country’s most populous state. An estimated 171,000 people are homeless in California, which amounts to roughly 30% of all of the homeless people in the U.S. Despite the roughly $24 billion spent on homeless and housing programs during...