America Homelessness Explosion

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: juan
Date: Oct 1, 2008 3:08 PM


Time running out again for Nickelsville camp
Mature


SEATTLE -- Time is running out again for a group of homeless people camped illegally in the city of Seattle

The group of about 100 campers who have set up camp on West Marginal Way Southwest is hours away from being kicked out again

They've named their camp "Nickeslville", a dig at mayor Greg Nickels to highlight the city's lack of low-cost housing. The city has already kicked them out More.. of one location already on Friday, and nearly two dozen were arrested for refusing to leave

But many of the occupants of the "old" Nickelsville, located in a grassy field off West Marginal Way, moved next door to a parking lot owned by the state Department of Transportation

The governor's office made a deal to allow these people to camp here until midnight Thursday morning in the hopes a more permanent solution could be found. Although the city says their deadline is 5 p.
m

"These people--we're not going to evaporate," said resident Anne Rider. "If we're not here tonight, we're going to be somewhere -- on your door step...in your backyard"

The residents of Nickelsville say they just want a place to cook their meals, and a safe place to sleep and store their belongings.
They say the parking lot that they're currently calling home is a good temporary solution

"There is a need for this and we're just trying to be part of the solution," said Nickelsville resident Aaron Coyler.
"I'm willing to go to jail as many times as it takes"

He'd like to see the governor come to the rescue a second time

"We're asking the governor's office to just continue to support us as they've done," Coyler said. "We're planning to move to another piece of state land.
I'm hopeful that something will work out by the time we move tonight"

In the meantime, the residents of Nickelsville are planning a vigil in Downtown Seattle later Wednesday, then possibly a march to Mayor Nickels' office to try and talk to him directly

Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis issued a statement to Nickelsville residents that the city will meet with them after they vacate the public property




----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: juan
Date: Sep 18, 2008 9:23 PM


Tent cities spring up across the U.
S


A few tents cropped up hard by the railroad tracks, pitched by men left with nowhere to go once the emergency winter shelter closed for the summer

Then others appeared — people who had lost their jobs to the ailing economy, or newcomers who had moved to Reno for work and discovered no one was hiring

Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot ap More..art in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population.
Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a "tent city" — an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go

From Seattle to Athens, Ga.
, homeless advocacy groups and city agencies are reporting the most visible rise in homeless encampments in a generation

Nearly 61 percent of local and state homeless coalitions say they've experienced a rise in homelessness since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007, according to a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless.
The group says the problem has worsened since the report's release in April, with foreclosures mounting, gas and food prices rising and the job market tightening

"It's clear that poverty and homelessness have increased," said Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the coalition.
"The economy is in chaos, we're in an unofficial recession and Americans are worried, from the homeless to the middle class, about their future"

The phenomenon of encampments has caught advocacy groups somewhat by surprise, largely because of how quickly they have sprung up

"What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the 80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group for homeless advocacy organizations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore.
and Seattle

The relatively tony city of Santa Barbara has given over a parking lot to people who sleep in cars and vans. The city of Fresno, Calif., is trying to manage several proliferating tent cities, including an encampment where people have made shelters out of scrap wood. In Portland, Ore., and Seattle, homeless advocacy groups have paired with nonprofits or faith-based groups to manage tent cities as outdoor shelters. Other cities where tent cities have either appeared or expanded include include Chattanooga, Tenn.
, San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio

The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently reported a 12 percent drop in homelessness nationally in two years, from about 754,000 in January 2005 to 666,000 in January 2007.
But the 2007 numbers omitted people who previously had been considered homeless — such as those staying with relatives or friends or living in campgrounds or motel rooms for more than a week

In addition, the housing and economic crisis began soon after HUD's most recent data was compiled

"The data predates the housing crisis," said Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for HUD. "From the headlines, it might appear that the report is about yesterday. How is the housing situation affecting homelessness? That's a great question.
We're still trying to get to that"

In Seattle, which is experiencing a building boom and an influx of affluent professionals in neighborhoods the working class once owned, homeless encampments have been springing up — in remote places to avoid police sweeps

"What's happening in Seattle is what's happening everywhere else — on steroids," said Tim Harris, executive director of Real Change, an advocacy organization that publishes a weekly newspaper sold by homeless people

Homeless people and their advocates have organized three tent cities at City Hall in recent months to call attention to the homeless and protest the sweeps — acts of militancy, said Harris, "that we really haven't seen around homeless activism since the early '90s"

In Reno, officials decided to let the tent city be because shelters were already filled

Officials don't know how many homeless people are in Reno.
"But we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember," said Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city's redevelopment agency director

Those in the tents have to register and are monitored weekly to see what progress they are making in finding jobs or real housing.
They are provided times to take showers in the shelter, and told where to go for food and meals

Sylvia Flynn, 51, came from northern California but lost a job almost immediately and then her apartment

Since the cheapest motels here charge upward of $200 a week, Flynn ended up at the Reno women's shelter, which has only 20 beds and a two-week limit on stays

Out of a dozen people interviewed in the tent city, six had come to Reno from California or elsewhere over the last year, hoping for casino jobs

"I figured this would be a great place for a job," said Max Perez, a 19-year-old from Iowa.
He couldn't find one and ended up taking showers at the men's shelter and sleeping in a pup tent barely big enough to cover his body

The casinos are actually starting to lay off employees

"Sometimes I think we need to put out an ad: 'No, we don't have any more jobs than you do,'" Royal-Goodwin said

The city will shut down the tent city as soon as early October because the tents sit on what will be a parking lot for a complex of shelters and services for homeless people.
The complex will include a men's shelter, a women's shelter, a family shelter and a resource center

Reno officials aren't sure whether the construction will eliminate the need for the tent city.
The demand, they say, keeps growing

Eddie NWO Censored





Marjorie Allgood in Louisville, Ky, where a record number of students qualify for free meals

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Hard Times Hitting Students and Schools
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New York Times
By SAM DILLON
Published: August 31, 2008

http://www. nytimes. com/2008/09/01/education/01school. html?hp

LOUISVILLE, Ky.
— With mortgage foreclosures throwing hundreds of families out of their homes here each month, dismayed school officials say they are feeling the upheaval: record numbers of students turning up for classes this fall are homeless or poor enough to qualify for free meals

“We’re seeing a lot more children in poverty,” said Lauren Roberts, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County school system, a 98,000-student district that includes Louisville and its suburbs

At the same time, the district is struggling with its own financial problems.
Responding to a cut of $43 million by the state in education spending and to higher energy and other costs, school officials in Jefferson County have raised lunch prices, eliminated 17 buses by reorganizing routes, ordered drivers to turn off vehicles rather than letting them idle and increased property taxes

The Jefferson County system is typical this school year

As 50 million children return to classes across the nation, crippling increases in the price of fuel and food, coupled with the economic downturn, have left schools from California to Florida to Maine cutting costs. Some are trimming bus service, others are restricting travel, and a few are shortening the school week.
And as many districts are forced to cut back, the number of poor and homeless students is rising

“The big national picture is that food and fuel costs are going up and school revenues are not,” said Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association.
“We’re in a recession, and it’s having a dramatic impact on schools”

Louisville’s pain is minor compared with the woes of some cities.
Detroit has laid off at least 700 teachers, Los Angeles 500 administrators and Miami-Dade County hundreds of school psychologists, maintenance workers and custodians

Schools in many states have cut bus stops to save diesel.
Districts in California and Ohio have gone further and eliminated bus service either completely or for high schools, leaving thousands of students to find their own way to school

In Maine, officials worried about the cost of heating their classrooms this winter have restricted travel for field trips to save money. Districts in Louisiana, Minnesota and elsewhere have taken a more radical measure and adopted four-day school weeks.
Hundreds of districts, responding to higher food prices, are charging more for cafeteria meals

In interviews, educators in many states said they were seeing more needy families than at any time in memory.
Two charities in suburban Detroit announced in August that they would hand out student backpacks, attracting hundreds of families

“They went through all 300 backpacks in three hours, boom, and that was that,” said Kathleen M. Kropf, an official in the Macomb Intermediate School District.
“We’re seeing a lot of desperate people”

There were no giveaways for Jacci Murray, 28, a single mother in West Palm Beach, Fla., who said she lost her job six months ago. Ms. Murray bought pencils and crayons for her son, Cameron, who is in the second grade, from a discount bin at Office Depot.
Saying she felt “cheap and broke,” she pored fretfully over her school supplies list, afraid to waste gas by making more than one shopping trip

“It’s been tough this year,” Ms. Murray said.
“I’m depressed about school”

And so are many educators

West Virginia officials issued a memorandum recently to local districts titled “Tips to Deal With the Skyrocketing Cost of Fuel.” Last week, David Pauley, the transportation supervisor for the Kanawha County school system, based in Charleston, met with drivers of the district’s 196 buses to outline those policies. Mr.
Pauley told them to stay 5 miles per hour below the limit, to check the tire pressure every day and to avoid jackrabbit starts

The Caldwell Parish School District, in northern Louisiana, took a more sweeping approach to saving fuel by eliminating Monday classes.
The district joined about 100 systems nationwide, most of them rural, that in recent years have adopted a four-day schedule

The district’s superintendent, John Sartin, said the move should save $145,000 in a $15 million budget. The decision, made in June, came after crude oil prices had risen for 29 consecutive days, Mr.
Sartin said

“People here worry that they won’t have enough money to last through the month,” he said

Similar concerns in the Southern Aroostook Community School District in Maine have delayed adoption of the budget

“We’ve tried to pass it twice, and we’re trying a third,” said Terry Comeau, the superintendent, who has restricted field trips and taken a bus off the road

Read The Rest HERE

[James and Terry Hamilton]

Having spent many years as an Inner-city Minister for Ha'Shem~~I have seen much of this.
Havingseen the political manuevering of the Homeless in Seattle as well as 'tent city' in Los Angeles ca....once funded by ARCO.
The Majority of America is at or Below the federal poverty level and that includes many of the daily workers,… Who have nothing left after the basics are paid...

Oh How I like the Institutionalized Church which is concerned NOT,… Just about as much help as our Apathetical politicians.

Only Judaism relates to Tzedakah [Charitable giving } to those who need it

Giving is important only second to Loving Ha’hem with all our heart