Deadline Extended For Residents To Leave Homeless Camp

Posted: Sep 9, 2008 08:47 PM

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The deadline for residents to leave a homeless encampment near downtown Nashville has been extended.

The deadline was Sept. 22, but Metro is giving homeless residents a couple of more months to get out of Tent City.

Police said health and safety issues on the five-acre site are out of hand.

"I've slept under benches, under bridges," said one name known as Pontiac after the Michigan city.

He moved to Tent City about two months ago.

Pontiac said he's an Army vet with physical and mental disabilities that keep him from holding a job.

"My dream is about that flag right there the great American dream, the pursuit of happiness and I believe people should be allowed to pursue happiness," he said.

That pursuit of happiness is a campsite along the Cumberland River. Some people call Tent City Nashville's unofficial homeless camp. The land is owned by the city.

"I'd like to see them address the health issues by bringing in Dumpsters and bringing in port-a-potties," said Lytle Thomas, who works near the unofficial camp.

Thomas of Inner City Ministries said he smelled raw sewage a few weeks ago.

"I think as a society we can do better than what this is," he said.
"Most of the folks here will dig their own holes and they'll bury out here," said Steven Samra, an advocate for the homeless. "They'll bury their waste."

Steven Samra said the smell comes from a storm sewer.

We were there for two hours and didn't notice any odor.

Samra said forcing the homeless to move would cause more problems downtown.

"None of them will go to the mission," he said. "They're very adamant about that. Each has their own reason. They'll end up back downtown."

But police said safety is also an issue. Officers responded Labor Day weekend to a stabbing at the site. A man was hurt and another was arrested.

Pontiac said Tent City is safer than the streets. He hopes city leaders will bring services to them and keep it open.

"Homelessness is not going away. You can only hope to manage it," he said.

Police said they've extended the deadline to leave Tent City so advocates can help find residents new places to stay.

Mayor Karl Dean said he is monitoring the situation. Dean said the decision to close Tent City was made by several government agencies not just the police department.

First of all, let me say I'm very impressed with this article. I think it's a start in the right direction. However I had to leave a comment stating my opposition to certain viewpoints. I think it's incorrect to think that "homelessness" can be "abolished". On the contrary, I believe that a certain subculture of the "homeless" community is actually crucial and essential to a well balanced society. I call this the Shamanic Class. The Shaman of most tribal societies fulfills the role of spiritual leader by "deconditioning ones self from society's distrust of the Mystery, and walking into it" to quote Terence McKenna. The shaman is the classic "wise man", who is willing to give up the normal comforts of society (including shelter) so that they may gain spiritual wisedom they can then give to others. Where is the traditional wise man of American society? It's no wonder that we're seeing a rise in the nomadic, homeless subculture, as witnessed by urban camping, human rewilding projects, raves in the streets, the hippie counter-culture, etc. I believe this is a natural, spiritual consequence to our lack of such a wise man, as individuals are now attempting to fulfil that role on their own. I wrote a short article on this topic which you can read here:

http://www.rovingfestival.com/guerilla_urban_camping.shtml

Artopium Mike -
www.Artopium.com
www.RovingFestival.com

Philip Mangano, US Homeless Czar(USICH), visited Camp Pinellas this month, April 2008. This is big news!! He's an interesting guy who has an almost impossible task. This interview sheds light on who-he-is. For the archive...

Dick

INTERVIEW:
Philip Mangano
April 5, 2002 Episode no. 531
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week531/interview.html

READ EXTENDED EXCERPTS FROM THE RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY INTERVIEW WITH NEW FEDERAL HOMELESSNESS CZAR, PHILIP MANGANO. THE CONVERSATION TOOK PLACE IN WASHINGTON, D.C. ON APRIL 2, 2002:

Q: Should people be able to choose to be homeless? Is there a right to be homeless?

A: The notion of choosing to be homeless, I think that's been with us from the very beginning of this country. There's a book called DOWN AND OUT IN AMERICA: THE ORIGINS OF HOMELESSNESS by Peter Rossi. It's a story of the history of homelessness in our country, and it's replete with stories of people who chose to be homeless.

I'm from Boston, and one of the great stories is the Boston Common, an area held in common in the early days of the colony, set aside for sheep and cattle grazing. And the citizens of Boston went to a reverend hermit who actually lived on the land and owned it, but he lived apart as a hermit. I don't believe that he had a house. He lived outside some of the time. He had the perfect right to do that and he had the perfect right to sell some of the land that he had. So I think there is a long tradition, from the very beginnings of our country's history, in terms of people choosing to live outside. I don't think there's any question of that. Of course, most people get concerned about that issue, in urban areas or in rural areas, when the inclement weather comes and it seems to them that a person's life is at risk. That's when it becomes a not-simple, ethical dilemma, I think, for people who are observing the vulnerability that people who live outside experience.

Q: When your appointment was announced, the Secretary of HUD said that churches are part of the equation for abolishing chronic homelessness, because they are closest to the root causes of it. Do you agree? And what does that mean for churches? Why do they have a special relationship to the homeless?

A: I think the secretary was actually astute in the observation concerning churches and their relationship to homelessness. Nearly every homeless program that I know of, other than those that have been begun and operated directly by city or state governments, almost all of the other responses to homelessness have had their roots in some kind of faith commitment. A group of priests, reverends, or rabbis in an area, seeing people homeless and on the streets, seeing families homeless, seeing children homeless have just done what almost any of us would think to do: that is, to make some kind of response to bring those people in. And much of that happened in the early 1980s.

Of course, one of my formative experiences in my own work, I was named the director of homeless services for the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, many years ago. Frankly, the very first person I went to talk to was actually a man named Reverend Fred Reisz, who in his church basement had operated a shelter for many years. It was the very first real response of the faith community in Cambridge to the issue of homelessness. But even the other shelter in Cambridge was actually begun by seminarians. When I looked at the programs throughout Massachusetts, I discovered that nearly all of them had roots in some kind of faith institution that decided that it needed to respond to the issue of homelessness.

I think the notion that churches, or synagogues, are close to the root causes of homelessness ... I think when you spend a lot of time with homeless people, as I did -- I unfortunately spend less time now, being more of an administrator, but in the years that I spent working on a bread line in the city of Boston, one of the things that I discovered was that oftentimes homeless people were coming to that bread line not so much for the food -- because they could get food in other places -- they were actually coming to that bread line for the companionship that the volunteers who worked that bread line offered to them. The companionship in terms of relationships that were formed.

Part of my own formation around the issue of companionship and the spirituality of the notion of companionship came when I sat in on classes taught by Dr. Robert Coles at Harvard. He was looking at the book BREAD AND WINE, written by Ignacio Silone. He gave a lecture talking about the notion of companionship, and he reminded us that companionship and compassion are a bit different: that compassion is viewing a situation and having empathy at a distance, whereas companionship comes from the old French words, "com" = with, "pan" = bread. So the notion of companionship is to be together with people in the breaking of bread. And I think for myself, in my early years of working on that bread line, that was precisely what I was attempting to do, following some of my Franciscan inclinations. I was trying to be together with homeless people in the breaking of bread -- literally the breaking of bread in terms of providing the sandwiches on the bread line. But there is a larger sense, a more spiritual sense. It's a beautiful symbol. It's true in a number of different faiths that the breaking of bread connotes communion with. And I think that that notion of spirituality, of having communion with our poorest neighbors is elemental in a response to homelessness. It's critical in the response. Homeless people need that kind of response. They need communion and companionship. So I think the secretary is right on target.

Q: How does that contribute to abolishing homelessness?

A: I think the abolition of homelessness, it's ultimately a spiritual task, I think, and it's lived out politically. In our country, the notion of abolition has a long history associated with it and has, of course, 150 years ago and before. In fact, I've become quite a student of the movement of abolitionism, because it's the story in which I place the work that I do and the efforts that I've made. I heard Cornel West give a talk a number of years ago and he said, "If you're involved in some kind of social activity, don't understand that you're alone in that and that you are the first to come to that. Understand that you're part of a larger legacy, a larger story that's taken place over time." That was at a time when I was looking at the abolitionists as a model. So I quickly understood that part of the work that I was doing was part of that larger story of the work of abolitionism in the United States. When I understand that, the abolition of slavery was really the abolition of a social evil; that a group of people -- most of them came out of faith communities; in fact, most of them were what we would now term to be evangelicals. They understood that there was a dignity to every human being and that the dignity of every human being was violated by the notion that a person could be owned by someone else. And they fought to be foolish and naïve for many of the years that they continued their activities. They were relentless in their advocacy around what they considered to be biblical notions of the dignity of every person.

Well, that was the story in which I wanted to place my work. And I came to understand that homelessness needed to be abolished; that there was a violation of human dignity in this. The idea that our neighbors would not have a place to live -- to me, it violated certain notions that I think are part of natural law that God gave to us, that certainly are in the Scriptures of many of the great faith traditions: that the will of God is NOT that people be homeless, it is that the stranger be welcomed in, that the stranger be given food and shelter and housing. So the notion of abolitionism ultimately is a spiritual notion. Now, it's often realized in a political way. The abolitionists eventually -- contrary to most of their natural instincts, because most of them were pacifists; most of them were actually calling for the North to secede from the South, because they wanted to secede from the evil that was being done there -- but when the war started, they all recoiled from the war, because it was violent. But as the war went on, they understood that there could possibly be a political solution; that is, a political solution to the ending of slavery. So they engaged the political authorities. And I think there are a number of historians [who believe] -- and I believe this myself -- that they were responsible for the movement in the political thinking from a war simply to preserve the Union to a war that would also abolish slavery. Of course, that's precisely what happened: that the social evil of slavery was ended by virtue of the war.

Which is actually a different circumstance than happened in England, because in England there was an abolitionist movement that went over a number of years, for many, many years. The notion in England was -- just as it was in the United States -- that there would be a conversion, a conversion of the sensibility of the English people; that they would turn against slavery, even though it had great social standing, just as it had in the United States. And over many years, William Wilberforce, who was in the English Parliament, would submit the same bill to end the slave trade. The early years when he did that, the bill was just laughed at. It was such a novel idea, it was so out of the ordinary that someone would want to abolish the slave trade, that literally no votes were gained. But he introduced that bill for 30 consecutive years -- I believe it was 30 consecutive years -- and finally that bill was passed in England, because there was a conversion that took place. It wasn't a war that effected the ending of a social evil; it was actually the conversion of a people to a different way of viewing a social evil. And Wilberforce was successful in 1831 in getting that passed.

Q: So does there need to be a conversion in America about homelessness?

A: Well, certainly the notion of a conversion in America around slavery happened only after the war, frankly. As late as 1859, there were very untoward things that happened. We had a Supreme Court Chief Justice who ruled that slaves weren't even human beings. So literally up until the late 1850s, the fugitive slave law, the Dred Scott decision indicated that that kind of conversion which occurred in England hadn't occurred in the United States.

In some ways, of course, the hope would be that there would be a conversion in that United States; that the same kind of feeling that we all had back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when we saw a homeless person on the street, we couldn't believe what we were seeing and we would call some authority to help -- either the church or the police. Someone should come and help that. We were all Good Samaritans back in those days. And I think, unfortunately, as homelessness has become more pervasive in our society, we've become a little bit anesthetized to seeing the results of homelessness, seeing homeless people on the street. And I know for myself -- I was just in New York City and there was a woman literally on the corner of, I think, 59th Street, where Tiffany's is. There was a woman on the corner, wrapped in a blanket, shaking. I went over to the woman and offered help. She wasn't enamored of my assisting her. She was begging. But it caused me to back away, go to a phone, and call somebody. I was fearful because she was shaking. I wasn't sure if she was detoxing or what was going on in her being. But, as a result of that, I stood there and watched. And I watched literally hundreds of people walk by a woman who was wrapped in a blanket, shivering on the corner of a street. I can't believe that those people would have walked by 20 years ago even, or 30 years ago. But now we've become so anesthetized to seeing homeless people. And we're all so uncertain of how to respond to homeless people that not only are we anesthetized to seeing them, I think there's a bit of a sense of being anesthetized [about] how to respond. We don't know exactly how to respond. So I saw many people hesitate but then continue to walk, because they didn't know exactly how to respond. Eventually, the EMT unit came and they were very kind and cordial to the woman, offered her transportation to a hospital, kind of checked her out physically, determined that she wasn't in need to go to a hospital, so that woman continued to be on the street. But it's breaking that sense of being anesthetized to the issue. I think that's the conversion that we need. We need to remember these people are none other than our poorest neighbors and that there is a call to us from any spiritual tradition, or even if we're without a spiritual tradition, there's a certain call to what our response should be to our poorest neighbors.

Q: Around the country you can find homeless churches -- churches specifically created for the homeless, of the homeless. They are the congregation. What do you think about that?

A: I've had a great experience [of that] myself in Boston. There's something called the Common Cathedral there that meets on the Boston Common. It's a congregation comprised primarily of people who have experienced homelessness. The Reverend Debbie Little, the Episcopal priest who is the parish priest of the Common Cathedral -- I've had many conversations with Debbie. What I've come to understand in that ministry and other ministries that are occurring around the country is that there's a certain offering that those churches make to the lives of homeless people that no institutional program, no government program can make to those lives. It has to do with what I mentioned earlier in terms of why people came to the bread line. It was because there were people who were responsive to them as human beings and who treated them with the dignity and respect that all human beings should be accorded. So these are churches that are comprised primarily of homeless people, I think what they do ... what I've talked to Debbie about it is, that the way I see them is that we have lots of programs that assist homeless people, that provide shelter, medical care, that provide a day center for people to go to. I see those as kind of the dry bones. They're important. They're very important. But they're the dry bones. These churches of homeless people, they breathe life into the dry bones. They make the dry bones get up and walk. I think the attraction of those churches -- and literally hundreds of people go to these churches in different places; each place has hundreds of communicants, so to speak -- I think it simply reminds us that ultimately the issue of homelessness is a spiritual issue. It's not really an ideological issue, it's not a political issue, it's not an economic issue. All of those are factors. There's no question. Politics and economics are absolutely factors in the issue of homelessness, but for most homeless people and the experience I've had of talking to homeless people, they are experiencing something spiritually in their lives by virtue of their homelessness.

Q: There are people in churches and faith communities who work with the homeless and minister to the homeless and who speak of having a closer relationship with God themselves in doing that. The homeless may come for companionship, but the volunteer may come to the homeless for companionship too. I wonder what you've experienced, how you've been changed or transformed in your own experiences with the homeless.

A: I think there's no question that people who work with homeless people -- it has an impact. It always has an impact. I've often heard people who volunteer at shelters, or volunteer at meal programs, talk about the fact that they're giving something, but what they're getting back is so much more than what they're giving. I've certainly seen that lived out in other people's lives. I spent about two and a half years volunteering on a bread line in downtown Boston; it was actually the first bread line in Boston since the Great Depression. In those years, I befriended homeless people. I would go to the bread line during the day and then I would go to meal programs at night. So I befriended homeless people. There wasn't a sense of them being homeless; it was a sense of them being my friends and I was trying to contribute to their lives, just as I did with friends who were housed. There were certain things. They might want me to go to the Registry of Motor Vehicles and help them stand in line for an hour to get a license. Well, in the same way, homeless people had various agencies that they needed to go to. And I would go with them to those agencies. Often there weren't enough shelter beds, so I would offer what room I had in my small apartment in the North End of Boston to people, and they would sleep in my apartment and all, because they were my friends and it was a natural thing to do. It's the same thing I would do for a housed friend. If they didn't have a place to go, I would offer.

What I learned was the spirituality, the importance of God to homeless people. They ministered to me. They served me. They ministered to me far more. I might have ministered to them in some way of going with them and not accepting "no" at some bureaucratic agency. They offered me a larger view into my own spirituality, because at that time I was very influenced -- and hopefully still am very influenced -- by the life of St. Francis of Assisi, who in fact gave up a life in, I would say, an affluent suburb, so to speak, and went and spent his life working with, caring for, and ministering to the poor. He himself talked about the beauty of the poor and the beauty that they had to offer. So I think, in many ways, my spiritual formation was certainly enhanced and certainly partially shaped by the companionship I've had in my life with homeless people. Frankly, in some of the jobs I've had recently, that's the precise thing that I miss. I see people who are in state and federal agencies, who work in state and federal agencies, more than I see homeless people. And I miss that companionship.

Q: In New York City, the minister at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church speaks about needing to keep the homeless visible, to be reminded that they need to be prayed for -- to keep them on the steps of that church, unlike the city wants, so that they aren't out of sight. Do we need to keep the homeless visible in our society for that purpose?

A: Actually, I visited that church. It was a Saturday and I just went into the church and prayed in the little chapel that they have open there in a very kind way, so literally anyone can go into that chapel and pray. You don't have to be homeless. I was aware of the ministry that they had to homeless people on their steps. What isn't mentioned enough, I think, about that situation is, they also have a shelter in that church. Many people think that they're simply ministering to people on the steps; why don't they bring those folks in? Well, in fact, they do have a shelter in that church. And the very people that they're ministering to on the steps of the church are people who preferred NOT to go inside.

There certainly are a number of homeless people who prefer not to go inside shelters. They've had untoward circumstances happen to them inside shelters. Shelters aren't always, despite the best intentions of professional staff and volunteers, they may not always be the safest and most secure place[s]. I think especially for people who are vulnerable by virtue of physical strength, or vulnerable by virtue of mental illness -- sometimes it's very scary to go inside. So I think it's instructive to know that that church has both an inside shelter where they care for people and they have people outside on the steps of the church.

Until homelessness is abolished, I think the reverend makes a very good point in terms of the visibility of homeless people. I think our natural preference would be to have all homeless people inside, because we think we can take care of them better inside. I understand that instinct. But visible homeless people in some way offer a prophetic moment as people are passing by, as city or state officials are passing by. Homeless people are choosing to be outside. It's not that the church is keeping them outside. And I think that in choosing to be outside, they make visible our conscience in a certain way. No one can pass a homeless person without having his or her conscience tweaked a little bit. They may walk by, but nonetheless their conscience is tweaked.

We all certainly need the tweaking of conscience around an issue that's now only grown worse over the last twenty-five years. Many of us suffer from compassion fatigue. Some of us suffer from solution fatigue. We'd like to solve this problem. We'd like to see homelessness remedied. We'd like to see it abolished. Homeless people on the streets remind us of our call to abolish this social evil.

Q: You've used the expression "remoralize" homelessness. Could you say what that means?

A: Actually, I'm growing more fond of the term "remoralize" the more I use it, I have to say. I don't know whose it is. I don't know who coined it. Maybe it was I. I don't know. But in any case, I think what's happened in our country over the last 20 years, is that we've rolled up our sleeves and worked to solve the problem of homelessness, the social evil of homelessness, the idea that some of our neighbors don't have a place to be. Some choose to be outside and we understand that. The vast majority of homeless people that I've met prefer to be inside their own housing and to live a life without intrusion. That's the life of most of the homeless people I've met. But in any case, we've rolled up our sleeves and what we've attempted to do is solve this problem. In fact, in the early 1990s, during the recession, the numbers actually leveled off generally, aggregately, in the country and actually went down a little bit, whether you were in New York City or Boston or in many other areas of the country. And we thought it was because we had rolled up our sleeves and we were really working hard. So we thought, "Let's roll them up a little bit further and let's knock this social problem out. Let's be done with this issue." What we, of course, readily learned as soon as the economy turned around and started booming again, [is] that homelessness is part of a larger issue. It's a larger economic and political issue that our hard work didn't measure against; that there were other ways that we needed to be about remedying homelessness, more than simply having our sleeves rolled up. And I think, as a result of that reverse, as we worked harder, there were more homeless people. That's not exactly what we had intended. Many people, I think, got some of that compassion fatigue that I mentioned earlier. And then I think they even got solution fatigue. They felt that there wasn't a solution to this. And I think, as a result of that, there's been a little bit of demoralization around the issue of homelessness. I think many people feel, "We've been at this issue for twenty years, twenty-five years. Why aren't there better results?" I think public policy makers have the right to wonder aloud about that. We've invested a lot of resources, hopefully in solutions to this issue, and yet there are more homeless people now than there were when we initially began this investment. Why is that? And I think that fatigue, which has lapsed, I think, for some into being demoralized, that then has an effect generally -- politically and socially and spiritually -- on the effort that needs to be made. Right now, in this country, for whatever reason, there is a confluence of something that's going right about the issue of homelessness. We've got several secretaries actually in the cabinet in Washington -- Secretary Martinez at HUD and Secretary Thompson at Health and Human Services -- who have put a marker way out there for us. They want to end the homelessness of people who have chronic disabilities in the next 10 years. We've never had that level of commitment. We've certainly had levels of commitment under Secretary Cisneros and Secretary Cuomo around the issue. We've never had an actual commitment to end a profile of homelessness. That's a very good thing.

We've got a president talking about, and in fact initiating, a notion that no child will be left behind in America. And there are resources that are following that initiative. That's actually a very important homeless prevention project. I'm not sure if we all realize that, but the idea that no child will be left behind will have implications in the future in terms of preventing homelessness. And it's already having implications, because now there's a homeless coordinator in every school system in America. There needs to be a person, a liaison, around homeless children in that district and remedying some of the difficulties that those children are facing. That's come out of the "leave no children behind" initiative. So we've got a couple of cabinet secretaries and we've got a president and they're all constellated around the notion of not leaving people behind. That's very, very important in terms of the work that needs to be done with homeless people, because that extended just a little bit means we should leave no American behind. And I think really the impetus of these new initiatives that are happening at the federal level -- there's no question that Congress is a part; Congress has been pushing, I think, on there to be more solution-oriented initiatives targeted to homeless people. I know that in my conversations with people in the Congress and aides in the Senate and in the House, they're interested in solutions around the issue of homelessness. So I think there's a certain confluence. And that confluence has something to do with policies. Sometimes it's a confluence of personalities that moves initiatives and policies more than anything else. There's the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a national organization that's advocated for a 10-year solution to the issue of homelessness, that is, ending homelessness in 10 years. So there are all of these different agencies, governmental and nonprofit and faith-based, around the notion that this is a problem that we should be solving.

This is an issue that we should be addressing and we need to come up with the solutions to put an end to unwilling homelessness. And I think, when all of us get together around that, there's some momentum. I think we're seeing some momentum. The major media -- THE NEW YORK TIMES and the LOS ANGELES TIMES and the BOSTON GLOBE -- have all editorialized recently around a certain confluence that they're seeing that's driving forward certain initiatives to end homelessness.

So I think it's an exciting time around the issue and I think that gets to the whole notion of being remoralized. What we need to be doing is getting out to people in this country and talking to them about some of these solution-oriented initiatives, to remoralize ourselves around the issue of homelessness, to go beyond being demoralized to be remoralized that some of the solutions are there. We've developed some solutions. Our solutions are more sophisticated than ever. We need to be gathered around. We need to invest resources in ensuring that we're moving forward toward the goal of abolishing homelessness.

Q: What do churches need to know about the burden that they're going to have to carry in the years to come on this social evil? And what does the Bush tax cut have to do with these solutions and what churches will have to do?

A: There's no question that the administration has churches and synagogues and mosques as well in their sight lines in terms of responding to a number of different social issues. There's no question about that. Certainly, the faith-based initiative that's been launched directly out of the White House is an important ingredient in moving forward initiatives that will be responsive to a variety of different social problems -- whether it's the lives of children or the notion of homelessness. So I think there's no question that churches will continue to have a role.

I don't think anyone believes that the full solution is in the faith-based communities, or in churches, or in synagogues, or in mosques. There are not sufficient resources. But certainly mobilizing the faith-based community to be responsive to the issue of homelessness -- I think it gives sensitivity to the notion that there is a spiritual side to homelessness. And that spiritual side, which is addressed in those congregations that we mentioned earlier that are comprised primarily of homeless people -- that there's a spiritual side to it and that we need to rally spiritual forces to address the issue, just as we need to rally nonprofit resources.

Q: Is the idea that it's a spiritual problem connected to what polls pick up when people are asked about their attitudes toward the poor or the homeless -- that the poor are responsible for their poverty, individually responsible for the dilemmas in which they find themselves, and that it's not other factors?

A: There's a long history in our country of certain people and commentators indicating that people who are victims of policies sometimes, victims of misplaced priorities in terms of allocating governmental resources, are, in fact, responsible somehow for those policies. I've heard in recent months people from both the Left and the Right talking about the issue of homelessness. And the perspective was, in both cases, that government policies were often responsible for some of the homelessness that we see -- when we didn't do enough to protect a certain kind of housing that was the starter housing for homeless people, namely, lodging-house rooms and rooming-house rooms across the country. We've lost literally tens of thousands of those kinds of units across the country. Or other kinds of policies that have stripped resources away from our poorest neighbors.

My sense is -- and one of the reasons I took this job -- in this administration there's a certain sensitivity to the issue that the victims of public policy shouldn't be blamed. The president's statement around substance abuse (in his budget he has called for, I think, 55,000 additional substance abuse slots) tells me that the administration and the president understand that treatment is important. And the president has spoken out on how important treatment is. When one realizes how many people who are homeless, and how many people who are in prisons and jails, have substance abuse issues -- in prisons and jails, the estimates are 80 percent -- many of those people, when they come out of prison, unfortunately, fall into homelessness. So the notion of having more treatment slots targeted in general tells me that the administration is thinking about prevention.

The administration also has in its budget additional money around the transition from foster care, investing resources in 18-year-olds who are aging out of foster care, to help them transition to more appropriate lifestyles. That tells me that the administration has some sensitivity to the fact that some of those transitions aren't going very well right now. In fact, there are two national studies. One showed that 25 percent, another that 29 percent, of all people who are in foster care go on to experience homelessness. What I used to say to policy makers in Massachusetts is that we know, tonight in Massachusetts, 10,000 young people are sleeping in foster care. We can know that somewhere between 2,500 and 2,900 of those young people are going to go on to be at risk of homelessness. We need to do something about that. Well, the administration in its budget is doing something about that by virtue of the money that it's investing in providing for better transitional services for young people in foster care.

So whether it's substance abuse or foster care or some of the additions that are being made in homeless line items in the federal budget, the administration, I think, is trying to respond. And, I think, in those responses is the notion that it isn't the fault of the person that they're homeless; it's the fault that systems haven't worked as they should have worked. And now we need to remedy some of the shortcomings of those systems, especially around the issue of discharge planning at the back door of systems of care and institutions; that sometimes the discharge plan wasn't there, so when a person came to the end of their time in foster care or in a prison or jail or in a substance abuse program, they were discharged with no place to go and they fell into homelessness and they kept just cycling through programs and into homelessness. I think some of the initiatives of the administration are to break that cycle of homelessness.

There was a federal study that was done in the mid-1990s that was entitled "The Federal Plan to Break the Cycle of Homelessness." I think there have been a number of initiatives in past administrations, and certainly it's being continued in this administration. The idea is to provide some solution-based initiatives that break that cycle of homelessness. That then contributes to the whole larger idea of ultimately abolishing homelessness. And that's what we need to be about.

Q: Your pantheon of individuals who serve as inspirations about homelessness -- St. Francis, the abolitionists -- also includes Simon Weil, the Jewish/Catholic intellectual and philosopher from the Forties. What [would] she have to say about homelessness in America in 2002?

A: I want to people to know this name, Simone Weil. She is a patron saint of mine, I would say. When I read her words, it's pretty much sacramental to me. She was a woman who, from the age of seven, had a great sensitivity to the needs of the poorest. Her country, France, had been invaded. Even at the age of seven years old, she would not eat more than the rations that were being given to the poorest people in France. And again in the Second World War, when the Nazis went into France, she and her family escaped to Marseilles and then eventually to New York. But, again, she would not eat more than the rations that were given to the French people at that time. She also, during the course of her life, prior to the Nazi occupation, went and worked in a Renault automobile factory. She worked with the grape harvesters in the south of France, because she wanted to understand the experience of workers and laborers. And she wanted to understand that experience in her own flesh, in her own being.

She simply wrote notebooks. Those notebooks, as she traveled, were given to farmers and to priests to hold. Then, when she died prematurely at the age of thirty-four, those folk who were entrusted with her notebooks opened them up and found great pearls of spiritual wisdom. Eventually, they were published, first in England and then here in the United States.

One of the documents that she wrote is called "A Declaration of Human Obligations." In that declaration, there is a passage that talks about the responsibility of people who have any sway or any responsibility publicly, over public opinion or public policy. And what Simone Weil indicates is that any person who has public responsibility or can influence public opinion should have as their prime responsibility the remedying of the privations of human beings, that is, remedying any privation they would have related to food and remedying the fact that people don't have housing. She said that any person who's been entrusted with a public position that doesn't make the remedying of those privations a top priority, then that responsibility is misplaced in that person. In fact, that person, if not attempting to remedy those privations, is engaged in criminal activity, because that should be the prime focus, that should be the prime motivator in the lives of people who have been entrusted with having influence in policy or influence in public affairs or in public opinion.

I would not have come to Washington, I would not be in the position I am unless I believed that this administration, by virtue of things that I've read, seen, and heard, has prioritized the needs of the poorest people. We see that in the two secretaries at HUD and HHS forwarding a public policy that calls for the ending of homelessness for our most vulnerable homeless neighbors. We see that in the initiative of the president in terms of wanting to leave no child behind. And we see that in other initiatives that are specific to the budget that I mentioned earlier of targeting resources to people who have substance issues, young adults who are coming out of foster care, in terms of their appropriate transition. So I do see -- or I would not have been able to come, frankly -- that there is this attention to something that is outside of this world, that Simone Weil talks [about]: that any person who has given attention to things outside of this world understands that the relief, the remedying of the privations of people is a primary priority. I do think that there is here an attention to that which is OUTSIDE of this world and that has caused there to be a prioritization of those things that are IN this world. Amen.

Q: Thank you, Philip Mangano.

A: Well, thank you for having me, and thanks so much for indulging my pantheon of saints, because they are worthy people one and all.

Where do these cut-people go??

Dick

----------------------

10:00 PM PDT on Friday, March 21, 2008

By IMRAN GHORI
The Press-Enterprise

The population at a homeless encampment in Ontario has been cut by more than half after a week of screening by city officials, who have eliminated those they say have no ties to the community.

About 150 people still are living in tents or RVs on three dirt lots west of LA/Ontario International Airport, down from a peak of 400 people, said Brent Schultz, director of housing and neighborhood revitalization for Ontario.

Camp residents who could prove ties to Ontario were issued photo identification cards. The rest must leave by 8 a.m. Monday.
Story continues below

Many already have left. The city provided bus fare or cab rides to about 20 people from out of the area, said Detective Jeff Higbee, spokesman for the Ontario Police Department.

Another 10 people were arrested and taken to West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga for felony warrants or parole violations. Police cited and released 13 people who had warrants for lesser charges, Higbee said.

Authorities announced last week that the population would be capped at 170 residents. Those who could not provide documentation or prove city connections, such as being a former resident or having family in the area, would be asked to leave, city officials said.

A homeless advocacy group and some camp residents criticized the screening as unfair.

"Everybody was basically broken and scared to death through this three-day process," Mike Dunlap, founder of Homeless We Care, said Friday.

The large police presence during the screening intimidated some homeless, who left of their own accord, he said. Some did not have ready access to documentation and were disqualified, Dunlap said.

Michael John Archibald, 49, who has been living at the camp for a month, said he has a bank account, a YMCA membership and a job in Ontario but did not meet the city's criteria to stay. He said he has no other option but to live on the street.

"There are a lot of people like me who are using this as a breather, a place to get back together," Archibald said. "Now, they are pulling the rug out from under them."

Roderick Cooley, 46, who has been at the camp three months, said he can't stay because he couldn't get a document notarized showing that he had been renting a room in Ontario before he became homeless. He said he doesn't know where he will go now.

Some were concerned that they might be arrested and their possessions confiscated if they don't leave by Monday.

Schultz said officials believe the process was fair and comprehensive.

"We've tried to do the most we could to prove their ties to Ontario," he said.

Those who get documentation later can reapply, Higbee said.

The city posted warnings for camp residents to vacate by Monday morning a lot where city officials plan to put in fencing, improve restrooms, mark individual campsites and install fire pits. The improvements will take two to three weeks, Higbee said.

The city has no plans to make arrests Monday but will clear the area and verify whether residents may remain, Higbee said. Authorities also plan to step up enforcement at city parks and on streets to ensure that the homeless don't spill over into other areas, he said.

Reach Imran Ghori at 909-806-3061 or ighori@PE.com

http://drop-shukhov.blogspot.com/
St. Petersburg
Creating production framework for the autonomous
homes /Ark/ using spiral DNA technology.
For any production of studio with a minimum
costs of energy and materials. Construction
experimental homes in the marshes or in the forest.
Franz Kafka- /The Burrow/.
Henry Thoreau- /Walden, or Life in the forest/.
House-/The Burrow. The code of life/ is in the form of an ellipsoids and spherical shell
2-4 meters in diameter.
Folding framework is made of springs wire diameter of 4-6 mm.

What else is there to do but accept the reality of urban camping. What's wrong with having camps? One way or another, people are forced to camp, so let's do the minimum and understand this.

I like this article.

Dick

What's really going on?
Larry Haynes
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
Article Created:03/20/2008 05:02:52 PM PDT
The city of Ontario has received a fair amount of media attention lately concerning its attempts to address the challenge of serving its homeless population in general, and its establishing a Homeless Service Area in particular. Much of the media coverage, both local and national, has been focused on the understandably sensational aspects of this mission, but lacking the content of what is actually occurring.

Let me offer a view to what is happening.

City leadership recognized that it is an emerging urban area. As such, it needs to balance a variety of competing interests: the need for local businesses to profit, the desire for peaceful residential neighborhoods, and yes, how to provide compassionate and effective services to its poorest residents.

The city aims to get ahead of the issues that currently face its homeless population. It decided to create a system of care that will address the needs of the transitionally homeless population - those living in cars, garages, motels, shelters, etc.

This system of care will include a homeless service walk-in center, a new 15-bed emergency shelter, a 34-bed transitional shelter, and low-income housing with supportive services for hundreds of people.

Why start with this group, and not the more visible poor, the chronically homeless? Because in almost any region in the United States, the transitionally homeless account for approximately 75 percent of the homeless population; they are the homeless majority, not the chronically homeless!

Still, the city recognizes that more can be done to provide for the homeless. The first action is to staff the new walk-in center with county experts in addiction and mental illness to serve the prevalent needs of the chronically homeless. Still not enough. Local estimates place the chronic population at about 140 persons. Therefore, a Homeless Service Area will be created to serve 170 local persons. This service area will improve current health and safety conditions, and it will be a central place where a variety of agencies and congregations can provide comfort, food, and services.

While certainly some things could have been done better, I submit that the city of Ontario has done exactly the above. As an advocate for the poor, how does one not stand up and cheer?

The mayor, the council, and city staff should be applauded for their efforts and investment. I have operated Mercy House since its beginning, 18 years ago, and have worked on homeless issues with dozens of cities over the last 20 years. I have never seen such a commitment by a city.

Having said all that, from a Mercy House perspective, and from what I can infer from the city's perspective, living in a tent is not an adequate response. I am confused by local critics who have lost sight of this and are instead advocating for an insufficient answer. Housing is the only effective and acceptable answer to ending homelessness, and here is the thing: We actually have a chance to accomplish this in Ontario if we all work together.

My entire professional life has been dedicated to this issue. It is a calling, a calling of deep and all-encompassing faith. The call from Jesus and the prophets is one of justice, not charity. The faithful response here is to end homelessness. It will take sacrifice and years more of dedication, but we have a rare opportunity for social justice in Ontario, and we have a partner in the city. Justice though, at least in this instance, can only come through the vulnerability of cooperation and relationship.

Or instead, we can squabble over tents.

Larry Haynes is executive director of Mercy House, a Santa Ana-based nonprofit agency that provides homeless services and transitional and permanent housing in Ontario and Orange County. He has founded several programs serving the homeless and is a lay-preacher at Trinity Episcopal Church in Orange.

What are people supposed to do. It's a story without hope.

Dick

Authorities nab camp's parolees
Andrea Bennett, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 03/20/2008 09:42:22 PM PDT

ONTARIO - About a week ago, state parole officers swept through the homeless camp here to inform everyone that all parolees would have to go.

For some of those on parole, Tent City had been their last hope.

"They catch me here, and I'm gone," said Barry Barnes, 33, on Wednesday. "They already gave me ample warning. I wasn't here when they did the sweep. I stayed away and came back two days ago."

By mid-afternoon Thursday, 13 people had been ticketed and released, eight people had been booked for local warrants, and two were arrested for parole violations, according to Ontario police.

Monroe Emmanuel Lee III was another straggler who hadn't fled after the first warning to parolees.

"When I first got out of prison, my parole officer said he don't have nowhere else to send me," Lee said. "I couldn't go to rehab because I don't have a drug problem. Now I have literally no place to go."

Lee said he was a truck driver living in Phoenix when he drove through the area and was arrested on a 14-year-old outstanding warrant.

He left the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco in February and landed at Tent City in Ontario - mere blocks from his parole office on East Holt Boulevard.

With his criminal record, Lee said no one will hire him. Plus, he's bound to the county he was arrested in, which eliminates many truck-driving opportunities.

"They're trying to hold me here, to get me down and out so I commit
another crime," he said. "That ain't gonna happen."

Bill Sessa, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said parolees are given $200 in gate money and a bus ticket to the county they came from when they get out of prison.

Generally, they have to find housing on their own, and their parole agents are there to enforce any restrictions, he said.

Some California counties want to establish re-entry facilities where inmates spend the end of their sentences preparing for the transition back to society. Before they get out, they could have jobs, housing and support systems lined up through the program, which has not yet been implemented anywhere in the state.

A state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation report states 18 counties have signed up to get the state-funded re-entry facilities.

San Bernardino County, which had 10,650 active parolees in November, has expressed interest in two of the 500-bed facilities.

Barnes said he has to check in with his parole agent every day as a "high control" parolee who served about 14 years for a kidnapping and murder.

The 30-year Ontario resident says he and his fiancee, Ronda, planned to head out by nightfall Wednesday to stay at the KOA campground in Pomona, Prado Park or perhaps a 24-hour Wal-Mart.

Barnes chafed at the state's providing housing for sex offenders while run-of-the-mill parolees like him are freed from jail with virtually nothing.

"Those are the ones doing the worst of the worst, and they're protected the most," he said.

High-risk sex offenders often are temporarily housed if they would otherwise be homeless, Sessa said, ensuring they can be tracked, which he said is in the best interest of the community.

Mentally ill or otherwise incapacitated parolees also can get vouchers for hotel stays.

Sessa said some innovative programs - such as a carpentry apprenticeship at Chino Institution for Women and underwater welding training at Chino Institution for Men - help get inmates ready for the real world before they get out.

"But (those programs) affect a very small percentage of inmates," he said.

"We parole 120,000 people a year. It's a hard transition. They have a lot of strikes against them, in most cases, and not a lot to work with."

Lee said most of the other homeless parolees already had left Tent City out of fear.

But he said he would stick it out at his camp, where there is tarp shading, chairs, a fire pit and a bookcase for his neatly arranged canned food and supplies.

"Some of us are more educated than others are. They put the `boo' game on them, and it worked," he said. "But I don't scare that easy."

He had better be gone, though, before 8 a.m. Monday, when state parole officials are expected to conduct another sweep of the camp.

Lee said he doesn't know where he will be by then.

"I ain't trying to say I got comfortable out here, because I'm not...," Lee said. "But I got me a place where I can build me a fire and leave and nobody takes my stuff. That's the best I got right now."

andrea.bennett@

dailybulletin.com

'Ontario residents only' at Tent City
Officials begin thinning out the encampment, saying the city can provide space only for those who once lived there and can prove it.
By David Kelly
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 18, 2008

Dozens of Ontario police and code enforcement officers descended upon the homeless encampment known as Tent City early Monday, separating those who could stay from those to be evicted.

Large, often confused, crowds formed ragged lines behind police barricades where officers handed out color-coded wristbands. Blue meant they were from Ontario and could remain. Orange indicated they had to provide more proof to avoid ejection, and white meant they had a week to leave.

Many who had taken shelter at the camp -- which had grown from 20 to more than 400 residents in nine months -- lacked paperwork, bills or birth certificates proving they were once Ontario residents.

"When my husband gets out of jail he can bring my marriage certificate; will that count?" asked one tearful woman.

Another resident, clearly confused, seemed relieved to get a white band -- not understanding it meant she had to leave.

Pattie Barnes, 47, who had her motor home towed away last week, shook with anger.

"They are tagging us because we are homeless," she said, staring at her orange wristband. "It feels like a concentration camp."

Ontario officials, citing health and safety issues, say it is necessary to thin out Tent City. The move to dramatically reduce the population curtails an experiment begun last year to provide a city-approved camp where homeless people would not be harassed.

Land that includes tents, toilets and water had been set aside near Ontario International Airport for the homeless. Officials intended to limit the camp and its amenities to local homeless people, but did little to enforce that as the site rapidly expanded, attracting people from as far away as Florida.

"We have to be sensitive, and we will give people time to locate documents," said Brent Schultz, the city's housing and neighborhood revitalization director. "But we have always said this was for Ontario's homeless and not the region's homeless. We can't take care of the whole area."

Officials believe the local homeless number about 140, less than half of those currently in residence. Schultz wants to reduce Tent City to 170 people in a regulated, fenced-off area rather than the sprawling open-air campsite it has become.

No other city has offered to take in any of the homeless who Ontario officials say must leave.

"So far I have heard nothing," Schultz said.

Even before the large-scale action Monday, police last week moved out parolees and towed about 20 dilapidated motor homes. A list of safety rules, including one banning pets, has been posted. The city says there is a threat of dog bites and possible disease from the animals.

The no-pet order caused widespread anger and tears Monday as some homeless people said they could not imagine life without their dogs. Many have three or four and vowed to leave Tent City before giving the dogs up.

"I will go to jail before they take my dog," said an emotional Diane Ritchey, 47. "That's a part of me as much as anything. The dogs are as homeless as we are."

Cindy Duke, 40, hugged Ritchey, who was sobbing.

"I had to give up my 6-year-old son because I was homeless and I'll be damned if I give up my dog too," Duke said.

Celeste Trettin, 53, rolled up in a wheelchair. She and her husband have an Ontario address but have lived for years in a truck, parking wherever they found a safe place. Trettin, who got an orange wristband, said she believed she would be able to find the paperwork to prove she was from Ontario.

"We thought if we came here we could save some money, but now they have pulled the rug out from under us," said Trettin, who has fibromyalgia, a painful disorder.

Marty Tovar took it all in stride. The 53-year old Mentone man had fresh bumps and cuts on his face after being on the receiving end of a recent assault. He didn't seem to care if he had to leave.

"It doesn't anger me; it angers a lot of other people here but not me," he said, wearing no shirt under his blue overalls. "If I got to go I'll just catch the next bus to the next town. Every town has a park."

Still, by noon only one man had taken up an offer of free taxi rides back to their home cities, returning the 50 miles to Victorville, said Det. Jeff Higbee, spokesman for the Ontario police.

"By next Monday we should have everyone who is supposed to be gone out of here," Higbee said. "The wristbands are only temporary so we can identify everyone."

As the local homeless people were separated from the others, city workers were busy setting up fencing for the new encampment. Those who are approved will get 90-day renewable permits to stay.

Peter Bibring, staff attorney with the America Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, toured Tent City and spoke with local officials.

"We are concerned that however they go about trying to reduce this population they don't depend on arrests or property seizures for people who have no other place to go and are just looking for a place to sleep," he said. "We will continue to monitor the situation."

Although no one at the camp seemed happy about efforts to shrink Tent City, some tried to see Ontario's point of view.

Tina Gove, 39, was evicted from her Pomona home and has been at the encampment for three months. Like many others in Tent City, her life has been marked by drug problems and mental illness.

Her four children, she said, were taken from her because of a past methamphetamine addiction.

"If they throw me out I'll be back on the street, and I don't want to be back on the street because it's scary," she said. "But I think we should all be grateful because if Ontario hadn't opened this place for us, where would we be today?"

david.kelly@latimes.com

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.

BBC NEWS
Tent city highlights US homes crisis
The meltdown in the US mortgage market has led to record foreclosures and forced thousands from their homes. In few places is it worse than southern California, where the BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani reports on an extreme consequence of the downturn, but one that some observers fear could grow.

Forty miles east of Los Angeles, on a patch of waste ground, is the place they call Tent City.

Sandwiched between the local airport and the railway line, this really is the wrong side of the tracks.

We are on the outskirts of Ontario, a functionally pleasant commuter-city in southern California.

Last summer, local officials established this camp as a temporary base for the city's homeless population, then around two dozen.

But word spread and now some 300 people live here. It has an air of scruffy permanence, and indeed, city officials say there are no current plans to close it down.

Varied histories

Most residents live in tents, some in mobile homes in various states of disrepair, their possessions crammed in with them or spread out on the ground.

Amenities are basic - no mains electricity, no plumbing, no drainage. Portable showers offer a chance to wash, but there is nowhere to prepare food, apart from makeshift tables in the open air.

Dogs and children scratch around in the dusty earth.

What is striking is the range of people here: whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, the old and young including some with babies. And they tell a variety of stories too.

Benson Vivier, a Vietnam veteran, said a leg operation allowed him to walk after years of being in a wheelchair. But as a consequence his disability benefits were cut, and he could not afford his rent

Others told tales of family disputes or houses burning down. Some were addicts, some fresh out of prison.

'Home or food'

But one man, who did not give his name, said he and his family were living in Tent City because they were victims of America's foreclosure crisis. It came down to "feeding my family or keeping the house", he said, "so I got rid of the house".

It's hard for me to see it, when someone else owns it and I am homeless with nothing
Foreclosure victim

The property he lost is nearby in Ontario, which, in places, offers a middle-class suburban dream - green lawns, wide pavements, garages big enough for two cars.

Yet it is in an area known as the Inland Empire, where the rate of foreclosure is the third highest in the entire US.

No longer able to afford his mortgage payments, this man saw his lender repossess the property, and now someone else lives there.

"It's hard for me to see it, when someone else owns it and I am homeless with nothing," he said.

There are thousands like him across California - people whose inability to finance their mortgages has cost them their homes; many thousands more across the US.

But in Tent City, at least, he is in a minority - few are here as a direct result of the housing crash.

However, Mike Dunlap, who runs a volunteer group providing supplies to Tent City's dwellers, thinks that could change.

"People lose their homes through foreclosure," he says. "They go and live in the hotels, and the homeless people who were in the hotels end up back on the streets."

He fears that, as more people lose their homes in what appears to be a deepening housing market collapse, more former homeowners could end up in places like Tent City.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/7297093.stm

Published: 2008/03/14 17:33:42 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

From the Los Angeles Times
Ontario Opens Arms to Homeless

At an enclave near the airport, people can get shelter, food and some social services. Many churches are helping.
By David Kelly
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

February 3, 2008

Over the last six months, more than 250 homeless people have pitched tents near the Ontario airport, creating a burgeoning shantytown that sprawls across vacant lots and spills into side streets.

They call it Tent City, and for many it's a welcome refuge from the cars, bridges and offramps they usually inhabit.

"This place is the best thing they could do for us," said Teresa Pacheco, 48, of Upland. "It's got food, water and there is an outhouse."

For others, it's a nightmare.

"I hate it here. I want a house. I want a life," said a tearful Teresa Dodson, 54. "I've never been in this position before in my entire life."

Pregnant women, parolees, alcoholics, the mentally ill, people fallen on hard times: They're all here, living on donated food and water. And rather than running them out, the city has invited them in.

Unlike many communities that hide or deny such problems, Ontario has put its homeless on public display.

The city makes sure trash is picked up. Police patrol the area. Portable toilets have been set up and clean water and showers are provided. Social workers try to place residents in shelters and get help for those with drug or alcohol problems.

"I have done this kind of work for 20 years and have never encountered a city that has made the investment that Ontario has," said Larry Haynes, executive director of Mercy House in Santa Ana, which is helping the homeless at the site. "We have unanimous support from the City Council and city staffers. This isn't Berkeley or Santa Monica. It's a moderately conservative area, not a bunch of wild-eyed liberals."

Ontario officials don't call the place Tent City or Camp Hope as some do. They prefer "rest area." They set it up on city property just west of LA/Ontario International Airport last June to lure the local homeless away from dangerous sites.

"They were living along the railroad tracks, along the 10 Freeway at the major intersections," said Brent Schultz, director of the city's office of housing and neighborhood revitalization. "We said, 'You don't have to go, but we have created a place where you can go.' It's not a permanent solution. We are trying to keep a lid on it, but we are not putting our head in the sand. We are reaching out to people."

Ontario is spending $3 million to deal with its homeless. As of 2007, that population numbered 331, the second highest in San Bernardino County, said Isaac Jackson, the county's homeless services coordinator. The city of San Bernardino ranks first with 1,397.

Tent City started with about 30 people. It grew fast to between 250 and 300 from all over the region. And there is increasing concern that it could be getting out of control.

"I worry how it has expanded, from a standpoint of safety and resources," said City Councilman Jason Anderson. "It needs to be regulated. It's taken on a life of its own. I envision the city throttling it back to the point where it was originally envisioned, as a resource for the local homeless community."

But there are no plans to close it, he said: "You can't just flip a switch and shut it down."

At least not anymore.

Tents now cover several large dirt lots on both sides of Cucamonga Avenue. Side streets are lined with battered vans and recreational vehicles. Dogs run wild. A 6-month-old was recently found living in a tent with his mother. Authorities said they would provide better shelter for all mothers with children they find.

Police say there has been one assault, but little other crime has been reported. They have intercepted gang members they say were casing the place in order to extort money from the homeless. And they say they know that parolees had been dropped off at the site.

"We spoke with parole and that has stopped," said Ontario Police Sgt. Bryan Allen, who recently supervised a cleanup operation in the area. "We get folks who come here to gawk, and a few have even brought their children down to play. This isn't a place for kids. Many of these folks are mentally ill. There are a ton of airborne illnesses."

First-time visitors are often shocked by the sea of flapping tents with residential homes barely a block away.

"My first impression was shame on America," said Beverly Earl, director of community and emergency services for the region's Catholic Charities organization. "But you have a lot of people here who are just caught in bad circumstances. They now feel part of a community."

Residents live in donated tents with mattresses. They light fires in barrels or grills to stay warm.

High winds can topple the portable toilets, spilling their contents. Inside one, someone scrawled "God Hates Us All" in black marker.

People freely admit addictions, arrest records and mental illness. Their life stories are harrowing.

Marty Tovar, 53, yanked all the hair from his head -- "to change my look," he said. His nose is scarred from a recent attack by teenagers, his elbow dented from crashing through a car window. His knees barely function and a hip has been broken.

"My kidneys are good, though," he said on a recent afternoon.

Jets landing at the airport thundered just a few hundred feet above him.

"And I got a good nose too," he said. "I can really take a beating."

Dodson walked past. She said her boyfriend kicked her out of the house. She drinks "to relieve the tension" and feeds the birds gathered outside her tent.

"I am grateful for all the help people have given us," she said. "But I get very depressed here."

Gina Worges is 47 and five months pregnant. She hopes her baby is fine but said she really has no idea: "The veterinarians have spayed and neutered the dogs out here, but I haven't seen any doctors for the people."

Her tent smells of mildew, her mattress soaked from the recent rain. She and her daughter Nancy McAbee said they were evicted from their Fontana home when a roommate failed to pay a portion of the rent.

McAbee, who is partly deaf, arrived at the encampment nine months pregnant. On Friday, her water broke and she was taken to a hospital.

A day earlier, she had said she planned to put the baby up for adoption.

"I prefer the baby be in a house than in this place," she said, lighting a cigarette.

Across the street, past a circle of scowling men drinking malt liquor, Danielle Rivera swiveled on an old office chair, its wheels firmly mired in mud. Her 6-month-old son,Daniel, smiled in a stroller beside her.

"I'm trying to get my son off the street," said Rivera, 20, of Ontario. "He's been a real trouper, but I'm hating it. I'm used to being indoors."

A high-strung parolee who identified himself only as "Mississippi" tried to start a fire at Rivera's tent site. He borrowed pieces of notebook paper to use as kindling.

"The parole officer left me here," he said. "The police said I committed assault with intent to commit great bodily harm, but I was just trying to break up a fight."

Rivera and her mother, Pam, said they ended up homeless after being evicted. They watched as Mississippi's anemic fire struggled to burn. It was cold, and the skies threatened more rain.

"We need this place. Otherwise we'd be on skid row," said Pam Rivera.

A fight broke out nearby, one woman screaming obscenities at another.

"Hey!" bellowed the elder Rivera. "There are children around here, and if they start talking like that, I'm coming over there!"

Tent City may be ugly, but plenty of people want to help those inside. More than 30 churches serve lunch and dinner almost every day and donate tents, tarps and clothing. Catholic Charities hands out water and blankets. Mercy House has opened an emergency walk-in center.

"People who want to help are coming out of the woodwork," said Wendy Francisco, director of Camp Hope Ministry for Flipside Church in Rancho Cucamonga. "This is the leper colony outside the city walls. I know Jesus would be out there. That's where he was, among the poor and lowly."

Not every person in Tent City is mentally ill or chemically addicted. Some fell on hard times with no safety net.

Damaris Rodriguez, 45, lost her inventory job when the company went bankrupt. Her last paycheck was $160 and her rent was $300. She was evicted, then lost her car.

"The whole thing was a domino effect, and I ended up here," she said. "Everyone has a different breaking point. For me, this is rock bottom."

Her tent is neat inside, with canned food stacked beside a mattress sitting on a shag carpet. She dug a ditch out front to drain away the water and wears slippers turned black with mud.

"My boyfriend thinks I'm high-maintenance because I'm not out collecting cans and bottles in the dumpsters," she said. "But I'm not going to give up my standards. It's easy to say, 'This will never happen to me.' I said that once and look at me. Never say never."

david.kelly@latimes.com

Edmonton tenting, winter 2008.

DF

---------

Homeless death watch
Officials predicting harsh Edmonton winter will take toll on less fortunate
By BROOKES MERRITT, SUN MEDIA

"Officials are bracing for a record number of homeless deaths on city streets this year and say a harsh winter will find many struggling to stay alive.

Last year, 44 people died on city streets, according to Hope Mission staff, who held a memorial yesterday.

"In 2006, it was 41. We expect the number to keep rising in 2008," said Sandy Ericson, head of Hope Mission's homelessness outreach program.

"Homeless numbers in Edmonton are growing faster than our efforts so far can keep pace with."

Ericson and several other outreach workers are frustrated by numbers suggesting homelessness doesn't top the city's list of problems worth solving.

At last count, 2,600 homeless people were identified in Edmonton, although outreach officials estimate the true number to be much higher.

By comparison, shelter groups in Edmonton can only offer about 800 nightly beds.

"On a given winter night, there could be at least 1,800 people sleeping outdoors," Ericson said.

Despite the lack of visible tents in the river valley this winter - a number that spiked last fall following the province's closure of tent city - Ericson said scores of adults are still camping outdoors.

"You might not see the tents, but they are there. The Hope Mission warming van helps up to 40 people a day who are living outside ... some will die out here."

Last night the temperature dropped to -16 C, but coupled with the windchill, the mercury was expected to plummet to -24 C.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is a high of -11 and a low of -19 C with similar windchills in effect.

Ele Gibson of the Bissell Centre agreed with the sombre prediction.

"It's sad, but the number of homeless hasn't gone down in Edmonton as long as I can remember.

"We see 500 people a day drop in (at the Bissell), many of whom are forced to sleep outdoors. It's heartbreaking."

Between the 50 emergency mats put out each night at the Salvation Army chapel, and the roughly 750 shelter beds split between the Herb Jamieson, Hope Mission, Women's Emergency Shelter and Youth Emergency Shelter - and those at the George Spady Centre reserved for the intoxicated - Gibson said the city and social groups still need to do more.

Herb officials answered the call last month by opening 150 overflow beds in the Marv Holland building at 105 Street and 105 Avenue.

Police and paramedics are also offering help by co-ordinating with shelter officials to operate a 24-hour "man-down" van, which enables outreach workers to take the homeless to shelters once paramedics or police give them the OK.

The warming van, which offers food and drink as well as respite from the cold, circles inner-city streets daily from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m."

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Edmonton/2008/01/20/4783343-sun.html

Hypothermia in Edmonton

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia

Comprehensive 2007 homelessness report. Worth archiving and reading.

"Without Housing, a major report released November 14, 2007 by Western Regional Advocacy Project, the National HCH Council and others, documents the impact of cuts to mainstream housing programs on homelessness."

NCH and others report on homelessness 2007

The entire article is worth archiving.

Dick Fischbeck

The Berkeley Daily Planet
Battle Over Sidewalk Use Returns to Council
By Judith Scherr

Residents in the vicinity of Magee Avenue and Blake Street became very much alarmed yesterday afternoon over the actions of a stranger. In fact, they became so alarmed that the marshal’s office was called upon to investigate the case and protect the people from what they supposed was a maniac—and all because the man was so thoughtless as to sit down on the edge of the sidewalk and remove one of his shoes.

—Berkeley Daily Gazette, July 16, 1905, as cited by Richard Schwarz in Berkeley 1900.

The Public Commons for Everyone Initiative, targeting people with behaviors some consider inappropriate for shopping areas, comes back to the City Council Nov. 27. It’s a proposal to enact restrictions on lying on the sidewalk and smoking in commercial areas, and it also calls for raising $1 million from increased parking meter fees to fund, in part, services for difficult-to-serve people with mental illnesses and drug and/or alcohol addictions.

The controversial set of laws and possible services, proposed in various iterations over seven months by Mayor Tom Bates, pits some mental health and homeless advocates, who say the plan further criminalizes homeless and mentally ill persons, against many in the business community who argue that people with inappropriate behaviors keep shoppers away.

The proposal the council will debate on Nov. 27 satisfies neither those in the business sector who wanted stronger prohibitions against inappropriate street behavior, nor advocates for homeless, addicted or mentally ill people who called for increasing services without the stick.

If the plan were approved next week, lying on the sidewalk in all commercial areas would be banned, with police citing violators after one warning. The citation would not have to be complaint-driven. (The current law applies to fewer streets and requires two warnings and that the citation is complaint-driven.)

The proposed law says enforcement would remain “low priority” between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., except when there is a complaint against the individual or there is a history of chronic problems of persons “lodging without consent” in a given location.

Smoking would be banned on commercial-area sidewalks.

Roland Peterson, chair of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce board and executive director of the Telegraph Avenue Business Improvement District, says the proposed ordinances are weak.

“Originally, I wanted to see no long-term sitting on the sidewalk,” he said. “So many people sit on the sidewalk and accost [others].”

The council removed sidewalk sitting from Bates’ original proposal, saying it would reconsider it later in light of results from the other restrictions.

Peterson had argued there should be no warning—“like most laws,” he said—before an officer cites people lying on sidewalks.

Peterson was also critical of the no-smoking-in-commercial-areas component. “The issue is not smoking,” he said, explaining that smoking restrictions fail to address the central issue: inappropriate street behavior.

While the lying and smoking restrictions would kick in 30 days after the ordinances get a second reading—Dec. 11 if the council gives its approval Nov. 27—the proposed services, if approved, would take longer to get started.

If the council votes in concept on Nov. 27 to increase the parking meter rate from $1 to $1.25, the city attorneys still have to write a resolution to that effect to come back to the council at a later date. The meters would then have to be recalibrated and the increased funds collected to pay for any new services.

Meanwhile, the council has yet to decide what services to provide and who would provide them if the money became available.

The programs proposed in the staff report for Nov. 27, prepared by Management Analyst Lauren Lempert, who was hired at $7,200 per month to put together the initiative, include increasing the number and availability of public toilets, providing housing and support services to 10 or 15 of the most difficult to serve chronically homeless persons, expanding services for older teens and young adults, providing advocacy for people to obtain disability benefits, and more.

Responding to the proposal, the Homeless Commission said in a report to the council that the concept remained too undeveloped to consider. “The Commission cannot support the enforcement aspects of the initiative without the opportunity to review them in the context of a fully developed plan that includes new housing and social services opportunities,” the commission wrote.

Public bathrooms

While the initiative underscores the need to treat public urination and defecation as an infraction, which police are more likely to enforce than a misdemeanor, the plan before the council Tuesday says the city will write no new laws prohibiting public urination or defecation until a sufficient number of public toilets becomes available.

The initiative proposes spending $142,000 to increase the number of public bathrooms available, including new “porta-potties,” and increasing public toilet hours. The bathrooms would be cleaned through a work program designed to put unemployed people to work, the staff report said.

The initiative includes a “visitor restroom program” on Telegraph in which business owners would open their restrooms to the public and the city would pay a stipend to them for restroom upkeep.

Supportive housing

For the Homeless Commission, Councilmember Dona Spring, Osha Neumann, attorney and advocate for homeless persons, and others, the most important component of any plan to help people with mental health or drug and alcohol issues get off the streets is housing linked to supportive services.

Spring pointed out that the plan has to take a long-term view—it takes years to stabilize someone on the streets with multiple needs, she said.

The staff proposal would dedicate $350,000 to housing subsidies and coordinated intensive services for 10 or 15 chronically homeless adults “who are hardest to reach and most likely to [exhibit] problematic street behavior.”

Spring pointed to the difficulty of selecting which people receive these services, noting that some have been on waiting lists for such services for years. “We need to serve 10-to-15 people one hundred times,” she said.

No Smoking

The proposed ordinance expands prohibitions against smoking to include commercial areas, designated by streets, senior centers, health facilities and parks.

Asked how the new law would affect small-business owners or their employees alone in their shops, who frequently step outside for a cigarette break, Lempert told the Planet that there won’t be “a cop posted outside every store.”

The ordinance will be enforced by “peer pressure,” she said. “It will be complaint driven.”

No Lying

Neumann told the Planet he believes from talking to his clients that as soon as the mayor proposed new laws last spring, police in the Telegraph area stepped up ticketing homeless people for so-called “quality of life” violations, such as lying on or obstructing the sidewalk.

The Daily Planet submitted a public records act request to see the numbers and kinds of violations being ticketed, but City Manager Phil Kamlarz responded that the data was unavailable: “We were unable to extract the information from our data base due to the way the data entry coding is done,” he said in a Oct. 31 email. (The City Council similarly requested but did not receive this information.)

Fearing arbitrary enforcement, Spring called the ordinances “punitive” and “a giant step backwards.

“Even if [the prohibition against lying on the public right of way] is low priority at night, people will still be harassed,” she said, noting that the men’s shelter has a 30-day stay limit. “What do you do when your 30 days are up?” she asked.

Responding to her own question, she answered: “You go and try to sleep in some doorway.”

Berkeley Ordinance 2007

"They envision a fenced-in area where trailers and modular structures line the perimeter, housing social services agencies, showers, toilets, computers and laundry facilities.

A large tent, situated in the middle of the campground, could serve as a place for residents to eat, watch television and unwind. Personal sleeping tents will likely sit toward the back of the lot, far from the public eye. If things go well, Catholic Charities may consider running the program again next winter. If the pilot fails, the agency will likely discontinue the effort, Murphy said."

St. Petersburg tent city

L.A., homeless advocates reach deal on sidewalk sleeping
The homeless can sleep on L.A. streets from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. with certain restrictions.
By Steve Hymon and David Zahniser
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

October 11, 2007

Even as Los Angeles officials announced Wednesday that they were settling a lawsuit with advocates for the homeless over a city law that prohibits people from sleeping on sidewalks, downtown Councilwoman Jan Perry vowed to pursue a law that would forbid such camping.

The legal settlement involves a 2003 lawsuit brought by skid row residents who complained they were being arrested for sleeping on sidewalks, despite having nowhere else to go. Under the new deal, the homeless can sleep on sidewalks from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. anywhere in the city as long as they do not block access to doorways or driveways or completely block the sidewalk.

If a homeless person blocks an entrance or the sidewalk, police first must issue a warning and then give the person time to move. Until now, police were allowed to remove the homeless from sidewalks in neighborhoods outside downtown, although they rarely have done so.

Under the settlement's terms, the city can enforce its overnight sidewalk sleeping ban only if it builds 1,250 units of supportive housing for the homeless, with half those units downtown. City officials said such action was unlikely to take place for at least three to five years.

The lawsuit was brought by six homeless people who alleged that the city's enforcement of the sidewalk sleeping ban was harassment. But the deal drew criticism from downtown business leaders because it allows sidewalk sleeping to continue.

"People eat, live, sleep and defecate in the same place on our sidewalks -- what's good about that?" said Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Assn.

Perry, who represents most of the 50-square-block area known as skid row, resisted efforts last year to settle the lawsuit. The difference this time around, she said, was the provision allowing the homeless to sleep overnight anywhere in the city, not just in skid row.

"I felt that whatever applied to this community should apply to all communities in Los Angeles," said Perry, who called the settlement a "decent outcome for now."

But Perry said she wants to create a new anti-camping ordinance that could withstand a challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped argue the case against the ban.

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California, said her group would oppose any anti-camping law.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April 2006 that the city was woefully short of overnight shelter space and said arresting a homeless person for sleeping on the sidewalk was "cruel and unusual punishment."

Judges also wrote in their decision that Los Angeles' sidewalk sleeping law was more restrictive than those in most other cities and amounted to criminalizing homelessness.

Both the city and homeless advocates agreed to ask the appeals court to vacate its decision. If the court declines, the settlement will be negated.

Since the 9th Circuit's ruling, the Los Angeles Police Department has been enforcing the ban only during the day.

Ripston said the settlement would force the city to build supportive housing where the homeless can receive treatment for problems that led them to live on the streets.

"Like all settlements, it's not perfect," Ripston said. "But it's a case that started with a request for shelter beds. We're getting a lot more than we asked for."

The council unanimously approved the settlement Tuesday in a closed-door meeting, a move that infuriated downtown business leaders who had followed the issue for years. Carol Schatz, president and chief executive of the Central City Assn., said that the council pursued a "stealth" strategy that would leave downtown to cope with the brunt of the homeless crisis.

"It's impossible to believe that they really wanted our input," said Schatz, whose group represents developers and business interests.

For one businessman, the settlement also raises the prospect that the homeless will increasingly spread beyond skid row, bounded by 3rd, 7th, Main and Alameda streets, and begin setting up tents and boxes on sidewalks in front of downtown's increasing number of late-night restaurants, as well as the newly opened Ralphs supermarket and Staples Center.

"How would you like people setting up tents in front of your house with no bathroom facilities? It's going to be a health hazard," said Peter Zen, the owner's representative for the Westin Bonaventure Hotel. "And every morning, after they clear out their tents, who's going to clean up after them?"

The LAPD last year increased the number of officers deployed to skid row.

Police Chief William J. Bratton said that effort had greatly reduced crime there but also had pushed homeless to other parts of the city.

Edmonton Tent City Closing gallery

September 15, 2007
Tent city packing up
Doors close by mid-afternoon
By CP Edmonton Sun

EDMONTON — It’s a difficult feat to be homeless but still have a space that feels like a home, but that’s exactly what life in Edmonton’s tent city has felt like for Claude Parisee over the past month.

Surrounded by the books he reads to pass the time, and secure in the knowledge that guards watched his belongings and kept unwanted troublemakers from causing a stir, the former resident of Hull, Que., said life has largely been good in the makeshift community, which was set up in May and at times swelled to 80 tents and up to 200 people.

Residents had been told they must leave the fenced-in property, which sits on a patch of provincial land behind a non-profit centre for the homeless, by mid-afternoon Saturday.

The site has been closed to new residents and has been fenced in since early August, when the government said it was going to gradually move residents out.

“I guess they don’t want to spend the money to support this place anymore, but the problems still remain, because many of us will just go camp somewhere else,” said Parisee as he and about 20 other people packed up their belongings just after noon.

Government spokesman Jerry Bellikka said there are enough spaces in homeless shelters for all the remaining residents of tent city. Low-cost housing has been found for 58 people overall.

“There has always been the capacity within the shelters to take everybody here, but many of the people here didn’t want to go to a shelter for one reason or another, they felt that something else was what they needed,” said Bellikka, adding case workers had helped resolve issues such as a lack of space for couples in the shelters. Other people were given bus tickets to get back to their home communities, or were set up with apartments.

Several of the residents say they’re not willing to live in shelters and can’t afford the city’s high rents, so they’ll just pitch their tents somewhere else after they’ve been forced to leave.

Parisee is one of those who will be in the same tent Saturday night. He said he’ll pitch it somewhere in Edmonton’s river valley, where he knows he’ll have to fend for himself.

“It’s a chance you’ve gotta take, you might wake up dead in the morning,” he said, sipping a beer as he watched other residents pack up. He used to work in construction, but now is on disability and can’t afford rent.

Dawn Cardinal, 52, has been at the tent city since June. She was evicted from an apartment in February and became homeless for the first time in her life. She’s angry the government is kicking them off bare land that hasn’t been used for many years, and plans to move her tent somewhere else, along with her niece.

“Just because it’s provincial land, it’s still the government. They should start doing something, instead of kicking people off,” she said.

“How do they think that people will not make another tent city?”

The government won’t interfere if people want to move their tents elsewhere, said Bellikka.

“In some circumstances, people make their own choices and you can’t force people to accept something they don’t want.”

About a dozen people who were not residents of tent city came Saturday to hand out food and keep an eye on how guards and the government would get people to leave.

Jim Gurnett, who works with a social welfare agency, said he was sickened by the number of people who are homeless or in substandard living in the city, and that it will take a lot more work to make up for years of neglecting affordable housing.

“They have to be somewhere else, they’re not going to disintegrate, they’re not going to evaporate,” said Gurnett.

Kevin Soto, who was barbecuing huge slabs of meat to help feed the remaining residents, said he’ll be sad to see the end of the sense of community that has built up since May.

“It was a family thing,” he said, twisting the meat with a pair of shears and stopping frequently to chat with other people milling about his tent. “We all knew each other from the street.”

Soto said he’d been part of the tent city from the very beginning. Despite his sadness at having to leave, Soto said he’s not angry at the government and would be happy to take permanent housing if it could be found.

“If they can find us a place to stay, it would be nice, it would be beautiful,” he said.

Parisee said he, too, remained hopeful he’d soon have a real place to call home. A place had been found for a friend, and he said many people were helping the residents of tent city in their search.

“I’ll just camp out until I can find a place to stay,” he said. “My turn’s coming up.”

Friday, September 14th, 2007
ISSUE #33.41 • NEWS • NEWS STORY
Sit. Lie. Roll Over.

Street Rootsvows that a $30,000 city grant won’t soften its views on “sit-lie” ordinance.

BY COREY PEIN | 503-243-2122

[August 22nd, 2007]

A sidewalk obstruction ordinance championed by Mayor Tom Potter can finally take effect, after months of wrangling between downtown businesses and homeless advocates. Everyone gave up a little, got a little, and—in a quirk of politics, Portland-style—the ordinance’s most vocal critic came out a winner.

The Portland Business Alliance will have a legal means to shoo away undesirables, now that police can issue citations. But after enduring accusations of heartlessness, PBA will donate $150,000—more than triple what it had planned—toward services for the homeless.

Opponents of the ordinance—known as “sit-lie” for what it prohibits—may have to take their case to court. But homeless advocates won concessions from the city such as public showers, benches and bathrooms.

And Street Roots, the newspaper whose opposition to sit-lie gave Mayor Potter and the PBA such a headache? It will get some cash money.

The Street Access For Everyone oversight committee, appointed by the mayor and funded by the city, will give Street Roots a one-time grant of $30,000. The grant will fund the quarterly printing of 10,000 resource guides listing services for the homeless (printing that many guides at Kinko’s would cost nearly $900,000), and a new employee to put the guides together. The grant represents a one-third increase in Street Roots ’ modest $90,000 annual budget.

“It’s a hairy situation,” says Street Roots director Israel Bayer. But, he stresses, the money will in no way influence the paper’s editorial position against the sit-lie ordinance.

“I can’t imagine that everyone on the committee was happy with giving us $30,000, while at the same time we were against the sit-lie ordinance,” Bayer says. “Portland is a unique town in the way politics works.”

Street Roots had approached city officials early in the year about funding the guide. Commissioner Erik Sten’s point-man on homelessness, Jamaal Folsom, referred them to the mayor’s office, which passed them on to the SAFE committee. Potter adviser Kyle Chisek says the city was initially concerned that the Street Roots guide might duplicate services provided by government and other nonprofits.

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“Things changed just in the course of the year,” Chisek says. “Nobody else had a similar proposal.”

Chisek, a non-voting member of the SAFE committee, says moderating Street Roots ’ editorial stance wasn’t a consideration. “Understandably, it seems like it would be an awkward position for Street Roots ,” Chisek says. However, he adds, the committee and Street Roots shared a common purpose: providing a service for the homeless.

Bayer agrees. “I think we all have the same goal in mind,” he says. “The goal is to not have homelessness downtown.”

Were some on the committee hoping Street Roots would take the money and shut up? No one contacted by WW said that was the intent of the grant, but some understood how it might look that way.

“There has been undue influence with the PBA. I don’t think your picking that part out is inconsistent with my overall criticism,” says Commissioner Randy Leonard, who criticized the SAFE committee’s decision to open City Hall’s bathrooms overnight as “cynical” and ineffective.

“To look at it non-cynically, Street Roots is the best [organization] to do this,” says Monica Goracke, a homeless advocate with the Oregon Law Center and co-chair of the SAFE committee.

Bayer says nearly $13,000 of the grant will fund half of the annual salary of the new full-time Street Roots employee—a former vendor—to compile the guides. The rest will pay for the printing of a durable, 80-page, pocket-size booklet listing where to find food, clothing, shelter, medical care and transportation.

Street Roots currently contains a four-page Rose City Resources section, but its disadvantages are twofold: newsprint doesn’t survive long in the elements, and to get it, you have to buy the paper for $1. The new pocket guide will be free.

This article suggests a property owner /can/ allow a homeless camp on their property. It's the first time I've seen that, except for religion organizations.

This means there might be a trend away from public property and toward private property for urban campsites. I'm looking ahead.

"In August, City Commission decided, in a 5 to 1 vote, that all homeless people living on the public property of Tent City would have to be relocated.

Woods said, "If private-property owners say that anyone living on their property is trespassing, they can request assistance from the GPD.""

http://www.alligator.org/articles/2007/09/07/news/local/tent.prt

"The village is amazing. The grounds are very clean. There are few tents left, so you really can't call it a tent city anymore. The homeless people keep building cottages. At the NASNA conference we learned from Commissioner Sten that the city relaxed building codes specifically for Dignity Village."

http://www.streetnewsservice.org/index.php?page=archive_detail&articleID=1477

Nqakula Appeal Halts Shack Rebuilding

Cape Argus (Cape Town)

NEWS
30 August 2007
Posted to the web 30 August 2007

It is back to square one for squatters in Moreleta Park, Pretoria, whose shelters were destroyed by authorities earlier this month.

Yesterday, a Pretoria High Court judge ordered Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula to rebuild the shacks within 12 hours.

In addition, Nqakula was found in contempt of a court order and the judge ruled that he should be jailed and fined if he did not appear in court personally within 14 days.

The minister's legal counsel is now seeking leave to appeal and will approach a full bench of the High Court or the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein. This has effectively put any rebuilding on ice.

The defence will argue that Judge Bill Prinsloo erred in granting an incarceration order against the minister as this was in contravention of the State Liability Act.

The minister was also not in contempt of court as notice of an application for leave to appeal against the earlier order had been given, counsel claimed.

But counsel for the squatters, Adriaan Vorster, is determined to go ahead with an application that will force the police to rebuild the shacks, pending finalisation of the matter.

Vorster said they would be going to court tomorrow or on Monday.

Yesterday, Judge Prinsloo held the minister responsible for not complying with a court order issued last week. In terms of that order, police were given 12 hours to rebuild the shacks of homeless people in Moreleta Park.

Eight days later the homeless people, including women and children, are still destitute.

Copyright © 2007 Cape Argus. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

Gainesville/Alachua County Office on Homelessness

Campsite clearance Best Practice

Dear Jim, Lee Ann, and City and County Commissioners: As we struggle with decisions regarding the removal of homeless people or their property from City-owned land, I have contacted service providers and advocacy organizations around the country and begun identifying best practices for the City's consideration. Though not many models exist at this time, the nationally-recognized best practice is the provision of a designated campground, either purchased by the City or set up on private or City-owned land, where homeless people are allowed to maintain campsites. Models in use elsewhere in the country include codes of conducts for residents, on-site supervision and amenities, and linkages to housing and supportive services. These models include: Portland, OR: Dignity Village is a city-recognized encampment of homeless people in Portland, and is considered a model for the rest of the country. Dignity Village got its start as a collection of encampments on unused public land near Downtown Portland. After well-publicized convoys of homeless people pushing shopping carts migrated from one place to another to accommodate legal technicalities, the Portland City Council agreed on August 22, 2001 to let the group camp at a city lot called Sunderland Yard, seven miles from downtown. Dignity Village is incorporated in Oregon as a 501(c)(3) membership-based non-profit organiz