Free Republic

... Those on the My Brother's Keeper team searching for answers about how to help the most "at risk" young minority men would do well to stop by the Doe Fund in New York City, where, for more than 25 years, the organization run by George and Harriet McDonald has helped homeless men. The program they run is based on a clear contract between the shelter managers and the homeless men. "You get up every day and go to work and stay drug free—and we will pay you and house you and feed you. It's as simple as that," Mr....

While tiny houses have been attractive for those wanting to downsize or simplify their lives for financial or environmental reasons, there's another population benefiting from the small-dwelling movement: the homeless. There's a growing effort across the nation from advocates and religious groups to build these compact buildings because they are cheaper than a traditional large-scale shelter, help the recipients socially because they are built in communal settings and are environmentally friendly due to their size. "You're out of the elements, you've got your own bed, you've got your own place to call your own," said Harold "Hap" Morgan, who is...

Facing a growing homeless population, San Jose is ready to try a new strategy to get people off the streets: pay to put some of them up in local hotels and motels, potentially for years. ...housing prices continue to climb and landlords become pickier about renters...100 homeless people roaming San Jose streets have publicly funded vouchers for subsidized housing but cannot find a place that will accept them. "It's just a tough place to live because of how expensive it is," said Leslye Corsiglia, the city's housing director, who called it an opportunity for homeless people "to get themselves settled...

A sheet of plastic laid over a clothesline. A mini-fortress of milk crates stacked under a tree. A thin mattress on a flimsy crate lying in a dark tunnel. On the edge of Baltimore's woodlands, dozens of the city's transients live in makeshift homes which they consider safer than homeless shelters. Photographer Ben Marcin has captured some of the shanties in his thought-provoking photo essay, 'The Camps', documenting the struggle, loneliness and ingenuity of Maryland's people of the woods.

The road most traveled: Most of the settlements Marcin photographed were by waterways, railway tracks, Walmarts, gas stations and liquor stores. (Daily Mail) As America suffers through its worse recovery on record, a homeless camp has cropped up on the outskirts of Baltimore. Daily Mail reported: A sheet of plastic laid over a clothesline. A mini-fortress of milk crates stacked under a tree. A thin mattress on a flimsy crate lying in a dark tunnel. On the edge of Baltimore’s woodlands, dozens of the city’s transients live in makeshift homes which they consider safer than homeless shelters. Photographer Ben...

QUEENS — The NYPD and the MTA plan to clear homeless men and women out of the subway system after a skyrocketing number of people have sought shelter there from the brutally cold winter, police officials said.

George Zimmerman says his problems continue. He told a Spanish language television station he is now homeless, battling post-traumatic stress disorder, more than $2 million in debt and lives in fear for his life. Zimmerman opened up on the Univision television show "Aquí y Ahora" (Here and Now) that will air Sunday on the Spanish language station at 7 p.m. Zimmerman also discussed his well-known struggle with 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, an African-American teen who was walking in Zimmerman's neighborhood in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, 2012. After he called the cops, the two got into a fight that ended with...

Link only - Angry Residents Wave Pitchforks, Torches In Protest Of Mayor's Crackdown On Homelessness

A woman has been arrested after a toddler she was caring for was found inside a filthy storage unit with no water and little food. Collier County Sheriff's deputies arrested the 44-year-old woman on Wednesday. She faces a felony child neglect charge.

New York man’s home seized after he comes up $936 short on $10,813 tax tab A Syracuse man had his home seized after he paid back $9,877 in city taxes over a six-month period -- but came up $936 short. "I tried so hard. I tried so hard to make these payments," Calvin James, who found out he lost the home when he walked into City Hall on Dec. 6 with a $1,500 check, told The Syracuse Post-Standard. The property had been seized Dec. 4. The paper reported that the city launched an aggressive foreclosure campaign in 2012. The program...

Man gives change to homeless person, is handcuffed and held by police for an hour Greg Snider was in a Houston, Texas parking lot, on the phone making a business call. While in the lot, a homeless man approached his car and asked forchange. Snider gave him 75 cents and then drove off. KPRC Local 2 News reported on the shocking thing that happened next. When Snider pulled onto a nearby freeway, a police car pulled him to the side. Greg was surprised by how aggressive the officer was, telling KPRC, “He's screaming. He's yelling. He's telling me to get...

What advice would you give to a retired Air Force Colonel that has three graduate degrees and that cannot even find work as a janitor? 59-year-old Robert Freniere once served as a special assistant to General Stanley McChrystal, and he has spent extensive time in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But now this man who once had an office in the heart of the Pentagon cannot find anyone who will hire him. In addition to his story, in this article you will also hear about several other middle-aged professionals that cannot find work in this economy either. Despite what the...

**SNIP** Just hours after being sworn in as the city’s public advocate, Letitia James went on TV to claim that she played a key role in helping expose “the face of poverty in the City of New York” on the ‘front page of The New York Times. **SNIP** But the Times refuted James’ account, saying she had nothing to do with its articles. “Andrea Elliott [the Times reporter] met Dasani in the course of interviewing residents outside the Auburn shelter, and exposed conditions there by following the family. Andrea never talked to Ms. James, nor was she source for the...

Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men. He isn't a social worker. He's a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in Japan's nuclear disaster zone for a bounty of $100 a head. "This is how labor recruiters like me come in every day," Sasa says, as he strides past men sleeping on cardboard and clutching at their coats against the early winter cold. It's also how Japan finds people willing to accept minimum wage for one of the...

In May 2009, a small experiment involving 13 homeless men took off in London. Some of them had slept in the cold for more than 40 years. The presence of these street veterans was far from cheap. Police, legal services, health care: Each cost taxpayers thousands of pounds every year. That spring, a local charity decided to make the street veterans — sometimes called rough sleepers — the beneficiaries of an innovative social experiment. No more food stamps, food-kitchen dinners or sporadic shelter stays. The 13 would get a drastic bailout, financed by taxpayers. Each would receive 3,000 pounds (about...

A small Missouri town was sued on Monday by a homeless couple who are accusing it of violating their constitutional rights by forcing them to leave because they stood on a street corner holding a sign seeking assistance. Brandalyn Orchard and Edward Gillespie, who were holding a sign that read "Traveling. Anything helps. God Bless," obeyed police who ordered them to leave Miner, Missouri, on September 26, according to the federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on the couple's behalf. Officers, who showed them copies of ordinances against vagrancy, begging and loitering, told the couple they would...

My family is in urgent need of prayers. Our landlord unexpectly sold the farm we had been renting with an eye toward rent-to-own. New owner will not even speak to us. Wants us out of his new weekend retreat before January 3. No compromise. He is completely within his legal rights to do this, btw. I am talking about 7 people, including 2 preschoolers, becoming homeless on a Kentucky Appalachian mountaintop in January. We have a cow ready to calve any day now, 3 horses, and farming hand tools we have been gathering for several years. If we and our...

Petaluma police Monday were investigating the death of a man whose body was found near the railroad tracks and a homeless center, the third apparent transient found dead since August. The man’s name hadn’t been determined. It appeared he was in his late 50s, Lt. Tim Lyons said. There was no apparent trauma to the body. Several people reported the discovery of the man’s body at about 2:15 p.m. Sunday near Caulfield Lane and Hopper Street. The location is just yards away from Committee on the Shelterless, the nonprofit homeless services center and shelter. Police detectives conducted an extensive search...

At a time when Wall Street is absolutely swimming in wealth, New York City is experiencing an epidemic of homelessness. According to the New York Times, the last time there was this many homeless children in New York City was during the days of the Great Depression. And the number of homeless children in the United States overall recently set a new all-time record. Americans like to think of themselves as "the wealthiest nation on the planet", and yet the number of young kids that don't even have a roof over their heads at night just keeps skyrocketing. There truly...

At a time when Wall Street is absolutely swimming in wealth, New York City is experiencing an epidemic of homelessness. According to the New York Times, the last time there was this many homeless children in New York City was during the days of the Great Depression. And the number of homeless children in the United States overall recently set a new all-time record. As I mentioned yesterday, there are now 1.2 million public school kids in America that are homeless, and that number has gone up by about 72 percent since the start of the last recession. As Americans,...