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PARIS — The gunman who was disarmed by passengers on a train in France two days ago looked weak and malnourished and said he had only meant to rob people, a lawyer who interviewed him after the attack said on Sunday. "(I saw) somebody who was very sick, somebody very weakened physically, as if he suffered from malnutrition, very, very thin and very haggard," the lawyer, Sophie David, told BFMTV.

The Obama Department of Justice argued last week that a Boise, Idaho, law against "public sleeping in a city without adequate shelter space constitutes criminalizing homelessness itself, in violation of the Eighth Amendment." In a statement of interest filed in federal court, the Obama administration asserted that banning sleeping and camping in public places constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment." Republican candidates, please take note. Mike Journee, spokesman for Boise Mayor David Bieter, described his city as "a fairly progressive island in a deeply red state." Bieter is trying to address homelessness, Journee told me, "from a holistic standpoint" -- and...

San Francisco — The homeless are a challenge for almost every American city, but nothing like they are for San Francisco. The city’s mild, year-round climate, famously liberal “live and let live” attitude, and a dense network of social services have made the problem worse than ever there. The city has some 3,200 people living on its streets, and the number is growing. Two recent news items brought the issue into sharp focus. First, a light pole collapsed downtown, crushing a car and barely missing the driver. The cause? It had been corroded by urine aimed at it by street...

We all need sleep, which is a fact of life but also a legally important point. Last week, the Department of Justice argued as much in a statement of interest it filed in a relatively obscure case in Boise, Idaho, that could impact how cities regulate and punish homelessness. Boise, like many cities — the number of which has swelled since the recession — has an ordinance banning sleeping or camping in public places. But such laws, the DOJ says, effectively criminalize homelessness itself in situations where people simply have nowhere else to sleep. From the DOJ's filing: When adequate...

We all need sleep, which is a fact of life but also a legally important point. Last week, the Department of Justice argued as much in a statement of interest it filed in a relatively obscure case in Boise, Idaho, that could impact how cities regulate and punish homelessness. Boise, like many cities — the number of which has swelled since the recession — has an ordinance banning sleeping or camping in public places. But such laws, the DOJ says, effectively criminalize homelessness itself in situations where people simply have nowhere else to sleep.

Paul Deleon On Wednesday, 5 August, 2015, an armed homeless man stopped a brutal assault on a teen-aged woman, then likely saved his own life in a dramatic gunfight.  It occurred in Fresno County, California.  From fresnosheriff.org: Deputies discovered there was a domestic disturbance nearby in the parking lot of Fresno Liquor (5596 E. Griffith Way). Two men in a white Lexus pulled up next to two women standing by the store. One of the men got out of the car and began to kick and punch one of the women, a 19-year-old. She was later determined to be...

STENCH AND THE CITY: SF’S SUMMER OF URINE If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to… plug your nose. By Debra J. Saunders – 8.10.15 How bad is the urine situation in San Francisco? This is not a joke: Monday night, a light pole corroded by urine collapsed and crashed onto a car, narrowly missing the driver. The smell is worse than I have known since I started working for The Chronicle in 1992. It hits your nose on the BART escalator before you reach Market Street. That sour smell can bake for blocks where street people sleep wrapped...

Laws that make it a crime for homeless people to sleep in public places even when there isn't enough room for them at a shelter unconstitutionally punish the homeless, lawyers for the Obama administration said in a court filing on Thursday. The federal government took this position against so-called anti-camping laws in an ongoing case against the city of Boise, Idaho, which has enforced ordinances banning sleeping in public spaces and ended up convicting homeless plaintiffs.

The glass facade of Cooper Union’s $111 million academic building offers a remarkable view — of a back alley packed with vagrants. “I have seen drug deals, public urination, defecation, masturbation in broad daylight in the Taras Shevchenko alley,” a Cooper Union faculty member told The Post. “It’s a place where many homeless congregate to sleep — right in front of a church and between a high school and a college,” the faculty member added.

The elevated “SkyWatch” booth was erected July 21 following a Post exposé about the hordes of homeless people taking over the park and Mayor de Blasio’s subsequent visit to chat up vagrants there.

Don't get into a pissing match with walls in San Francisco. The city's Public Works agency is testing a pee-repellant paint on walls in areas that have been saturated with urine. Anyone urinating on the specially treated walls will get the spray splashed back onto them. [Snip] "The urine will bounce back on the guys pants and shoes. The idea is they will think twice next time about urinating in public," said Rachel Gordon, a Public Works Department spokeswoman. She said the super-hard coating made the "bounce back" effect much stronger than when peeing on a regular wall.

No wonder he doesn’t think there’s a problem. The police have been laboring to keep Mayor de Blasio in a bum-free bubble — clearing nuisance-causing vagrants from his view at Gracie Mansion and as he travels in the city. On Wednesday, two hours before de Blasio was due to walk through Washington Square Park, cops arrived en masse to clear out the quality-of-life-ruining bums who drink from paper bags, sprawl on benches and pee in public. “They had to clear all the homeless out before he got there,” for a Ramadan fast-breaking dinner at the NYU Islamic Center, said one...

Bums across the city hailed Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday for relaxing enforcement against homeless panhandlers, saying it hasn’t been this good for them in years. “I want to thank de Blasio for taking it easy on us. It’s easier for me to get by. Because of him, nobody bothers me,” said Phil Zasel, 63, who was hanging out near Bellevue Hospital with several sacks of belongings. “It’s better out here now. It’s the best time to be homeless. The weather is nice. I feel like I’m in California. So I’d rather be out here until it gets cold.”

My wife has to take trips to San Francisco every couple of months for business and each time she comes back with the same observation, "there are a great many people who appear to be living on the street and maybe homeless. " I have not seen this for myself yet but I began to wonder why there seems to be no or very few stories about the homeless in the news these days. I remember hearing and reading about the homeless situation in this county almost every day when President Bush was in office but now I can't remember...

Families in an affluent Hollywood Hills community are outraged after claiming to see people openly drinking and having sex on a campsite being rented out in their community. Advertised through the Airbnb website, the site is advertised as a "Hollywood Hills Camping Retreat" on La Punta Drive, but sits in middle of a multimillion-dollar neighborhood. For the cost of $40 per night — or $800 a month — people get a tent, spectacular views and are within short walking distance of the Hollywood sign. The listing appeared to have been taken down as of Thursday morning. But people living in...

A major new report from the nonprofit Coalition on Homelessness investigates how criminalizing homelessness in San Francisco has only exacerbated the crisis. Much like America’s War on Drugs, the city’s crackdown on homelessness has been a costly failure, leaving in its wake people who feel victimized by the very system that’s supposed to help them. The report’s title, “Punishing the Poorest,” neatly sums up city policy. “Since 1981, San Francisco has passed more local measures to criminalize sleeping, sitting, or panhandling in public spaces than any other city in California,” the report states. In fact, San Francisco has 23 state...

* At memorial for man killed in police shooting on skid row, church leaders call for Pan-African unity * Pastor warns of 'ongoing challenge' of police brutality against black menCalling for Pan-African unity in the protest movement against police violence, eight church leaders led a fiery service Saturday for Charly Leundeu Keunang, a homeless man shot and killed on skid row by Los Angeles police in a videotaped struggle seen around the world.. "Whether it's Ezell Ford, or whether it's Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin, we have seen an ongoing challenge around police brutality as regards black men," said Sauls,...

Tasked with marketing Miami to tourists and investors, the tax-funded Downtown Development Authority has plenty of maps highlighting restaurants, tourist attractions and real estate development.On Thursday, they unveiled their latest: a detailed map showing where people popped a squat on downtown streets. The scatological atlas, smiling poop emojis and all, was created amid a swirling dispute between downtown boosters and the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust over how to get homeless men and women off the street, and how to deal with corresponding sanitation issues. The two public agencies have been feuding for about a year now, dating back to the creation...

On Reddit, he’s /u/huckstah, an administrator on /r/vagabond, a subreddit with nearly 10,000 members—many of them identify as “homeless”—who trade skills and stories. On “the road and the rails,” he’s Huck, and even after we speak twice by cellphone, he tells me he’d prefer I don’t print his real name. “People say, ‘Well, you chose to become homeless.’ But that’s wrong,” he says. Huck says he’s been a hobo for upward of 11 years and started hopping trains and hitching rides at 18. “I did not choose to become homeless. If you want to say I chose to become homeless...

WASHINGTON — St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco is getting bad press this week over a sprinkler system it installed to keep homeless people from sleeping on church grounds. People are outraged that a church would treat the poor so callously. But St. Mary’s isn’t alone. Many houses of worship all over the country face the question of how to keep safe, welcoming grounds while being compassionate to homeless neighbors sleeping on porches and in doorways. Here’s what we tried at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church in Washington, DC. A couple of months ago, we started a dialogue about...