Free Republic

Traverse City's governing body recently passed a resolution that among other things could make it harder for libraries and other public facilities to enforce rules banning vagrants from using their facility as a place to hang out. “A Resolution Recognizing the Rights of Homeless Persons," as the document is titled, is the product of an arm of city government called the Human Rights Commission. Commission member Patricia Nugent said, “We’re trying to be proactive. The population has grown in the last few years and we don’t want to see bad things start to happen.” By “bad things,” Nugent means laws...

Maybe people need to start listening to NYC Police Commissioner Bill Bratton when he recently suggested that New Yorkers refrain from giving money to street beggars if they'd like to alleviate the panhandling epidemic brought on by the serially-misguided DeBlasio era.   Of course he was immediately attacked as some sort of heartless monster by the left with hashtags and worse... And while I can't prove how much heart the NYPD's head cop may-or-may-not have, he's got to have one hell of a lot more brains in his head than the 'progressive' NYers now inflicting their knee-jerk' 'caring' on the man: handing drunks...

Ending homelessness isn't just about finding a home. Sometimes, it's about finding a nice home — a place that's bright, modern and healthy to live in. That's the idea fueling the development of a number of buildings around the country, as communities try to move chronically homeless people off the streets. In downtown Washington, D.C., one of those buildings is currently going up right beside NPR's headquarters. Still under construction, the structure looks a little like four huge blocks, stacked atop each other and slightly askew. At 14 stories high, it will have a striking view of the U.S. Capitol...

In response to what the Seattle mayor calls a growing homeless crisis in the city, Ed Murray signed a proclamation declaring a civil emergency.More than 2,800 men, women, and children are without shelter on the streets of Seattle, which is a 21 percent increase from last year, according to the latest overnight count. "We are in a moment of our history where decades of service cuts, growing inequality, and untreated mental health and drug [addiction] has finally resulted in a human crisis seen in the history of our city -- indeed in the history of our nation," Murray said.(snip) Many...

Some Michigan high school students are redefining the term "extracurricular activity." In addition to club meetings, band practices and football games, University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy teens are also signing up to serve as pallbearers for homeless veterans. Six students recently volunteered to be pallbearers for three dead homeless veterans. Senior Joshua Gonzales is one of the student leaders who helped develop the program. He said this new opportunity for students is "meant to help dignify and respect the human being." The students' initial plan was to carry the caskets for homeless individuals, said the Rev. Karl...

I need some Prayers for my brother who despite what meager efforts my wife and I have been able to muster for him has been unable to pick himself up and get back on his own two feet. He has been struggling with esophageal cancer and lost his position in the Navy then his apartment. We had moved his belongings into a public storage while he transitioned to another apartment that never materialized. He has not been able to make any payments and soon the contents will go up for auction and his birthday is Friday.

Police say a man threw a hot sauce bottle and knocked his victim unconscious in a fight over graham crackers. Riveria Beach police say Shawn Deandre Thomas was eating graham crackers this week at a church that provides meals for the homeless. Authorities said Thomas became upset when someone asked for his crackers so he picked up a bottle of hot sauce and allegedly threw it at the man's head, knocking him unconscious. According to a police report, Thomas also punched another man in the throat when he tried to intervene. Thomas is charged with aggravated battery with a deadly...

Social welfare groups have raised concerns about the lack of support for people living on the fringes of society Police are trying to confirm the identity of a homeless woman who was found dead in a 24-hour McDonald’s outlet at a public housing estate in Kowloon Bay yesterday morning. The case has raised concern among social welfare groups about the lack of support for people living on the fringes of society. The woman, aged around 50 to 60 years, was found slumped over her table in a quiet corner, 24 hours after she entered the restaurant at Ping Shek Estate,...

Olga Gutierrez Machorro believes that beggars should be culled with lethal injection, believing it to be in their best interests. She said: “Yes they’re a little crazy, but they’re harmless. “Which is why I think to myself wouldn’t it be kinder to just give them a lethal injection?” Unbelievably, Machorro, who is a member of the local government in Tecamachalco, Mexico, is also the councillor responsible for the Vulnerable Groups Commission - who try to find ways to help the homeless and disadvantaged.

Mexican representative for the vulnerable suggests homeless should be culled with lethal injections **SNIP** Her remarks, reported in local newspaper Cambio, came when she alleged that the local government lacked the necessary resources to deal with an increasing number of beggars on the streets. She claimed that she herself had a big heart but was unable to solve the homeless problem alone. Ms Machorro also said that she had often offered her home and office as a sanctuary for those individuals with nowhere to go - but said it wasn't a real solution. She explained: 'Yes they're a little crazy,...

EXCLUSIVE: New York 2015 - FOUR THOUSAND sleeping on the streets, 80 homeless encampments in the city and beggars making $75 a day as arrests for panhandling and street drinking plunge They are sleeping in front of the Empire State building, sprawled in front of the doors of Macy's, and panhandling outside Grand Central. New York is in the grip of a homeless epidemic so bad that it has raised fears of the city slipping back into the disorder of the 1970s and 1980s. The city's police chief this week said that as many as 4,000 people are now sleeping...

It was early afternoon when the man with the twitching legs was dragged from the ground into an ambulance. Another man selling books washed away the vomit.A man named Charlie Medina sat at the same spot a few days later, unable to remember his name before he fell into a trance with his jaw open and his eyes dilated.And the lovers. They were unable to find a room. One pulled off the other’s shirt and her bra, then started to kiss her bruised breasts while a small crowd gathered to watch.The people here on this stretch of 125th Street in...

San Francisco has had it with the homeless. First came the Chronicle’s obsessive summer of op-eds and thinly reported screeds; then came Mayor Lee’s announcement threat that the homeless must leave before the Super Bowl PR machine rolls into town; and yesterday Supervisor Scott Wiener put a semantic twist on the whole fracas, arguing it’s not the homeless we’re vilifying but unsavory “street behavior." The public outcry has no real center but, like a dragnet, implicates everything from mental illness and substance abuse, to access to public restrooms and street encampments. There’s a cacophony of complaints (and rallying cries) but...

San Francisco is known for its Golden Gate Bridge, world class cuisine, panoply of cultures, striking skyline, frigid fog, and homeless. More specifically, aggressive panhandling and homeless defecating and urinating in public. And sometimes doing even worse things. With the holiday shopping season coming, and Super Bowl 50 right behind, the city by the bay will be in the national spotlight once again, and so will images. While Mayor Ed Lee announced this week that "the homeless must leave the street" for Super Bowl 50, it's more what they leave behind on the street that is a concern for the...

America’s homeless are lawyering up to fight for a “right” to live on the street – your neighborhood and personal safety be damned. From Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles, cities are struggling with a surge in people living in cardboard boxes and doorways. Local lawmakers are trying to ban “camping out” in public, and ordering police to clear the fetid encampments. But lawyers for the homeless are pushing back. They’re demanding that “sleeping rough” be legally protected. In Denver, where living on the street is outlawed, lawyers for the homeless want to guarantee vagrants “the right to use and move...

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.