Free Republic

A Good Samaritan landlord has had her generosity taken advantage of after she was left with her Perth home trashed and a repair bill running into the thousands. Christine Goss is now warning other property owners to be careful who they rent to. Her once spick and span Padbury three bedroom home has been turned into a rubbish tip inside with a junk yard out the back. One room is so full of discarded items it's impossible to open the door. Ms Goss said she felt sorry for the children, so agreed to let a homeless woman move in 12...

San Diego County declared a local health emergency early Friday night, adding a new level of urgency to a hepatitis A outbreak that has hit the homeless population hardest, killing 15 people and hospitalizing hundreds. Dr. Wilma Wooten, the region’s public health officer, signed the declaration shortly after lawyers finished writing it, bolstering the county Health and Human Services Agency’s ability to request assistance from the state and providing legal protections for a slate of actions that began unfolding across the city earlier in the day. Working on a county contract, a private company began delivering portable hand-washing stations Friday...

DENVER -- It is not every day the word "flamethrower" is used in federal court documents. But attorneys representing homeless plaintiffs have included that language in their latest motion filed in federal court. The plaintiffs are fighting to end the city's homeless sweeps -- the practice of removing items resembling a camp on public sidewalks or parks. City officials have denied the accusations.

DALLAS (AP) - Drew Demler is digging in a box of dirt in the middle of Fair Park. The Dallas Morning News reports he is harvesting potatoes - big, small, misshapen, one that even looks like a snowman - in a hotter-than-deep-fried parking lot just outside the Cotton Bowl. "I think potatoes and onions are two of the most important crops that we grow," Demler, farm manager at Big Tex Urban Farms , says as he uses his bare hands to search for the tubers. "They're hearty and prolific, and their storage life is long."(continued)

The first piece of advice he got was “Don’t take off your shoes.” The second, “Don’t go to the bathroom after dark.” Though Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams heeded both, it didn’t make him feel any less vulnerable. There was little that could as he settled in for a night at the downtown Road Home homeless shelter. When he climbed into bed — the top of a three-person bunk— with his sneakers still tightly laced to fend off would-be thieves, arguments echoed off the walls. One man had passed out on another’s cot, and McAdams heard the thud of...

A man remained in the Mendocino County jail Wednesday for allegedly tying his diaper-clad 2-year-old son to a tree branch without access to food or water. Jeffery Wilson, 27, of Willits, is being held on suspicion of felony child abuse, possession of a controlled substance and trespass, according to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies said they discovered the child July 27 in an illegal encampment along Highway 20 near Willits. The property owner previously had reported the encampment and deputies had warned Wilson and the other two adults staying there — believed to be the child’s mother and grandmother...

Usually, the floorboards creaking above you in the middle of the night are the house settling. Or perhaps a raccoon. But for a woman in Arlington, Va., it was the footsteps of a man living in her attic. The woman, who was not publicly identified, heard noises coming from the attic of the house she rents on 22nd Street S, just outside Washington, the Arlington County Police Department said. She contacted her landlord, thinking it might be him she was hearing — “because sometimes he’s used the storage above,” she told NBC Washington — and the landlord called the police...

Councilman Larry Gossett bristled at a request for funds to clean human excrement from Seattle’s city streets near the Third Street courthouse, calling it “racist. It’s all part of a pattern of disrespect toward the minority community.” The request for $8,000 to pay for the cleaning came from King County Sheriff John Urquhart who complained that “public defecation is only part of the problem. The homeless denizens of the area have been assaulting and harassing citizens reporting for jury duty. The jurors are asking judges to excuse them because they’re afraid to come to the courthouse.” Gossett insisted that “putting...

Near the end of Thursday’s BART Board of Directors meeting, the transit system’s elected leaders found themselves in the unusual position of staring at something not on the agenda: a fresh puddle of urine. BART directors usually meet twice a month in a clean, quiet, windowless board chamber in Oakland, but this time they took a field trip to Powell Street Station to view its “challenges” — homeless people sleeping in hallways, intravenous drug users, rundown conditions, dirty floors, and elevators and escalators used regularly as restrooms.

Inside the newly refurbished facility in the Little Saigon neighborhood are sleeping cots with blue cushions that couples can push together... Unlike more restrictive shelters, clients will be able to store their belongings, bring along their pets and partners, and come and go when they like. While discouraged, drug and alcohol use inside the facility will be allowed unless it disturbs other clients or the surrounding community.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he is so fed up with the city’s panhandlers begging for money on the street that he wants to ban the practice. “I’m saying that not as a matter of policy. I’m saying that as a human being, bluntly,” Mayor de Blasio told WNYC radio Friday.

With its belated posting of the grim results of this year’s street homelessness census, City Hall just exposed Mayor Bill de Blasio’s real homelessness policy: Hide the bad news. The count was done back in February, but didn’t get posted until Wednesday — after Politico had published it. It’s obvious why Team de Blasio didn’t want you to see the numbers: They show 3,892 people living on the streets, up 40 percent from last year and the highest rate since 2005.

Homelessness and crime » Assault on baseball player, fatal hit-and-run are the latest examples; House speaker asks if it’s time for extraordinary measures. News is spreading across the country on the state of homelessness in downtown Salt Lake City — and it isn't pretty. Just over the Fourth of July holiday, a professional baseball player was attacked and suffered a concussion. And a car plowed into a group of homeless people on a sidewalk, killing one and sending five others to the hospital. These are just the latest in a string of events that continues to frustrate officials, police and...

Lee Smith was one of the first homeless people to pitch a tent near 26th and Wood streets in West Oakland. Now, four years later, he has 100 neighbors, including two pregnant women. The place looks like a Third World shantytown, a village for the city’s poorest on the fringes of its bustling center. It’s one of about 100 such sprawling encampments in Oakland, and they’re not going away anytime soon. They’re likely to get even bigger. Just as the Bay Area’s tech boom has reshaped Oakland in different ways than it has San Francisco, so has its homeless crisis....

Caltrans is building a taller, stronger wall in San Jose to stop homeless individuals from returning to an encampment. Caltrans has repeatedly cleaned up the large encampment under I-280, but the homeless keep returning. While this new solution has some homeowners pleased, it is generating a lot of anger in the community. Laura Nunez, who has lived on Macredes Avenue in San Jose most of her life, said everything changed on her street when homeless people began using the rickety chain link fence at the end of the block as a doorway to their encampments along I-280. “Every time Caltrans...

The number of homeless people in Los Angeles is skyrocketing. In just one year, the figures revealed that the homeless population in the city grew 20% while the numbers for the wider Los Angeles County were even higher at 23%. As if looking at those numbers isn’t cringeworthy enough, The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority reported Wednesday that 6,000 homeless young people were tallied across the county in January, a 61% increase over the 2016 total. Most of the young people are ages 18 to 24. All the youth shelters have waiting lists and affordable housing is tough to find,...

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – Jeremy Joseph Christian yelled at court staff during his jail booking, newly filed court documents show. When Christian was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center, he was placed in an isolation cell, according to jail records. The same records show that Christian told court staff that he is transient and doesn’t know the last time he had a permanent address. Christian is accused of slashing the throats of three men on board a MAX train as it approached the Hollywood Transit Center on Friday in Northeast Portland. The three men, according to police, were defending...

town into homeless magnet By Joseph J. Kolb Published May 17, 2017 Fox News NOW PLAYING New poll shows shift on marijuana legalization From his sidewalk vantage point in front of an outdoor equipment store in downtown Durango, Colo., Matthew Marinseck has seen a transformation in this mountain resort town. The picturesque town near the New Mexico border, once a vibrant, upscale community dotted with luxury hotels, is being overrun by panhandlers – thanks, in part, to the legalization of marijuana. The town suddenly became a haven for recreational pot users, drawing in transients, panhandlers and a large number of...

It’s been at least two weeks since a massive fire caused a section of I-85 to collapse, throwing metro Atlanta traffic into gridlock and leaving many wondering who exactly was to blame. » The latest: Man charged with I-85 bridge fire pleads not guilty, to be released on bond Here’s what we know so far: Who’s at fault? Basil Eleby, 39, was charged with starting the fire. On Tuesday, April 18, Eleby pleaded not guilty to arson and criminal trespass charges and is expected to be released on a $10,000 signature bond. According to AJC’s Rhonda Cook, Fulton County Superior...

LOS ANGELES - A Los Angeles man says he’s found a solution to the city’s housing crisis in the most unlikeliest of places. T.K. Devine wants to help solve L.A.’s homeless problem with portable toilets. “Folks who are living it rough and living on the streets and are trying to make a better life for themselves, they need consistency,” Devine told CBS Los Angeles. “They need a good night’s rest.” The 35-year-old founder of Porta-Home is converting portable toilets into portable homes out of a downtown Los Angeles warehouse, including one built for himself....The system rests on a trailer that...