Free Republic

Local health officials confirmed two more cases Sunday of COVID-19 in King County, saying that two men in their 60s with underlying health conditions were hospitalized in critical condition.a The announcement that the two men were being treated for the respiratory illness raised the total number of COVID-19 cases to six in King County, where officials said a man in Kirkland became the first person in the United States on Friday to die of it. Health officials so far have identified 12 cases treated in Washington. King County has monitored more than 500 people for signs of the illness, and...

San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City currently make up 42 percent of the United States homeless population. These so-called sanctuary cities are in a mess. Due to decades of misguided and faulty policies, homelessness is a serious problem. Over half a million people go homeless on a single night in the United States. But that’s no reason for homeless people to crash into your backyard and stay there because the cops tell you that they will arrest you if you remove them! This might sound horrifying but one video that surfaced over the weekend shows a homeowner in...

(warning upset West Hollywood, California home owner that is not happy about street bums living on his property uses a little profanity) Look at the homeless epidemic in Los Angeles due to failed liberal policies, high taxes, and high crime. Police are now demanding citizens allow homeless people to camp on their private property, threatening this man with arrest if he moves them. https://twitter.com/MichaelCoudrey/status/1233928266764828672 

The homeless problem in San Francisco is out of control. Also, the poop problem is huge. San Francisco residents reported more than 30,000 cases of poop to authorities in 2019, city records show. What was once a hub for newcomers is leaving a bad taste in the mouths of its former residents as more and more citizens of the San Francisco Bay Area are jumping ship at a record-breaking pace. This is what happens when one party has been in control for TOO many years. Pelosi needs to go and maybe DeAnna Lorraine is the person who will replace her....

HUD Secretary declares, 'In God We Trust' Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson plans to call on all churches, synagogues, and mosques in America to help fight homelessness in the weeks and months to come. “If every church would adopt one homeless person or one homeless family, with the goal of making them self-sufficient in a year, can you imagine what the impact would be?” Carson asked in an interview with Just the News for the Pod's Honest Truth podcast. HUD officials say this is not a new agency policy but rather a personal call by a man...

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif) is proposing to solve the homeless problem in his state by authorizing doctors to prescribe housing. "Having a comfortable and safe place to live is just as important to a person's health as insulin or antibiotics," he asserted. "Armed with a prescription from a doctor, a homeless person could then draw upon Medicaid resources to either buy a home or pay rent." Newsom called his idea "pure genius. Right now, there is no legal mandate for guaranteeing housing for the homeless. Ten million Californians, one in four, suffer from some type of behavioral health condition. This...

The vagrant whose alleged threats got a homeless outreach nonprofit to flee the transit hub in fear last weekend was holding court — and spewing hate at cops — there Thursday. Eugene Watts was spotted sipping a brown-bag beer in the station one day after The Post reported that embattled nonprofit Bowery Residents Committee up and abandoned its satellite office there because he allegedly threatened to shoot workers. -snip BRC is under contract with Amtrak to run the outreach office to help the dozens of homeless people who frequent Penn Station on a regular basis. BRC has a separate contract with the...

We can really just chalk up this next story to California being California in the most California way. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave his State of the State address on Wednesday to a joint session of the California Legislature and told the predominantly controlled by Democrats body that of a new proposal that would allow doctors to write out prescriptions for housing as part of a five-point plan to combat California’s homelessness situation.

NBC LA published a story this week focused on the problem of human feces on the streets of Los Angeles. There are an estimated 36,000 homeless in the city (60,000 in LA County) but the city only has 16 portable toilets and those are removed at night. The result is people using streets, sidewalks, and even businesses as bathrooms: In one act caught on camera, a homeless man is seen waking up on South Hope Street. He unbuckles his belt, walks over to the front door of a business, pulls down his pants, and defecates right on the door...

The Central Coast is getting a new beachfront campground. California State Parks has been trying to build campsites at Fort Ord Dunes State Park for more than a decade and the project is finally moving forward. Advertisement "This spring we are really excited to announce that we are going out to bid," said State Parks Monterey District Superintendent Brent Marshall. State Parks has received all of the necessary permits and Marshall said construction on the $25 million project could start as soon as this fall. The campground will be nestled between the dunes and out of the view of Highway...

Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to make it easier for the government to force psychiatric treatment for people with mental illness and expand statewide a still-developing test program that allows officials to more easily take control over those deemed unable to care for themselves. In a State of the State address Wednesday devoted almost entirely to the issue of homelessness, the Democratic governor said the state should broaden those laws “within the bounds of deep respect for civil liberties and personal freedoms — but with an equal emphasis on helping people into the life-saving treatment that they need at the precise...

I came back from a flight last night around midnight at Terminal A gate 15 and was surprised by all the homeless sleeping in the area around baggage claim and in the hallways. I guess they take the DART train to the A terminal and sleep the night, and are rounded out in the morning. This situation makes Dallas county and the DFW airport look bad at their ineptness to deal with homelessness. I heard about this situation about 2 weeks ago and called Fox affiliate KDFW channel 4 and they brushed it off. I should have taken video but...

The owner of Vince Young Steakhouse says homelessness in Austin is reaching a boiling point... The first real major incident that I had was I had my head split open,” Brown said in an interview. “We had a guy, he was knocking over tables on our patio.” When he called 911, he said the man believed to be homeless hit him in the head. He needed 13 stitches. Then about six months ago, he found a man relieving himself in the parking lot. When Brown asked him to leave, Brown said the man responded, “This is Austin. We can do...

After former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger applauded President Trump for addressing California’s housing and homeless crisis, the former movie star appeared on Fox News on Sunday to explain how the state became plagued by sky-high prices for housing. “When it comes down to it, California was going through a period where we had kind of had a no-growth movement,” Schwarzenegger told “The Next Revolution” with Steve Hilton. “Therefore there was no supply anymore so the demand became bigger and bigger and the prices of homes now went up,” Schwarzenegger said, referencing California's “no-growth movement” causing a “disruption” in the supply...

... Skid Row is the epicenter of L.A.’s addiction crisis. More than 12,000 homeless meth and heroin addicts pass through here each year, with thousands living in the vast network of tent encampments that line the sidewalks. For decades, L.A. has centralized public services in this tiny city-within-a-city. The result: it’s become an iron cage of the social state, with the highest concentration of homelessness, addiction, and overdose deaths in Los Angeles County. Fire Station 9, which covers Skid Row, is now the busiest firehouse in America, responding to 35,518 calls for service last year, including a record-high number of...

People leaving the Golden State are changing the political makeup of the states they move to. President Trump clearly hates the most populous state in the country he governs. While trashing California with his gutter mouth, the president has used his office to physically trash the home to nearly one in eight Americans — seeking to make its air more polluted, its water less clean, its forests more vulnerable to catastrophic fires.But now the Golden State is poised to strike back. By moving its presidential primary from June to March 3, California will finally exert a political influence commensurate to...

BART has lost nearly 10 million night and weekend passengers in just four years at a time when the region is enthusiastically promoting a transit first philosophy. Data from the four-county rail system shows the disconnect between Bay Area transportation habits and purported Bay Area values. Though trains continue to fill during rush hour, fewer people are riding BART to museums, parks or shopping centers.

The Trump administration’s new homelessness czar is proposing a wholesale shift in the country’s philosophy for aiding the unhoused, potentially upending existing approaches as big cities and states struggle with the deepening problem. Robert Marbut, the head of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the top federal body on the issue, blames the rise in homelessness in large part on a policy called “Housing First,” which was conceived in the 1990s in New York City and soon became best practice but whose definition has since become contested. It aims to get people a reliable home before focusing on services such...

Gilles Desaulniers moved to San Francisco 40 years ago, settling in the ‘friendly, quaint and affordable’ city after running out of cash while driving from Canada down the West Coast of America. Today he runs a grocery store filled with fresh fruit, vegan snacks and organic wines typical of this famously liberal Californian city. But Gilles has shut one outlet and would sell up entirely if anyone wanted this one, his remaining shop. Each day, up to 30 people stroll in and openly steal goods, costing him hundreds of dollars.

A number of Alameda County, California, homeowners were less than pleased to find out they are being forced to split the cost of a roughly $20,000 cleanup effort undertaken to remove a local homeless encampment. According to KPIX, the now-abandoned encampment, situated by a creek adjacent to Walsh Property Management’s 75-residence Castro Valley housing development, was made known to local authorities as early as 2017. Misunderstandings, however, as to whose land the camp sat on and who would be responsible — Alameda County, East Bay Regional Parks or the nearby development’s Lakewood Home Owners Association — led to nearly 2...