Posted on 07/08/2009 8:47:47 PM PDT by libh8er
The U.S. expects to send $1.5 billion in stimulus money Thursday to hundreds of communities around the country to prevent homelessness, including $1 million for Fresno to dismantle tent cities and move residents into privately owned apartments.
The novel experiment is one of hundreds of projects to be funded under the stimulus law intended to jump-start the economy. It will help people like Lana Meranda and her husband and stepmother, who have been living under a tarp enclosure with their pitbull puppy, Lucky, for 10 months, after a series of job losses and, in her stepmother's case, cancer.
"We can't get jobs in this situation," said Meranda, 54. "We aren't clean. We don't have the right clothes."
Last week, they became one of the first encampment families to move into an apartment the city is leasing from a private landlord.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to send the stimulus money to more than 500 cities, counties and communities for rent relief or other steps to prevent homelessness and assist those without homes. The funds are being distributed under a homelessness prevention program in the stimulus law to help millions of newly or nearly jobless Americans.
The money is being used in different ways:
_A nonprofit in eastern Idaho hopes to apply its stimulus funds toward one-time payments for rent or mortgages to those on the verge of losing their homes.
_Stockton, Calif., plans to buy foreclosed houses and renovate them as affordable housing.
_Franklin County, Pa., will use stimulus money to help families with back rent and utilities, moving costs, short-term storage and credit repair.
_In Reading, Pa., a coalition for the homeless plans to provide short-term rent aid and landlord-tenant mediation to prevent evictions.
What happens when the money runs out remains to be seen.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Great, another attack on property values!
I notice the key word in all these projects is ‘short-term’. What an awful thing to do, getting people exited and then pull the rug from under their feet. But hey, isn’t that the rat M.O.?
They’ll have the apartments trashed and unlivable in no time flat. Just the same old crap from the liberals.
The insanity never ends, does it?
Lots of new jobs from this program - not......
It might not be that bad of an idea, but in this case I suspect it will only make people cleaner, better dressed homeless and unemployed.
I wonder how many people in this country still believe the stimulus was anything but a means to fund pet liberal causes.
I won’t rent to them under these circumstances. No short term stuff for me. You are right, they will trash the units in 1 month, then leave the mess for us to repair. No dice.
Ever since the US closed the mental institutions they migrated to the underpass. Putting nuts together in a building should do it. History repeats itself.
Exactly right. There are no jobs, even for the clean and well dressed with homes. Sorry to disappoint you, Meranda.
I was in LA a few years ago staying at a motel near the airport (LAX). Kid you not, in the middle of the day - I saw an apparently homeless guy taking a dump right under a busy overpass ! Not in the middle of nowhere. Under an overpass near LAX airport !
The "stimulus" is just another liberal wealth transfer scheme from the producers to the parasites.
shovel ready!
A friend who lived in San Francisco told me she used to see “transients” taking dumps in the doorways of buildings in the middle of the day.
The big city tent cities were created by the homeless. Let them keep them. At least they police their own. There isn’t much you can do for an unbalanced person but lock them up or let her be with her own.
These people have a proven track record of failure. How exactly would it “stimulate” the economy to throw even more taxpayer money at them?
Wonder how many of these “transients” would be allowed to transit through Nancy Pelosi’s neighborhood.
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