Posted on 02/08/2022 10:44:46 PM PST by MAGA2017
SAN JOSE, Calif. — As the Bay Area continues to struggle under the weight of its homelessness crisis, officials and nonprofits are asking local residents to do more than hand out meals or donate spare change. They’re asking them to open up their homes.
Nearly 30,000 people are unhoused in the five-county Bay Area, and there isn’t nearly enough room in the region’s existing affordable housing developments. To fill the gaps, service providers increasingly are recruiting private landlords to take in homeless tenants. Some property owners are renting out entire units in exchange for agreements that the government or a nonprofit will cover the rent. Others are offering up spare bedrooms in their homes – sometimes in exchange for a small stipend, and sometimes as a purely charitable act.
But it’s hard to find owners willing to take a chance on someone down on their luck. At least one program recently ended because of a lack of landlord interest.
“This is something that someone can do when they just feel that despair of ‘oh my gosh, I just can’t stand seeing these poor people on the streets near my home,’ ” said Christi Carpenter, executive director of East Bay nonprofit Safe Time, which places unhoused college students and families in spare bedrooms for between one and six months. Since 2017, the group has made more than 60 placements.
Richmond Mayor Tom Butt recently partnered with the Rotary Club to match unhoused people with local landlords. The small program will be funded entirely by private donations and landlords will get one year’s rent in advance. The number of people Butt can house depends on donations and volunteer interest, but he already has two more landlords lined up.
(Excerpt) Read more at arcamax.com ...
***So sick of the term “homeless” or “homelessness” being used to describe these situations.***
They used to be known as “Bums, Tramps, Hobos”. Vagrancy laws were designed to keep them out of the cities.
When vagrancy laws were done away with they flooded the air conditioned libraries and free Museums in the hot summers and heated in winters, driving out many patrons of such places.
The big library in Tulsa had to close a floor due to them bringing in bedbugs.
Expect them to also bring in lice, fleas, bedbugs, and other nasties.
“The obvious solution is work camps. The state gets cheap labor, and the homeless get somewhere to live. But of course, that makes sense, and we don’t want that.”
In fact, those work camps did indeed exist in the early 20th century. Bums and hoboes could voluntarily enter. They had a place to sleep and small farms where they grew veggies and raised chickens. They were run by volunteer county aid societies.
IT CERTAINLY WOULD.
I already had a version of a ‘street bum’.
He was called my first Ex-husband.
Bay area must be a very high-priced area to live in. Seems like a lot of this problem would depend on what kind of people that homeowners are supposed to accommodate. Doesn’t seem like a place where many of those folks should be living. If there’s a lot of college students here, shouldn’t the college have affordable housing? Something about this doesn’t smell right.
Matt Bracken (Travis McGee) wrote a trilogy, the first of which is Enemies Foreign and Domestic. In the third(?) book, the government is helping themselves to “excess” space in makers’ homes and housing takers of favored flavors.
Bay area must be a very high-priced area to live in. Seems like a lot of this problem would depend on what kind of people that homeowners are supposed to accommodate. Doesn’t seem like a place where many of those folks should be living. If there’s a lot of college students here, shouldn’t the college have affordable housing? Something about this doesn’t smell right.
I know that I have read the first one (Enemies Foreign and Domestic). Wouldn’t mind reading the others.
Ah, gotcha.. (a response to my question about the acronym... ;^)
Thank you :)
All three are excellent. He’s written some other fiction ad well, also good.
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