Free Republic

The No. 1 job of a mayor, above everything else, is to keep his or her city functioning. Yet with people dying on the cold streets of New York and trash building up in parts of the city, New York is by no means functioning. Not even close. The snow and frigid temps have tested Gotham’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani and, alas, he has not risen to the occasion. Rather, he’s left the city a mess. Everest-size mountains of garbage have popped up. Unremoved snow, ice and road salt have damaged Con Edison electrical equipment, contributing to power outages. Most...

The Big Apple is about to take on a new name -- Tent City, or Filth City. Or perhaps Lepto City, after leptospirosis, a bacterial infection increasingly found in homeless encampments. New York's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is barring the New York Police Department from closing down encampments. Since Mamdani previewed his policy in December, new encampments are emerging in many neighborhoods. The consequences are dire both for vagrants and for the city's viability. Between Friday, when the city was hit with a bone-chilling winter storm, and Sunday night, eight people were found dead outdoors, suggesting they were homeless. Mamdani...

Within weeks of Zohran Mamdani being sworn into office in New York City, homeless encampments have popped back up in Manhattan after he vowed on the campaign trail to stop clearing them away. The democratic socialist, who took office on the first of the year, said in December he would stop the destruction of homeless encampments in the city - a hallmark of the previous administration led by Eric Adams. 'They are simply pushing New Yorkers who are living in the cold to another place where they will live in the cold,' Mamdani said at the time. In the 23...

Federal prosecutors announced Friday that the head of a South Los Angeles charity was arrested on wire-fraud charges, accused of stealing more than $23 million meant to help people experiencing homelessness — and spending some of it on luxury travel, including stays at a Maui resort featured in HBO’s “The White Lotus.” Authorities say Alexander Soofer, 42, ran Abundant Blessings, a Hyde Park-based nonprofit that received more than $23 million in homelessness funding between 2018 and 2025. Prosecutors allege he pocketed at least $10 million for a $7 million Westwood home, private jet trips, designer shopping and a vacation property...

Residents in a trendy apartment building in Denver, Colorado say their peaceful lives turned into a nightmare when homeless families were given free apartments next door. Owen Johnson, a 25-year-old from Missouri, says he moved into the White Swan apartment building near the city's Congress Park in May with his wife. But Johnson says their honeymoon period after tying the knot was quickly ruined when a homeless man was given a state housing voucher to move into the apartment next to theirs, and he says it dawned on them the tenant 'was crazy.'

An outbreak of deadly bacteria at a Bay Area homeless encampment has sparked urgent calls for action in Los Angeles, with officials warning the disease may already be circulating in the city. The bacterial disease leptospirosis was found in rats at encampments in the hippie college town of Berkeley, leading health officials there to issue an urgent warning to the homeless to clear out. Officials told them to relocate at least a third of a mile from the “red zone” encompassing several square blocks as soon as possible. The warning comes as authorities attempted remove the encampment last year but...

Actor David Spade raising awareness that a bill was introduced in California to audit where the $20+ billion dollars in missing homeless money went, it passed but then Gavin Newsom VETOED the bill to block the investigation Yes, this really happened. He blocked bills for an audit MULTIPLE TIMES Bipartisan bill AB 2903 (unanimous passed 72-0 in the Assembly, 40-0 in the Senate) would’ve forced annual public reports on where the money went Newsom vetoed it. Gavin Newsom also vetoed similar bills AB 2570 and AB 2093 “The same broader problem with people paying taxes in California — The homeless,...

Seattle drug addicts have praised the city's new mayor for allegedly telling cops not to arrest people doing illegal substances on the crime-ridden city's streets. One 36-year-old local, who gave his name as Brandon, told the Daily Mail on Wednesday that Mayor Katie Wilson is 'cool' after her office and Seattle's progressive city attorney Erika Evans reportedly plotted to avoid prosecuting most public drugs use cases. Brandon, who lives on the streets because he prefers them to his taxpayer-funded apartment, said of Wilson's new plans: 'They tried to do that already during Covid. We went buck wild! I'm not gonna...

A man who allegedly ambushed two police officers after luring them to a transit center with a bogus 911 call has been charged, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital that reveal new details about the attack. The officer-involved shooting took place in downtown Bellevue, Washington, at around 12:25 p.m. Friday at the Bellevue Transit Center. Bellevue is a city located just east of Seattle. The suspect, Mohamed Morray Bangura, 38, calmly spoke with the officers for several seconds, pretending to point out an argument he reported on 911, according to charging documents. That's when he allegedly suddenly unzipped...

A tourist viciously stabbed by a crazed homeless woman inside a bathroom at Macy’s Herald Square had been changing her 10-month-old daughter at the time, sources told The Post. The 38-year-old mom, who was visiting from California, was in the seventh-floor bathroom with her baby when she was repeatedly knifed Thursday afternoon, the sources said. The victim suffered knife wounds to her back, shoulder and arm in the unhinged attack that unfolded during the holiday shopping rush at the packed flagship store in Midtown. The alleged attacker, Kerri Aherne, 43, was arrested on charges of attempted murder, assault and weapon...

It is always amazing that, in a place where liberal Democrats have reigned supreme for decades, and say they want a change, their answer always seems to be, "If we just elect some new Democrats..." Since he came on the scene during the summer, the entire nation has been able to see what's coming once Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani gets sworn into office. He is an unapologetic socialist and will implement ridiculous and useless socialist ideas in the Big Apple. When it comes to the city's homeless population, even Democrat Mayor Eric Adams knew there had to be some restrictions. But...

Voters in Texas' capital overwhelmingly rejected a plan to raise taxes to pay millions for homeless services last week, but that isn't stopping local leaders from looking for the money in other places. The City of Austin is now proposing cutting millions in funding from the fire and ambulance services to give it the city's unsuccessful program for people on the streets. 'It's a slap in the face because they really aren't listening, and they really are steamrolling, whatever they want to do, and continuously trying to undermine the public will,' local public safety advocate Cleo Petricek told Daily Mail...

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs … announced $84 million in grants to 176 organizations across the country to help veterans who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. Of the total amount, $42 million in grants will cover legal services and another $42 million in grants will go toward case management services to improve housing retention by veterans who are at risk of becoming homeless or who were previously homeless and are transitioning to permanent housing. Legal services grants will be distributed through VA’s Legal Services for Homeless Veterans and Veterans At-Risk for Homelessness Grants program and provide...

A Portland Democrat who once called for homeless individuals to be given housing suffered an ironic and cruel twist of fate last week. As The Oregonian reported, 51-year-old homeless man Vashon Locust was arrested on Tuesday after starting a fire that torched Portland City Councilor Candace Avalos’ townhome and car. He faces charges of reckless burning, second-degree mischief, and trespassing. These are all misdemeanors. According to a police affidavit obtained by the paper, Locust snuck into a shed near Avalos’ home on October 26 and attempted to use an electric outlet. When that failed, he set a fire to stay...

A new study from a pair of think tanks has found that massive amounts of money, taxpayer dollars that are meant to combat the ongoing homelessness crisis, are in fact being used to further the left’s political goals. This might explain why the homeless problem seems to get worse each year despite the fact that we throw billions of dollars at efforts to solve it. FOX News reports: A new study just exposed the corruption behind America’s homelessness crisisFor years, Americans have been told that “compassion” for the homeless meant writing ever-larger checks – more money, more programs and far...

“We would not eat.” That is how disabled U.S. Navy veteran Juan Saro described a life without the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP…About 1.2 million veterans are enrolled now, according to the National Council on Aging. More than 20,000 military families, 213,000 National Guard and Reserve members, and more than 1 million veterans, rely on such benefits, according to Veteran.com. Saro survived a brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his time in the Navy. He later worked as a sixth-grade teacher. But COVID-related health problems made it impossible to stay in the classroom. The veteran now...

With the arrests and federal indictments of two California men announced on Thursday, we're now getting an idea of how California's billions of dollars to "end homelessness" vanished without a trace. Instead of helping to solve the problem of rampant tent encampments filled with addicts on the beaches and streets in California, things got worse. Where did all that money go? An audit in 2024 revealed that no one knew how the homeless money was spent. I wrote about this in "No Wonder Gavin Newsom Didn't Want an Audit to Track $24 Billion in Homeless Spending." The audit revealed that...

Federal investigators accuse Charlotte community activist Cedric Dean of exploiting homeless people to defraud Medicaid out of millions of dollars.

It's apparently the latest trend in Los Angeles. Homeless encampments aren't just popping up in parks and sidewalks anymore. Now, they're taking over some private lots, too. "It's just sketchy," said Samantha Rene, a Koreatown resident. The encampment sits at Hoover and San Marino Streets, right next to an apartment complex and close to a place of worship. Hoover Elementary School is just two blocks away, and many young students need to pass it to get to school. "Sometimes when I pass by, they're always like screaming, fighting or sometimes they're like doing this," said Jayleen Alas, a 4th grader,...

MADISON, Wis. -- Jaytona Lockhart is living on the streets of Madison. "I'm not gonna be homeless too long, you know what I'm saying? It's just for a season," he said. "I work myself into getting some resources to help me find some housing." Lockhart and others facing housing insecurity watch as the Dairy Drive tiny homes and the Veteran's Museum homeless encampment are shut down and the permanent men's shelter on the city's east side is built, all changing the landscape of homelessness in the community and highlighting a growing problem. "We have teams of providers that go out...