Free Republic

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — A Mexican drug trafficker faces the potential of decades in federal prison after the Drug Enforcement Agency arrested him for peddling fentanyl from a homeless encampment in Bellingham. Prosecutors say Rigoberto Vasquez-Martinez, 32, had a "fortified compound" inside the encampment, which included armed security around the structure where he stayed. The city of Bellingham is in the process of trying to clear the encampment behind the Walmart on Stuart Road after years of shootings, explosions, overdoses, and drug crimes. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle, Vasquez-Martinez was a significant supplier of drugs in Bellingham and...

The city of Vancouver was built by serious Christians.... It is now a cesspit of crime, drugs, human trafficking, child sex and money laundering. The city has been taken over by a consortium of cartels, Asian and Mexican, who own through their funding of a proliferation of social justice activist groups, members of the city council, the judiciary, as well as members of the provincial and federal government, particularly those in immigration who rubber stamp the papers of the worst criminals from across the Asian world. They are all here now. The pickings are just too good. You are next...

A pair of St. Louis homeowners are suing the city after a homeless couple set up camp outside their homes and the mayor told cops not to intervene. Two Missouri residents are fed up after dealing with a homeless encampment on their front lawn for three years. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Richard Baumhoff and Steven McClanahan, who alleged that St. Louis have refused to intervene in the crisis despite the many requests. Baumhoff and McClanahan have claimed that the homeless couple are 'scary, smelly and noisy,' according to their attorney W. Bevis Schock. 'For three years there have...

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is facing criticism from Hollywood residents as homeless encampments are returning despite her efforts to move people from the streets into hotels and motels. Under her predecessor, Eric Garcetti, and under California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the focus of homeless policy in the state has been to use government money to pay for hotel or motel rooms for homeless people, offering them alternative accommodation. But that approach does not address the root causes of the problem: mental illness; drug abuse; permissive law enforcement; and the high cost of living in the state, especially when it...

Homeless families already in emergency shelters, including migrants from other countries, may be eligible for a state-run program that provides up to $30,000 over two years to find stable housing. The program, HomeBASE, has long served homeless families with children or pregnant women living in the emergency shelter system, which provides temporary housing under state’s decades-old right-to-shelter law. About half of the shelter system houses Massachusetts residents, according to state officials. Resettlement agencies are also working with Gov. Maura Healey’s administration to stand up a pilot program that would, according to one draft plan, help up to 400 migrants in...

The homeless crisis in America is set to come to a head with a Supreme Court ruling as early as this spring, in the case of Johnson v. City of Grants Pass, Oregon.The Supreme Court could—depending on what it decides—force changes in city ordinances and homeless policies across the country.The decision is one of the most anticipated in years for San Francisco and other cities facing legal challenges from homeless people and advocacy groups.At the heart of the case is the challenge by three homeless people to ordinances in the Oregon town of Grants Pass that prohibit homeless people “from...

This Isn’t A Third World Country, An Apocalypse Didn’t Happen, A Nuclear Warhead Didn’t Detonate…. This Is Democrat Run Oakland, California “Of all the bad places I've been to in the United States, I don't know if I've ever been to a city that's as vastly rundown, abandoned, and out of control as Oakland, California. This is the side of town where most of the homeless camps are located. Some look like something you'd see in Haiti, lean to shacks made of recovered junk that serve as 4 walls and a roof but that's just about it. Other areas just...

The number of homeless people in New York City’s shelter system skyrocketed 53% over the past year — driven by the unrelenting surge of migrants, according to Mayor Eric Adams’s preliminary management report released Tuesday. The report compares data and performance of city agencies for the first four months of the fiscal year — July through October of 2023 — with the same period in 2022. “During the first four months of Fiscal 2024, the average number of individuals in shelter per day increased by 53 percent compared to the same period in Fiscal 2023, driven by the unprecedented increase...

The San Francisco Center, once a thriving mall home to the largest Nordstrom in America, is a shell of its former self after a string of high-profile departures.. Staff and shoppers in the mall, where five more stores closed in January .. crime and falling foot traffic is ruining the palatial building.. The mall lost $1 billion in value last year ... The mall's cavernous, marble-floored atrium is eerily quiet. There's not a single shopper in sight and a litany of abandoned stores lay mostly empty, but for a few leftover cardboard boxes or fading signs which serve as a...

(The Center Square) – A universal income program partially funded by the city of Denver that pays homeless people a regular stipend is eligible to migrants as long as they meet the criteria, according to the city. The Denver Basic Income Program, which was started in 2021 with the aid of $2 million from the city of Denver, announced it will go at least six months more beginning in February 2024. The $2 million the city gave Denver Basic Income Project in 2022 was “earmarked for women, families and transgender and gender non-conforming individuals,” according to a city statement to...

A growing number of Americans are ending up homeless as soaring rents in recent years squeeze their budgets. According to a Jan. 25 report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, roughly 653,000 people reported experiencing homelessness in January of 2023, up roughly 12% from the same time a year prior and 48% from 2015. That marks the largest single-year increase in the country's unhoused population on record, Harvard researchers said.

Caves equipped with tables, chairs and even beds — that's what officials in Modesto say the homeless along the Tuolumne River were living in, up until a clean-up last weekend. Police tape and barricades went up Wednesday along the river near Crater Avenue and Dallas Street in Modesto, meant to keep the homeless out. “They’re building some interesting caves," said Brian Brandenburg, who lives in the neighborhood and walks his dog along the river every day. Brandenburg always knew the homeless sought shelter in the area but didn’t know to what extent, until volunteers and officers with Modesto Police’s Community...

Being a resident of the Big Apple can really bite. Sure, living in the city that doesn’t sleep has its perks — access to world-renowned art, first-rate restaurants, a vibrant array of global cultures, to name a few. Yeah, yeah. That’s all great. But being a New Yorker isn’t all Tony-winning shows on Broadway and late-night cocktails at Zero Bond. In fact, a griping group of Gothamites has taken to social media to reveal some of the most distressing mishaps they’ve endured while in the survival-of-the-fittest struggle that is life in the concrete jungle.

A woman may have unknowingly passed the ghost of a supposed ancient Hawaiian warrior while running through a rainforest. Kay Borleis was running the Hawaiian Ultra Running Team’s Trail 100-Mile Endurance Run on the Honolulu Mauka trails in Oahu in January 2019 when she had the spooky encounter. 'To this day, we still don’t know what it was,' said Borleis, a senior art director, in a blog post. The race, known as HURT 100, is a 20-mile loop through the rainforests that participants run five times. Borelis' friend Cassie was running the fourth lap with her when Cassie snapped the...

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to weigh in on whether homeless individuals have the right to camp on public property. The issue is the biggest SCOTUS case in decades on the rights of the homeless, and the decision has the potential to impact how cities across the U.S. handle the homelessness crisis. Grants Pass, located in southwestern Oregon with a population of nearly 40,000, requested that the high court review a lower court decision that ruled it unconstitutional to punish homeless residents for camping on public property when no shelter alternatives are unavailable. According to court filings, there are...

Portland, Oregon has a serious homeless problem and now it’s about to get worse. Much worse. The disease of Shigella is spreading in the city, mostly through the homeless population, and to make matters worse, it spreads in a disgusting way, through fecal matter. Aside from the ethical matter of allowing people to live on the street, one of the biggest issues is the threat to public health. This is why you don’t want a large population of people living in tents and using streets as a bathroom. FOX News reports: Portland health officials report waste-borne illness rampant among city’s...

A highly contagious infection that is spread through tiny particles of fecal matter has broken out in Portland - with officials warning that the homeless population are most at risk of catching the illness. Shigella is a bacteria that spreads through human feces. People transmit the infection after getting the microbes on their hands and then touching their mouths. People can also spread the intestinal infection through sexual intercourse. Multnomah County in Oregon has warned that homeless people and same-sex male partners are most at risk because of their lack of access to hygienic facilities. In the last month, 45...

The head of the Illinois Chapter of the NAACP has been suspended over her inflammatory comments about migrants. Teresa Haley made the remarks during a Zoom call in October, where she labeled the more than 25,000 new arrivals 'savages' and 'rapists'. The soundbite soon went viral, and eventually elicited both an apology from Haley, and a statement from the seminal civil rights group. In a statement, the Baltimore-based agency confirmed it had suspended Haley, 58, on December 13 - the day before she issued her apology. When contacted Thursday, the NAACP did not immediately offer information or clarification on the...

The man from the Bay Area will stand trial this week after a county DA's office filed a complaint against him—consolidating 31 misdemeanors from the past year. A serial shoplifter from the Bay Area who has been arrested 90 times will be put to trial this week after the Contra Costa District Attorney’s office filed a complaint against him—consolidating 31 misdemeanors from the past year. Jesse Leonardo Otero, 44, is well-known by Bay Area businesses and law enforcement for his frequent shoplifting and arrests, local news outlet KRON reported. Mr. Otero was released Dec. 8 from the Martinez Detention Facility...

Members of Seattle, Washington’s Parks and Recreation department, along with city police, removed a community garden planted in Cal Anderson Park as part of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 on Wednesday. City officials said in a statement that the "makeshift," temporary garden was being removed because of public health and safety concerns, as well as for maintenance reasons including reseeding and turf restoration. The efforts on Wednesday also included the removal of tent encampments located near the garden and outside the park along E. Olive Street, which city officials said was to ensure the public spaces remain clean...