Free Republic

The minister of a church in Kensington Market says she’s “heartbroken” and “extremely anxious” for those staying at an encampment there after receiving word that the city intends to evict its residents and clear the site on Friday morning. Rev. Canon Maggie Helwig of St. Stephen-In-The-Field Anglican Church on Bellevue Avenue told CP24 that the City of Toronto’s Encampment Office informed them on Wednesday night that it plans to remove the makeshift camp, which is located on a small plot of private and city-owned land just west of the church, sometime between 7 and 9 a.m. on Friday. “We have...

Homeless people stealing power caused $500 million of damage to an LA freeway. It will take three months to repair. 10 million people are inconvenienced because homeless people were allowed to steal electricity.

It’s hard to believe, but it seems that the clueless owners of the commercial buildings in downtown Berkeley and on Telegraph are pressing on with their campaign to ban sitting down. It appears that their proposal is still on the fast track for passage in mid-summer, in that convenient sweet spot when most students and many other residents are out of town and the Berkeley City Council can do its dirtiest deeds relatively unnoticed. Since there are already many well-organized opponents, passing an ordinance like this would be a guaranteed recipe for disruption: certainly demonstrations, possibly calls for boycotting businesses...

The Los Angeles City Council has approved an ordinance that awards the homeless so-called “squatters rights” to city sidewalks between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. The action resolves a lawsuit filed in 2003 by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of six homeless people who wanted an injunction against a 1968 law that prohibited people from sleeping on sidewalks. Police stopped enforcing the law after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that the law was a violation of the 8th Amendment’s ban against “cruel and unusual punishments” and said the law couldn't be implemented as...

Official numbers are inconsistent with overwhelming reality. Over the last few years, indigence has become an oversized scourge. In almost all avenues in the capital city, hundred Venezuelans beg for a loaf of bread and sleep on the outside, in streets, on sidewalks or under bridges. According to world experts in extreme poverty, beggary is a widespread phenomenon and the state is most accountable for it, as it "must ensure education, information, and health care, and deal with indigence and poverty." The Venezuelan state is deep in debt to thousand citizens who survive on what they can find in dumps,...

Several times a year I travel for business, and San Francisco is a regular destination.  I love the city itself, the food, the sights, the food, but there is one thing about SF that I can't stand. For some reason, every wild-eyed crzay, druggie or drunk thinks that I am their pot of gold.  I really don't understand how it works, but If I am walking ten blocks, fifteen smelly individuals will approach me looking for money for beer, pizza, fried chicken or chinese food.  Why they approach me, and not the lady dressed in the black leather jacket is...

While bird watchers and joggers passed by, the Arcata Police Department and homeless advocates were locked in a showdown adjacent to the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary on South I Street last week. Activists made their stand at "Camp Aerial" - a plot of City property west of the Little Lakes Industry development site. Events were punctuated by the delivery and removal of a B & B porta-potty, and culminated in the arrest of homeless advocate and self-described "Free" Tad Robinson on Friday afternoon. Monday, the activists set up a formal, if illegal, camping site with tents, an information table...

The Eugene Homeless Initiative's seven-week-old protest in downtown Eugene has reignited debate over how to deal with the city's homeless population. Tuesday morning, Melissa Mona, a member of the city's Human Rights Commission, crawled under a chain-link fence to send food, water, coffee and cigarettes up to "Traveler," who lodged himself in a cedar tree in the Lane County Park Blocks on Oct. 12. The city erected the fence last Friday to prevent pedestrians from getting hit on the head by items falling from Traveler's perch. His supporters say the city wants to starve him out of the tree by...