Tag: homelessness

San Francisco buys vodka shots for homeless alcoholics in taxpayer-funded program

The City of San Francisco is providing free beer and vodka shots to homeless alcoholics at taxpayer expense under a little-known pilot program. 

The “Managed Alcohol Program” operated by San Francisco’s Department of Public Health serves regimented doses of alcohol to voluntary participants with alcohol addiction in an effort to keep the homeless off the streets and relieve the city’s emergency services. Experts say the program can save or extend lives, but critics wonder if the government would be better off funding treatment and sobriety programs instead.

“Established in countries such as Canada and Australia, a managed alcohol program is usually administered by a nurse and trained support staff in a facility such as a homeless shelter or a transitional or permanent home, and is one method to minimize harm for those with alcohol use disorder,” the California Health Care Foundation explains in an 2020 article describing the pilot program. 

“By prescribing limited quantities of alcohol, the model aims to prevent potentially life-threatening effects of alcohol withdrawal, such as seizures and injuries.” 

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Ohio Pastor Criminally Charged for Letting People Sleep In Church. Again.

An Ohio pastor is once again being brought up on criminal charges for sheltering people in his church.

On Friday, the city of Bryan, Ohio refiled charges against Chris Avell, the pastor of Dad’s Place, for fire and zoning code violations related to his operation of a 24-hour “Rest and Refresh” ministry at the church’s downtown building.

The city argues the church’s 24-hour ministry is in fact just a residential homeless shelter, which is not allowed at the commercially zoned property. The fire code violations make it not only unauthorized but also unsafe. Each violation, if not corrected, is punishable by a $1,000 daily fine.

“We appreciate that Dad’s Place has tried to help people in need,” said Bryan Mayor Carrie Schlade in a statement. “But putting these people’s lives at risk in the case of a fire or other dangers is not helping them.”

“Here we are with the pastor facing new criminal charges for caring for people inside his church,” First Liberty Institute attorney Jeremy Dys, who is representing Dad’s Place, told Reason in an interview on Friday.

Reason covered Avell’s case back in January when he was first charged with 18 criminal counts for similar zoning and fire code violations.

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Behind the Badge: In New York City Homeless Shelters, the Same ‘Peace Officers’ Abuse Residents

In April 2018, at a New York City intake center for homeless families, Melina Cardona and five other city employees handcuffed a woman who had just walked in to get information about emergency housing. They applied the cuffs in a manner “so excessive,” they fractured her arm.

At the time, Cardona was a peace officer with the New York City Department of Homeless Services Police, an obscure, approximately 700-member agency that maintains security throughout the shelters the city owns and operates. Department of Homeless Services (DHS) officers “work with New York City’s most vulnerable population,” as a former deputy commissioner said in a recent recruitment video.

They are “the original community police officers.”

Although DHS’s peace officers are given broad powers, they are not police officers. They carry non-lethal weapons such as pepper spray, batons, and Tasers, and they are given the power to detain, not arrest. Nevertheless, they have been training with the NYPD since 2017.

And peace officers still have the ability to mistreat the people they are employed to protect. An investigation by a team of journalists reporting for MuckRock and New York Focus offers a first-of-its-kind look at how these officers are held accountable — and how long their behavior can go unchecked. Previously-unreleased disciplinary files show that it often takes DHS a half a year or more to suspend officers found guilty of misconduct. Those who do land a timely suspension tend to be back at work within a month.

If they’ve done it once, they’re likely to do it twice: Through public records requests, MuckRock and New York Focus uncovered disciplinary incidents involving 31 officers, many of them repeat offenders. Just three officers were involved in more than a third of all incidents.

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How effective are California’s homelessness programs? Audit finds state hasn’t been keeping track

California spent $24 billion to tackle homelessness over the past five years but didn’t consistently track whether the huge outlay of public money actually improved the situation, according to state audit released Tuesday.

With makeshift tents lining the streets and disrupting businesses in cities and towns throughout California, homelessness has become one of the most frustrating and seemingly intractable issues in the country’s most populous state. An estimated 171,000 people are homeless in California, which amounts to roughly 30% of all of the homeless people in the U.S.

Despite the roughly billions of dollars spent on more than 30 homeless and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, California doesn’t have reliable data needed to fully understand why the problem didn’t improve in many cities, according to state auditor’s report.

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Fury as Boston plans to fill former veteran housing with migrants as city asks residents to take people in

Massachusetts residents are outraged at recently announced plans to turn a former Boston area veteran housing unit into a homeless shelter as the city is inundated with migrants.

Democrat Governor Maura Healey revealed the government will turn the former Chelsea Soldiers’ Home facility, which is vacant and scheduled for demolition, into a safety-net site in April.

It will be able to accommodate 100 families who are eligible for the state’s Emergency Assistance family shelter system, which has been operating at capacity for months. 

Residents of the Bay State, however, are furious that the former veteran housing facility is being turned into migrant shelter when on a single night in 2023 there were 545 veterans experiencing homelessness in Massachusetts, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Local Dick McGrath said on Facebook: ‘Is it me, or is there something wrong with putting migrants in the Chelsea Soldiers Home instead of homeless veterans?’

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‘It’s going to be war’: Hundreds of furious Brooklyn residents take to the streets to protest planned homeless shelter for 150 men

Thousands of protesters descended on a Brooklyn neighborhood Saturday to protest a planned homeless shelter that will house only men.

The shelter, proposed by the city, will be a 32-room hotel with a community facility, and will provide services like case management, housing placement, and community partnerships that will work to provide the men with jobs.

The planned site is located in heavily residential Bensonhurst, where locals have expressed unease over the site’s proximity to several schools.

City officials have shot back that the neighborhood is one of few in the five boroughs without a shelter, and that residents have had ample notice, being notified back in November.

Unswayed, residents, business owners, and politicians in the mostly Asian neighborhood came together Saturday to say no to the city’s plans, as Mayor Eric Adams‘ administration works to address the city’s rapidly rising homeless rate.

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Homelessness Rises Among US Veterans For 1st Time In 12 Years As Immigration Crisis Escalates

As national, state, and local governments continue to spend billions of dollars to house, feed, clothe, and provide medical care for millions of illegal immigrants, homelessness among U.S. veterans has risen dramatically for the first time in 12 years.

A recent report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) details a 7.4 percent increase in veteran homelessness between 2022 and 2023 and estimates that more than 35,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. Over the course of a year, according to the report, almost twice as many veterans may experience homelessness. In total, HUD estimates that nearly 13 percent of the homeless adult population are veterans.

Kate Monroe, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and CEO of VetComm.us, calls this situation “the ultimate betrayal” by the U.S. government. She is also a California Republican congressional candidate.

“What they are trying to do is get as many people into the U.S. as they can,” she told The Epoch Times. “And what we’re saying to our homeless veterans is that we as a country don’t care. It’s no wonder why recruiting is down by 20 percent.”

According to a November 2023 report by the Homeland Security Republican Committee, the money spent on illegal migrants could cost Americans up to $451 billion by the end of this year. According to NYC.gov, the official website for New York City, the Big Apple alone doled out $1.45 billion in 2023 to provide food, shelter, and services to tens of thousands of immigrants. Several published reports indicate that Chicago paid $138 million during the past year to house, feed, and care for illegal immigrants.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform reports that the state of California, which had the highest number of immigrants in 2023—more than 160,000—spent some $22.8 billion for their care in 2023. California has also become the first state to offer health insurance for all illegal immigrants.

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Good Times, Bad Times: Eviction Edition

Happy Tuesday and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. Despite the ink still wet on many state-level YIMBY reforms prodding local governments to allow housing, we’re already witnessing a concerted counter-revolution from the forces of local control. This week’s stories include:

  • Slow-growth activists in the Boston-adjacent suburb of Milton, Massachusetts, have successfully overturned state-required zoning reforms that allowed apartments near the town’s train stations.
  • Local governments in Florida are trying to defang a new state law allowing residential high-rises in commercial zones with lawsuits and regulatory obstructions.
  • A lawsuit against Arlington, Virginia’s exceedingly modest “missing middle” reforms that were passed last year trundles on.

But first, our lead item is a short take on how America’s overregulated, undersupplied housing market turns good things, like economic growth, into bad things, like more evictions.

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This Is A Tale Of Two Americas, And Those At The Bottom Of The Economic Food Chain Are Being Hit Extremely Hard

If you have plenty of money and you are able to shield yourself from what is happening to the tens of millions of people that are wallowing in poverty, life in America is still good in 2024.  Stock prices have been hovering near record highs, and companies that cater to the rich and famous have been raking in the cash.  But for most of the rest of the country, things are not going so well.  Homelessness has been rising at the fastest rate we have ever seen, crime is out of control all over the nation, and large companies are laying off workers at a very frightening pace.

If you live in the version of America that is still living the high life, good for you.

But if you live in the version of America that the rest of us live in, conditions are rapidly deteriorating.

Earlier today, I came across an article in the San Francisco Standard that detailed what life is like in Oakland, California these days…

A Prius hanging out of a dumpster. Stripped-down cars. Burning trash cans. These are some of the East Oakland sights set to a new catchphrase that’s blowing up on social media: “Oakland, California, … donde la vida no vale nada.”

Even cops, government officials, firefighters and kids are repeating the catchphrase on social media and on the streets of the Town.

That catchphrase was created by a man named Gregorio Ramon.

He has posted hundreds of videos on social media that document what is happening to the city where he has his home…

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LVMPD plans ‘tunnel sweeps’ of homeless people as part of Super Bowl security

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department tells FOX5 it will begin clearing homeless people from drainage tunnels next week for the Super Bowl.

But one homeless advocacy group says tunnels have already been thinned out.

“Since F1, the talk about the A’s coming here, the stadium, all the presence downtown, there’s definitely been more of a presence in trying to clear out the tunnels around the Strip, and to keep it cleared out, more so than in the past,” said Shine A Light Outreach Director Robert Banghart.

In fact, Banghart tells FOX5 there may already be 70% fewer people in tunnels near the Strip. He says around 30-40 people were living in a tunnel near the Rio but says right now, there may be only three or four people there.

“On the route I usually do, it seems in the underground tunnels around the Strip it’s down to bare minimum,” he said.

Shine A Light goes into drainage tunnels to provide emotional support, supplies and even an immediate way out of tunnel life if people choose. The group will get people into detox right away and work to place them into sober living and eventually into independent living.

“We’ll engage them in our IPATH program, which will be 18 months if they so choose. And every step of the way, we’re going to walk them through all the different levels of care,” said Banghart.

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