Tag: homelessness

California City Addresses Homeless Issue by Passing Sweeping Ban on Camping on Public Property

Homeless camps have been an ongoing problem for cities across the country for several years now, particularly in California.

In Fremont, the city council has addressed the problem by passing a sweeping bill which bans camping on all public property. It’s the sort of measure you could never imagine passing in Los Angeles, which has a massive problem with homelessness.

The Fremont ban acknowledges the fact that when you have homeless people camping out on sidewalks, it interferes with the lives of everyone else who lives in the city.

FOX News reported:

California city passes sweeping homeless encampment ban on all public property

A California city passed one of the nation’s strictest anti-homeless encampment ordinances to combat the ongoing crisis.

The Fremont City Council voted 6-1 Tuesday night in favor of the law which bans camping on any public property “including any street, sidewalk, park, open space, waterway, or banks of a waterway or any private property not designated and equipped for such camping” as well as “any land designated as a high fire risk area.”

“The purpose of this chapter is to maintain streets, parks and other public and private areas within the city in a clean, sanitary and accessible condition and to adequately protect the health, safety and public welfare of the community, while recognizing that, subject to reasonable conditions, camping and camp facilities associated with special events can be beneficial to the cultural and educational climate in the city,” the ordinance read.

It continued, “The use of streets and public areas within the city for camping purposes or for storage of personal property interferes with the rights of the public to use these areas for which they were intended.

The terms of the ban are pretty serious by California standards.

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Seattle Public Schools Sees Alarming 20% Spike In Student Homelessness After 30% Rise Last Year

Seattle Public Schools is seeing an alarming rise in the number of its students experiencing homelessness. 

As of October, the district reported 2,235 students experiencing homelessness since the school year began, a nearly 20% increase from last year’s 30% rise, KUOW/NPR reported. 

Homelessness has reached record levels nationwide, according to a recent HUD report. In Washington state, over 41,000 students experienced homelessness during the 2023-24 school year, a nearly 15% increase.

Jenny Allen, a McKinney-Vento support worker in Seattle, said rising costs and limited affordable housing are straining families, while the district has seen a rise in immigrants and refugees, particularly from South America.

The KUOW/NPR report said that at Dunlap Elementary, Rogers Greene, an eight-year veteran supporting unhoused students, now assists a growing number of families fleeing conflicts in countries like Ukraine and Afghanistan.

“I can’t imagine. You’re just dropped somewhere and then figure it out — figure out the language, figure out how you’re going to live, where you’re going to live, how you’re going to eat. It’s survival. So it’s important for us to have those connections, relationships, and work through the language barrier,” he said. 

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Homeless crisis in America GETTING WORSE as government continues to spend hundreds of billions on foreign aid

Homelessness in the United States has hit a record high, with over 770,000 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2024, according to the 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

This represents an alarming 18 percent increase from the previous year, and the actual number may be even higher because the report undercounts the true number of homeless individuals.

This crisis is particularly devastating for families with children, who saw a staggering 39 percent increase in homelessness, leaving nearly 150,000 children without stable housing. In contrast, the report shows a 55 percent reduction in veteran homelessness since 2009, with an eight percent decrease from 2023. (Related: Study finds home ownership in California has become increasingly unattainable due to disparities between wages and housing prices.)

This development is notable because of how it is contrasted with how much the United States has spent on other programs, such as foreign aid.

To date, the U.S. has provided about $310 billion in economic and military support to Israel and another $106 billion in assistance to Ukraine. These staggering numbers raise serious questions about the government’s priorities and its ability to address domestic issues like homelessness.

The report highlights that certain demographics are disproportionately affected by homelessness. Black people make up around 32 percent of the homeless population, despite comprising only 12 percent of the U.S. population. Veterans, who have seen the most progress in reducing homelessness, are a notable exception. The decline in veteran homelessness is attributed to targeted programs and efforts to quickly house homeless veterans.

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US homelessness up 18% as affordable housing remains out of reach for many people

The United States saw an 18.1% increase in homelessness this year, a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country, federal officials said Friday.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said federally required tallies taken across the country in January found that more than 770,000 people were counted as homeless — a number that misses some people and does not include those staying with friends or family because they do not have a place of their own.

That increase comes on top of a 12% increase in 2023, which HUD blamed on soaring rents and the end of pandemic assistance. The 2023 increase also was driven by people experiencing homelessness for the first time. The numbers overall represent 23 of every 10,000 people in the U.S., with Black people being overrepresented among the homeless population.

“No American should face homelessness, and the Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring every family has access to the affordable, safe, and quality housing they deserve,” HUD Agency Head Adrianne Todman said in a statement, adding that the focus should remain on “evidence-based efforts to prevent and end homelessness.”

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In Miami-Dade County, Federal Funding For “Affordable Housing” Displaces Working Class Minorities Of New Republican Coalition In Li’l Abner Trailer Park

One problem with trying to raise opposition to federal funding is that it’s hard to trace bureaucratic causes to human effects. That’s not the case this month in the city of Sweetwater, part of the greater Miami metropolitan area in Miami-Dade County. Here, in a neighborhood where glittering Christmas lights overlap with “Trump/Vance” signs in a county which Trump carried with 55% of the vote, and a state he carried with 56%, around 3,000 people are about to be displaced due to the Washington bureaucracy that Trump ran against. Matters are so bad that talk is that Washington might have to solve the homelessness problem that it helped to cause by using FEMA—an unsettling thought now that we know how FEMA treats Republican voters.

The formal displacer is Raul F. Rodriguez of CREI Holdings, the owner of Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park in Sweetwater, founded by his father, a Cuban immigrant who had grown up in a mobile home himself. But bigger forces are also at play. The main one is amped-up federal funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to Miami-Dade County, justified because of the seemingly endless and mostly better-off new arrivals escaping failing Democrat cities in New York, Illinois and California. New developments have to be built to house them, sometimes by tearing down buildings, and housing also has to be provided for the working and middle class locals that they are displacing. These new arrivals drive up general costs as well as property taxes, which pushes more locals out and raises the demand for cheaper housing s.

Enter “affordable housing,” which, like “diversity” and “ equity,” is a helpful-sounding phrase that benefits bureaucrats, Democrats, and the better-off. Not surprisingly, in Miami-Dade, “affordable housing” is allowing federal money to flow to citizens who need it the least , even as it supports the projects of well-placed contractors and government bureaucrats . The people most hurt by the funding, in the meantime, are like those in Sweetwater: working class people with nowhere to go. The specifics of the crisis this Christmas in Sweetwater give a sense of just what’s being lost, and why, and what it might mean for Miami-Dade.

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Biden White House Worked Directly with the City of Chicago to Place Immigrants Across the State While Leaving Homeless Chicagoans to Freeze

A recent FOIA request made by Terry Newsome of Behind Enemy Lines revealed that the Biden White House worked directly with the City of Chicago placing immigrants.

Throughout an email chain of 207 pages, City of Chicago officials, FEMA representatives, and a Special Assistant to the President of the United States discuss different locations for placing immigrants across the State of Illinois.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that FEMA had awarded approximately $20 million to the City of Chicago for food service contractors to feed illegal immigrants.

The award timeframe was from October 2022 to December 2024. This article also details the City of Chicago’s ‘Vendor Payments – New Arrivals Mission’ webpage detailing the $574.5 million that has been spent on the immigrant crisis thus far.

It’s relevant to note that the recent trove of FOIA emails between the White House, city officials, and FEMA reference an amount of $20 million being released from an embargo.

This could be the amount that was allocated to food services. However, the recent email chain only discusses placing immigrants in facilities, warming and transporting them in buses, and reports a detailed census on the new arrivals.

Given the context of the recent email chain, it’s plausible that the $20 million referenced could be in addition to the food services funds and reserved for these location and transportation services.

It has been established that the Federal Government has not only allowed the immigrant invasion at the border, but it has also funded it with tax dollars.

It is not surprising that distrust in government is at an all-time high. While Americans in Florida and North Carolina suffer from hurricane fallout, non-citizens are reaping the benefits of shelter, food, clothing, and cell phones.

Most egregious, the unit of government designated to deal with Emergency Response – FEMA – is funding the care for the illegal immigrants.

In other words, the government intentionally created an emergency of illegal immigration, diverted funds away from tax paying Americans who need emergency response, and applied them to non-citizens.

Things get more interesting as Special Assistant to the President of the United States, Molly Ritner, enters the scene.

City of Chicago officials had requested information from the White House on available Federal sites for housing illegals. Special Assistant Ritner provides the following:

“32 federal sites across the State of Illinois were identified as having vacant space — this included review of potential space across federal agencies including DOD.”

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Homeless man admits to torching mailbox, destroying ballots in Phoenix

A homeles Phoenix man was arrested on Thursday after he allegedly set fire to a US Postal Service collection box that contained numerous election ballots. 35-year-old Dieter Klofkorn was charged with one count of arson and booked into Maricopa County jail. He later confessed to the crime.

The Phoenix Fire Department contacted police shortly after 1 am on Thursday after they responded to a fire at a USPS collection box on Seventh Avenue, a press release stated. 

While working on leads in the case, investigators were led to possible suspect Klofkorn. He was arrested on an outstanding and unrelated warrant. While in custody, he admitted to the arson. “Klofkorn stated that he committed the arson because he wanted to be arrested and that his actions were not politically motivated and not related to anything involving the upcoming election,” the press release stated.

Klofkorn was said to have lit a piece of paper on fire and tossed it into the collection box, in which there were around 20 election ballots and other pieces of mail, which were destroyed, according to AZ Central. Social media users claimed that the fire was set by a Republican, with an official Democratic Party account on X spreading the claims. “But yeah, Democrats are the ones doing voter fraud,” wrote the Harris County, Texas Democratic Party X account in response to a post that claimed Klofkorn was a Republican. 

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SF says homeless tents down 60%; homeless haven’t gone anywhere, just tentless

Amid a tightening mayoral race, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced the number of homeless tents have declined 60% since peaking in July 2023. Meanwhile, homeless individuals say they’re still around and have simply ditched their tents to avoid being arrested under the mayor’s new enforcement of anti-camping laws. 

 In July 2023, homeless tents peaked at 609, and homeless vehicles at 1,058. By July 2024, those numbers had declined to 319 and 474, respectively. Since Ninth Circuit overturned a regional ban on enforcement of anti-camping ordinances in July — in a case, then ruling supported by Breed and California Gov. Gavin Newsom — Newsom has since issued an executive order banning encampments from state property and ordered municipal governments to take similar action. 

San Francisco began enforcing anti-camping laws after the ruling, arresting but not detaining homeless individuals who have refused to leave their tents. While there is no data available for August or September, the newly released October count has homeless tents and vehicles down to 242 and 548, declines of 24.1% and 3.4% respectively, since the ruling.

“Every day our City workers are out in San Francisco offering help, bringing people indoors, and cleaning up our neighborhoods and we are seeing the results,” said Breed in a statement. “We are a compassionate City that leads with services, but we also will continue to enforce our laws when those offers are rejected.”

According to the San Francisco Standard, homeless individuals are leaving their tents to avoid arrest, but are still remaining on the streets; Standard reporters found no increase in utilization of shelter or bus tickets elsewhere.

Breed and her two opponents are neck and neck, with Levi Strauss heir and homelessness expert Daniel Lurie holding a narrow lead at 51% if the election were held today in the city’s ranked-choice voting system that allows voters to rank their first 10 choices for a given office. The candidate with the least amount of votes is dropped in each round, with that candidate’s votes distributed to voters’ next preference on their ballot, until a candidate has a majority.

While Breed would get 38% of first-round votes and Lurie just 21%, Lurie’s popularity as citizen’s second choice brings him to 51% by the fourth-round. Aaron Peskin, who sits on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and thus has one of the consolidated city-county’s most powerful positions, nearly tied Lurie in earlier rounds of voting in the survey, but fell behind due to Lurie’s hold as voters’ popular second choice. 

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California County Fines Man $120,000 for Refusing to Evict a Family From His Property

Hundreds of people live in trailers and campers on the streets of Santa Clara County, California—a very visible sign of the ultra-expensive county’s homelessness crisis.

Despite the scale of vehicular homelessness in the county, county officials have spent years focusing their enforcement actions on a single trailer parked on private property.

For years now, winery owner Michael Ballard has allowed his longtime vineyard manager, Marcelino Martinez, and his family to live rent-free in a trailer parked on the winery’s property.

County officials say this violates a county ordinance prohibiting recreational vehicles (RVs) parked on residential parcels from being used as dwelling units. Therefore, Martinez’s trailer has got to go.

Ballard has been trying to fix the violation by building a permanent home for Martinez and his family on the property. But getting all the needed permits from the county for that home has taken years.

In the interim, Ballard has refused to evict Martinez’s family from the property.

“I’m not going to remove this trailer because that will cause them to be homeless and I’d be putting this family on the street and I’m not going to do that,” Ballard tells Reason.

In response, the county has issued Ballard daily fines for every day he refuses to remove the trailer. These fines total some $120,000.

Ballard is now suing the county in federal court, arguing the fines violate the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on excessive fines.

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Newsom issues executive order for removal of homeless encampments in California

California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order Thursday to direct state agencies on how to remove homeless encampments, a month after a Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public spaces.

Newsom’s order is aimed at the thousands of tents and makeshift shelters across the state that line freeways, clutter shopping center parking lots and fill city parks. The order makes clear that the decision to remove the encampments remains in local hands.

The order comes after a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this summer allowing cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public spaces. The case was the most significant on the issue to come before the high court in decades and comes as cities across the country have wrestled with the politically complicated issue of how to deal with a rising number of people without a permanent place to live and public frustration over related health and safety issues.

“There are simply no more excuses. It’s time for everyone to do their part,” Newsom said in a statement.

While Newsom cannot order local authorities to act, his administration can apply pressure by withholding money for counties and cities.

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