Tag: homelessness

Portland enforces homeless camping ban after SCOTUS ruling, county continues giving out tents

After Portland, Oregon, announced it would implement a ban on homeless street camping and impose fines or jail time for those who refuse shelter, Multnomah County says will continue distributing tents and tarps to homeless individuals despite the city’s efforts. The news comes just as the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that cities can remove homeless encampments from public property.  

On Monday, the city announced that it would start enforcing the new ban which applies to any homeless person offered reasonable shelter who refuses. Violators could be fined $100 or jailed. The ban also prioritizes targeting camps that pose significant health and safety risks in the community.  

Despite the city’s ban, the county will keep handing out tents and tarps, aiding those living on the streets, according to Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, per KATU News.   

“We’re not stopping handing out tents and tarps. We’re just not going to be purchasing any more,” said Pederson. “We do have supplies on hand that are sufficient for the needs we have right now.”  

On Wednesday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler criticized the county’s actions, explaining, “It doesn’t make any sense that with 6,000 homeless people on our streets that we would hand out more than 6,000 tents and nearly five times that many tarps.”  

The city and county are currently in the middle of negotiating a three-year homeless response plan. Pederson emphasized she wouldn’t be pressured to stop distributing tents and tarps to reach a new deal.   

“If anyone was going to be using this to have an ultimatum about what our policy was going to be, that’s not something I was going to stand for,” she said.  

Responding to questions from KATU about the city and county’s relationship, with the county distributing tents and the city enforcing the ban, Pederson remarked, “I think it’s a sign of where we are right now, where we don’t have enough capacity within our existing system for shelter.”  

Mayor Wheeler responded to the same line of questioning, stating, “I think it says you have two separate governments.”  

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Supreme Court allows cities to enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outside

The Supreme Court decided on Friday that cities can enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outdoors, even in West Coast areas where shelter space is lacking.

The case is the most significant to come before the high court in decades on the issue and comes as a rising number of people in the U.S. are without a permanent place to live.

In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the high court reversed a ruling by a San Francisco-based appeals court that found outdoor sleeping bans amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

The majority found that the 8th Amendment prohibition does not extend to bans on outdoor sleeping bans.

“Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority. “A handful of federal judges cannot begin to ‘match’ the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding ‘how best to handle’ a pressing social question like homelessness.”

He suggested that people who have no choice but to sleep outdoors could raise that as a “necessity defense,” if they are ticketed or otherwise punished for violating a camping ban.

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Homelessness After Age 50 Is Rising

Imagine you are 82 years old, barely making ends meet on a fixed Social Security check and getting a $1,300 bill to fix a burst water pipe. Imagine being 51, years away from Social Security, and losing your low-wage job because a new medical diagnosis forces you to give up your driver’s license in a place with no public transit. Or imagine being 70, experiencing memory loss and forgetting to pay your bills.

In these all-too-common scenarios, eviction and homelessness lurk around the corner. People aged 50 and older are the fastest-growing group of people experiencing homeless in the United States. They make up nearly half of the homeless population, and their numbers are estimated to triple by 2030.

Some older adults have been on the brink of or experienced homelessness at some point during their lives, especially if they struggled to find stable, good-paying jobs or if they suffer from substance use or mental health disorders.

Meanwhile, recent years have witnessed an alarming increase in the number of Americans over 50 experiencing homelessness for the first time. When they should be enjoying some hard-earned rest after decades of work, too many are losing their homes and ending up in shelters or on the streets.

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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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