Tag: homelessness

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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Record number of Americans are homeless amid nationwide surge in rent, report finds

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. 

Homelessness, long a problem in states such as California and Washington, has also increased in historically more affordable parts of the U.S.. Arizona, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas have seen the largest growths in their unsheltered populations due to rising local housing costs. 

That alarming jump in people struggling to keep a roof over their head came amid blistering inflation in 2021 and 2022 and as surging rental prices across the U.S. outpaced worker wage gains. Although a range of factors can cause homelessness, high rents and the expiration of pandemic relief last year contributed to the spike in housing insecurity, the researchers found. 

“In the first years of the pandemic, renter protections, income supports and housing assistance helped stave off a considerable rise in homelessness. However, many of these protections ended in 2022, at a time when rents were rising rapidly and increasing numbers of migrants were prohibited from working. As a result, the number of people experiencing homelessness jumped by nearly 71,000 in just one year,” according to the report.

Rent in the U.S. has steadily climbed since 2001. In analyzing Census and real estate data, the Harvard researchers found that half of all U.S. households across income levels spent between 30% and 50% of their monthly pay on housing in 2022, defining them as “cost-burdened.” Some 12 million tenants were severely cost-burdened that year, meaning they spent more than half their monthly pay on rent and utilities, up 14% from pre-pandemic levels.

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California homeless people are found living inside CAVES 20 feet below street level complete with home furnishings – as Democrat state grapples with vagrancy and LA begins annual count of those living rough

Rough sleepers in California were found living inside furnished caves dug into the banks of a river 20 feet below street level. 

The groups were removed from the eight caves – along the Tuolumne River in Modesto – over the weekend, and they were emptied of belongings, furniture and 7,600 lbs of rubbish, filling two trucks and a trailer. 

Some of the caves were decorated with murals, had broken floor tiles and one even had a makeshift fireplace with a chimney. 

Modesto Police Department said: ‘This particular area has been plagued by vagrancy and illegal camps, which have raised concerns due to the fact that these camps were actually caves dug into the riverbanks.’

It comes as Los Angeles carries out its annual homeless count to try to take an accurate snapshot of the rough sleeper population in the city, after 75,500 were found to be sleeping rough in the county on any given night last year.  

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Zoning Bans the Good Samaritan

Since March 2023, Chris Avell’s church, Dad’s Place, in Bryan, Ohio, has been keeping its doors open 24/7 for anyone who might stop by to use the church’s kitchen, get food for themselves or their pets from its pantry, or join in church services.

When the homeless shelter next door is full, Dad’s Place will take in some of those people too. Avell considers all these activities a core part of his church’s mission. The city of Bryan, however, considers his sheltering of people an illegal, residential use of a commercially zoned property.

This past New Year’s Eve, when Avell was arriving at the church to preach that Sunday morning, a police officer served him with 18 criminal charges related to violations of the town’s zoning code. Avell pleaded not guilty to those charges earlier this month.

Churches’ charitable activities often don’t fit neatly into zoning codes’ definitions of commercial and residential uses. For that reason, they often get dinged with code violations for doing things like operating a soup kitchen in a residential area or sheltering people in a commercial zone.

The fact that churches are also serving the poor and homeless can make them a target of nuisance complaints from neighbors and extra scrutiny and enforcement from local officials as well.

Bryan’s decision to criminally charge Avell is nevertheless unusually punitive.

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