Tag: homelessness

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.

Keep reading

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.  

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

Kentucky GOP bill paves the way for ‘deadly physical force’ against the homeless

Republicans in Kentucky are cooking up new legislation that would pave the way for property owners to deploy “deadly physical force” against homeless people.

Vice reports that the bill, known as the “Safer Kentucky Act,” says that physical force against homeless people is “justifiable” if a property owner believes that criminal trespass, robbery or unlawful camping are occurring on their property.

Additionally, “deadly physical force” can be justified if the property owner believes a homeless person is trying to “dispossess” them of their property.

Lyndon Pryor, the CEO of the Louisville Urban League, tells Vice that the legislation will likely have deadly consequences for the homeless in his state.

Keep reading

Highly-contagious infection spread by feces breaks out in Portland as homeless crisis sparks disease common in Third World

A highly contagious infection that is spread through tiny particles of fecal matter has broken out in Portland – with officials warning that the homeless population are most at risk of catching the illness.

Shigella is a bacteria that spreads through human feces. People transmit the infection after getting the microbes on their hands and then touching their mouths.

People can also spread the intestinal infection through sexual intercourse. 

Multnomah County in Oregon has warned that homeless people and same-sex male partners are most at risk because of their lack of access to hygienic facilities.

In the last month, 45 cases have been found in Portland, bringing the total from 2023 to 218. The influx of infections were reported among unhoused people in downtown Portland’s Old Town neighborhood.

Keep reading

Homelessness In U.S. at Highest Level Since 2008 Financial Crisis, Federal Report Reveals

Spurred on by the rising cost of living and the end of pandemic aid, U.S. homelessness this year reached a level not seen since the 2008 financial crisis, according to one influential annual metric released by the The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Friday.

HUD’s annual homelessness count, which is called the “Point In Time,” or P.I.T., count, is not a count of all cases of homelessness throughout the year, but a snapshot of who was homeless on a single day in the last ten days of January. 

This year, HUD said 653,100 people were experiencing homelessness, the highest number since HUD began issuing the report in 2007 and a 12 percent increase from 2022. Nearly one-third, or 143,105 people, of those experiencing homelessness reported that they were chronically homeless, also the highest number ever counted.

In a press release, HUD said that the increase in homelessness was a result of the expiration of pandemic-era expansions in the social safety net, like eviction moratoria and rental assistance.

“The rise in homelessness at the beginning of 2023 continued a pre-pandemic trend from 2016 to 2020, when homelessness also increased,” HUD said. The agency said the American Rescue Plan had prevented a rise in homelessness between 2020 and 2022, but many of its resources have now expired. 

Keep reading

Las Vegas police search for suspect after 5 homeless people are shot, killing 1

Five homeless people were shot in Las Vegas, one of them fatally, and police say they are searching for a lone suspect

Las Vegas police search for suspect after 5 homeless people are shot, killing 1The Associated PressLAS VEGAS

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Five homeless people were shot in Las Vegas on Friday, one of them fatally, and police were searching for a lone suspect, authorities said.

The shooting occurred around 5:30 p.m. near a freeway overpass in the northeastern part of the city, according to Las Vegas police.

A police commander initially said two were killed, but Las Vegas Metro Police Department spokesperson Jason Johansson later said at a briefing that one man in his 50s was pronounced dead and another was in critical condition, while three others were in stable condition.

“Right now we are trying to figure out what exactly happened during the shooting, the information we have is kind of conflicting,” Johansson said.

Keep reading

LA man accused of murdering three homeless men AND fourth man during horrific ‘follow-home’ robbery in crime-ridden city

Los Angeles police have nabbed a man accused of killing three homeless men – and a fourth victim gunned down in his garage during a ‘follow-home’ robbery. 

On Saturday afternoon, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore announced that the man arrested for the murders is 33-year-old Jerrid Joseph Powell.

He is also the prime suspect in the murder of Nicholas Simbolon – a father of two – which took place last Tuesday night in San Dimas.

Moore said the department suspects Powell was responsible for four murders in four days.

The suspect, who is a Los Angeles resident, is alleged to have shot three homeless men across the city from November 26 to November 29.

His vehicle was identified by the police in Beverly Hills last Wednesday. Upon conducting a traffic stop, authorities recovered the gun used in the murders – he was subsequently arrested.

On Saturday, Moore said: ‘Over the course of the investigation of our murders, we were able to identify the vehicle we believe is connected to our three homicides as being the same vehicle that Mr. Powell used in the murder of Mr. Simbolon.’

‘[We learned] that it was being held in custody of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department as evidence of their murder.

LA County Sheriff Robert Luna discussed the use of the controversial license plate reader system law enforcement officers sometimes use to identify suspicious vehicles.

‘We know there’s controversy out there about the usage of this system, but let me tell our community something. If we did not enter that plate into the system, this individual that we believe is responsible for at least four murders may have [still] been out there and reoffended,’ he said.

Keep reading

LA cops are hunting a SERIAL KILLER after three homeless people were shot dead by ‘hooded male suspect’ – as police warn locals to avoid sleeping outside alone at night

LAPD has warned that a potential serial killer could be on the loose after three homeless people were murdered in the past week. 

Police are asking the public’s assistance in identifying the suspect responsible for three murders that occurred on November 26, 27, and 29 around downtown and in South Los Angeles, California. 

The LAPD said the investigation is at the early stage, but noted similarities in those three killings. 

‘A single individual approached each one and shot and killed each one as they slept,’ LAPD Chief Michel Moore said. 

‘The suspect, hooded, targets lone, unsheltered individuals sleeping on the streets, shooting them before fleeing in a vehicle without any observed altercation’, LAPD reported during a Friday afternoon press conference. 

‘To the person responsible: We will find you, we will catch you and you will be held accountable,’ Mayor Karen Bass said. 

Keep reading

After Xi Jinping visit to San Francisco, city falling back into drug use and homelessness: business owner

With the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference over and done with in San Francisco, some business owners are complaining that the city is reverting into a den for homelessness and drug use. 

Restaurant owner Tony Pankaew said in a local media interview.that San Francisco rushed to clean up the city for Chinese President Xi Jinping and other foreign dignitaries for APEC.

“They cleaned up the people, they cleaned up the streets,” he told CBS News Bay Area. “They made the city look good and look impressive for the foreigners, for the politicians.”

“Now they have started to come back,” Pankaew said. “Slowly but surely. [In] a couple weeks [the city] will be back to where [it was] before.” 

Pankaew said he was hopeful that things will turn around in San Francisco, adding that a new skating rink near his business might attract more people, and therefore more business. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., was criticized on social media after admitting that San Francisco timed a massive cleanup effort ahead of the summit.

Keep reading