My Homeless Story

Homeless is not the end of the road

Orlando Florida Homeless Links

Homeless.  

There's a lot of it going around.  As the economy goes through the effects of mismanagement, greed and outright stupidity, as always, it's the one's who were close to the line already that do the brunt of the suffering.  Those who have no cushion to protect them from the folly of Washington and Wall Street.  Get ready!!  There is a saying, "The bigger the boom, the bigger the bust."  We are in for a very big bust.

Best of luck to everyone!!

In Hard Times, Tent Cities Rise Across the Country

A few tents cropped up hard by the railroad tracks, pitched by men left with nowhere to go once the emergency winter shelter closed for the summer.

Then others appeared — people who had lost their jobs to the ailing economy, or newcomers who had moved to Reno for work and discovered no one was hiring.

Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like many other cities, Reno has found itself with a "tent city" — an encampment of people who had nowhere else to go.

5 Pieces of Advice for the New Paupers

Little did I know that when I lost everything last year, I was doing research. At the time I thought it was just stupidity or bad luck or both. But now that the economy's crashing, it turns out I've been out there gathering valuable tips for millions of new paupers. And let me clarify, I'm talking real poverty. My wife and I fell through many layers of poverty in a few months. First we revisited the genteel poverty known to grad students, the sort of poverty where you have scary dreams about the rent and eat a simple, wholesome diet toward the end of the month. But we fell right through that into the sort of Dickensian privation that spoiled first-worlders like me never expected to experience. That's the kind of poverty a lot of people are going to be experiencing soon -- and I'm here to tell you, it can happen here and it can happen to you.

Arson, Suicide, and Murder Mark the Economic Crisis, and We're Not Hearing About it

On October 4, 2008, in the Porter Ranch section of Los Angeles, Karthik Rajaram, beset by financial troubles, shot his wife, mother-in-law, and three sons before turning the gun on himself. In one of his two suicide notes, Rajaram wrote that he was "broke," having incurred massive financial losses in the economic meltdown. "I understand he was unemployed, his dealings in the stock market had taken a disastrous turn for the worse," said Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Michel R. Moore.

According to a U.S. Conference of Mayors the homeless population is diverse:

20% of the Homeless work.

22% of the Homeless are mentally disabled.

11% of the Homeless are veterans.

34% of the Homeless are drug or alcohol dependent.

Care Critical for Homeless

Lack of Treatment for Chronic Diseases Sends Lives Spiraling

In Orlando, a Law Against Feeding Homeless - and Debate Over Samaritans' Rights

 After a law that banned panhandling was struck down by the courts, the city tried to discourage aggressive beggars by obliging them to carry ID cards, and later by confining them to 3-by-15-foot (90-centimeter-by-4.6-meter) "panhandling zones" painted in blue on sidewalks downtown.

    Despite these laws, the number of people living on the streets of the metro area swelled, from roughly 5,000 in 1999 to an estimated 8,500 today, dwarfing the city's shelter capacity for 2,000 people.

    So in July, the city commission tried a "supply-side" approach: It passed an ordinance regulating the feeding of large groups of people in Orlando's downtown parks.

    Those who wished to feed more than 25 hungry individuals at parks within a 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) radius of City Hall could do so, but only if they obtained a "Large Group Feeding Permit" from the parks department - and no one would be granted more than two feeding permits a year.

    For the first time anyone in Orlando could remember, not only would panhandlers find themselves in the crosshairs of the law, but so would those trying to help them.

Surge Seen in Number of Homeless Veterans

  Experts who work with veterans say it often takes several years after leaving military service for veterans' accumulating problems to push them into the streets. But some aid workers say the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans appear to be turning up sooner than the Vietnam veterans did.

    "We're beginning to see, across the country, the first trickle of this generation of warriors in homeless shelters," said Phil Landis, chairman of Veterans Village of San Diego, a residence and counseling center. "But we anticipate that it's going to be a tsunami."

    With more women serving in combat zones, the current wars are already resulting in a higher share of homeless women as well. They have an added risk factor: roughly 40 percent of the hundreds of homeless female veterans of recent wars have said they were sexually assaulted by American soldiers while in the military, officials said.

LA's Vicious War on the Homeless

On the morning of February 8, a white hospital van stopped a few feet from a curb in Los Angeles' skid row area. According to witnesses, a man wearing a soiled hospital gown fell through the doors, and the van, later connected with Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, drove away.

The man, a paraplegic, began crawling down the street, a bag of his belongings clutched in his teeth and a colostomy bag dragging behind him. Other homeless people helped the disoriented man into a nearby park, just before police called an ambulance.

Shelters and Soup Kitchens Hold Crisis Front Lines

Across the city, New York's social services are troubled. Even as the weak economy drives more and more people to seek help in soup kitchens or shelters, advocates worry that the private donations they rely on will simultaneously begin to dry up.

Twenty Questions Social Justice Quiz 2008

13. How many people does our government say are homeless in the US on any given day?

    A: A total of 754,000 are homeless. About 338,000 homeless people are not in shelters (live on the streets, in cars or in abandoned buildings) and 415,000 are in shelters on any given night. The 2007 US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Annual Homeless Report to Congress, page iii and 23. The population of San Francisco is about 739,000.

    14. What percentage of people in homeless shelters are children?

    A: HUD reports nearly one in four people in homeless shelters are children 17 or younger. Page iv, the 2007 HUD Annual Homeless Report to Congress.

    15. How many veterans are homeless on any given night?

    A: Over 100,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. About 18 percent of the adult homeless population are veterans. Page 32, the 2007 HUD Homeless Report. This is about the same population as Green Bay, Wisconsin.

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If you have a homeless story please email it to stevenraker@yahoo.com  I'll put it up on the website.  Send pictures if you have some.  Yourself, campsite, friends, etc.