- L.A. moves closer to easing limits on seizing homeless people’s belongings, By Gale Holland, June 9, 2015, Los Angeles Times: “The city of Los Angeles moved closer Monday to making it easier to remove homeless people’s belongings from public parks, over opposition from City Councilman Gil Cedillo, who said it was a failed strategy. ‘We have pursued a strategy that does not work,’ Cedillo told the arts, parks, health, aging and river committee, which voted 4 to 1 to approve the new ordinance. ‘The overemphasis on policing is a fetter.’ In 2012, a federal appeals court ruled the city could seize and destroy transients’ possessions only if they posed an immediate threat to public health or were evidence of a crime. The court also required the city to give owners a chance to reclaim their belongings before they are destroyed…”
- L.A. city homeless committee debuts with calls for restrooms, showers and shelter, By Gale Holland, June 19, 2015, Los Angeles Times: “The Los Angeles City Council’s new homeless committee kicked off Thursday with members calling for the city to provide showers, restrooms and emergency shelter to help indigents survive in the streets with dignity. At the committee’s inaugural meeting, members also discussed developing transitional and bridge lodgings for homeless people while they await permanent lodging, new storage facilities for their possessions and parking lots for people who live in their cars…”
Tag: Resources for the homeless
Internet Access for the Homeless
Fighting homelessness, one smartphone at a time, By Claire Cain Miller, April 14, 2015, New York Times: “Holly Leonard has been homeless on and off for years. There was a stint in jail and, more recently, a period in a women’s homeless shelter, while her husband slept in their car. But last month, the two moved into a one-bedroom apartment in San Jose, Calif., complete with a small garden. Ms. Leonard found it on Craigslist while using her Nexus 5 smartphone — a donation from Google that she got from a San Jose nonprofit called Community Technology Alliance…”
Libraries and Homelessness
U.S. libraries become front line in fight against homelessness, By Ian Simpson, July 17, 2014, Chicago Tribune: “George Brown, a homeless man in Washington, has a simple answer when asked how often he uses a public library. ‘Always. I have nowhere else to go,’ Brown, 65, said outside the U.S. capital’s modernist central library after a morning reading sociology books. ‘When it’s hot, you come here to stay out of the heat. When it’s cold, you come here to stay out of the cold.’ Brown is among the hundreds of thousands of homeless people who have put the almost 9,000 U.S. public libraries, the most of any country in the world, in the forefront of the battle against homelessness. Moving beyond their old-fashioned image as book custodians where librarians shush people for talking too loud, libraries have evolved to serve as community centers, staffed with social workers and offering programs from meals to job counseling. . .”