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Fade to black – Is government leveraging homeless agencies out of business? Thursday, March, 4, 2010
Is politics the problem or the solution to homelessness? Monday, March, 1, 2010
Why do you hate in the name of God? Monday, February, 22, 2010
Cardboard is for shipping, not for housing Thursday, February, 18, 2010
Throw the bums out—RPG game re homeless should be sent back Monday, February, 15, 2010
Down-sizing affordable housing could increase the reduction of homelessness Thursday, February, 11, 2010
Down and exploited in Beverly Hills - Is TMZ.com exploiters? Monday, February, 8, 2010
Is marriage the solution to poverty or is it the cause of poverty? Saturday, February, 6, 2010
Book on homeless man and Los Angeles journalist is highlighted by Long Beach Book Week Thursday, February, 4, 2010
Why homelessness is decreasing while hunger and poverty is increasing
Tuesday, November, 3, 2009
A Nation In Denial? Half of Our Kids On Food Stamps. Insert Head in Sand.
I’m typically an optimist. It sometimes gets me in trouble. When facts are usually set before me, I become a realist.
I’ve also been known to stick my head in the sand. Not literally. It’s my defense mechanism. If I don’t see it, maybe it will just go away.
Here’s the fact of the day. A Cornell University study released this heartbreaking truth—one in every two American children will be on food stamps sometime during their childhood. I won’t go into the details. You can read the article here.
It means our nation is raising a generation of hungry children who are dependent on the government to be fed.
Wait. This is America. We raise children that go to university. I was always told when I was a child, “Joel, when you get older and go to college…” I wasn’t raised with, “Joel, when you get older and are dependent on the government for food…”
Wait a second. This is the country that instills an amazing dream that we call the American Dream—a white picket fence in front of a home we own.
Wait a minute. Those Cornell folks must be kidding. It’s just a scary Halloween joke. Half of this country’s children cannot be hungry. This is North America. We are part of the First World. The Industrialized Nations. The G8. We give away food to poor countries.
It’s time to slap my face. Not literally. We are creating a culture of poverty. Right here in the good old U.S. of A.
And the news gets worse. Among black children and children of single parent families, 90% will be on food stamps during their childhood. I won’t even get into the racial politics of this fact.
Stop. Look around. No outrage, except for us socially liberal advocates who cry when we watch a Michael Moore documentary. Head scans the nation’s landscape. No one seems to care. No outrage.
Tuesday is election day in some parts of the country. The East Coast is battling a World Series. A ship built from the steel girders of the World Trade Center is sailing into New York. But no one is worried about the hungry children.
I wonder if our country sticks their head in the sand—not literally—then this will just be an extremist study from people who think the glass is half empty?
I don’t think so.
(Pic from www.khanya.co.za)
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A Third Wave Of Addressing Homelesness Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Civil Overestimation Friday, April 3, 2009
WWYD? Monday, November 13, 2006
705 Missing Homeless People: Where Did They Go? Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Body Found In A River Near Long Beach
Linda Rosenberg, MSW Juan was a delivery driver, but his health problems were putting him at risk of losing his job. His diabetes was poorly controlled and had caused foot ulcers that made it difficult for him to walk. He also had bipolar disorder, which was not being controlled. When he joined the Working Well program in Harris County, Texas, Juan worked with a case manager to get orthopedic shoes, to receive support in developing a diabetic diet and exercise plan, and to make an appointment with a psychiatrist to bring his mental health condition under control. As a result, Juan was able to continue working full time as a delivery driver and received a raise for exceptional performance (Bohman, Stoner, & Chimera, 2009). Working Well is part of the....
Homelessness Resource Center "I believe that people who are trained in Motivational Interviewing have a different perspective on building relationships. Many people are trained to view clients in a paternalistic manner, like they are children. This attitude says that providers always know what is best for a client. This attitude makes us think that we must convince clients that we know what is best for them. In this view, success is measured by the provider’s actions, not the client’s." In the spirit of Motivational Interviewing, Alan Pickett, a Mental Health Outreach Nurse at the Project Outreach Team (PORT) for Washtenaw County Community Mental Health in Ann Arbor, Michigan, does not define success this way. He believes his first task to is to make himse
David J. Jefferson “The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.” When William James, ostensible father of American Psychology, penned this line over a century ago, he had embedded the idea in a discussion on religious experience, in which he also extolled the virtues of voluntary poverty. Today, in a totally distinct context, James’ words are imbued with new meaning. Due to economic recession and what many economists have deemed a jobless recovery in contemporary America, people who never before feared poverty—the educated, or middle class—must now confront harsh new realities. The current conditions are like nothing we’ve ever seen. Conspiring myriad circumstances....
Jamie Van Leeuwen When Denver’s Road Home began over four years ago, we never could have anticipated a year like we just had. Who could ever imagine that our economy would shift into a global recession unlike anything the country has experienced since the Great Depression? And yet, in the midst of unparalleled economic shifts, there comes great opportunity. We believe there has never been a more important time for Denver to have a plan to end homelessness. During the past year, our homeless plan has been tested and we expect the coming year will continue to pose new challenges for us. Housing foreclosures, unemployment and funding cutbacks will continue to place new demands on our ten-year plan to end homelessness. As a result, we updated our plan so....
Linda Valverde & General Dogon The authors have lived and worked in Central City East—commonly known as Skid Row—for a combined thirty years. During all of our decades of living in Los Angeles, neither of us had ever heard of gentrification until about five years ago, when we became members of the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN). Now it seems that gentrification has become a common household word in cities throughout the United States, and nowhere more than downtown Los Angeles. When redevelopment really took off in downtown L.A. in 2002, LA CAN and our allies created five principles for fair redevelopment. We wanted to see our neighborhood revitalized, not gentrified. The principles were....
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