#called it a 'crisis' not because the unhoused people are the issue but that the structures are failing them...

[uncanny-tranny]

My favourite part of knowing what I can get away with in my job is using it in order to get unhoused people drink/food or whatever they ask for. My least favourite part is knowing that there are specific structural issues with regard to housing and the way we treat the unhoused, especially now when 80°F/26°C is considered a cool day and my city doesn't help our crisis with unhoused people.

[reasoningdaily]

No One Cared About Jordan Neely's Life. They Just Want to Use His Death | Opinion

1

One thing I've learned as an adult is that people who actually care about someone don't let them continually fail. Instead, they address that person's problems head-on, because people who care actually want you to succeed, and success often requires course correction.

Progressives are currently beset by a sick reversal of that, where no one is willing to address the root problems of the people they claim to care about, because the people who are failing in our society are more suitable as political pawns and social commodities to exploit for attention and donations.

Instead of addressing real problems like mental illness, violence, crime, and homelessness, progressives are normalizing these things, gaslighting people who call them out as unacceptable, and denouncing any attempts to truly rectify the problems that have our cities in a stranglehold. And they do it all in the name of compassion.

Ka'Chava [The Gold-Standard of Health Shakes] The Gold-Standard of Health Shakes

This phenomenon has been on full display in the Left's response to the sad killing of Jordan Neely this week. Neely was a homeless man with a long history of arrests who was suffering from extreme mental illness. Neely tragically died while being restrained in a chokehold by a passenger on the subway after Neely was aggressively screaming at passengers, per witnesses.

The story is horribly sad. Everyone seems to have failed Jordan Neely, as well as everyone in that subway car with him. But the incident has brought out the gross hypocrisy of those who claim to care about the indigent, with a detail to satisfy every political appetite.

Jordan is a Black man who was killed via chokehold by a white man, so let's bring out the term "lynching," because it'll always elicit racial animosity. If the racial angle doesn't work for you, you can always use Jordan's death to show the world how much of a do-gooder you are by exclaiming how the "unhoused" have a right to scream as much they want in an enclosed space. You get to wag your finger at the three men who refused to participate in the New York City tradition of keeping your head down, pretending these people don't exist, and praying that you don't become their target. And you get to accuse those who don't decry those men loudly enough of condoning murder.

Let's be real: These people don't care about the homeless. The upper-class city dwellers of New York treat homeless people like bears in the wild: Don't make eye contact with them and they won't bother you. When this strategy doesn't work, they gaslight you into accepting rampant squalor as not only normal but progress! And when you vocalize your guttural displeasure with watching people live in filth and desperation, the self-appointed homeless-whisperers will manipulate you into believing this is just what city life is supposed to look like.

They do everything to avoid addressing the issue and helping people recover a normal life. And in so doing, they entrench the problems—all while posturing as white knights.

New Yorkers are supposed to just accept that New York's Penn Station looks like a scene from "The Walking Dead." Wanting to do something other than accept the status quo of submitting an entire train station to drug addiction and suffering makes you intolerant, per the Left.

Progressive politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Jamaal Bowman will fire off a tweet about "another Black man dying" or complain about rising rents, but it's just a precursor to drafting up a new round of donor emails, much like after the death of Tyre Nichols.

You know what they say: Never let a crisis go to waste.

Never mind that Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman could actually do something about homelessness in New York. It's actually their job!

But to do something, they would have to actually care. And you know they don't care because they don't act, and anyone who suggests they should is cast as a heartless bigot.

Everyone is debating when someone can or can't use a chokehold. But no one is willing to ask why Neely was on the streets in the first place. The Left's supposedly compassionate approach of letting the homeless just exist means not ever really contemplating what we've let this city become. We've been trained to not look at the homeless as people but as inconvenient rats whom we need to quickly scurry past. They didn't just one day wake up at the feet of your subway station's stairs, but no one cares how they ended up at the bottom—as long as their bottom doesn't interfere with their walking path.

If any of these protesting progressives cared about Jordan Neely, they would care to understand his declining mental health after his mother was murdered and stuffed into a suitcase by his stepfather when he was 18 years old. They would attempt to empathize with the trauma of having to take the stand against the man with whom he shared a home with and comprehend how his own stepfather took the most important woman in his life from him forever.

The man who went through that needed help. He needed an intervention from the state.

Instead of admitting this, they brandish videos of Neely dancing like Michael Jackson in subway stations, as if this activity is a sign of success and happiness, not desperation and struggle.

Would you tell your highly talented friend that dancing in the subway will get them far? Of course not—but it's suitable for Neely because they don't really care.

If you want to know if someone cares, they'll be honest about what is happening around them and want realistic change. They won't pretend that everything is fine. They won't work extraordinarily hard to convince you that depravity is normality.

But I don't think most people actually care about Jordan Neely's life. They just care about what his death can do for them.

Adam B. Coleman is the author of "Black Victim To Black Victor" and writer on Substack at adambcoleman.substack.com.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Jordan Neely's Criminal Record: Man Killed on Subway Had 42 Prior Arrests

Jordan Neely's Killing Is the Predictable Result of Dehumanizing and Despising the Homeless | Opinion

Who Killed Jordan Neely? Police Silence Over Former Marine Raises Questions

[lugra7]

Blog Post #6

Lucy Graham

In our last blog post, I would like to focus on thoughts I have about Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler that I didn’t get to discuss in the required blog post about this book. Although Butler exaggerates our world crises such as climate change and corporate control, her fictional dystopian society can be connected to present day in many ways. A few themes in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower stood out to me such as hyperempathy. Lauren has a disorder called hyper-empathy syndrome which makes her feel the physical and possibly emotional pain of others. In lecrture, Professor Due explained that Octavia E. Butler was trying to warn us to be better with this theme of empathy and I agree. Specifically, I think that Octavia E. Butler had Lauren have hyper-empathy syndrome because to portray humanity increasingly detached and unsympathetic attitudes towards each other. Amid this dystopian world, Lauren’s character reminds the reader of the importance of sympathy and kindness towards others. She is unable to avoid or turn a blind eye to the pain and suffering of others which is a major problem in our society and a contributor to the suffering of for issues like the unhoused population. Her hyper-empathy syndrome also makes her the leader that she is. Lauren’s first-hand experiences with other people’s pain makes her able to sympathize with others and allows strangers to join her Earthseed community while traveling north. For example in Chapter 19, she allows the two sisters to join her traveling north after they are injured in the earthquake. Overall Butler’s messaging through Lauren’s earthseed community was a reminder that positive change is only possible if we lead with kindness and empathy. 

Although this book was not written when humans were as severely reliant on technology as we are now, this book reminded me of the ramifications our reliance on technology may have in times of crisis. For instance, Americans would have difficulty building new communities and  surviving during a natural disaster if we can no longer use technology for navigation. Personally, I am very reliant on Google and Apple Maps while I am driving or walking anywhere. I could barely make an hour outside of Los Angeles without navigation services, let alone traveling across state lines. Reading books such as Butler’s or watching movies like Leave the World Behind actualizes the possibility of the individuals having to utilize survival skills such as navigational skills, scavenging, and other tactics that Lauren uses. For example, Lauren dressing like a man for her survival. The dire necessity for Lauren dressing like a man highlights the severity of women’s safety in Parable of the Sower. I feel like women use these types of survival behaviors even in present day society, although the state of the world is not nearly as severe as in Parable of the Sower. Know that if I am running errands alone, I dress dress in an outfit that is not revealing in order to avoid cat calls and inappropriate gestures by men.

[kael-writ]

Some thoughts for addicts just starting recovery:

- build up support around yourself. You need and deserve support, and even if you can't believe that you deserve it, you gotta know you need it. Lots of people are so happy to give it. They got help and they wanna pay it forward. They feel good about themselves when they help. They want you to succeed. You aren't putting them out. Helping you get clean is a mutual benefit to your community. And when you're clean and strong, you'll be there helping others too. So take all the help you can get, and know people do give joyfully out of love.

- Make plans. Short term and long term. How can you delay using for five minutes? What supplies can you get to cope with withdrawal? Make lists. A list of people to call. A list of things that calm you down besides drugs.

- Envision your sober self. Focus on it. What will you be able to achieve? How will you feel? See your body healing. Your mind clearing. Your life become more manageable. Keep your eyes on that future for yourself, a future you can and WILL achieve.

- It's particularly important to get MEDICAL help to manage chemical withdrawal from alcohol and other hard drugs.

- Take measures to prevent and deal with any potential mental health crisis. You need to be seeing a primary care doctor, a psychiatrist, and a therapist. Or as best as you can get to that. Your mental health has been mismanaged by this drug for a very long time, maybe from childhood or youth. You may not even be fully aware of what your sober mental

- Practice being comfortable with discomfort. Let it suck. Let it fuckin suck. Because whatever is happening, it will end. A panic attack for example will end. It ends, your body calms, and you got through it, without drugs.

- Be fucking honest. Be embarrassingly honest. Secrecy is addiction's friend. You want to defeat addiction? You tell everyone everything. You tell your mom, your best friend, your bartender (they know), your liquor store, everyone, you are an addict, you need help, you are entering recovery. You relapse? You tell someone you are accountable to. Every time. A sponsor, therapist, a friend who isnt a using addict.

- You're probably gonna have to end friendships. Your buddy who you kill half a case with every night is a great guy who would kill for you and die for you, but you are killing each other. The way to save each other might have to be to part from each other. Some of your best friends might end up going clean too and being your absolute best comrades in arms against this common enemy. but some of them will lead you back to the enemy. You can't be friends with anyone who will ask you, "are you sure? Come on." Sorry buddy, all my love, but I gotta cut you loose.

- Guilt and shame are addiction's other friends. I know they're mean girl friends who talk shit about addiction, but they're ultimately gonna drag you back to addiction. Being down on yourself is just gonna end in you sinking into the swamp of sadness. You gotta build yourself up. Yes, addiction can feel shameful, that's a normal way to feel. And lots of addicts, in desperation and intoxication, do shitty things like steal. Beating yourself up about it is just telling yourself you're not worth saving. And you fucking need saving right now. So you need to be telling yourself that you are trying to do something really hard and important because you care, and there are people who care about you, and you have a future worth fighting for.

You are not your addiction. You are a person.

- Know that addiction is a social justice issue, and a medical issue. People who devalue addicts as people the way they devalue unhoused people are fucking assholes. Fight to not internalize that shit. Dont let the bastards drag you down.

- Learn new ways of solving problems. For a long time, you thought all you had was a hammer, and you bashed your life to bits trying to solve every problem with your one solution. Now you are gonna have to figure out the right tools for actually solving these problems. You're gonna wanna learn to calm your body with breathing and meditation, for example.

- Sabotage the Future Addict. Throw fuckin everything away, throw every lighter away, purge your house, this is not you anymore, you are done. Think you might feel like buying a drink after work? Leave the house with no money except your bus fare and no ID. If you gotta move or change jobs, put in the work to get that rolling. Realize this is the most important thing you gotta do right now and fuck pretty much everything else..

- The mundane shit works and is good, actually. A lot of us got into this wanting to have fun, we may have been the bad kids, the cool kids. A tamer life may seem unattractive. We also tend to have extreme emotional issues. We tend to have been through Some Shit. So getting sleep and water may seem so trite. but I swear to god, I PROMISE you, if you commit to that shit and really do it, it fucking helps a lot. It adds the fuck up. You're gonna start feeling better.

Not just water and sleep but like, go for a goddamn walk, do a fucking crossword puzzle. You might find yourself enjoying something that calms your body and centers your mind.

- let go of the need for instant gratification. Good shit takes time. The same way this fuckin addiction crept up on you over time before it became this beast, so too will the healing take time. If you work out every day, you'll build muscle over time, not instantly. If you give up in a week cuz you're not buff, dont say it's because exercise can't work. You gotta keep at it.

- get new sober friends, or revisit old ones. Get into some sober activities. It's a lot easier to go hiking sober, it's hard to go to a bar sober, so go the fuck hiking and dont go to the bar. Sober groups exist to facilitate this.

- relapses happen. You don't have to let that destroy you. You wake up in the morning, you feel like shit, feel that withdrawal? Go empty anything left and call your person. Get the fuck back on the horse, do not give up.

- Know it gets easier. It gets so much easier and better. The end of the withdrawal period will come and go. You'll have your first moments of not thinking about it. Then days, then weeks of not wanting it. Then one day it'll be five years and guys you're gonna be so fuckin strong and proud and you'll never wanna go back.

[when-the-cities-burn]

FOX's Jesse Watters recently called for Americans to stop "coddling the homeless" & to stigmatize them. Because that will solve the problem "You have to call them what they are: These are people that have failed in life and they're on their deathbed." 30% of unhoused people are veterans who served this country. 20–25% suffer from serious mental health issues & can't afford treatment. Nearly 30% are families; many put there by the housing & economic crises the Republicans caused over the last 20 years. And dumping people in need of mental health treatment onto the streets was the brilliant idea of Ronald Reagan.

Here is the FOX clip, in case you want to see how they 100% blame the Democrats for this mess. https://youtu.be/susTDOB46IE?si=Muphoi0sbpZDTuDN&t=111

[recentlyheardcom]

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A group of homeless people in Portland, Oregon, filed a class action lawsuit on Friday challenging new restrictions the city placed on daytime camping in an attempt to address safety issues stemming from a crisis of people living on the streets.The lawsuit filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court alleges the restrictions violate Oregon law and the state constitution because they subject people who are involuntarily without permanent shelter to unreasonable punishments for unavoidable activities including sleeping and staying dry, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. Violators could face jail time and/or fines of up to $100.Lawyers at the Oregon Law Center, which is representing the plaintiffs, are seeking a temporary restraining order from the court to stop the city from enforcing the restrictions until the lawsuit is resolved.“The ordinance subjects the approximately 10,000 Portlanders living outside every night to 30 days in jail for violating a law that is impossible to understand or comply with,” the lawsuit alleges.Portland’s city council voted in June to pass the ordinance prohibiting camping during the daytime in most public places as the city, along with other cities throughout the U.S., wrestles with the longtime crisis of people living outside.The measure says people may camp in nonrestricted areas from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., but at that time they must dismantle their campsites until the permitted overnight hours begin again. Camping is also banned entirely near schools, parks and busy streets among other locations.The Oregon Law Center’s litigation director, Ed Johnson, in a statement called the measure “a huge step in the wrong direction," saying the city needs more supportive housing, rent assistance, tenant protections and supports to stabilize unhoused Portlanders so they can better access housing and services.A spokesperson for Mayor Ted Wheeler, Cody Bowman, declined to comment to the newspaper on the lawsuit but said the city plans to start enforcing the new rules in the coming weeks. Wheeler has said prosecutions will focus on alternative sentences that connect people with resources.Bowman said the city is focused on education and outreach efforts related to the ordinance and will provide two weeks notice to the public before enforcement starts.Business and property owners were among those who supported the measure, which was introduced by the mayor, saying campsites are causing them to lose customers and creating safety issues. Advocates for people experiencing homelessness said it will further burden them, heightening mental and physical distress.

[shainyarias]

Blog Deliverable #4

It’s no joke how bad the homelessness issue is in Portland, Oregon and everyone is fully aware of it; city counsels, portlanders and tourists and this issue is ruining our city. These houseless people deserve better, every single one of them has a different situation with a different story on how they ended up on the streets. A lot of them have mental health issues, drug addictions, they live in unsanitary situations exposing them to illnesses, they’re exposed to severe weather and a lot of violence. Now, there’s many people that want to “solve” homeslessness but are they really thinking of the correct methods to actually end this huge issue Portland is facing? According to the article Could Portland End Homelessness With A By-Name Directory Of People Living Outside? Officials Are Going To Try by Anthony Effienger the Multnomah County Commissioner; Sharon Meieran, understands that the best way to solve the homelessness issue at the moment is to create a list (by name) of all houseless people in Portland and the reason why they live on the streets that way they can be matched with what they need to get a place to live. “Ask Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran how to end the homeless crisis in Portland and she’ll say the city needs a list, by name, of every unhoused person and the reasons they live outside. Portland City Commissioner Dan Ryan will say the same thing.

Only then, they say, can homeless people be matched with what they need to become housed: mental health care, addiction treatment, rent assistance, or job placement.” I think this is a ridiculous idea, there's a lot of houseless people on the streets right now and this process would take a really long time before it can actually be solved. “It makes me incredibly uncomfortable that focusing on getting people’s names and information, even if they don’t want to engage in services, is a priority,” Zapata says. “I don’t need anybody’s name to produce housing faster. I need to know how many people there are to know how many units to build.” I agree with Zapata, I think that at the moment, what we need to start solving this issue is to start building places where they can live because a lot of houseless people don't even want to look for shelters and such because they know they’re isn’t enough space. I realized this when I was in highschool, my senior project was to inform houseless peoples of shelters nearby and they wouldn’t even want to hear about it because what they need is a place they can call home. Not another tent on the side of the road. 

Source: 

Could Portland End Homelessness With A By-Name Directory Of People Living Outside? Officials Are Going To Try by Anthony Effienger. June 08th 2022. Willamette Week

[pdxoutreach]

Stakeholder Interview

Stakeholder: Naomi Meeker, Portlander 

“What are your thoughts on the homelessness crisis in Portland?”

It makes me sad, you know? To walk down the street and see people who are in such an unfortunate situation, it just makes me want to cry. I think about myself, my friends and my family, and I wonder what it would be like to be in that position. It especially makes me sad when I hear people talking negatively about the unhoused. You constantly hear people making it sound like it’s their fault, and that makes me just feel really sad.”

“Has the homelessness crisis impacted you personally?”

“I haven’t experienced homelessness, which is something I do not take for granted. I would say one of the ways I see it impacting me is just in terms of pollution. When people are living on the streets of our city there is a lot more litter on the ground too, when they don’t have access to a place to put their garbage. Microplastics get into our water supply, that is something that impacts us all.”

“What makes you passionate about solving the homelessness problem in Portland?”

“I think homelessness is an important issue to work on solving all throughout the world. I think that I am passionate about Portland specifically because it is my home, I have grown up here. When you think about how everyone here, homeless or not, calls Portland their home, it is difficult to not care about the people who are in those bad situations. Those are our citizens, and I know that I would want somebody to be taking care of me if the roles were reversed.”

[caros-musing]

SF, homelessness, big tech, the Last Black Man in San Francisco

There are a few things that I have qualms with when people talk about San Francisco's homeless population.

One, what makes you think that the unhoused population in SF is particularly out of control? There are literally no statistics, no data to substantiate this claim. If anything, the NYC unhoused population rivals that of SF. It frustrates me to no degree that East Coasters ignore this similarity, claiming that it's different. The only distinction is that, in New York, it's much much easier to spurn the unhoused. They live, both literally and metaphorically, on the fringes of society, away from the bustling streets of Midtown or the East Village, and most definitely away from the quaint suburban-cosplay of the Upper East and West Side. Being unhoused in NYC means being red-lined into a specific quadrant of the island, contained within a mile's radius of a soup kitchen or police patrols, or the free drug alternatives that the government passes out. In NYC, Wall Street bankers are free to live guilt-free and unhindered as they walk through their block with the blinders on. In NYC, tech workers move in once the company businessmen move out the unhoused. They never have to bat one eye.

But San Francisco is unique in that the unhoused are there, they are present. They are not a footnote in the margins of the city, they are living in broad daylight, demanding humanity and humanization. They hold fast to their egos and their pride, and most don't even beg for money or drugs. They are mostly harmless. They are physically harmless (because what threat has an unhoused 70-year-old man with a bum leg ever presented to you???) and prefer to enjoy what little life has given them. The reason people dislike seeing the homeless, truly seeing them, is because they dislike being presented with the idea that society is flawed. That society has failed these people. The tourists who visit SF, the techies and finance bros who move into Ocean Beach, the South Bay-ers who tire of Menlo Park, want to pretend that SF is an idyllic city (which it is), and that of a dreamland, where there is no poverty or homelessness, just the soaring Salesforce tower-penis and the promises of streets paved with NFT gold. But then they turn the corner and run into a man who is barely clothed and too starved to pick up a pencil. And they hate themselves for it because they didn't want to consider their own role in keeping men barely-clothed-and-too-starved-to-pick-up-pencils before 7pm on their walk back to a BART stop that they'll surely call "infested" and "dirty" before going out at night in a city built on the backs of those same people crawling the streets barely-clothed-and-too-starved-to-pick-up-pencils.

Perhaps this is cruel to write out. I don't necessarily believe all these people are evil and vigorously evade guilt. But it still makes me furious. The Republican media has clearly done a fantastic job of constructing talking points about SF to delegitimize its influence in politics and society. Yes, SF is flawed. Yes, it has a housing crisis. But that doesn't mean we give up on it. It just means that we treasure it as East Bay residents always have, and work to make it better. The imperfections of SF are not any reason to love it less -- we love it regardless of its scars, the same way New Yorkers are proud of the city and its piss-filled subways and simmering summer trash heaps.

It's true that there are too many unhoused people in SF. But that is true anywhere. I dislike that people frame it as if the issue is a personal problem of anyone barely-clothed-and-too-starved-to-pick-up-pencils. There is a housing crisis and a housing shortage induced by many of the companies that these people pooh-pooh-ing work for. Real estate developers buy up houses until there are 10 empty houses for every homeless person in the Bay Area. Tech companies buy up lots and property from real estate developers, and when money exchanges hands, those empty houses are torn up, new shiny buildings are constructed, and homeless encampments are pushed further out into different sectors of the city.

The one movie that best encapsulates the frustration I feel over this issue is The Last Black Man in San Francisco. I believe any tech or finance worker who moves into SF should watch this movie. Gain some empathy. You are entering a city with history and culture and a delicate ecosystem of people recognizing people. Real recognize real. Maybe you're the one who looks unfamiliar. And maybe you don't like that.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A federal judge overseeing a sprawling lawsuit about homelessness in Los Angeles ordered the city and county Tuesday to offer some form of shelter or housing to the entire homeless population of skid row by October.

Judge David O. Carter granted a preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiffs in the case last week and now is telling the city and county that they must offer single women and unaccompanied children on skid row a place to stay within 90 days, help families within 120 days and finally, by Oct. 18, offer every homeless person on skid row housing or shelter.

It’s unclear whether the city and county will challenge the order, which also calls for the city to put $1 billion into an escrow account — an idea that has raised concerns among city officials.

The ruling argues that L.A. city and county wrongly focused on permanent housing at the expense of more temporary shelter, “knowing that massive development delays were likely while people died in the streets.” That element of the order underscores the judge’s skepticism of a core part of L.A.'s current strategy to tackle homelessness.

“Los Angeles has lost its parks, beaches, schools, sidewalks, and highway systems due to the inaction of city and county officials who have left our homeless citizens with no other place to turn,” Carter wrote in a 110-page brief sprinkled with quotes from Abraham Lincoln and an extensive history of how skid row was first created.

“All of the rhetoric, promises, plans, and budgeting cannot obscure the shameful reality of this crisis — that year after year, there are more homeless Angelenos, and year after year, more homeless Angelenos die on the streets.” Last year more than 1,300 homeless people died in Los Angeles County.

In the last homeless count in January 2020, more than 4,600 unhoused people were found to be living on skid row — about 2,500 in large shelters and 2,093 on the streets. They account for only slightly more than 10% of the city’s overall homeless population, and it’s not clear what Carter’s order might mean for other parts of the city.

The judge wrote that “after adequate shelter is offered,” he would allow the city to enforce laws that keep streets and sidewalks clear of tents so long as they’re consistent with previous legal rulings that have limited the enforcement of such rules. That appears to only apply to skid row.

He also ordered the county to offer “support services to all homeless residents who accept the offer of housing” including placements in “appropriate emergency, interim, or permanent housing and treatment services.” The costs would be split by the city and county, he said.

Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said Tuesday that city lawyers are reviewing the order. He declined to comment further.

Skip Miller, partner at the Miller Barondess law firm, which is outside counsel for the county in the lawsuit, said the county is “now evaluating our options, including the possibility of an appeal.”

Previously, the county had asked to be removed from the case, arguing that it was about the city and that the county was aggressively responding to homelessness without any direction from the court. It cited efforts that included spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually through the Measure H sales tax and developing innovative strategies such as Project Roomkey in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Project Roomkey is a state program that provides temporary funding for cities and counties to rent hotel rooms for homeless people during the pandemic.

The push for an injunction “is an attempt by property owners and businesses to rid their neighborhood of homeless people,” Miller said.

“There is no legal basis for an injunction because the county is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on proven strategies,” he added.

Matthew Umhofer, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, said he and his clients were ecstatic. Carter’s call for action was what they had been looking for when they filed the case, he said, and why they sought out Carter, who had overseen similar cases in Orange County in recent years, to preside over it.

“This is exactly the kind of aggressive emergency action that we think is necessary on the issue of homelessness in Los Angeles,” Umhofer said.

The Alliance is a coalition of downtown business owners and residents that filed the case in March 2020, accusing the city and county of breaching their duty to abate a nuisance, reducing property value without compensation, wasting public funds and violating the state environmental act and state and federal acts protecting people with disabilities.

Carter’s order came the day that Mayor Eric Garcetti released his budget for the next fiscal year, which includes nearly $1 billion in spending on homelessness. The longtime federal judge also ordered “that $1 billion, as represented by Mayor Garcetti, will be placed in escrow forthwith.”

Of the $1 billion in homeless spending planned by Garcetti, more than a third would come from Proposition HHH, the 2016 bond measure to build permanent housing for homeless residents. Garcetti aides said they expect the city will be building or developing 89 HHH projects over the next fiscal year, for a total of 5,651 housing units.

Whether Carter’s order will disrupt those activities is unclear. In his order, the judge said he wants a report in 90 days of every developer receiving funds from HHH, as well as new regulations to “limit the possibility of funds being wasted.”

[hoe-doroki]

ana reads bnha ch169

previous chapter here first chapter here next chapter here

We’ve entered the school festival arc, folks. I introduce you to my new program: Ana ruins everything

Aw, this is so teenage. Like, Kami’s actually being super sweet. He seems genuinely curious and he’s identified that it’s something that Jirou really, really loves. But she has that teen shame and those teen nerves and so she’s lashing out. I definitely did that as a teen. Fortunately I don’t feel embarrassment nearly as often now, post theatre-school. My room shows all my childish obsessions loudly and proudly and idc who sees.

Oop, Kiri, I hate to break it to you, but overlooking enormous world suffering is a part of the human condition. We are conditioned to walk past unhoused people on the street and not think about the housing crisis. We are conditioned to not prioritize world news and have any awareness about, say, what’s happening in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. We are conditioned to forget about South Africa’s water crisis as soon as talk of “Day 0” exits the news media. This is how humans cope and how humans think. We can’t constantly have tabs for every world crisis open in our brain at all times and, like it or not, they can’t all affect our every decision. We are not perfect in this way, and its not achievable to attempt otherwise. It’s something heroes would assuredly get desensitized to—which makes Aizawa’s response kind of odd to me. Really, he should say that stuff like that is happening in the world all the time. It’s just that it just recently became personal to you and is front of mind for you. We need to marry how to both be activists in our everyday lives, but also carry on our everyday lives without ruining all the joy and good fortune. That’s how you burn out, buddy.

*steps off soapbox*

Disco!Shou and Katsu!! Omg, it makes me laugh, it makes me cringe. Let it be known the world ‘round that I don’t like disco and don’t wanna see my boys in this state! Although, I don’t mind laughing at them…

But it’s still super strange to me that Shouto is the one who looks this up. How would he have seen the video that he brings up? (How does he even find it when he doesn’t know what it’s called?) I get how it relates to the provisional license class, but it’s still a bit of a stretch. I do appreciate the attempt to tie in what is otherwise a very isolated mini storyline with the larger story, though.

Also, can we talk about Shouto in a black button down????? Pretty please????????????

Overall: Wow, I have a LOT to say about this chapter. First and foremost, we have another night with Bakugou asleep before anyone else. Canon confirmed. Second, we get a cameo from Shinsou and Mei. Always a win.

Now. This, uh, club idea. Setting aside the fact that I don’t get how Shouto thought of it, I have a lot of issues with this idea, and will continue to snark about it for the rest of this arc. I mean, I love this arc, I do, but I have many, MANY gripes with it (including my biggest nitpick with the whole series—wait for it, it’s a while away yet). They’re not things that I wish were different, but just things that I, personally am like 😒 yeah right. First of all, most people at concerts enjoy themselves because they’re a fan of the band. There will be considerably less enthusiasm when it’s just the yahoos you go to school with. Next, Ashido says she can teach everyone to dance, and it’s declared that she can teach anyone because she taught Aoyama one step in one day. Well, let me tell you! I took four years of extensive (expensive) dance classes in college and I NEVER got good enough that anyone would ever wanna watch me. Seriously! No way you can teach everyone to be good in 1 month? Next, Jirou is supposed to teach multiple people different instruments in a month. Aside from the fact that there’s no way she has time for that in addition to classes, a month is simply not enough time to learn an instrument and all the songs that you’d need for a whole concert.

Sorry, y’all. This is an arc about music and dance—two things I actually know a lot about. Welcome to hell.

[96thdayofrage]

Living through Covid-19 while Black and homeless

Not too many people do what Luther Keith does. Keith walks the streets among the homeless, passing out clothes and serving the unhoused with hot meals. This has been an everyday occurrence for Keith for over two decades.

On a weekly basis, Keith donates his time and feeds hundreds, sometimes thousands.

“That was my mission back in 1999, [that’s] to feed the homeless,” said Keith. “I started doing this on Avalon and Imperial Highway back in 1999 when I was at Locke High [School].”

At the time of his calling to help out those on the streets, Keith was a security officer for Locke High School in an area previously known as Watts, which is now encompassed inside of the boundaries of South Los Angeles.

A longtime gang interventionist, Keith has a strong presence on the streets of South Los Angeles. Working as the head of security for the renowned Drew League, a pro-am summer basketball league that has become home in the offseason for many NBA players, and keeping the peace among warring gang factions, Keith is a doer and not a talker when it comes to helping others.    

Feeding and clothing the homeless is not for the faint of heart. Driving through downtown Los Angeles one can encounter many things. First, the many skyscrapers silhouettes that outline the Southern California skies make for a breathtaking view.

There are local hotspots and eateries that pop up on just about every block of the downtown area that make it chic or trendy to wine and dine.

STAPLES Center, the place that the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers call home, is snuggled in the midst of all of this hustle and bustle. Right across the street sits the Microsoft Theater, where live concerts from some of the biggest names in the music and entertainment industries are constantly on display as artists come and pay a visit when they’re in town performing.  

Then there is Skid Row which is the direct antithesis to everything that is glamorous and modern in the downtown area of the second-largest city in America.

Though it is located in the downtown area of Los Angeles, a person would have to go through nearly two miles of designated parking lots and clumps of buildings and go past the city’s Los Angeles Fashion District before encountering humanity at its worse.

Skid Row is a proliferation of tents, gangs, hustlers, prostitution, gambling, and drug activity. The streets are blackened by the large amounts of trash and debris that have settled on them. The air space is almost inhalable. Assaults and robberies can happen about as quickly as you snap your fingers.

Navigating through Skid Row and other parts of downtown Los Angeles can be a dangerous place to walk or drive. The Covid-19 pandemic has magnified the danger alert to an even greater level. Keith is not too concerned about it. That’s because as a devout Christian, Keith arms himself with the faith weapons he’s been given on his sleeves.

These are the antidotes to any negativity he may encounter when he’s out and about doing what he’s called to do.

Judge David O. Carter gave the elected officials representing the City Los Angeles and Los Angeles County a sharp rebuke for failing to properly address the homeless crisis. The judge issued a memo ordering those living on Skid Row to be housed by this fall.

“There can be no defense to the indefensible,” Carter wrote in a 110-page ruling in the court case LA Alliance for Human Rights v City of Los Angeles. “For all the declarations of success that we are fed, citizens themselves see the heartbreaking misery of the homeless and the degradation of their City and County. Los Angeles has lost its parks, beaches, schools, sidewalks, and highway systems due to the inaction of City and County officials who have left our homeless citizens with no other place to turn. All of the rhetoric, promises, plans, and budgeting cannot obscure the shameful reality of this crisis—that year after year, there are more homeless Angelenos, and year after year, more homeless Angelenos die on the streets.”

The system of homelessness has become a Black problem with long-rooted institutional checks and balances in place playing a significant role behind the scenes, said Heidi Marston, director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“I want to be very clear, homelessness is a byproduct of racism,” Marston said. “We continue to see that Black people are overrepresented in our homeless population and that Black African Americans are four times more likely to become homeless than their white counterparts.”

Being homeless and Black in the middle of the Covid-19 is not just a Los Angeles thing. The numbers are just as staggering nationally. Much like the population-to-homeless ratio in Los Angeles, unhoused statistics for Blacks across the country are alarming.

According to the 2020 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress, a report backed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 39 percent of the people who are homeless nationwide are Black. The AHAR report, released this past January, also concluded  that Blacks with families and children (53 percent) are in far greater numbers to be homeless than any other ethnic group surveyed.

According to a 2020 U.S. Census study, Blacks are just 12 percent of the general population in the country, a sobering reality to the vast homelessness numbers this group represents. There are several contributing factors as to why many Black people can be found on the streets or are unsheltered, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

The main causes, poverty, rental and housing discrimination, lack of access to quality health care and incarceration, are nothing new. When it comes to re-entering back into society after being incarcerated, Black women are more likely than anyone else to be homeless, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. That’s including Black men.

A New Way of Life Reentry Project, founded by Susan Burton, does its best to address the needs of these women once they leave jail or prison.

“A New Way of Life and similar programs offer people released from jails and prisons an opportunity to live in a safe, welcoming, structured, and supportive environment where both staff and other residents understand the challenges that convicted and formerly incarcerated people face, and are able to offer a clear path forward,” said Pamela Marshall, co-director of A New Way of Life Reentry Project.

“Having stable, safe and affordable housing improves an  individuals’ abilities to reduce stress; to heal from trauma or addiction; to manage a health or mental health condition; to find and maintain employment; to protect, uplift and support children and other family members; to attend school and/or job training programs; to avoid violence and system contact,” Marshall added.

Based in South Los Angeles, A New Way of Life Reentry Project has 10 homes to accommodate women coming from jail or prison. Marshall said once these individuals put incarceration in the rearview mirror, trying to live and function in normalcy, can be overwhelming.  

“Imagine living in a jail or prison cell where your every movement, every minute, every meal and every decision has been made for you and you are suddenly released with $200 or less, without a state ID, social security card, medical or birth documents, into a world where the technology, bus routes, culture, and communities have advanced far into the future leaving you without direction or understanding and you have also lost all contact with family, friends or a place to stay,” Marshall said.

While A New Way of Life Reentry Project has a more structural way of helping those once locked up to stay off the streets, Keith keeps things pushing with his charitable outreach, bringing encouragement and food to fill the bellies and minds of the homeless. And he does it without fear.  

“If you ain’t equipped and know how to do this…they got gangs down there,” Keith said. “Folks are scared to go down there.”

[sataniccapitalist]

The worse the political and economic crisis becomes, the more lethargic the US left behaves – as if generations of collaboration with corporate Democrats has sucked the life out of the left.

Until leftists break with the Democrats they will always be on a fool’s errand.”

The sight of a Donald Trump incited mob storming the United States Capitol was a political turning point for this country. It confirmed the worst fears about the outgoing president and his supporters but ironically has also empowered right wing tendencies which are never far from the surface. There are cries for domestic terror legislation which is unneeded and which will be directed not at Trump’s “deplorables” but against the left. The event also amplified positive feelings about the incoming Joseph R. Biden administration, feelings based on hope and not on facts.

There are many legitimate questions surrounding the January 6 Capitol riot, how it happened, who planned it, and what their motives were. In addition to investigating the incident, there must be a discussion about the absence of any effective left wing activism.

Why are the right wing so determined to make their voices heard while what passes for a left wing is largely silent? Why aren’t the left marching on Washington? They have much to be concerned about and the issues of great importance to them are routinely ignored by Republicans and Democrats alike. Millions of people are suffering and have more reason to “take their country back” than Trump supporters do.

“Why aren’t the left marching on Washington?”

The quality of life for most people in this country was already in decline even before the COVID-19 virus killed 400,000 people and put millions out of work. Sore loser Trump supporters should not be the only group angry enough to mass in Washington with an expectation of bringing about change.

Leftists don’t act as they should because they are still tied to the Democrats, who are devoted to crushing them as a political force. They rarely even bother to throw their left flank a bone. Until leftists break with the Democrats they will always be on a fool’s errand, defending the party that is committed to keeping them neutered.

Biden promised wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” should he be elected. He declared opposition to Medicare for All while the impact of COVID falls disproportionately on low income communities. His pledge to raise the minimum wage to a meager $15 per hour is greeted as a sign of success when it is in fact proof of failure. The promised $2,000 stimulus payment has now fallen to $1,400. The number of unhoused people grows and so do long lines at food pantries. There are a multitude of reasons to protest. Yet the left is largely silent, restricting any action to social media debates. There is no will to act in concert and make political demands.

“Trump supporters should not be the only group angry enough to mass in Washington.”

The left were already marginalized even before Donald Trump’s election. The damage done by decades of corporatist allegiance continues. Anyone who questioned bank bailouts, falling wages or privatized public education was labeled unrealistic at best, and a spoiler at worst.

After the Democratic Party leadership coalesced around Biden the deed was done yet again. Neoliberalism is again ascendant, progressives have been shoved aside and the sight of right wing mobs results in sneering instead of the urge to join the fight. It is shameful that thousands of people believe that Trump won the election, and were willing to wreak havoc against the symbol of the federal government, without any countervailing action taking place or even being contemplated.

Obviously many people who want a better and more just country do not really believe that they can bring about the changes they want to see. They barely survive on the margins and every four years hope that the people determined to give them the proverbial bum’s rush will suddenly have a change of heart and give them a hearing.

“The sight of right wing mobs results in sneering instead of the urge to join the fight.”

Black people suffer the most from this dynamic. They are the most left leaning cohort in the country but their politics have been undone by the black political class of misleaders. They lay claim to representing millions of people but in fact only represent themselves and the interests of their patrons. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has not proposed meaningful legislation in a very long time, and they have not shown an inclination to change now that a Democrat will be in the White House. In fact, that is when the real backstabbing takes place. Democratic presidents bring welfare “reform” that impoverishes the already poor, deregulation of financial services, bank bailouts, and health care plans that empower the private sector.

There must be a complete rejection of the political status quo. A Democratic president with control of Congress should be seen and treated as an adversary. Biden is not a friend, nor are the CBC or phony progressives who call themselves a squad.

“A Democratic president with control of Congress should be seen and treated as an adversary.”

The left need not riot at the Capitol but they must believe that they can get what they want. The era of the liberation movement in the 1960s and early 1970s should be remembered as a moment when millions of people made demands knowing that politicians did not want to meet them. That is how that time should be remembered. It can be repeated again if defeatist attitudes are rejected.

There must be a commitment to wholesale change from top to bottom. The failed state must be taken on without hesitation or apology and dependence on the electoral system must end. Republicans fear the Capitol rioters and straddle the fence instead of denouncing the people who make up the bulk of their party. Democrats have no such concerns about the left, and see them as an irritant to be placated at key moments.

Leftists need not behave as the Trumpers do, but they must lose their own fears and leave the Democratic Party behind. It would indeed be shameful if the Capitol rioters are the only people who believe they can achieve their political goals and are willing to act accordingly.

Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at patreon.com/margaretkimberley and she regularly posts on Twitter @freedomrideblog. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com

[latoyajkelson70506]

Controversy Continues Over SF Restaurant Serving $200 Meals in Private Domes

Last month, California governor Gavin Newsom announced the mandatory closure (or re-closure) of all indoor restaurant dining rooms throughout the state. After investigating its options, Michelin-starred sushi restaurant Hashiri announced that it had purchased three miniature geodesic domes so it could provide a "unique outdoor multi-course dining experience." At the time, the domes seemed like a novel means of providing increased privacy safety for diners during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A few days ago, after a brief hiatus, Hashiri was allowed to start seating customers in its three outdoor geodesic domes again after the staff cut the plastic sides off to bring them into compliance with current public health requirements. Slicing several feet of soft PVC from the Garden Igloos seems to be a satisfactory resolution—at least for now—after two straight weeks of controversy that started when they were assembled on a San Francisco sidewalk.

Hashiri general manager Kenichiro Matsuura told the San Francisco Chronicle that he had previously attempted outdoor dining (pre-plastic bubbles) but it hadn't worked out, due to the restaurant's location in the Mid-Market section of the city. "We wanted to continue offering the fine-dining experience—and safety and peace,” Matsuura said. (The restaurant also offers a swanky to-go menu, including a $500 Ultimate Trifecta Bento box and a $160 takeaway Wagyu Sukiyaki kit, but it is best known for its five-course Kaiseki and Omakase tasting menu.) “Mint Plaza is a phenomenal space, it’s just sometimes the crowd is not too favorable,” he said. In an interview with ABC7, he again emphasized that "it's not the safest neighborhood." 

The entire Bay Area has an estimated 35,000 people who are unsheltered or experiencing homelessness and, at the beginning of the pandemic, there were more than 8,000 unhoused individuals in San Francisco alone. In mid-March, when the city issued its first stay-at-home order, homeless residents were encouraged to "find shelter and government agencies to provide it” but that was easier to type than it was to do. The Guardian reports that shelters stopped taking new residents due to concerns of overcrowding or inadequate social distancing, and more than 1,000 people put their names on a futile-sounding waitlist to get a bed. 

In April, the city's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed emergency legislation directing the city to secure more than 8,000 hotel rooms to accommodate all of the unhoused people in the city, but the order was denied by Mayor London Breed. It eventually acquired 2,733 hotel rooms for vulnerable individuals but, as of this writing, only 1,935 of them are actually occupied. As a result of the pair of public health crises that the city is enduring—the pandemic and widespread homelessness—the number of unhoused people has increased, as have the number of tents and other makeshift structures that comprise a homeless encampment near Hashiri.

"This is a difficult and upsetting issue," Laurie Thomas, the Executive Director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, told VICE in an email. "In San Francisco there are areas in the city where there are real concerns about negative street behavior and cleanliness and how that affects both workers and customers of restaurants relying on outside dining [...] Our restaurants have a strong desire to provide a safe and welcoming outdoor dining experience, especially without the ability to open for indoor dining, and this is so critical to their ability to stay in business and keep staff employed." 

It's easy to sympathize with just about everyone in this scenario. The pandemic has caused an ever-increasing number of challenges for restaurant owners, who are doing whatever it takes to keep their doors open for another day, while the essential workers who prep to-go orders and serve outdoor customers are doing so at great risk to their own health and safety. But still: the optics of serving a $200-per-person tasting menu to customers sitting in plastic bubbles a few hundred yards from people who are struggling for basic human necessities...well, they're not great. 

"I think what really gets people going about the dome is that it’s a perfect symbol of the complete inadequacy of our social safety net: In a queer reversal, the dome is a shield against, not for, the ones who need sheltering the most," the Chronicle's restaurant critic Soleil Ho wrote. "An unhoused person’s tent is erected in a desire for opaqueness and privacy, a space of one’s own, whereas the fine dining dome invites the onlooker’s gaze as a bombastic spectacle [...] for the housed, being seen eating on the street or in a park is a premium experience, especially now." 

Last week, the city's Public Health Department paid Hashiri a surprise visit, and ordered them to remove the domes over concerns that they "may not allow for adequate air flow." According to current regulations, outdoor dining enclosures are required to be open on the sides; the soft structures each have two windows and a door that can be opened, but those features were deemed insufficient. 

Matsuura said that he has received hate mail about the domes and he has been accused of making discriminatory comments about the city's most desperate residents, so he believes that someone reported him to the city (though, perhaps the Health Department just saw some of the nationwide media coverage of Hashiri's sidewalk igloos). Regardless, he still says that the domes are there to keep his customers safe… from interacting with the people living on those same streets. "There are people who come by and spit, yell, stick their hands in people’s food, discharging fecal matter right by where people are trying to eat,” he said. “It’s really sad, and it’s really hard for us to operate around that.”

The criticism that Hashiri has faced is similar to what the organizers of a pop-up restaurant in Toronto encountered when they set up their own heated glass domes last year. The Dinner with a View experience, complete with a three-course gourmet meal prepped by a Top Chef winner, was assembled under the Gardiner Expressway, just over a mile from the site of a homeless encampment that had been cleared out by the city. 

Advocates for the unhoused said that the meal and its location just further emphasized the ever-increasing gap between the Haves and the Have Nots. More than 300 demonstrators showed up to protest outside the event, and the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) served a free 'counter-meal' that it called Dinner with a View of the Rich. 

"On the one hand you have homeless people whose tents were demolished and who were evicted with nowhere else to go," OCAP wrote. "On the other hand you have people with sufficient disposable income to splurge over $550 on a single meal and who’re facing the possibility of their luxurious dining spectacle being tainted [...] Do they deserve to be mocked for their obliviousness to the suffering around them? Absolutely." 

Back in San Francisco, Hashiri is not the only Mid-Market restaurant to express concern about the safety of its patrons, or about the city's ineffective attempts at addressing the social and economic conditions that have contributed to the homelessness crisis. Last month, a group of residents and businesses in the neighborhood sued the city for negligence, alleging that homeless encampments, criminal activity, and unsanitary conditions combined to make Mid-Market a dangerous area. 

"The City has created and perpetuated these conditions through its pattern and practice of tacitly treating Mid-Market as a ‘containment zone’ that bears the brunt of San Francisco’s homelessness issues, and its failure to take action to address these issues," the lawsuit said. Two of the restaurants that are among the plaintiffs, Montesacro Pinseria and Souvla, said that if the situation doesn't improve, they could be forced to move to a new neighborhood, or to close their doors for good. 

"We are deeply concerned that property owners have taken to suing the city to 'remove tents' without anywhere for [those experiencing homelessness] to go. Worse, these lawsuits would have the courts decide the fate of people who have no seat at the table where 'justice' is being served," Jennifer Friedenbach, the executive director of San Francisco's Coalition on Homelessness, told VICE.

"These situations can be resolved by working collaboratively with the unhoused person to address the issues, while pressing the city, state and federal government to ensure there are dignified housing options available. If the restaurant owner can afford to sue, they can afford to hire someone to advocate successfully for solutions." 

Laurie Thomas is also working on behalf of restaurants, sharing their concerns and working toward positive changes and respectful solutions for all involved. Last week, she was among the hospitality and small business leaders who sent a letter to Mayor London Breed, the President of the Board of Supervisors, and the co-chairs of the City's Economic Recovery Task Force. 

"We are writing today because we are gravely concerned about the condition of our streets. We are devastated to see so many unsheltered neighbors struggling each day in unfathomable and treacherous conditions," their letter read. "These conditions will prohibit businesses of all sizes from reopening. More companies will leave San Francisco for safer and cleaner places to operate [...] Additionally, with outdoor dining and shopping options being the primary avenues for businesses to survive, the intersection between the unfortunate conditions on our streets and this new heavy reliance on public spaces for commerce will result in disastrous outcomes." 

The letter also made a number of recommendations that "should be prioritized" by city officials, including additional housing options, making mental health and substance abuse resources available to those experiencing homelessness, and establishing a 24-hour crisis response team that can respond to "urgent mental health and/or drug induced episodes." 

Meanwhile at Hashiri, the DIY-ed, now open-sided domes are back out on the sidewalk. "Signed, sealed and delivered," the restaurant wrote on Facebook. "With small modifications we are back in business." 

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

[anniekoh]

housing is a human right

Reclaiming Our Homes: No one should be homeless when homes are sitting empty. Housing is a human right!

#ReclaimLA just started up! (And they’ve started a fundraiser.)

Tweet by @sashaplot​_ members of the el sereno community have started to reclaim some of the 170 vacant homes in the area owned by caltrans; taking back what is rightfully theirs. it’s a beautiful rainy morning with chants being led by one of the youngest reclaimers.

Here are some articles from Dec of 2019 on ground-up efforts to decommodify land and housing 

[Tweet by @moms4housing “We don’t believe that corporations and house flippers should get to decide who has the right to live indoors.”]

Homeless moms solve housing crisis — temporarily Caille Millner (Dec 2019, SF Chronicle)

Walker, her young children and another mother named Sameerah Karim moved into a vacant home on Magnolia Street in West Oakland and proclaimed their intention to stay. The two women, who are both Oakland natives and currently homeless, are organizers with a new group called Moms 4 Housing.

“We took action out of complete desperation,” Walker said. “We wanted to draw attention to the fact that this isn’t just happening to us, it’s happening to a lot of moms. There are vacant units all over this city. It’s about who has the right to be housed.”

To say that the group’s first action got some attention is an understatement.

Because they have deep roots in the community, many local residents, activists and even well-known comedian W. Kamau Bell supported them at rallies and news conferences.

Because they are homeless — in a city where the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment rose by nearly 30% from 2017 to 2019, while homelessness increased by 47% — they’ve thrown a light on Oakland’s complete failure to adequately address the needs of this population.

Because they grew up in Oakland and work there (ironically, Walker works as an outreach organizer, connecting potential evictees with free legal services) they’ve focused attention on how dramatically the city’s last several years of hyper-growth has divided newcomers from natives, haves from have-nots.

This Oakland Neighborhood Is Supporting a Community for Unhoused Black Women Zack Haber (Dec 2019, The Bold Italic)

Inside 37MLK, a beacon of hope amid the current housing crisis

“These people lived here before me,” said 24-year-old Maria Campos on a cold November night as she walked her dog with her mother, Daisy Campos, along 37th Street near Martin Luther King Way in Oakland. The three of us were standing half a block away from 37MLK, a community of about 20 unhoused people, mostly elder Black women, who used to be housed in the neighborhood but now live in tents on a small plot of land behind a fence on the corner. Maria seemed sad and angry from seeing her neighbors displaced; she told me that her family regularly donates to this community.

“These people got kicked out of their homes because the landlords doubled their rent.”

Are Community Land Trusts the answer to Chicago’s Large Lots Program issues? Daniel Wu @danwu_danwu (Dec 2019, Shareable) 

In 2015, Chicago’s Large Lots Program was created to revitalize the city’s neighborhoods and cultivate new tax revenue. Within this program, existing local property owners are allowed to purchase up to two vacant, residential lots on their blocks for $1 each. Requirements include the stipulation that lots must be held for at least five years to prevent flipping. In return, the new owners pay the property taxes and maintain each lot. Since then, Chicago has sold 1,250 out of approximately 11,500 total vacant lots, transforming these desolate spaces overrun with trash, nuisance animals, and illegal dumping, into gardens, housing and public parks.

...

Recently, local Chicago aldermen have requested a list of all community gardens to add to a “do not sell” list for the city. However, residents like Gutierrez believe this effort is insufficient and argues that these lots should be for residents who are “sitting in the community, working with the community, engaging the community.”

In other words, she believes the program should favor those who will steward the property for the community. Whether the purchaser owns property locally should be a secondary concern.

[daveblume]

Making the Scene (Magazine)

I'm very pleased to announce the launch of our Spring 2020 edition of CSUN’s Scene Magazine, produced by students from two classes in the Journalism Department, Magazine Production, and Documentary Photojournalism...

Pastor Kathy Huck

This issue, now available in print and online, is completely dedicated to covering issues related to homelessness. This notion was inspired by a phone call I had late last year with Pastor Kathy Huck, founder of About My Father’s Business, a non-profit that does outreach to the encampments in the west San Fernando Valley. Kathy made a compelling case that the Chatsworth area in particular has very little infrastructure or the kind of name-brand charities that bring the needed attention and exposure to the ongoing confrontations between the NIMBY and activist communities. The difficulties in finding compromises that would allow for even the minimal amount of affordable housing needed are touched on in the excellent article, “There Goes the Neighborhood,” by Ricardo Lopez-Garcia.

In what seems like a very long time ago now, this effort was jump-started by a panel I convened on campus back on February 4th. Simply titled “Working On It,” we brought together an impressive group of activists and social service workers, which included Pastor Huck and several others who ended up being featured prominently in the magazine, such as “We the Unhoused” podcaster Theodore Henderson, and Brooke Carrillo and Rita Dunn, each of whom set an inspirational example and do not let their struggles with poverty and marginalization stop them from speaking out on behalf of their fellow unhoused neighbors. I can’t thank them, and everyone else who attended that memorable panel discussion, enough for lighting a fire under our students with straight talk, followed by open access to their lives and work. They allowed us to place most of our emphasis on those seeking solutions to the crisis, and one of the things I’m most proud of is the absence of the stereotypical pity-invoking imagery, sometimes justifiably referred to as “poverty porn,” in this magazine.

Halfway through the semester, everything was thrown into chaos when the COVID-19 outbreak forced the closure of our campus and brought increased uncertainty to the lives of those experiencing homelessness, several of the students involved in this project were left scrambling to adjust to financial, housing, and health issues. One student, who was working on a story about the many encampments which have appeared along the Metro lines in the Antelope Valley, had this effort and his entire master's degree thesis project derailed when he learned that both of his parents had tested positive back in New York. One of our photo editors was called back home to Canada, while others faced unemployment and other pressures. Further complicating things were the unexpected limitations many were suddenly faced with in terms of access-- not only access to our unhoused friends in the encampments and elsewhere, but general access to offices, organizations, and so on. 

Because of this, a few other stories that were being worked on, such as the effects of homelessness on women, the difficulties in assisting youth coming out of foster care, obstacles faced by various non-profits trying to coordinate activities to connect people to services, and a story on a needle exchange program in Skid Row, were also either scrapped, scaled down, or bundled into other stories. From mid-March until the end, our editorial meetings were conducted virtually, which made an already challenging task that much more so. Much credit has to be given to a core group of students who rose to the challenge and took on leadership roles, holding several sessions on Zoom even without my involvement. As the results show, they did a fantastic job in keeping our focus on a solutions-based approach to a humanitarian crisis that affects a very vulnerable, marginalized segment of our community and the city-at-large.

Rita Dunn

Brooke Carrillo

Photojournalist Shae Hammond, with Kathy Huck and Rita Dunn...