Changes in public housing bring fresh start for families, By Timothy Pratt, November 16, 2009, Las Vegas Sun: “Shea Hampton-Earl’s living room is empty, but her head is full of ideas. This spring, she will plant a garden with tomatoes and collard greens in the back yard of the house she just moved into. And in a few years, the 36-year-old mother of seven wants to buy the house with its path that leads to a park in the back and a tree-lined street in the front. Only two months ago, Hampton-Earl’s front door opened onto the pop of pistols and the hum of police helicopters overhead. There were no gardens, no parks. Hampton-Earl’s family lived in one of the 250 apartments at Ernie Cragin Terraces, a public housing complex scheduled to be turned into dust early next year. The single mother and her children are living through the biggest change in Las Vegas Valley public housing since the 1940s…”

State considers getting out of handling Hawaii public housing, By Mary Vorsino, November 11, 2009, Honolulu Advertiser: “The Hawaii Public Housing Authority is considering a radical solution to decades of backlogged repairs, aging projects and limited resources: selling properties or units and ending state oversight of public housing. The proposal, which officials stressed is still very preliminary, is part of a draft ‘vision’ before the housing authority board that includes ’self-sufficient families living in units that they own that were previously public housing’ and the authority - the largest affordable-housing landlord in the Islands - ‘no longer in existence.’ The draft says the ‘public housing shelter model has been broken for 40 years’ and ‘having an ownership stake in their housing encourages people to take pride in their physical surroundings and become responsible for their future.’ Under the proposal, the agency would sell some units to tenants and also redevelop rental projects under a mixed-income model aimed at deconcentrating poverty while preserving affordability…”

Hope in the battle against homelessness, By Neal Peirce, November 8, 2009, Denver Post: “Veterans of America’s recent wars left homeless; abused women and their children seeking nightly shelter; out-of-sight medical system costs; rising tides of bankruptcies. What do they have to do with each other - and America’s current health care debate? A lot, it turns out. By failing to guarantee a roof over every American’s head, we’ve failed the test - as Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan puts it - of ‘a civilized society.’ On a typical night, 650,000 Americans have no place to call home. We created this crisis ourselves, by the states emptying out their mental hospitals and cities demolishing thousands of low-income rental units. The result was a huge gap in affordable shelter. Plus, by failing to restrain medical system costs or guarantee care for all Americans, we’ve forced thousands of families to go into bankruptcy. Today, alarming numbers are being forced to take to the streets where their health is even more endangered by extremes of pelting rain or stone-cold nights, unsanitary conditions and sometimes violence. Yet as grim as all this sounds, it’s possible to see strong glimmers of light…”

Housing aid: End of a lifeline, By Kevin Duchschere, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “With two emergency housing aid programs slated to end this week, officials are worried that homelessness figures, especially among single adults, will rise. By his own count, Victor Gomez has lived in 28 states since leaving his native Indiana. He’s been homeless for the better part of 20 years. He worked odd jobs in construction before damaging his wrist in a drunken leap off a bridge in downtown Minneapolis four years ago. ‘I don’t know what got into me,’ he says about the jump, although he knows why he used to drink so much: ‘I didn’t feel no cold.’ For the past three months Gomez, 44, and his wife, Linda, have shared a two-bedroom apartment in south Minneapolis. St. Stephen’s Human Services found the place for them, and Minnesota’s Emergency General Assistance (EGA) program got them in the door — it provided the funding for Hennepin County to cover the Gomezes’ $939 damage deposit…”

• Recession drives surge in youth runaways, By Ian Urbina, October 25, 2009, New York Times: “Dressed in soaked green pajamas, Betty Snyder, 14, huddled under a cold drizzle at the city park as several older boys decided what to do with her. Betty said she had run away from home a week earlier after a violent argument with her mother. Shivering and sullen-faced, she vowed that she was not going to sleep by herself again behind the hedges downtown, where older homeless men and methamphetamine addicts might find her. The boys were also runaways. But unlike them, Betty said, she had been reported missing to the police. That meant that if the boys let her stay overnight in their hidden tent encampment by the freeway, they risked being arrested for harboring a fugitive…”
• For runaways, sex buys survival, By Ian Urbina, October 26, 2009, New York Times: “She ran away from her group home in Medford, Ore., and spent weeks sleeping in parks and under bridges. Finally, Nicole Clark, 14 years old, grew so desperate that she accepted a young man’s offer of a place to stay. The price would come later. They had sex, and he soon became her boyfriend. Then one day he threatened to kick her out if she did not have sex with several of his friends in exchange for money. She agreed, fearing she had no choice. ‘Where was I going to go?’ said Nicole, now 17 and living here, just down the Interstate from Medford. That first exchange of money for sex led to a downward spiral of prostitution that lasted for 14 months, until she escaped last year from a pimp who she said often locked her in his garage apartment for months. ‘I didn’t know the town, and the police would just send me back to the group home,’ Nicole said, explaining why she did not cut off the relationship once her first boyfriend became a pimp and why she did not flee prostitution when she had the chance. ‘I’d also fallen for the guy. I felt trapped in a way I can’t really explain.’ Most of the estimated 1.6 million children who run away each year return home within a week. But for those who do not, the desperate struggle to survive often means selling their bodies…”

Foreclosures force ex-homeowners to turn to shelters, By Peter S. Goodman, October 18, 2009, New York Times: “The first night after she surrendered her house to foreclosure, Sheri West endured the darkness in her Hyundai sedan. She parked in her old driveway, with her flower-print dresses and hats piled in boxes on the back seat, and three cherished houseplants on the floor. She used her backyard as a restroom. The second night, she stayed with a friend, and so it continued for more than a year: Ms. West - mother of three grown children, grandmother to six and great-grandmother to one - passed months on the couches of friends and relatives, and in the front seat of her car. But this fall, she exhausted all options. She had once owned and overseen a group home for homeless people. Now, she succumbed to that status herself, checking in to a shelter…”

As city adds housing for poor, market subtracts it, By Manny Fernandez, October 14, 2009, New York Times: “Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is closing in on a milestone: building or preserving 165,000 city-financed apartments and houses for low-, moderate- and middle-income families, the goal of a $7.5 billion housing plan he announced in 2002 and expanded in 2005. It has already financed the creation or preservation of 94,000 units, including 72,000 for low-income households, city officials say. But those efforts have been overwhelmed by a far larger number - the 200,000 apartments affordable to low-income renters that New York City has lost over all, because of market forces, during the mayor’s tenure. The shrinking supply of these apartments, highlighted by researchers at New York University, illustrates not only the increasing strain that housing costs have had on this city of renters, but also the limits of the mayor’s success in providing the city’s poor with reasonable places to live…”

Number of homeless students skyrockets in Central Florida, By Denise-Marie Balona, October 1, 2009, Orlando Sentinel: “The number of homeless children attending Central Florida’s public schools is soaring — further evidence that the weakened economy has hit this part of the state particularly hard. Across Florida, there were 41,286 homeless students in the 2008-09 school year, according to a new report from the Florida Department of Education. That’s a 20 percent jump over the previous year. The tally jumped much higher in Orange County — 36 percent — thanks in large part to the area’s economic and housing crises. It was one of the biggest increases among Florida’s largest counties. In Brevard and Lake, more than twice as many students as last year woke up and got ready for school in motel rooms, shelters, campgrounds and other forms of temporary housing…”

• Student homelessness soars in Oregon schools, By Betsy Hammond, September 18, 2009, The Oregonian: “Amid the recession, the number of Oregon students who are homeless surged 14 percent in the past year, rising to 18,000 children and teens without a permanent home of their own, the state reported Friday. Schools are required by federal law to help homeless students find security at school during the upheaval in their lives. And many Oregon educators report they are doing a better job helping children remain in the same school, get basics such as food, and find extra academic support. But they said the emotional and practical needs of students who’ve become homeless are huge, and the ranks of students in those straits are still growing…”
• In school, but no home, By Anne Williams, September 19, 2009, Eugene Register-Guard: “A report from the Oregon Department of Education on Friday offers yet more evidence of the recession’s toll on Oregon families. The number of homeless students attending Oregon public schools surged to more than 18,000 in the 2008-09 school year, up 14 percent over the previous year and 122 percent over 2003-04, the first year the state took a count…”
• Database: Student homelessness rises, By MacKenzie Ryan, September 19, 2009, Statesman Journal: “Two thousand more students in Oregon were homeless last year, a “significant” increase and a troubling trend that reflects the state’s dour economy, rise in home foreclosures and high unemployment rate, state education officials said this week. More than 18,000 students, or 3.2 percent of those in grades K-12 statewide, were identified as homeless last school year. That’s a 14 percent increase from the previous school year, according to education data released Friday…”

Poverty in Fresno carries hidden costs, By Sanford Nax, September 19, 2009, Fresno Bee: ” The apartments along Lowe Avenue in southeast Fresno sound like a good deal. For about $600 a month you can get two bedrooms, and bad credit won’t keep you out. But many costs aren’t in the lease: Some apartments are teeming with roaches and mold, creating a veritable stew pot for illness — and constant doctor bills. It’s in a dangerous neighborhood, so costly possessions — like stereos — have a way of disappearing. People live here because they are poor and can’t afford anything better. But compared to those with just a little more money, they must spend an enormous share of their household incomes on rent. The same is true across the central San Joaquin Valley and the nation: When it comes to housing, being poor is expensive…”

Suddenly shocked by life in a shelter, By Alfred Lubrano, September 18, 2009, Philadelphia Inquirer: “Frank Marshall remembers the moment he transformed from unemployed security guard to homeless man. ‘The walk toward my room at the shelter was surreal,’ he said. ‘I pinched myself to believe it was happening.’ Shoehorning himself into a 14-by-10-foot room with three other bewildered men in the Salvation Army’s Railton House in West Chester, Marshall, 48, lay on a narrow bed that looked like a boy’s and stared at the ceiling. On it, he projected images of the life he’d lost: job, apartment, girlfriend. Marshall, who always thought the homeless were drug addicts or schizophrenics, was dumbfounded. ‘There are days when my faith is lacking,’ said Marshall, a Roman Catholic from Phoenixville who is unmarried with no children. ‘This is unbelievable.’ Though the economy is improving, hard times grind on, and many people who lost jobs near the beginning of the downturn are facing the ultimate consequence of unemployment: homelessness. Tomorrow, the maximum of 79 weeks of unemployment benefits and extensions will end for 20,000 in Pennsylvania and 45,000 in New Jersey, officials said. An additional 14,000 Pennsylvanians will exhaust all benefits by next Saturday…”

Homeless in Colorado metro area up to 11,061, By Mike McPhee, September 17, 2009, Denver Post: “There are 11,061 homeless people in the seven-county metro region, and about half of them say they are homeless for the first time, according to the results of a 24-hour survey conducted Jan. 27 by the Metro Denver Homeless Initiative. While the total number is 4 percent higher than in 2007, when the last point-in-time survey was taken, homeless advocates say the much-delayed results are already out of date. The survey results were expected in June. John Parvensky, director of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, said homelessness dipped slightly in 2008 but came roaring back this year. He estimates homelessness is now up about 20 percent from 2007. The methodology for the point-in- time survey was changed somewhat this year, making year-to-year comparisons difficult. Still, the survey represents the best count available, Parvensky said…”

Seattle’s 1811 Eastlake project puts housing first, saves lives and money, By Kim Horner, September 13, 2009, Dallas Morning News: “An attractive blue and gray apartment building with views of the Space Needle saved taxpayers $4 million in one year - simply by giving hardcore homeless alcoholics a place to live. This home for the homeless has attracted visitors from across the country - including Dallas - looking for ways to move the most seriously ill off the streets and cut costs. But it has detractors because it doesn’t require residents to stop drinking. The $11 million project is one of the country’s best-known examples of housing first, an approach to combating chronic homelessness by providing homes upfront and offering help for illnesses and addictions. The concept turns the traditional model, which typically requires sobriety before a person can get housing, upside down….”

Recession dries up funds for low-income housing, By J.W. Elphinstone (AP), September 13, 2009, Contra Costa Times: “For thousands of low-income renters nationwide - but especially in rural towns and small cities - the recession is hitting home in an unexpected way. Nationwide, funding to build low-cost apartments has dropped by more than half in two years to $4 billion. Hundreds of projects can’t get off the ground because the federal tax credits that help offset development costs are currently worthless to traditional investors. Georgia, for example, typically funds about 30 projects a year using up to $20 million in federal tax credits. So far, just nine deals have closed for 2008 and none this year. In Savannah, one project was halted mid-development because of a financing gap…”

Surge in homeless pupils strains schools, By Erik Eckholm, September 5, 2009, New York Times: “In the small trailer her family rented over the summer, 9-year-old Charity Crowell picked out the green and purple outfit she would wear on the first day of school. She vowed to try harder and bring her grades back up from the C’s she got last spring - a dismal semester when her parents lost their jobs and car and the family was evicted and migrated through friends’ houses and a motel. Charity is one child in a national surge of homeless schoolchildren that is driven by relentless unemployment and foreclosures. The rise, to more than one million students without stable housing by last spring, has tested budget-battered school districts as they try to carry out their responsibilities - and the federal mandate - to salvage education for children whose lives are filled with insecurity and turmoil…”

Japan’s economic downturn pushes more onto streets, By Peter Ford, September 3, 2009, Christian Science Monitor: “By the time the police arrived at 7 a.m. last Monday to move him on from the Ikebukuro subway station where he had spent the night, Isao Ito had been awake for some time. He had been poring over the jobs section of a magazine, and he hadn’t slept well anyway. Newly arrived in the capital in search of work, he said, ‘I haven’t eaten or slept for three days. I’m alone, and I’m nervous about sleeping rough.’ Welcome to the global recession, Japanese style. As Mr. Ito has just found, perhaps nowhere else in the industrialized world is it so easy to slip from just getting by to utter destitution. Some 460,000 people have lost their jobs in Japan since the ‘Lehman shokku,’ as people here call it - the day last September when the collapse of Lehman Bros. bank triggered a worldwide financial crisis. Half of them, like Ito, were on temporary or part-time contracts that gave them no unemployment or other social security insurance…”

Hope, reality collide in post-Katrina New Orleans, By Becky Bohrer and Peter Prengaman (AP), August 26, 2009, Washington Post: “Shelia Phillips doesn’t see the New Orleans that Mayor Ray Nagin talks about, the one on its way to having just as many people and a more diverse economy than it did before Hurricane Katrina. How could she? From the front porch of her house in the devastated Lower 9th Ward, it’s hard to see past the vegetation slowly swallowing the property across the way. Nearby homes are boarded up or still bear the fading tattoos left by search and rescue teams nearly four years ago. The fence around a playground a few blocks down is padlocked. ‘I just want to see people again,’ she said recently, swatting bugs in the muggy heat. On paper, the city’s economy appears to be thriving, with relatively low unemployment, foreclosure and bankruptcy rates. But in post-Katrina New Orleans, residents’ perceptions of their city’s recovery tends to depend on where they live, their vantage point of it. Swaths of some neighborhoods are sparsely populated, even desolate, and federal rebuilding dollars have provided much of the economic resilience…”

Advocates push to include the homeless in Medicaid, By Pam Fessler, August 25, 2009, National Public Radio: “Most homeless people in America are too poor to buy their own health coverage, but many also don’t qualify for Medicaid, the government-run health program for the poor. Medicaid is mainly for people who have children or a disability, and most homeless people are childless adults. So, like 63-year-old Walter Brooks of Baltimore, they make do without insurance coverage…”

• Cutbacks pinch homeless programs, By Wendy Koch, August 24, 2009, USA Today: “The homeless are having more trouble getting help because of state budget cuts, and federal stimulus funding in September will fill only part of the gap, service providers for the homeless say…”
• New faces of homeless in D.C., By Leila Fadel, August 23, 2009, Seattle Times: “At 6 a.m., a block from the manicured lawns of the White House, Poppy Cali starts his days. Cali, 36, a Navy veteran, wakes up just after dawn, before security can find him sleeping on the steps of the General Services Administration building near the grate he uses to warm himself in the winter…”
• Nashville follows Denver’s lead in homelessness fight, By Angela Patterson, August 25, 2009, The Tennessean: “The Metropolitan Homelessness Commission wants to bring a little of what Denver learned to Nashville. The Mile High City created a 10-year plan to end homelessness called Denver’s Road Home. An accompanying partnership between the private and public sectors helped lower the city’s chronic homelessness rate by 36 percent…”
• Strategy goes beyond housing homeless, By Mark Price, August 24, 2009, Charlotte Observer: ” Project Hope - a groundbreaking program that could change the way Charlotte deals with homelessness - is expected to be unveiled tonight as part of a Charlotte City Council vote to back the project with nearly $2 million in federal stimulus money. Crafted to be a long-term solution rather than a quick fix, the program calls for pulling families and individuals from local shelters, putting them in rental apartments, and stabilizing their lives over 18 months with education, job skills, counseling and support from social workers and teams of volunteers…”

Section 8 shortfall leaves thousands waiting, By Dan Gorenstein, August 23, 2009, National Public Radio: “Federal funding for Section 8, the nation’s largest rental assistance program, could dry up for some housing authorities before year’s end. The shortfall is forcing some low-income families to pay higher rents - and putting others in jeopardy of losing their vouchers altogether. As for the hundreds of thousands currently on multiyear waiting lists nationwide, the wait is now even longer. In New Hampshire, the Housing Finance Authority cut aid, forcing people to pay more in rent. Executive Director Dean Christon doesn’t like to squeeze people who make on average less than $15,000 a year, but he says that’s better than the alternative…”

Homeless: Orlando could be the most violent metro area in Florida, survey finds, By Willoughby Mariano, August 20, 2009, Orlando Sentinel: “The nation’s third “meanest” city for the homeless may also be the state’s most violent toward them, say survey results being released today. Forty-six percent of homeless people questioned in Orlando and Orange County in an ongoing local survey said they were physically attacked in the past four years by someone they thought was not homeless - well above Florida’s average of 27 percent, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. The same organization last month ranked Orlando as the third “meanest” city in the country, behind Los Angeles and St. Petersburg. A coalition report released earlier this month said that in 2008, Florida led the nation in violence against the homeless for the fourth year in a row…”

Number of homeless in Oklahoma City slightly up, By Murray Evans (AP), August 19, 2009, Tulsa World: “A report released Wednesday found that Oklahoma City’s homeless population increased by 4 percent this year, though advocates said the ongoing economic slowdown likely will push next year’s count far higher. The “Point in Time” count found that 1,475 people were homeless in the city as of late January, when the annual count is taken each year. Since then, advocates say they’ve seen a spike in the number of people visiting shelters or seeking help from local homeless agencies…”

Minus Medicaid, homeless youths hurting, By Jennifer Brown, August 20, 2009, Denver Post: “LeeLee Hanley, 19, plunks down in a chair in the makeshift health clinic and asks for a pregnancy test. She also needs a new asthma inhaler because her ex-boyfriend has hers. And she wants a tuberculosis test so she can move back into this youth homeless shelter, Urban Peak. Hanley, who lost her Medicaid coverage when she turned 19, has no money and no home. When she needs a doctor, she goes to a hospital emergency room or the physicians who spend a few hours each week at the homeless shelter, in central Denver. About 75 percent of the more than 3 million American adults who spent some part of the last year homeless have no insurance, according to the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. Under the radar of the town-hall shouting matches on health reform, advocates for the homeless are pushing to get them on the rolls of the insured.

Downturn brings a new face to homelessness, By Alexi Mostrous, August 15, 2009, Washington Post: “The lowest point in Lawanda Madden’s life came in February, when she woke up on the floor of her friend’s run-down house in this city battered by recession. She was shivering with cold. She remembers turning to her 8-year-old son, Jovon, and thinking: ‘How did this happen to us? How did we become homeless?’ Only 15 months before, Madden, 39, had a $35,000-a-year job, a two-bedroom apartment and a car. She was far from rich, but she could treat Jovon to the movies. She occasionally visited her sister in Chicago and bowled in a local league. She dreamed of going to law school. Then she was laid off and lost everything. ‘I’ve had a job since I was 19,’ she recalled. ‘I never imagined I would be without a home. You think it’s going to get better — that it’s just temporary — and then six months goes by, and you wonder, ‘Wait a minute — this might be it.” With neat hair and clean clothes, a college education and stable job history, Madden represents the new face of American homelessness…”

Health-care barriers overwhelm Nashville homeless, By Christina E. Sanchez, August 18, 2009, The Tennessean: “Robert Tucker kept having dizzy spells and felt weak a couple of months ago, but he didn’t see a doctor because he didn’t have health insurance or even a job. Tucker, who is homeless, finally went to the doctor after a former boss offered aid, and he learned he has diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and hepatitis C. But as health-care workers say, the easy part of caring for the homeless like Tucker is diagnosing their condition. ‘The hard part is treating,’ said Mary Bufwack, CEO of United Neighborhood Health Services. ‘And we are seeing more people in the streets and more families in hotels…’”

Unemployment spike compounds foreclosure crisis, By Renae Merle, August 18, 2009, Washington Post: “The country’s growing unemployment is overtaking subprime mortgages as the main driver of foreclosures, according to bankers and economists, threatening to send even higher the number of borrowers who will lose their homes and making the foreclosure crisis far more complicated to unwind. Economists estimate that 1.8 million borrowers will lose their homes this year, up from 1.4 million last year, according to Moody’s Economy.com. And the government, which has already committed billions of dollars to foreclosure-prevention efforts, has found it far more difficult to help people who have lost their paychecks than those whose mortgage payments became unaffordable because of an interest-rate increase…”

Homeless would benefit from health care reform, By Wayne Parry (AP), August 13, 2009, Idaho Statesman: “Victor Rozanski’s wife gave him an ultimatum: It’s either me or the bottle. He chose the bottle. The drinking wrecked his marriage. The 47-year-old lost his job as a printer, and hopped on a bus to Atlantic City, where his life’s savings of $1,500 vanished in two days of drinking and gambling. While sleeping in an alley one night, he nearly lost a leg to a cut that became infected and infested with maggots. His hernia and psychiatric disorders went untreated for years as he bounced from one casino bus lounge to the next, getting rousted every hour or so. People like Rozanski, who is trying get off the street with the help of a homeless shelter detox program, have gotten scant attention in the contentious national debate over whether and how to reform the nation’s health care system. Among the nearly 50 million Americans who don’t have health coverage are an unknown number of homeless adults, who would become eligible for Medicaid under proposals being considered in Congress…”

A place for former foster kids to call their own, By Sue Doyle, August 13, 2009, Los Angeles Daily News: “Brandee Berry peers out the window of her new studio apartment, overlooking the high school she attended in foster care, and she grins. After leaving foster care transitional housing two years ago, the 23-year-old struggled to pay the $600 rent on her Lancaster apartment with her hotel front desk job while attending community college full time. On the brink of homelessness, she touched base with Penny Lane Centers, the social service that guided her through foster care, and learned about a newly constructed apartment building that provides permanent housing for former foster youth and low-income families…”

• Attacks on homeless bring push on hate crime laws, By Eric Lichtblau, August 7, 2009, New York Times: “With economic troubles pushing more people onto the streets in the last few years, law enforcement officials and researchers are seeing a surge in unprovoked attacks against the homeless, and a number of states are considering legislation to treat such assaults as hate crimes. This October, Maryland will become the first state to expand its hate-crime law to add stiffer penalties for attacks on the homeless. At least five other states are pondering similar steps, the District of Columbia approved such a measure this week, and a like bill was introduced last week in Congress…”
• Florida led the nation last year in violence against the homeless, By Scott Wyman, August 8, 2009, South Florida Sun Sentinel: “Last September, a homeless woman in Pompano Beach was raped and nearly strangled. Earlier in the year, two homeless men in West Palm Beach were shot and killed and a Fort Lauderdale man was accused of harassing the homeless with a chainsaw. Florida led the nation for the fourth consecutive year in violence against the homeless in a report released Saturday by the National Coalition for the Homeless. The group documented 30 attacks last year in 10 communities across the state, including three deaths…”

Public housing moving out, By Dionne Walker (AP), July 29, 2009, Washington Times: “The nation’s bulldozer attack on crime and poverty soon will make Atlanta - home of the first public housing development - the first major city to eliminate all of its large housing projects. Cities from Boston to Los Angeles are following its lead. For more than 15 years, housing officials across the country have been razing the projects where about 1.2 million families live and replacing them with a mix of higher-rent and subsidized apartments and homes…”

• Homeless families could face eviction over rules, By Julie Bosman, July 27, 2009, New York Times: “Homeless families can be kicked out of city shelters for repeatedly breaking rules like staying out past curfew or for refusing apartments offered to them, according to a tougher policy that takes effect Tuesday. The new policy gives the city greater latitude to push families out of the shelter system, which had swelled to a near-high of 9,720 families as of Sunday.  Families could always be evicted for illegal behavior like bringing in drugs or weapons, but they can now be ousted for any of 28 violations, including failing to sign in and out or not keeping an active case file with city welfare agencies…”
• City aids homeless with one-way tickets home, By Julie Bosman, July 28, 2009, New York Times: “They are flown to Paris ($6,332), Orlando ($858.40), Johannesburg ($2,550.70), or most frequently, San Juan ($484.20). They are not executives on business trips or couples on honeymoons. Rather, all are families who have ended up homeless, and all the plane tickets are courtesy of the city of New York (one-way).  The Bloomberg administration, which has struggled with a seemingly intractable problem of homelessness for years, has paid for more than 550 families to leave the city since 2007, as a way of keeping them out of the expensive shelter system, which costs $36,000 a year per family. All it takes is for a relative elsewhere to agree to take the family in…”

Number of babies in homeless shelters increasing, By Mike Clary, July 13, 2009, South Florida Sun-Sentinel: “At 5 weeks old, with a crown of dark hair and big blue eyes, Anastasia Garcia is one of the newest faces of the economic crisis. She was born homeless.  ‘When we are lucky enough to be settled, we will tell her that things were not always as easy as you may think,’ said Angela Garcia, 26, laying the infant down in a crib crammed into the corner of a small room at the Broward Outreach Center in Pompano Beach she shares with her husband David Henson and their two older daughters, ages 2 and 6…”

• Homeless numbers include more families, By Kevin Freking (AP), July 9, 2009, San Diego Union-Tribune: “The face of homelessness in the United States is changing to include more families and more people who live in the suburbs and rural communities.  The number of homeless has remained steady since 2007, but within the overall count are trends that can tell officials where federal resources would do the most good, the Housing and Urban Development Department says in its annual report to Congress being released Thursday…”
• Homelessness in suburbs, rural areas increases, By Wendy Koch, July 9, 2009, USA Today: “As the recession took hold last year, homelessness shifted toward rural and suburban areas and gripped a growing number of families, the U.S. government reports today…”
• Stimulus money targeted to help the homeless, By Evelyn Nieves (AP), July 8, 2009, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: “The U.S. expects to send $1.5 billion in stimulus money Thursday to hundreds of communities around the country to prevent homelessness, including $1 million for Fresno to dismantle tent cities and move residents into privately owned apartments…”

• Homelessness surges as rents soars, By Stephen Lunn, July 9, 2009, The Australian: “More families are being squeezed into homelessness by the high costs of private rental, but better support services have led to fewer teenagers on the streets.  A new report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare into Australia’s homeless finds numbers were on the march in Australia even before the global financial crisis hit home…”
• More sleeping rough in capitals, July 9, 2009, News.com.au: “The number of people sleeping rough on the streets of capital cities was on the rise before the financial crisis hit, a new report shows.  The number of homeless older Australians has also been increasing, new analysis by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows…”
• Govt pours money into help for homeless, By Susanna Dunkerley, July 7, 2009, Brisbane Times: “The Rudd government has poured millions of dollars into its plan to combat homelessness, amid criticism from the sector it had put it on the backburner.  The ambitious $800 million state and federal plan to halve homeless rates by 2020 was due to get off the ground last week…”

Advocates push to add attacks on homeless to Florida hate crimes law, By Anthony Man, July 7, 2009, South Florida Sun-Sentinel: “Horrified by video of teens who went on a rampage beating homeless men in downtown Fort Lauderdale, a state legislator was propelled to push for including attacks on the homeless to the state’s hate crimes law.  It is now state law — in Maryland — because state Sen. Alex Mooney, R-Md., saw what he termed “gruesome” video of the Fort Lauderdale incident. His state is the first to include homeless people as a protected group under its hate crimes statute…”

• Summer brings a wave of homeless families, By Julie Bosman, July 6, 2009, New York Times: “As the school year sailed to a close last month, Arielle Figueras crossed the stage in her cap and gown and proudly accepted her fifth-grade diploma.  The next day, she was homeless.  Arielle, a petite 11-year-old, and her parents, brother and sister packed their belongings and arrived at the intake center for homeless families in the South Bronx. Though they had been fighting with their landlord for months and their gas and electricity had long been shut off, they refused to leave their apartment while school was in session…”
• Homeless, and on a college path to independence, By Amanda M. Fairbanks, July 5, 2009, New York Times: “For many college students, survival means keeping up on assigned reading, maintaining an acceptable grade-point average and squeezing in extracurricular activities.  But for those at Advantage Academy, a program offered by the city’s Department of Homeless Services and St. John’s University to provide homeless and formerly homeless people with the chance to earn an associate’s degree, survival looks like something altogether different…”

More female veterans are winding up homeless, By Bryan Bender, July 6, 2009, Boston Globe: “The number of female service members who have become homeless after leaving the military has jumped dramatically in recent years, according to new government estimates, presenting the Veterans Administration with a challenge as it struggles to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.  As more women serve in combat zones, the share of female veterans who end up homeless, while still relatively small at an estimated 6,500, has nearly doubled over the last decade, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs…”