Homeless in Bangor, By Eric Russell, November 21, 2009, Bangor Daily News: “The signs of homelessness growing in Bangor are everywhere. They are just far enough off the beaten path to go unnoticed by many. People take shelter in makeshift camps under the Veterans’ Memorial Bridge. In the wooded area off Hammond Street known as The Pines. Inside jails and emergency rooms and the police station lobby. The trend is heart-wrenching and perpetual - and just might indicate the arrival of a perfect storm, according to experts. Bangor’s shelters are full. State and federal housing subsidies have either dried up or created unfathomable waiting lists. General assistance, which is supposed to be emergency and temporary funding, is stretched paper-thin. Additional social service cuts from the state seem imminent…”

• Mental Health Commission begins 5-year project to help homeless Canadians, Canadian Press, November 23, 2009, Brandon Sun: “A research project that takes homeless people with mental illness off the streets in five cities and provides them with a safe place to live was officially launched Monday, the first such effort by the new Mental Health Commission of Canada. The pilot study, called the At Home/Chez Soi project, involves 2,285 people who are homeless and living with a mental illness in five cities - Moncton, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver. Altogether, 1,325 people will be given a place to live and social services over the course of the five-year study, while the others will receive services that are currently available. One of the goals is to find out more about what works well in providing services to homeless people…”
• Research project gets mentally ill Canadians off the streets, By Laura Stone, November 23, 2009, Vancouver Sun: “Sandra Dawson woke up one morning with a bright idea. She would quit her job as a video editor in Vancouver, take all her money out of the bank and move to Seattle. There, she would have a revelation. It didn’t happen. Penniless, Dawson moved back after a few days to her mother’s basement - another manic episode that shook her once stable life…”

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…”

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…”

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…”

• 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…”

Poverty on the rise in county, By Betty Ridge, August 20, 2009, Tahlequah Daily Press: “While Americans hope, and many experts predict, that the recession is turning around and the economy heading upward, the head of one local agency dealing with poverty isn’t so optimistic. Tom Lewis, CEO of Project O-Si-Yo, said demand for the shelter, which currently provides temporary housing for up to 15 homeless men, has grown more than expected. Based on preliminary reports he has seen from the latest U.S. Census figures, he expects more men to come to 118 W. Keetoowah looking for a place to spend the night, or a new start in life. The new figures will be released shortly after Labor Day, Lewis said…”

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…”

• 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…”

• 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…”