Tag Archives: homeless

Denver Isn’t the Only City Seizing Homeless People’s Gear

by Rich6968mhoql Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Saturday, Denver’s mayor, Michael B. Hancock, announced that city police officers would be asked to stop seizing sleeping bags, blankets, tents, and other items that help homeless people keep warm in the winter. The announcement came after a video showing officers confiscating blankets in frigid weather provoked outcry. And while the announcement was a win for Denver’s homeless, Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, notes that the seizure or destruction of homeless people’s property is common practice in the United States.

Belongings are often seized under anti-camping laws or laws that prohibit sleeping in public—part of a larger trend of what Foscarinis calls “the criminalization of homelessness.” Earlier this year, her organization released a study tracking the phenomenon in 187 cities. It found that one-third of cities prohibit camping citywide, an increase of nearly 70 percent over a decade ago. But many courts have ruled such practices unconstitutional. Here’s a rundown of what’s happening in a few key cities.

Los Angeles: In March, lawyers sued on behalf of four homeless people whose property was destroyed by the city. One plaintiff, Judy Coleman, was hospitalized for pneumonia after her tent and blanket were taken. The judge in the case issued a preliminary injunction requiring the city to stop seizing homeless people’s belongings during arrests or clean-ups. The order also prohibits the city from storing seized items in a manner that makes them difficult to reclaim—a common problem, according to the Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. A similar case from 2014 is in the process of being settled out of court.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles City Council approved a law limiting the storage of items in parks, alleys, and sidewalks to what will fit in a 60-gallon container. Under the law, homeless people may also be cited or arrested if they fail to take down their tents between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. An LAPD spokesman told me the department is no longer doing sweeps of homeless encampments. The current policy on seized possessions, he says, is to store the items, unless they are too wet or are deemed unsanitary—that determination is left to the officer’s discretion.

Denver: The mayor’s order only applies until April, when officers may resume seizures of bedding and camping gear. In the interim, police still intend to enforce the pubic camping ban—violators can face fines of up to $999. Back in August, a group called Denver Homeless Out Loud filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that the city’s sweeps are unconstitutional.

Seattle: The city’s regular raids on homeless camps have come under fire due to the loss of personal property and the city’s failure to give homeless residents proper notice. Seattle has been embroiled in an ongoing debate about how best to handle its sweeps, some of which have been halted by city civil rights monitors because the approved protocols were not followed.

San Francisco: Homeless sweeps are common in San Francisco. According to Mission Local‘s examination of the Department of Public Works records, the city only preserved 23 people’s seized belongings over a six-month period this year. On Tuesday, Bay Area civil rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the California Department of Transportation over the seizure of items such as stoves, tents, and bedding by Caltrans employees.

Honolulu: Though winter survival is less of a problem in Hawaii, Foscarinis points out that homeless people are also at risk in warm weather when their belongings are essential to keeping cool. In a survey of homeless residents by the Department of Urban Planning at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, nearly 60 percent reported losing personal identification, 40 percent lost tents, and 21 percent lost medicine in sweeps. The National Law Center on Poverty and Homelessness report stated, “The city has been transparent about its goal of removing Honolulu’s homeless population from view” and has proposed to “relocate homeless people to a separate island that previously served as a garbage dump and former internment camp during WWII.”

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Denver Isn’t the Only City Seizing Homeless People’s Gear

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The Rent Is Too Damn High in San Francisco, and It’s Putting People on the Street

by BridgetteKesteve Posted on July 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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A new report shows that San Francisco is still struggling to house its homeless. According to the 2015 Point in Time Count—an in-person tally conducted in cities around the country every two years—the city’s homeless population has remained roughly constant over the past decade, even as the numbers of chronically homeless people continue to decline. This shift, homeless advocates say, points to a disturbing link between homelessness and the skyrocketing cost of housing in the city.

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From 2013 to 2015, San Francisco’s homeless population increased by around 200 people to a total of 6,686. The number of chronically homeless has, however, decreased by 12 percent since 2013 and has fallen close to 60 percent in the past six years. (Chronically homeless refers to those who have spent more than a year on the streets, often with a disabling condition like mental illness or substance abuse.) Close to half of the homeless people surveyed by the city said they lost their housing because they could not afford rent; an additional 17 percent said they could not find housing.

“Housing instability is a trend we have been hearing a lot about nationwide, particularly in high-cost areas like San Francisco,” says Elina Bravve, a Senior Research Analyst at the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), an advocacy and research organization. After the recession, she explains, more people began renting. Now higher-income renters are driving up demand and price. “That puts a lot of pressure on the low-income market,” she says. “It is definitely a problem that will continue over the next few decades.”

According to a NLIHC report released earlier this year, a person needs to make more than to $31 an hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment in the city and around $40 an hour for a two-bedroom. At $12.21 an hour, the local minimum wage is higher than average but it doesn’t even come close. The problem isn’t limited to expensive cities. The same NLIHC report finds that the 2015 national “Housing Wage” for a two-bedroom apartment is $19.35—more than double the federal minimum wage and far out of reach for renters earning the average wage of $15.16.

The Obama administration has set a goal of eradicating chronic homelessness by 2017. But Bravve says fixes for the non-chronic homeless population are subject to the ebbs and flows of political will, especially when budgets are tight and most federal and local programs don’t target this population. In Los Angeles County, for example, rental prices have risen more four times faster than wages since 2000. The LA Times reported in January that city funding for affordable homes had fallen by $82 million between 2008 and 2014. In May, the county’s count found a 12 percent increase in its homeless population. It also found an 86 percent spike in numbers of tents, makeshift shelters, or people sleeping in vehicles, which it attributed in part to housing affordability.

Chronic homelessness is declining largely because of the effectiveness of “Housing First” programs that provide permanent housing to individuals who need the most (and most expensive) services. The strategy, which enabled Utah to house nearly all of its chronically homeless people can also provides a huge boon to local budget, saving around $43,000 a year per person.

However, this strategy isn’t designed to help low-income people who are not chronically homeless. Housing First’s savings start to dry up when it comes to housing people who don’t require the same level of services. This is one reason why analysts like Bravve emphasize the need for cities to invest in affordable housing. In San Francisco, she says, that doesn’t just mean increasing the supply of housing but “preserving what already exists and making sure that it doesn’t end up turning into condos.” The Housing Balance Report, released last week, showed that even though the city built thousands of new affordable housing units between 2004 and 2014, it only had a net gain of more than 1,100 new affordable units.

Just south of San Francisco, Santa Clara County has made housing affordability a priority—and it has paid off. Like San Francisco, the home of Silicon Valley has one of the most expensive rental markets in the nation. The wages necessary to rent a typical one-bedroom are close to three times as much as the local minimum wage. San Jose, like San Francisco, ranks among the top ten cities with the highest numbers of homeless people.

But this year, San Jose saw a 15 percent drop in its homeless population. “San Jose has been a leader in building affordable housing over the past 15 years,” says Ray Bramson, the homeless response manager for the San Jose Department of Housing. “We have 17,000 units in our portfolio and we have great low-income housing for working families and folks who need support in the community.” With more than 6,500 people still on the streets, he says the city remains committed to creating more affordable housing.

This year the county has issued 1,000 project-based vouchers that provide funds for contractors to produce affordable housing units, is working to convert more hotels and motels into low-income housing, and is looking into models like temporary tiny homes to house people coming off the streets, while more units are being built. It also invested $91.5 million in on housing and homeless services, and an earmarked an additional $6.7 million specifically for permanent supportive housing.

They still have a long way to go—more than 6,500 people are still without homes. But Bramson says the numbers show that the strategies are working. “I think if we can show that we can create affordability in a community like San Jose and areas of Silicon Valley,” he says, “we have great potential to house people anywhere in this country.”

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The Rent Is Too Damn High in San Francisco, and It’s Putting People on the Street

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Can Tiny Houses Help Fix Homelessness?

by RonnieThomson Posted on February 17, 2015

Mother Jones

More Coverage of Homelessness


The Shockingly Simple, Surprisingly Cost-Effective Way to End Homelessness


Heartbreaking Photos and Tragic Tales of San Francisco’s Homeless


How Does a City Count Its Homeless? I Tagged Along to Find Out


This Massive Project Is Great News for Homeless Vets in Los Angeles


Here’s What It’s Like to Be a Homeless Techie in Silicon Valley


Hanging Out With the Tech Have-Nots at a Silicon Valley Shantytown

In November 2013, June lived in a makeshift encampment of tarps and cardboard, squeezed between a road and a chain link fence in West Oakland, California. “It can happen to anybody, man,” he says of life on the street. “Up today, down tomorrow. That’s the way it goes.”

Come last winter, June upgraded from his ramshackle encampment to a pink wooden house with a tan door and shiny roof. The new house, which is just long enough for him to lie down inside, cost only $30 to build.

It’s one of about 25 colorful homes artist Greg Kloehn has fashioned from the massive amounts of garbage dumped illegally in Oakland—a city where a minimum wage worker would have to put in 150-hour weeks to afford a fair market, two-bedroom apartment. He uses whatever materials he happens upon—pallets, bed boards, sheets of plastic, dryer doors. One home has an umbrella and grill propped on its miniature front porch. Wheels accommodate the “nomadic life” of people living on the street, who relocate frequently to avoid cops and city cleanup crews. As Kloehn jokes, he builds “illegal homes out of illegal garbage.”

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Can Tiny Houses Help Fix Homelessness?

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