More Pics: Homeless in my Neighborhood

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More of the People in my Neighborhood

I do not want to point my camera at their faces...

In L.A. they shit on the sidewalks, and I don't blame them

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In L.A. there is a new trend, homeless people just pull down their pants and defecate in front of people, right in the middle of the sidewalk. I've seen it myself, and almost everyone I know in town has a story to tell of having seen it themselves, it's "what's happening" in L.A. today. We are watching mankind sink, a new lower breed of human is evolving, they live on the streets in L.A., adapting with insanity to the insane life that's been dealt them.

What else are they supposed to do when they have to move their bowels? We have a society with humans living without a human's most basic need, shelter. Yet developers continue to build luxury apartments. In L.A., they build "million dollar down payment condos" at the same addresses where people sleep on the ground outside. We don't even provide public restrooms for the homeless, so they can at least defecate in decency.

So in L.A. the homeless now shit on the sidewalk in front of all of us, and I don't blame them.

What does it say about this time, this culture, that we let conditions get this bad? I feel like I'm living in a futuristic sci fi movie, only it's real, all too real.

(This post started as a comment by Kay E at: Crimes Against Homeless Increasing, Compassion Not So Much at Change Dot Org Homelessness Blog.)

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One Million Children in U.S. Public Schools are Homeless
So, let's get rid of public schools, say extreme Republicans today...

You find humans now in strangest places

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A 37 year old homeless man is in hospital in critical condition after he was tipped from a West End dumpster into the back of a garbage truck.
The man was rescued from the back of a Waste Control Serviuces truck Thursday in a lane in the 1500-block Robson Street after a woman heard him crying for help, say Vancouver police. (Read more )

Progress

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Calif. Senate OKs homeless civil rights protection
San Jose Mercury News - ‎Aug 23, 2010‎

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Attacks on the homeless could violate California's civil rights law under a bill approved by the state Senate.
The bill passed Monday would let the state's estimated 157,000 homeless sue for higher damages if they are targeted for assault because they are transient.
Democratic state Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco called the bill a civil rights issue.
The bill, AB2706, designates the homeless as a protected class, but stops short of declaring attacks on the homeless as hate crimes.
It passed on a 21-12 vote, without debate. It now returns to the Assembly for final action

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13.6 percent increase in homelessness since 2007

D.C.: At least four city shelters have been closed since 2004 with just one having been replaced. There has been a 13.6 percent increase in homelessness since 2007 in spite of the creation of the Permanent Supportive Housing program. There has been a drastic reduction in the amount of affordable housing citywide. Housing isn't any closer to being a realized human right than it was five years ago. And, from what I can see, most of those who were working on making housing a human right in D.C. have put such efforts on the back burner.

Documenting these strange times in photos

The hardship of living on the street.

I've seen man above all over my part of town for years, aging rapidly.

Below: How one homeless man makes it through a day in East Hollywood, August 2010






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Just more of life in East Hollywood, walking distance from Beverly Hills


Imagine what Paramount Studios, right around the corner, could do, or CBS, or all the film companies in this town,
But instead people live close to the bottom, in my neighborhood, walking distance from studios producing for national networks.
Actually in photo at left the man looks more cleaned up than usual. He is the same man you see waiting for a bus in photo below, about one week later...


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The City of Angels Is Everywhere

Documenting These Strange Times Continued

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(In construction for week of August 15)

VIDEO below: People live in drain pipes, miles of them provide improvised housing for former casino workers, travelers. A CBS Crew goes to the Underground Las Vegas:



Moving L.A. Times Series
Gives Glimpse of Life on Skid Row
A program in L.A. houses a handful of chronic homeless, i.e., mentally ill crack addicts, as the homeless population, already in five-figure numbers in L.A., grows yearly. Our county finally provides a home for 50 people who had been on the street for decades. As reported in the L.A. Times:

Part 1
Whatever it takes
Aug. 1, 2010
Identifying and finding the hard-core homeless, then cajoling them to accept housing, proves a daunting challenge.
More »

Part 2
The Baddest of them all
Aug. 3, 2010
Mental illness, addiction and the ingrained survival habits learned on the street can make it hard to keep the homeless housed.
More »

Part 3
From penthouse to gutter
Aug. 5, 2010
Even for a former high-flying businessman whose sharp decline had led to skid row, the housing project is no panacea.
More »

Part 4
No tidy endings
Aug. 7, 2010
The project succeeds with most, and many clients say it's saved their lives. But for others, old patterns are hard to shake.

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They Paved Paradise to Put up a Parking Lot, Hawaii 2010 Style

Homeless families in Honolulu turned "paradise" into a hostile reminder of the bleak poverty our economy is creating. So in Hawaii, as everywhere on this planet run by greed, the attitude is "Send them back where they came from."

In Honolulu in story below they paved over a homeless camp to create a suddenly much needed parking lot. And of course, no new location ever suggested for the homeless families. In this story townspeople criticize homeless families for raising their children that way:

Officials To Move Kakaako Homeless
KITV Honolulu - ‎Aug 13, 2010‎
On Monday Aug. 16, work crews will begin grading and paving several empty lots where many homeless campsites have sprung up. ...

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The World wakes up and realizes floods have wiped out the lives of thousands in Pakistan:

UN chief: Never seen anything like Pakistan floods
The Associated Press - Chris Brummitt
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday he has never seen anything like the flood disaster in Pakistan after surveying the ...

UN calls world to speed up aid for Pak
Hindustan Times
UN secretary general, Ban ki-Moon, has urged the world to speed up aid efforts to Pakistan as the country braces itself for further flooding with the waters ...

Ban seeks speedy aid for flood-hit Pakistan
IBNLive.com
PTI Rezaul H Laskar Islamabad, Aug 15 (PTI) UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today warned that the humanitarian crisis caused by the devastating floods in ...

The world has been sluggish in helping out with this particular natural disaster
Macleans.ca
A day after Canada pledged an extra $33 million (on top of $2 million last month) for Pakistan flood relief, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made an urgent ...

UN chief speaks of sorrow over of Pakistan flood crisis
BBC News
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has described as "heart-wrenching" the destruction he witnessed on a visit to flood-devastated Pakistan. ...

MORE NEWS:

Minnesota-Missouri-West Virginia
Travelers seeking work end up in tent city - WILLISTON, N.D. - Kneeling next to a green Coleman grill, Minnesota native Kyle Heikkila was busy preparing food in a frying pan as the sun set in a pink sky over Williston's Davidson Park. The tent where he sleeps stood a few feet away.
Heikkila moved to Williston from Grand Rapids, Minn., to find a construction job. He's trying to save up enough money to bring his wife and two children to Williston. "I've been looking for apartments left and right," he said. But ...

Documenting These Strange Times

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(Will be adding and rearranging stories here as they come up)

Portland, OR, he is steelworker employed in construction until 2007, now homeless in Portland, OR, this video documents a day in his life, credit Oregonian

“Homeless in PDX"

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Homeless Woman Run Over in Park

Death of Joann Burton July 27, 2010: After gentrification destroyed the area where homeless used to dwell in Cincinnati, Joann Burton was sleeping in a park. Police car decided to take a shortcut and ran her over where she was catching a few hours rest between two trees. Her death comes "in context of the year's long effort of the quasi-public development group Cincinnati Center City Development Corp, to 'take over the entire Over-the-Rhine neighborhood south of Liberty Street and drive out the suffering and homeless.' Read More And More Photos at Cincinnati Dot Com
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ISLAMABAD 5th August 2010. Pakistan’s flood victims seek food and shelter as the worst floods in 80 years continue to wash away villages leaving thousands homeless and dead. United Nations has warned that a shortage of food could threaten the lives of thousands of people who are trapped in the floodwaters in northwestern Pakistan... Read in full at Pattaya Daily News which is also source of photo above.

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At last G20, "someone" funded the Black Bloc to rampage through Toronto, uninhibited by a huge private black-hooded security force, who then turned loose with riot gear to beat up on protesters:


Same thing happened in 2007
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In Redding CA, a Tent City on Technology Way is coming down. Local agencies will provide "services" and "assistance" for homeless living there, but no one mentions housing.
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Santa Barbara As Always Decades More Advanced Than the Rest of Us, now in dealing with Homeless: Santa Barbara Mayor Schneider, Carbajal speak out on homeless report - The Daily Sound: An overwhelming number of the homeless deaths over the last year in Santa Barbara involved individuals who were either ...

MORE COMING

You Might Be Better Off in Bangladesh

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"If you don't have to see it on your way home to Brentwood, who cares?"- From Part 5



There are higher numbers of homeless families every day now, due to the disappearance of jobs and banks foreclosing on homes. Our national $1.2 trillion budget deficit is a “major obstacle” to funding the National Housing Trust Fund, according to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, quoted last week…

MEANWHILE

The new American middle class homeless trek from city to city, where news stories say there may be jobs:

Seeking oil spill work, homeless fill Gulf Coast shelters
from: blog.al.com. The director of the homeless service center 15 Place in downtown Mobile calls them "rainbow chasers" -- unemployed, sometimes unemployable, people who've come to Mobile in hopes of striking oil cleanup gold...

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Meanwhile, visit InvisiblePeople.tv "the face and voice of homelessness" for more of the story.

MEANWHILE:

A bank from Bangladesh comes to New York City, the financial capital of the world, to give poverty stricken women an opportunity to show their innovation and entrepreneurship and create thousands of small businesses. "I thought that America led the world in innovation and entrepreneurship, but in this area it seems to be Bangladesh." From OC Daily Pilot july 31, 2010

(Re Grameen Bank, a project for poor women to start up small businesses presented at FreedomFest started in Bangladesh by economist Muhammad Yunus.)

Meanwhile...

I Found the John Lennon Song I've Been Looking for Since 2004, that Defined Our Homelessness:

We were about to live on the street, our money had run out, January 1, 2004. As Lizzie and I pulled away from homeless hotel number 7, the radio station played this song, and it SO described what we were feeling and thinking that morning.

August 1, 2010, I heard the song again finally, it's part of the soundtrack of The U.S. Vs. John Lennon that was on cable yesterday... the film only plays about three bars of the song, little more, but I heard it, and I finally found it!

sigh