This is a True Story
Saturday, August 28, 2010
You find humans now in strangest places
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 )

Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Progress
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.

Saturday, August 21, 2010
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,
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

Saturday, August 14, 2010
Documenting These Strange Times Continued
(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:

Friday, August 6, 2010
Documenting These Strange Times
(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

Sunday, August 1, 2010
You Might Be Better Off in Bangladesh
"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
