Ugly Laws, Bum Blockades and Sundown Towns

The Quality of Life ordinances enacted in cities across the nation to outlaw and banish homeless people from certain areas are our contemporary version of the vagrancy laws that have been with us for centuries. In the South, they were used to force freed slaves back to the plantation. In the North, they were used to instill a Protestant work ethic in indigent whites.

World Homeless Day: Housing Activists Take Over Vacant Hotel in San Francisco

he Leslie Hotel is just one vacant building in a city that has hundreds of abandoned buildings on the streets where thousands of abandoned human beings languish without housing or shelter. While the Leslie Hotel has 60 vacant units that could provide housing to homeless people, the 2009 Census Bureau statistics show that San Francisco has an estimated 36,000 vacant housing units. With 6,000 to 15,000 homeless people on the streets of San Francisco, that seems unfair.

Coffee and Conversation with a Homeless Man

This man was in his early sixties and had been homeless for many years. Yet he kept his hair combed, and he spoke clearly and reasonably. Sure, he had some anger concerning his plight, but who wouldn’t? It seems that fate had dealt him a few too many blows, and this is where he had ended up.

U.S. Government Conceals Housing Violations in Report to United Nations

“What is needed is a change in the mindset and motivation of our elected leaders to say that housing is not just a commodity, but a basic human need, and a basic human right. This report was a chance to make a strong statement in that regard, and it is sad to see our leaders shying away from this opportunity.” —Eric Tars, human rights program director at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty

America’s Epidemic of Violence Against the Homeless

Violent, often fatal, attacks on homeless Americans now outnumber all other categories of hate crimes combined. Over the past 11 years, there are more than double the amount of homeless hate crime deaths than there are for all other protected classes. Homeless Americans from all walks of life have been victimized by hate crimes. Many of the victims of lethal assaults are older homeless men. ***** Lenny Silverberg’s starkly beautiful paintings capture the suffering etched on the faces of homeless people the artist observed struggling to survive.