NPACH: The National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness

New Orleans City Business has coverage of the NPACH sponsored Tsunami - Hurricane exchange visit:

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, said Viola Washington.
One year after Hurricane Katrina, her community was not supposed to be a ghost town. Yet when she walks out the front door of her Gentilly home, she is surrounded by abandoned houses and barren sidewalks.

. . . With recovery moving so slowly here, Washington and a delegation of community leaders traveled to Thailand three weeks ago to study how Third World fishermen along the coast of the Indian Ocean rebuilt their villages in the wake of the 2004 tsunami that killed more than 350,000 people and destroyed 2.5 million homes.

The level of recovery from the tsunami has far outpaced what has taken place in New Orleans. When a delegation of Indonesian residents visited the Crescent City in June, they were stunned that 10 months after the storm parts of New Orleans still looked as if they were hit by a bomb, said Brad Paul, executive director of the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness in the Lower Garden District.

“They were amazed at the lack of progress in these neighborhoods a year out,” Paul said. “They looked around and said, ‘How is this possible that in a country so wealthy you could have this type of devastation and lack of progress?’

Herman Wang and Matt Wilson, Staff Writers
Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee)
October 29, 2006

In early 2004, Chattanooga officials unveiled the 10-year Blueprint to End Chronic Homelessness in the region, along with a $2.6 million federal grant to start the initiative at the Fortwood Mental Health Center.

Now, 21/2 years later, that money has dried up, with no supplemental funding in sight, and the future of the much-touted blueprint appears in limbo.

"One of the issues is the Homeless Coalition and the people who designed the blueprint haven't been working on it," said Al Chapman, the city's director of faith-based and community partnerships. "They wrote it, and then they put it on the shelf."

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- The bright blue and yellow cover reads: "Ending Homelessness in Jacksonville: A Blueprint For The Future"

It was an ambitious study that took many months to complete, compiled by a panel of local experts who have spent years dealing with the homeless.

"It's a very good plan. It's a thoughtful plan," said the City's Housing Director, Kerri Stewart.

Among the tenets of the plan: take City dollars to go after matching State and Federal dollars to build up to 800-affordable housing units in the next decade to assist those most at risk for becoming homeless.

But the blueprint for ending homelessness -- which took months of study to complete, will now collect dust at City Hall. There's no local funding to get it going.

"And without a real aggressive plan and ambitious strategies --we weren't going to solve the (homeless)problem," said Wanda Lanier.

Nov 20, 11:08 PM EST

Judge Nixes Las Vegas Homeless Food Ban

By KEN RITTER
Associated Press Writer

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A federal judge on Monday rejected the city's ban on feeding
poor or homeless people in city parks.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman had argued that handouts discourage homeless people from seeking help from social service providers set up to handle mental health and substance abuse problems. Neighbors had complained of large numbers of homeless people congregating at downtown parks, drawn by groups providing meals.

For Immediate Release:

Contact:

- Jeremy Weir Alderson, Director, Homelessness Marathon, 607-546-2084,
radio@lightlink.com
- Mike Rhodes, Editor, Community Alliance, 559-978-4502
mikerhodes@comcast.net

THE MAYOR, THE BROADCAST AND THE TRUTH

The Tenth Annual Homelessness Marathon will originate from Fresno,
California starting at 4 p.m., PST (7 p.m., EST), on Tuesday, February
20th and ending at 6 a.m., PST (9 a.m., EST), Wednesday, February 21st.
The Homelessness Marathon, the world's leading radio broadcast focusing on
homelessness and poverty, airs on over 100 radio stations. More than 30
stations across Canada carry a parallel Canadian Homelessness Marathon.
"We picked Fresno," explains the Homelessness Marathon's director,
Jeremy Weir Alderson, "partly because of the extraordinary cruelty with
which homeless people are being treated there." Allegedly, in the course
of making sweeps, the City of Fresno has thrown away people's money,
ID's, sleeping bags and tents as well as a list of items Alderson calls
"particularly shocking," including someone's false teeth, a cane, a
wheelchair, the ashes of someone's dead grandchild and a tent thought to
have kittens inside (the kittens were never seen again).
In response to a lawsuit filed by a group of volunteer lawyers,
including the ACLU and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, U.S
District Judge Oliver W. Wanger issued a preliminary injunction ordering
the City of Fresno to stop throwing away the possessions of its homeless
citizens. In his decision, Judge Wanger characterized the City's
arguments as "disingenuous" and "dishonest." Fresno's mayor, Alan Autry,
responded by calling Wanger's ruling "cavalier" and "veracity
challenged," suggesting that the judge, "enter the real world." He
didn't stop there.

IL - CHICAGO -- Not counting all homeless doesn't make them
go away

Chicago Sun-Times - 12/24/2006 - COMMENTARY -- This Christmas, Elashune Calhoun and her seven children, ages 9 to 16, will be staying with her mother in Englewood but the occasion will lack much joy. "There are no Christmas lights, no Christmas tree, no presents," says Calhoun, 32. Calhoun may have a roof over her head but she and her children are essentially homeless; they were evicted from their own rented house last spring after Calhoun lost her job. She had to take off time to care for her 10-year-old asthmatic son and her employer let her go. "I don't fault him, but my children come first," Calhoun says. The lack of income led to the eviction. The City of Chicago does not count Calhoun as one of its homeless. It includes only those who are staying in city-funded shelters or are sleeping out in the open on Chicago streets or are spotted on the CTA. The last census of homeless people was taken on Jan. 27, 2005, and the city counted 6,715. But "doubling up," like she does with her mother, "is homelessness," Calhoun argues. "I don't have the financial stability to go out on my own and pay market rent." In fact, a recent study by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and the University of Illinois at Chicago showed that if one includes people who are doubling-up, the real number of homeless people in Chicago on any one night is more than triple the city's numbers: 21,078, including 9,871 children and 1,348 unaccompanied homeless youth. More than 11,000 families are doubled up because they can't afford to pay rent and have nowhere else to go.