Word: shelter
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...social work Dennis Culhane that suggested that the most efficient solution to homelessness was to provide permanent housing to the "chronic homeless"--those helpless cases, usually the mentally ill, substance abusers or very sick--who will probably be homeless for life. The study found the chronic homeless make temporary shelters their long-term home; they take up 50% of the beds each year, even though they make up 10% of the homeless population. Culhane's idea appeals to conservatives: it has had proved results in 20-year-old projects across the country; it gets the really hard-to-look...
Andrew Cuomo, founder of HELP USA, a national, nonprofit shelter provider, says the Administration is merely redefining the issue so as to appear to be doing something. "What makes you say that a guy who has been on the street for five years and is a heroin addict is any more needy than a woman who is being beaten nightly in front of her children?" he asks. For his part, Senator John Kerry, a Democrat running for President, has proposed legislation that would add 1.5 million units of affordable housing to address the fact that America's population has grown...
Without a federal plan that has worked, cities have lost patience, concentrating on getting the homeless out of sight. In New York City, where shelter space can't be created fast enough, Mayor Mike Bloomberg has proposed using old cruise ships for housing. New Orleans removed park benches in Jackson Square to discourage the homeless; Philadelphia launched an ad campaign asking people not to give to panhandlers; and in Orlando, Fla., a new law makes it a jailable offense to lie down on the sidewalk...
Polls in San Francisco, where the streets are clogged with the homeless who lose the nightly lottery for limited shelter beds, indicate that homelessness is a major concern. Billboards show residents holding cardboard signs that read, I DON'T WANT TO HOLD MY BREATH PAST EVERY ALLEY. Voters last November overwhelmingly passed Proposition N, which cuts handouts from $395 a month to $59, providing food and shelter instead. The proposition was proposed by Gavin Newsom, 35, a member of the city's Board of Supervisors who describes himself as a liberal. Newsom's proposal was supported by a $1 million...
Even in Miami, where homelessness has been reduced because of a 1997 court settlement that forced the city to decriminalize it and develop an elaborate system for dealing with it, citizens are demanding that the streets be cleared. New laws prevent sleeping on the beach and building shelters too close to one another. "They want to hide us with all kind of zoning tricks and such," says Steve Silva, 50, who makes $7 and a 5% commission selling Miami Heat tickets and lives in a shelter. "But it's a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound...