A Window into Calgary’s Eviction ‘Gong Show’

Come Oct. 23, Shelley Bailey and her husband have nowhere to live.

In July, after nine years renting at Varsity Estates Village, a townhouse complex in Calgary’s northwest, the elderly couple received a notice ending their month-to-month tenancy. And as rental rates skyrocket, the urgency of finding a place to live while on a fixed income is taking a heavy toll on the Baileys.

Shelley Bailey wants to stay in her community. “I can walk to my doctor’s, and go to infusions for my Crohn’s,” she says, pausing before breaking into tears. “This is just killing me. I don’t sleep. I’ve lost 15 pounds.”

Chronic nuisance ordinances are forcing people with disabilities out of their homes

Emily Doe was nearly exiled from Maplewood, Missouri, because crisis hotline volunteers sent police to her home too many times within one year.

Emily, who’s bipolar and suffers from anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, called a crisis hotline because she was suicidal. Crisis volunteers sent emergency personnel to her house on three different occasions, and in one instance, she was taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation and treatment.

Cities Across US Are Stripping Homeless People of Their Autonomy

One of the world’s richest cities is waging war on disabled and homeless people.

In February 2018, an unsigned flyer was posted in San Francisco’s Mission District, warning the homeless: “If you are still here after dark tonight, the hunters will become the hunted. We will pound you, burn you, beat you, and fuck you up if you are within a 100 yards of this park starting after sun down tonight.”

Street Homelessness Soars To Six-Year High As Labour Blames Tory Council And Benefit Cuts

The number of people sleeping on Britain’s streets has increased to a six-year high, new official statistics have revealed.

Ministers were accused of presiding over a “national scandal” of growing homelessness as it emerged that ‘rough sleeper’ levels had gone up by 16% in the past year - and more than doubled since 2010.

Some 4,134 people slept rough across England on any given night in 2016, up 134% overall since the last Labour government and an increase of 51% in the last two years.

Homelessness in Canada: Its growth, policy responses and advocacy

On February 1, I gave a guest presentation on homelessness to a graduate seminar class on housing policy taught by Steve Pomeroy at Carleton University's School of Public Policy and Administration. The focus of my presentation was the emergence of homelessness in Canada as a pressing public policy area in the 1980s. I discussed the growth of homelessness, policy responses and advocacy. My slides from the presentation can be downloaded here.

The Shocking, Unacceptable Levels of Hunger and Homelessness in American Cities

The U.S. Conference of Mayors today released its 2015 Hunger and Homelessness Survey, which gathered information on 22 cities around the country between Sept. 1, 2014, and Aug. 31, 2015. The cities reported on are led by mayors who serve on the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness.

The number of homeless veterans in Canada is soaring

The number of homeless people identified by Veterans Affairs Canada has skyrocketed over the last five years, jumping from just 35 in 2009-2010 to 236 last year.

But the true figure could be much higher. Experts suggest there could be thousands of veterans living on the streets yet to be located by government and volunteer organizations. A City of Toronto report released last year revealed that 16 per cent of the 447 people sleeping on Toronto’s streets identified themselves as veterans.

There’s a Solution to Homelessness. Why Aren’t We Funding It?

We need a national Housing First plan implemented as soon as possible if we are to effectively deal with the problem of homelessness in America. This is a story that explains why.

I became homeless in 2009 and out of necessity learned how to make the services administered through the Ocean County New Jersey Board of Social Services work for me. They included housing assistance provided by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), food assistance (SNAP) through the US Department of Agriculture, and cash assistance through the General Assistance program made available by the State of New Jersey.

Local Officials Have Pushed To Criminalize Homelessness For Years. The Feds Are Starting To Push Back.

Armed with lawyers, data, and money, the federal government is discouraging local communities from passing laws that treat the daily realities of being homeless as crimes.

The effort draws on three different forms of federal power. Government attorneys are urging a federal court to strike down one local law criminalizing outdoor sleeping, which would create precedent that could be used elsewhere. The official federal homelessness task force is using its platform to discourage communities from cracking down on tent encampments, an act without the same bite as a court filing but one which is likely to be influential in the advocacy world.

Canada Could End Homelessness. And It'll Only Cost You $46 A Year

"Nobody grows up with the aspiration to be the poster child for homelessness, but you take what you've been given, right?"

Katrina Blanchard-Gervais laughs at the absurdity of it all, and she sounds more bright than bitter. After two years in homeless shelters, the mother of six now has an apartment as part of an innovative program in Hamilton, Ont., called Housing First.

38 Million Homeless In 'Worst' Forced Displacement In A Generation, Report Finds

At least 38 million people worldwide have been forced from their homes by violence or armed conflict, a new report on internally displaced persons has found. Of that number, 11 million were displaced in 2014 alone, spurred by ongoing violence in Syria, South Sudan and Iraq.

“These are the worst figures for forced displacement in a generation, signaling our complete failure to protect innocent civilians,” Jan Egeland, secretary general at the Norwegian Refugee Council, which publishes the yearly report, said in a statement.

California Bill Would Stem Criminalization Of Homelessness Statewide

Anti-homelessness laws are on the rise in California, but one state lawmaker is pushing back against the trend.

Criminalizing homelessness has spiked in the Golden State, a tactic experts and advocates say achieves nothing but fostering a tense environment and more targeted violence against homeless people. To make the streets a more peaceful place, state Sen. Carol Liu (D-La Cañada Flintridge) introduced on Friday the Right to Rest Act, which would allow homeless people to move freely in public without fear of getting harassed or punished by authorities.

Homelessness In Canada Report: Add $46 A Year Per Canadian To Housing Budget, Cut Homelessness

OTTAWA - Spending an extra $46 per Canadian a year on affordable housing could dramatically reduce homelessness, a new research report concludes.

Existing intervention programs can only go so far if those who find a way off the streets or out of shelters can't afford their own place to live, say researchers from York University and the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness.

Their annual State of Homelessness in Canada study was published today.

This City Came Up With a Simple Solution to Homelessness: Housing

Kilee Lowe was sitting in a park when cops picked her up and booked her into jail overnight.

After she got out the next morning, she returned to the park. The same officer who had thrown her into a cell not twenty-four hours before booked her again. It was back to jail for Kilee.

Kilee has been cycling in and out of the criminal justice system for years. After three and a half years in prison, she’s been homeless for a little over a year now.

How San Francisco Is Forcing Its Gay Population Onto The Streets

Even before the sexual abuse, Olivia’s life was characterized by tremendous struggle. Growing up in Amman, Jordan as a member of a tight knit family, her difficulties long preceded any awareness that the male gender she was assigned at birth didn’t quite fit.

Severe dyslexia made her different from other children, and her constant struggle to answer the teacher’s questions resulted in generous amounts of bullying. Her feeling of remove from society only worsened after a family vacation when she was in the fourth grade.

Booming Alberta Faces Growing Rural Homeless Problem

Most homeless people in Alberta live in Calgary or Edmonton, but a growing number can now be found in rural areas as well.

New research funded by the provincial government suggests about 3,000 people outside of the two cities are homeless — and that doesn't vibe with how most people view rural areas.

Mayor's Pledge to End Street Homelessness Takes a Hit

Mayor Gregor Robertson's pledge to wipe out street homelessness by 2015 took a hit today, with the release of figures from this year's Metro Vancouver homeless count showing a slight increase in the number of people living in the region without a home.

A total of 2,770 people were found homeless on March 12, the day of the 2014 count -- up five per cent from the 2,650 counted in 2011. The news raises questions about the feasibility of the mayor's promise, and also about efforts made so far.

Pennsylvania School Tries To Kick Out Two Students After Their Families Became Homeless

As if their lives hadn’t been thrown into enough turmoil when their house was foreclosed on and their family became homeless, two Pennsylvania students learned last Monday that they were no longer welcome at the school they had attended their entire lives because the campground they were living in was located just outside of town.

The two students, one eighth-grader and one twelfth-grader whose names are withheld because they are minors, have lived in a camper with their parents in eastern Pennsylvania since losing their home to foreclosure in 2011. The campground where they were able to find refuge is located just outside the school district’s boundaries.

Rising homelessness in Paris: does it have the most rough sleepers of the big European capitals?

At 9pm, as the street lights glinted off the river Seine beyond Notre Dame cathedral, by the Pont Marie bridge, Yan, 37, was neatly laying out his cardboard boxes for the night in front of a chic sofa-bed shop. A dozen people were already climbing into sleeping bags nearby, an elderly woman was sorting clothes, a man in his 60s was wrapped in a duvet reading a book as the last well-heeled commuters hurried past from the metro. Yan, a Polish butcher, trained in charcuterie, just wanted a job in his trade. "But you can't work with food while you're sleeping rough, it just wouldn't feel hygienic …" he muttered. He had been sleeping rough in Paris for three years, occasionally doing agricultural work outside the city. With the weather not yet plunging to freezing, he felt OK inside two sleeping bags on a bed of cardboard on the concrete. "When it gets colder, we'll go down into underground car parks to sleep. Not the metro, because, with the constant noise and activity, you can't get to sleep before 1am, then you're up again at five. Here, I'll shut my eyes at 10 or 11pm, I'll be gone by seven."

City homeless census shows "troubling trends"

A new city survey shows Toronto’s homelessness strategy isn’t working, according to one expert.

On Wednesday, the Shelter Support and Housing Administration released the interim results of the Street Needs Assessment, a one-day blitz that saw hundreds of volunteers hit the streets, shelters, hospitals and correctional facilities to count and survey the homeless.

The assessment, conducted on April 17, found that the overall homeless population was 5,219, up only one per cent from the last time the assessment was completed, in 2009.