homelessness

A Shocking Number of Working People Live in Homeless Shelters

Hamilton Nolan · 09/18/13 09:45AM

During the tenure of billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, the number of homeless people in New York City's shelter system has increased to more than 50,000, an all-time high. An astoundingly high percentage of those people have jobs.

Homeless Man Returns Backpack Full of Cash to Best Buy Employee

Lacey Donohue · 09/15/13 06:26PM

A homeless man found a backpack filled with a large sum of money, travelers checks, and a passport outside a Dorchester mall in Massachusetts on Saturday and turned it over to police officers. He alerted Boston police in front of the South Bay Mall TJ Maxx store and gave them the bag filled with $2,400 in cash, $39,500 in traveler’s checks, and a Republic of China passport. The Good Samaritan, according to Boston police, could only provide them with his name and the address of the shelter where he is currently staying.

Hamilton Nolan · 09/13/13 02:20PM

As part of its legal obligation to house the homeless, New York City "is paying to keep a record 2,684 households in apartments costing $3,000 a month." It costs just as much to house families in homeless shelters, but the shelters are full.

Court Rules Homeless People Are Allowed to Have Stuff

Hamilton Nolan · 06/25/13 10:27AM

Lost amid the uproar over other Supreme Court rulings this week was this: yesterday, SCOTUS let stand a lower court ruling that said that the city of LA cannot just confiscate and destroy the possessions of homeless people. Homeless people may legally have things, huzzah.

Detroit Police Picking Up Homeless and Dumping Them Outside of City

Max Rivlin-Nadler · 04/18/13 07:20PM

In a complaint filed with the U.S. Justice Department, the Michigan ACLU says that Detroit police have been picking up homeless people from the popular Greektown neighborhood and dropping them off miles away, sometimes even outside of city limits. Homeless people have termed the practice being "taken for a ride," after police officers have repeatedly approached members of the homeless population and told them to get into vans. They are then deserted by the police, often far from any assistance, and told to never return to Greektown.

City Seeks Consultant to Figure Out How to Keep the Public Out of City Hall

Hamilton Nolan · 03/21/13 09:03AM

The city of Saratoga Springs, New York has a problem: homelessness. I mean, the problem is not that Saratoga Springs residents are forced to sleep on the streets—the problem is these homeless citizens are sleeping in City Hall. How are the city fathers supposed to conduct their important business of helping out Saratoga Springs citizens when those citizens are being all, like, dirty in their space?

Hamilton Nolan · 03/05/13 09:33AM

A new report says NYC has 50,000 homeless people in shelters each night, up 61% since Bloomberg took office.

Thousands Possibly Exposed in a Tuberculosis Outbreak Among LA's Homeless

Cord Jefferson · 02/22/13 02:45PM

The largest California outbreak of tuberculosis in a decade is happening in Los Angeles right now, and the Centers for Disease Control has finally dispatched a team of scientists to help LA-area authorities try to control it. The locus of the outbreak, which involves a strain of TB unique to LA, is the city's notorious Skid Row, the small constellation of streets in downtown where Southern California's most downtrodden citizens—homeless people, prostitutes, heroin addicts, combinations of all three—congregate in such close quarters that a disease outbreak was probably inevitable. Since 2007, 11 people have died of TB in LA County, according to the LA Times. In the latest outbreak, 60 of the 78 cases reported to authorities were homeless people living on or near Skid Row.

Mike Bloomberg Will Leave the Homeless Worse Off Than He Found Them

Hamilton Nolan · 02/20/13 10:30AM

New York City Michael "Mayor Mike" Bloomberg, the 20th richest human in the world, said this yesterday about his administration's policy of requiring single adults "to prove they have no other alternatives when they are seeking access to a homeless shelter," and of barring homeless families and children from city shelters during freezing weather "if officials determine they have an alternative place to sleep:"

NYC Shelters Turning Away Families Despite Dangerously Cold Temperatures

Max Rivlin-Nadler · 02/17/13 01:00PM

Despite this winter actually acting wintry and cold, NYC homeless shelters have been turning away homeless families on freezing nights if they cannot prove they have nowhere else to go, the Daily News is reporting. Turning homeless individuals and families away has long been a practice of New York City's Department of Homeless Services, which relentlessly insists that you must stay with a relative or at some prior living arrangement if it is still available to you, leaving many homeless no choice but to sleep on the street rather than return to a bad living situation.

How to Solve Homelessness: The Mundane Miracles of The Doe Fund

Hamilton Nolan · 02/07/13 12:06PM

The next mayor of New York City will not be George McDonald, though George McDonald is running for mayor. That's OK. George McDonald is already better than any mayor has ever been at addressing the most obstinate social problems in this city's modern history.

CVS Manager Fatally Strangles Homeless Man for Shoplifting Toothpaste

Mallory Ortberg · 01/19/13 01:40PM

Surveillance footage capturing a homeless man's death in the alley behind a CVS pharmacy in Chicago in 2010 was released today, showing several minutes of the attack in which store manager Pedro Villarosa held down and strangled 35-year-old Anthony Kyser while six passersby helped hold him down.

Hungry Homeless Man Goes to Jail for Trying to Eat a Pelican

Cord Jefferson · 09/10/12 06:20PM

After a day of failed fishing, Sergio Alvarez was homeless and hungry in Malibu last month when he says he did what millions of red-blooded Americans do every year when they want some food: He killed a bird in order to eat it. What Alvarez didn't know is that while the type of pelican he strangled to death wasn't endangered, it was on the protected species list. The 30-year-old Alvarez was arrested on the spot, and now he's going to jail for two months after pleading no contest to misdemeanor animal cruelty.

New NYC Homeless Policy Rejected (For Now)

Caity Weaver · 02/21/12 08:48PM

Good news for All The Single [Homeless] Ladies: the Manhattan state Supreme Court ruled today that, for the time being, unmarried homeless people do not have to prove they have no other housing options before entering a shelter.

Teen Ruffian Proves He's Tough By Punching the Elderly

Lauri Apple · 11/07/11 05:52AM

Did you have a spiritually rejuvenating weekend during which your loving family members and random kindly strangers helped to restore some of your dwindling faith in humanity? This video of a Chicago teenager punching an elderly homeless man should eliminate that new-found faith.