CALIFORNIA MAKES DEEP CUTS IN WELFARE : MORE HOMELESS WILL BE THE RESULT

Linking to this breaking news article from Yahoo...

"steps taken in recent years to cut costs and get more recipients back in the workforce have run head-on into the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. Recipients have been left with fewer training programs, shrinking welfare checks and a shorter period during which they are eligible to receive assistance at a time when employment prospects for even highly qualified job-seekers are dim."

"Funding for CalWorks, the welfare-to-work program that is the state's main welfare service, was cut by $1 billion this year. The legislation that reduced the spending also shortened the amount of time a recipient can stay on welfare, from 60 months to 48, while also reducing monthly checks by at least 8 percent.

SIMON and GARFUNKLE - SOUNDS OF SILENCE

HUMAN TRAFFICKING - SLAVERY - SEX SLAVES - RICHMOND JUSTICE INITIATIVE

We were inspired by reading a Cosmopolitan Magazine article about this issue and we want to give you a list of organizations from that article that are working on Sex Slavery, Child Prostitution, and the use and abuse of other human beings for profit.


linked above : RICHMOND JUSTICE INITIATIVE

HOMELESS MEMORIAL DAY IS TODAY

This is the day that we remember those homeless who didn't make it off the streets or out of the shelter or out of abusive relationships and died. Sadly, there are too many. The streets are hard. If you weren't drinking, drugging, or committing some crime to make money before you landed on the street, it's going to be a challenge to not start. So many homeless do have a history of drug abuse or mental illness. Shelters are only a temporary answer and while you're in one you are still homeless. The drinking, drugging, and crimes committed in shelters is also a problem for those who don't want to be around that.

WHAT IS THE ANSWER?

DIONNE WARWICK - I SAY A LITTLE PRAYER

BILL HANDEL : KFI : THE JOKES ON THE HOMELESS : HANDEL AND STAFF NEED A LESSON IN HOMELESSNESS

A few days ago, shortly after 5 am in the morning when the Bill Handel show begins on KFI radio, Bill had a real joke to tell about the homeless. HA HA HA HA HA! His dummy staff chimed in behind him.

Without any sensitivity at all, which is Handel's Hallmark, he began to deride homeless people, as drunks and beggars, who use the handouts they receive only for alcohol. Handel added that it was a FAMILY CHARACTERISTIC to bait homeless beggars with five dollar bills. He said this was what his brother did, and of course we homeless, when we see five dollar bills our eyes get real wide. Oh yes sir, do we want that five dollar bill.

When we heard that we thought of the stereotype that used to play of blacks; their eyes got real big too didn't they?

Of course it is cheap to deride people who are picked on and often defenseless and have to hide to survive. Handel and staff are PART OF THE SAME PROBLEM that allows teenagers to beat the living hell out of homeless.

It has been 40 degrees at night this past week in many parts of Los Angeles, colder where the wind blows, and it's been raining. Handel and his staff have apparently never spent a night standing under an overhang trying to stay dry and warm. Handel and his staff apparently do not know that while many homeless are drug addicted or alcoholic, the majority are not.

Handel and his jokey staff need to spend a week out in the cold, sleeping on cement (personally we don't think they could even handle (ha ha!) sleeping on a cot in a cold weather shelter for a week. They should do so with five dollars in their pockets, no ID, no access to food without locating and attending feeds, and try out the humiliation some of us feel to have to beg for our meal or for the bus fare to get to the next one. They should feel what it's like to go a week without a shower. They should pick their clothes off giveaway tables. They should find themselves thrown out of (or asked to leave) restaurants and coffee houses, where they are trying to have a meal, because they stink.

WE INVITE BILL HANDEL AND HIS STAFF to read this blog so they won't think IGNORANCE IS FUNNY OR EVEN ACCEPTABLE broadcasting on their 50,000 watt station.

GO TO HELL HANDEL!

Thanks Buffy for letting us know we spelled his name wrong in the original post. We've also decided to link to his official site so you can see what he looks like and maybe contact him yourself!

UPDATED! A DISASTER OF PLANNING ! LA FAMILY HOUSING AWARDS THE KEYS TO GLEN OAKS APARTMENTS IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS

UPDATE : BELOW IS THE ORIGINAL POST

Promises were made. Some promises were kept.

This week final decisions were made about which homeless sheltered at Los Angeles Family Housing and other County of Mental Health Programs will live at GLEN OAKS.

LA Family personnel, wearing their blue T-shirts, were there to oversee the hanging of blinds and installation of furniture. There are 60 units and by Christmas most of them will be lived in, leaving vacancies that the LA Family Housing wait list people will quickly take. We know that many residents have waited over a year, even two or three years, to get those keys, under threat of being terminated the whole time.


We're waiting to hear from new residents about their experience living at GLEN OAKS.

How involved in your personal life will employees (case management) of LA FAMILY HOUSING be? If you have problems with other residents will they be involved in the resolution? What do you have to do to get kicked out? (We hate to bring that up!)

We wish the best to all of you who have come this far to get housing. We hope you will be happy, healthy, and see this residency as a stepping stone to greater independence and the kind of life you really want to live!

By the way, word on the street is that LA FAMILY HOUSING has just bought another building but is still claiming they have no money to provide promised deposit money for residents moving into Section 8 and other housing! Right!

HERE IS THE UPDATE! SHAMEFULLY and ALMOST UNBELIEVABLY, THE GLEN OAKS MOVE IN HAS TURNED OUT TO BE A DISASTER IN PLANNING! A GOOD NUMBER OF RESIDENTS WHO HAVE BEEN LIVING IN SHELTER CONDITIONS WAITING TO BE MOVED, TOLD IT WOULD BE OCTOBER, NO AUGUST, NO IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS 2011, MOVED TO GLEN OAKS, but before they could get comfortable or pop a champagne cork in celebration, THEY WERE TOLD THEY HAD NOT BEEN APPROVED AND WERE MOVED BACK TO THE SHELTER! HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN? ARE WE TO BELIEVE THAT FROM CEO STEPHANIE DOWN TO JOHN THE DIRECTOR TO THE CASE MANAGERS NO ONE KNEW THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR MOVING RESIDENTS INTO THE BUILDING. AGAIN, HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

HAS YOUR VEHICLE BEEN TOWED BECAUSE YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO REGISTER IT?

ONE DAY YOU ARE LIVING IN YOUR VAN or RV and PARKING IT ON A RESIDENTIAL STREET, careful to move it every few days so that no one notices you're living in there.

The next day it's been towed, with all your possessions inside, and you can't afford to get it out of impound.

There goes your shelter.

Welcome to life on the street.

Unaffordable rents. Greedy landlords. Landlords who evict so they can raise the rent on units under rent control.

Where does it end?

With you on the street.

IT'S RAINING AND COLD IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

If you're one of the many who sleep outside and use fast food restaurants or libraries to keep warm and dry during the day, and be near a bathroom, then you know that it's extremely cold outside in southern California with the REAL FEEL close to freezing some nights in the last week or so. One of the problems here is that not too many people keep winter clothing like they do back east. So that means that donated coats, hats, scarves, gloves, rain boots, warm boots that you can walk in (homeless women do not need spike heels) are few.

Some long term homeless do acclimate to the colder temperatures but usually the cold brings with it bad health.

Last year a homeless man we met, who had lost a house on the West Side, then been evicted when he and his room mate failed to pay the rent, lasted about 6 months outside before he died. He was in a car in someones back yard that didn't run for a while, and then on a screened in sun porch that hid him but had no heat. Depressed or maybe without the resources to pay for medicine, he went without. This man looked for work using public computers every day and managed to shower and keep himself looking clean (not homeless looking) through the use of public showers such as at the gym and the roving shower truck.

Cold weather shelters can help, but many people who have never been on the street are afraid of them, don't like their family separated within the shelter, or use them only when they can't take it any more, or do not want to give personal information in order to stay in them. We believe that every city should have its own year round shelter rather than expect homeless, especially not newly homeless, to move to skid row in downtown.

2011 NATIONAL HOMELESS DAY IS DECEMBER 21

NATIONAL HOMELESS DAY ! Linking to the site: You can always have your own personal memorial.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD

HAVE OTHER HOMELESS PEOPLE VICTIMIZED YOU?

Victimized ??

HOMELESS PEOPLE STEALING FROM OTHER HOMELESS.

HOMELESS PEOPLE RAPING OTHER HOMELESS.

HOMELESS PEOPLE SABOTAGING OTHER HOMELESS.

ARE YOU PART OF A COMMUNITY THAT PROTECTS MEMBERS FROM OUTSIDER HOMELESS WHO PREY ON OTHERS?

We know it, we've experienced it, we think it's terrible!

We'd like to hear from you!

PINK GLOWING BUTTERFLIES