South Carolina city makes being homeless illegal

South Carolina’s capital city is dishing out some southern discomfort following a controversial decision to criminalize its homeless.

On Aug. 13, the Columbia City Council approved a plan that effectively makes homelessness illegal in parts of the city. The proposal forces those who sleep outdoors to be sent to a shelter on the outskirts of town. Those who don’t comply will be rounded up and forced to leave or sent to the slammer.

“It’s basically a choice between two kinds of jail,” Jake Maguire, spokesman for Community Solutions’ 100,000 Homes Campaign, told Fox News. “There’s jail and then there’s the shelter.”

He added, “Once you get there, you can’t come and go. You are basically brought to a place where you are expected to stay. If you want to go back downtown, you have to get approval for them to shuttle you back.”

But Councilman Cameron Runyan, the man behind the proposal, believes moving Columbia’s homeless shelter 15 miles from the city’s downtown area can cut crime and draw in more businesses and opportunities.

“If we don’t take care of this big piece of our community and our society, it will erode the entire foundation of what we’re trying to build in this city,” Runyan told the council. “What I see is a giant risk to business.” Read more >>

Shelters seeing more elderly homeless

On the afternoon of Jan. 17, when the temperature dipped below freezing, a family from Kingman drove to Wichita, dumped a 78-year-old relative at the Inter-Faith Inn homeless shelter and quickly drove away.

They left her on the sidewalk with her wheelchair and a few suitcases.

“She wasn’t crying,” case manager Amanda Merritt recalled. “But she was upset about the situation. She said they were kicking her out.”

They left so quickly that no one from the shelter was able to talk to them, Merritt said. They didn’t even knock on the shelter door to make sure there was room at the inn.

“That’s unbelievable that someone would do that,” said Janis Cox, co-chairwoman of Advocates to End Chronic Homelessness, an area faith-based volunteer group.

Shelter staff took the woman, who was in poor health, inside. To accommodate her frailties, the staff hustled to set her up with a room on the ground floor. Read more >>

Family Homelessness Is On The Rise

WASHINGTON - In a region with seven of the 10 most affluent counties in the country, family homelessness is on the rise — straining services, filling shelters and forcing parents and their children to sleep in cars, parks, and bus and train stations. One mother recently bought $14 bus tickets to and from New York so she and her 2-year-old son would have a safe place to sleep — on the bus.

As cold weather descends on the region, the need will become increasingly acute, advocates say. That will be especially true in the District, where continued fallout from the recession and lack of affordable housing has contributed to an 18 percent increase in family homelessness this year over last.

The city has recently come under fire for turning away families seeking help as 118 overflow beds that were added last winter at D.C. General — the city’s main family homeless shelter — sit empty. A few places have recently opened up, but 500 families — some of whom are living with relatives or friends — are on a waiting list for housing. Read more >>

19,000 kids in NY City's homeless shelters

In the past year alone, the total shelter population has risen by 17% and the number of children has risen by 18%, city stats show. Mayor Bloomberg said recently that the number of homeless children was increasing because of the recession.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a mayoral hopeful, has supported using public housing apartments and federal housing vouchers to move people out of shelters. The city, meanwhile, has opened at least nine new shelters this summer.

“Since just May, more than 2,000 children have become homeless,” said Ralph da Costa Nunez, CEO of the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness. “If the trend continues, we will surely see more than 20,000 children living in shelters by Christmas — a gift that nobody wants.” Read more >>

Hard Times Generation: Families living in cars

This bus is a retired unit that has been customized. 

Never has unemployment been so high for so long. And as a result, more than 16 million kids are living in poverty -- that's the most since 1962. It's worst where the construction industry collapsed. And one of those places is central Florida.

We went there 16 months ago to meet families who'd become homeless for the first time in their lives. So many were living day-to-day that school buses had to change their routes to pick up all the kids living in cheap motels. We called the story "Hard Times Generation."

Then eight months ago, we went back to see how things had changed. We found that some families are losing their grip on the motels and discovering that the homeless shelters are full. Where do they go then? Well, they keep up appearances by day and try to stay out of sight at night -- holding on to one another in a hidden America, a place you wouldn't notice unless you ran into the people that we met in the moments before dawn. Read more >>

Foreclosed on Families Live in Hotels

According to a joint report by four of the largest U.S. homeless advocacy groups, almost 80 percent of homeless service providers report foreclosures have rendered many families homeless in cities across the nation, and because homeless shelters are at full capacity, families are forced to live in hotels, paid for by vouchers from states and non profits. Jason Szep with Reuters reports that in Massachusetts, homeless shelters are at capacity. State law requires temporary accommodation for those without shelter, leading authorities to place 830 families, including 1,125 children, in 39 motels -- an unprecedented number.

"This truly is the highest we have ever seen it," said Nancy Paladino, director of the family team for the Boston Health Care for the Homeless. "The hotel owners will tell you it has increased. The homeless service providers and the school officials will say we know there are more people living in hotels and putting their kids in school because that is the address they are giving us."

In Phoenix, writes Szep, demand for emergency accommodation is swamping available services as the recession and spiraling foreclosures turn even more families out of their homes. One nonprofit bought two former hotels -- a Days Inn and a Super 8 -- in a gritty downtown neighborhood to provide emergency accommodation for homeless and low income families. When the $23 million project is finished in September, it will be able to house 156 families, up from 112 now.

"We've seen a whole new subset of homeless families due to job loss and foreclosures, and our waiting list has doubled in the past year," said Nichole Barnes, chief fund development officer of the UMOM New Day Centers. "Some were previous homeowners. Due to the housing market out here, they'd got into a mortgage with a flexible interest rate. Some were working full time, but lost their jobs, went through their savings trying to save their home, and then found themselves without a home due to foreclosure," she said.