“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”

The numbers are horrifying, but drug overdose death statistics can’t fully convey the crisis ravaging America, so DailyMail.com has documented the suffering in some of the worst-affected communities.

There were 107,622 deaths from drug overdoses in the US in 2021, an increase of nearly 15 percent from the year prior, and shocking national trends show few signs of the crisis abating.

Just two milligrams of fentanyl – the amount that fits on the top of a pencil tip – is deadly. Despite successful nationwide stings to bust dealers, authorities admit there’s no end in sight for the epidemic.

No doubt everyday journalism has lost much of its power to shock the conscience in a world in which everyone’s a victim one way or another. But I unexpectedly found my hackles still functioning when I read in Nova Scotia’s ancient Chronicle Herald about the predicament of Robert Antle, a resident of Upper Stewiacke.

This solution works for those who can make it work.

Unfortunately most of the homeless crisis is in fact a mental illness and drug abuse crisis.

An Ontario court’s decision that blocks the eviction of a Kitchener encampment could affect municipalities across Canada that are contending with tent cities of their own, according to legal experts.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision released Friday says the Region of Waterloo isn’t allowed to evict people living in tents on one if its vacant lots, at 100 Victoria St., because its shelter system didn’t have enough beds for people experiencing homelessness.

In his 51-page decision, Justice M.J. Valente said clearing encampments without sufficient shelter spaces would infringe on their constitutional rights.

Oh Great. Now the whole country can be just like San Francisco.

A San Francisco tech executive has branded the downtown area ‘dystopian’ after she walked past ‘hundreds’ of homeless people.

Michelle Tandler, 37, shared a picture from her Saturday night trip to a bar in the wilting Democrat-run city.

She posted the image of a distressing scene that featured a group of homeless men surrounding by trash and graffiti.

Crime-ridden Seattle has lost its downtown Nike flagship store and multiplex movie theater as crime runs rampant and the number of homeless people dying soars.

The Rain City’s downtown area suffered its latest blow on Friday when the popular Nike store, located at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Pike Street, shut its doors for good.

Nike’s exit came right after Regal Cinemas announced it would reject the lease of the Meridian 16 multiplex located on Seventh Avenue and Pike Street.

The City of Portland, Oregon, has released an online dashboard that documents more than 30,000 homeless campsites reported in the past year as officials vow to clean them up.

The Homelessness and Urban Camping Incident Response Program (HUCIRP) launched the dashboard on Wednesday to give the public more clarity on how they are handling the dire homeless situation in the City of Roses.

The interactive map shows the thousands of camps in the Oregon city, their risk level, and before and after photos after crews have cleaned up.

A San Francisco art gallery owner who sprayed a homeless woman with a hose has been arrested, police have said.

Collier Gwin, 71, has been charged with misdemeanour battery, after a video of him spraying the woman outside his gallery on 9 January caused outrage.

He faces up to six months in prison and a $2,000 (£1,600) fine, the city’s district attorney said.

Mr Gwin has since apologised for his actions, describing them as indefensible.

Only in San Francisco. Business owner #reelsinstagram #shorts #briochesf @sfgov @SFGate @SupervisorTang @AaronPeskin @Telemundo48 No respect ✊🏼 pic.twitter.com/Gn2mmPpLtb

— #briochesf (@briochesf) January 9, 2023

Like many cities on the West Coast, Redding, California, is experiencing a homelessness crisis. And, like too many cities around the country—as I detail in my book and have highlighted in many columns over the years—officials appear to have determined the problem can be best dealt with by making it difficult or impossible to share food with people in need.

Homelessness in Redding is a challenge city residents have recognized and organized to address. Last summer, for example, a group of “regular guys” in Redding partnered with a local taco truck to offer free lunches to those in need. More recently, an obituary for a charitable local resident highlighted her compassionate history of sharing homemade coffee and sandwiches with hungry residents.

A homeless woman in Portland revealed how easy the Oregon city makes it to subsist in that lifestyle.

A woman identified only as Wendy told an interviewer from the nonprofit We Heart Seattle, “It’s a piece of cake, really; that’s probably why you’ve got so many out here.”

She mentioned that certain organizations will provide free food to the city’s homeless residents, letting the homeless do what they want in between those meals.

The true scale of homelessness is being grossly undercounted in the official estimates, experts say, leading to a chronic underfunding of programs designed to help unhoused people.

The most recent statistics of unhoused people nationwide are from 2016 in a Canadian Observatory on Homelessness report, which states more than 250,000 people in Canada experience homelessness in any given year.

Homeless encampments are “visibly rising” in Canada, according to the Canadian Human Rights Commission — and to address this, a “Housing First” approach is needed from all levels of government, be it federal, provincial or municipal, experts say.

The “Housing First” approach identifies the right to housing as the first and foremost need of people experiencing homelessness. Needs such as childcare, drug addiction or medical requirements come after an individual has been housed, Leilani Farha, the global director of The Shift, an international initiative that advocates for the right to housing, told Global News.

Acting to address “a crisis we see all around us” toward the end of a year that has seen a string of high-profile crimes involving homeless people, Mayor Eric Adams announced a major push on Tuesday to remove people with severe, untreated mental illness from the city’s streets and subways.

Mr. Adams, who has made clearing homeless encampments a priority since taking office in January, said the effort would require involuntarily hospitalizing people who were a danger to themselves, even if they posed no risk of harm to others, arguing the city had a “moral obligation” to help them.

I don’t disagree. The homeless problem is often a mental illness or addiction problem.