“What stands out for visitors?” I asked our guide during a tour of Honolulu’s Chinatown with my out-of-town guests. “Always the same,” he replied, “the homeless.”
“Homelessness & Affordability Crisis”
Did Billions in Spending Make a Dent in Homelessness? Canada Doesn’t Know.
An auditor general’s report found that multibillion-dollar federal housing programs were not being tracked to see whether they actually reduced homelessness.
While other Canadian cities are firmly in the throes of winter, Toronto, after months of balmy weather, finally surrendered to its first snowfall on Tuesday, with more on the way. Winters are a habitual stress test on Toronto’s infrastructure, especially public transit, but also on its constellation of social services for the homeless.
Most nights in Toronto, the shelter system is full and has to turn people away.
Portland moving forward with $27 million plan to end homeless camping on sidewalks
“I’ve written a lot of posts about the problem of homelessness in Portland over the years. Just this year there have been multiple reports about people planning to leave the area for good because of crime and homelessness. There have been specific reports about dangerous homeless people and persistent homeless thieves who never seem to get taken off the streets no matter what they do.”
Portland is a “progressive paradise” anything they do will make things worse and this plan is typically insane.
After spending billions, federal government doesn’t know if it’s reducing chronic homelessness: AG
Feds want to reduce chronic homelessness by 50% — but there’s scant data on progress
The federal departments tasked with curbing chronic homelessness in Canada don’t know if the billions of dollars in public money they’ve spent have helped to get people into homes, Canada’s auditor general reported Tuesday.
Auditor General Karen Hogan found that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and Infrastructure Canada have failed to collect sufficient data about their programs, which are designed to connect the most vulnerable people with homes.
These two agencies are largely responsible for delivering the federal government’s National Housing Strategy, which has a target of reducing chronic homelessness by 50 per cent by the 2027-28 fiscal year.
Inside the short-lived effort to turn an Esplanade hotel into a homeless shelter
After less than two years as a homeless shelter, opened with the aim of moving people out of park encampments, the Novotel on the Esplanade is pivoting back to life as a tourist hub.
The shelter will shut its operations by year’s end, the city recently announced, as part of a gradual closure of 27 temporary shelter sites by the end of 2023. The hotel aims to resume life as a tourism destination in 2023, city hall says — as a development application has also been made with hopes of building two towers on the site with a hotel, retail and condos.
‘Nothing Safe About Handing Out Opioids’: Filmmaker of Documentary on Crime and Addiction in Vancouver
Vancouver Is Dying, a documentary released by independent journalist and city resident Aaron Gunn, has garnered over 2 million views since it premiered on Oct. 7.
The one-hour film highlights the overdose crisis, increasing crime, public disorder, and homeless situation in Vancouver, and in particular, criticizes what Gunn calls government “failed policies that have ravaged our downtown cores, especially Vancouver, over the past 20 years.”
Adam Zivo: Canadians see what governments and activists won’t admit — homeless crime is a real threat
A new poll shows that many Canadians feel less safe because of homeless violence and believe that the government is not effectively addressing homelessness. For years, soft-on-crime activists and their allies have tried to bury this issue, but it is clear based on public sentiment that this needs to change.
Canadians are fed up with homelessness, and many think government is making it worse
There was a time, not too long ago, when tent cities plagued by violence and disorder were a phenomenon reserved almost exclusive to the most troubled corners of Vancouver or Toronto.
But now, they’re virtually everywhere.
LA’s enterprising homeless hook up washing machines to street power lines
Images and video show homeless in Los Angeles syphoning water and power in camps sprouting throughout the city’s streets – with some of the brazen encampments even boasting working washing machines.
Homelessness is a dominant issue in the state’s upcoming mayoral election, with a large field of candidates promising to do more on an issue that has placed Los Angeles in an unwelcome national spotlight.
Sagging tents, rusting RVs, and makeshift structures have become commonplace along Hollywood Boulevard to Venice Beach – and even in the shadow of City Hall.
In Ottawa, where junkies and technocrats collide
Canada’s liberal capital city has been besieged by drugs and disorder
I got out of the taxi in front of my hotel in lower town Ottawa and was immediately accosted by a homeless junkie looking for a donation to the cause. It was a Sunday evening, well after sunset, and not quite the greeting I had hoped for upon arrival in Canada’s leafy capital. The smell of pot was in the air, a lot of it — there was a cannabis store across the street, and another around the corner.
Adam Zivo: Encampment activists callously harass victims of street crime
Activists who defend violent homeless encampments claim they are driven by compassion, and that criticisms of encampments, or of homeless crime more generally, are callous. This is untrue. Those who call attention to homeless crime merely recognize that victims of street violence deserve empathy and protection — especially because, when said victims speak out about their experiences, they suffer shocking abuse by “compassionate” pro-encampment activists.
Portland retiree dealing with homeless thieves: ‘At some point your compassion just runs out’
“It’s pure hell,” said Bambi Alvey, who has lived in the retirement community for 10 years. “I wake up every morning looking out my window at the homeless people looking through my window back at me.”…
“Every morning I go out, I look at my window to see what they have stolen out of my yard,” added Yvonne McKown who has been living there for eight years…
San Francisco’s Slide
Disorder poses a danger to its future.
This past spring, activity in downtown San Francisco reached just 31 percent of its 2019 level, as measured by comparing visits to points of interests such as restaurants, retail shops, and grocery stores between the two years. No other North American city of the 62 reviewed in a University of California, Berkeley analysis fell that far. Is “the City,” as its residents like to call it, destined to hollow out and become synonymous with urban decay? Or can it reverse its decline?
Portland mom finds homeless person in her child’s BED and calls cops – but woke DA lets intruder go with bail set at $0
A Portland, Oregon mother who found a homeless woman in her son’s bed was blindsided a second time when the city’s woke district attorney let the intruder go within 24 hours.
Kelsey Smith, from Northeast Portland, first knew something was amiss when she heard her dogs barking in a bedroom and went to investigate. She initially thought her husband was playing a prank on her, but within moments quickly realized someone had broken into her home to hide out.
After backing out of the room and calling for help, Smith was bum rushed by the intruder, who had picked up an ottoman and threw it at her before leaving the home.
Viral video shows homeless fighting in squalid conditions on San Francisco street
A viral video making its rounds on social media offers a grim new snapshot of San Francisco’s surging homelessness crises as two men can be seen brawling amid squalid conditions on a city sidewalk.
The shocking scene was filmed and posted to Twitter by J. Terrell Allen, who said he stumbled upon the wild fight in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood on an evening walk.
On my evening walk. SOMA isn’t safe. Just happened. This is disgusting @MattHaneySF. I’ve written to your office and you and failed to take action. Why??? Is it worth your time? pic.twitter.com/cLwAtb4ZGU
— J. (@jterrell) September 9, 2022