Los Angeles’ elected leaders on Tuesday said they would declare a “state of emergency” and devote up to $100 million to a growing homeless population problem. But they offered few details about where the money would come from or how it would be spent, leaving some to question the effort’s chances of success.
“We all understand the urgency that this situation requires, and what is at stake,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said. “I applaud the Los Angeles City Council for their action today in earmarking a necessary initial investment that helps launch my comprehensive plan to tackle homelessness.”
According to figures released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, homelessness has increased 12% since the mayor took office two years ago.
“It’s time to get real, because this is literally a matter of life and death,” said Councilman Mike Bonin, whose Westside district is home to many of the makeshift sidewalk encampments that are an increasingly glaring symbol of the problem across the city. He spoke of a “collective failure of every level of government to deal with what has been a homeless crisis for generations and is exploding and exacerbating now.”
Los Angeles has one of the largest unsheltered populations in the country, and more than an estimated 25,000 homeless residents.
Environmental officials are warning the deaths from the explosion at the port of Tianjin may not end with the dousing of the fires that are still burning.
There are now fears that rain could release poisonous hydrogen cyanide into the air in the event of a heavy rain. Also, more explosions could be possible as many of the chemicals still at the site violently explode when they come into contact with water.
“If there is rain, it will produce hydrogen cyanide, so we are monitoring it closely,” Bao Jingling, chief engineer for the Tianjin Environmental Protection Bureau told NBC News. He added the nation’s anti-chemical warfare military divisions are on site.
Scientists also have admitted that they have found sodium cyanide in the waters of Bohai Bay. Local officials say that they learned over 700 tons of sodium cyanide was stored at the site, 70 times the legal limit and that the chemicals had not been reported to Chinese customs officials.
The government has cleared a 1.8 mile area of the city with over 6,000 families forced from their homes.
The death toll from the blast has officially reached 114 and local rescuers say at least 90 people are still reported missing including many firefighters. One firefighter told the NY Times that he doesn’t know the fate of 25 men from his brigade and “no one told [his crew] the fire involved chemicals.”
Some fire experts are speculating that the water from the hoses of the fire crews came into contact with explosive chemicals, causing the massive second explosion that had the force of 21 tons of TNT.
A 40-year-old man was found alive in the debris on Saturday and is hospitalized. Thousands are now homeless because of the fire’s impact on surrounding buildings.
The city’s residents have taken to the streets to demand the government buy out their homes so they can begin a new life. They say the toxins from the explosion are likely much worse than the government will admit.
A rooftop garden run by the homeless in Atlanta has become so successful they are feeding an entire shelter through their efforts.
The Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless set up the organic garden at a shelter in downtown Atlanta. The garden system includes their own beehive and rainwater collection system to keep the garden lush and growing.
The group is getting ready to take the garden to the next level with a new roof put on by the homeless in the shelter, giving them money and job skills.
“Part of the contract for any construction we will be doing is that indigenous, resident labor will be used and certified, but the requirements are the same as for professional labor,” Executive Director Anita Beaty told Atlanta Progressive News.
“Everything we do here involves residents. They get job training and every job is preparation for a job outside,” Beaty said.
The group will double the size of the garden once the roof is finished.
The addition of a beehive was overwhelmingly successful for the group.
“Because of the elevation, we have less trouble with insects and the mites that attract the bees. The bees have enough to eat on the roof…they don’t go in search of food and bring back pests. We get eight to ten hours of constant sun, nothing blocks the wind, the plants and the bees love it. This rooftop is a microclimate,” Carl Hartrampf, a board member and the rooftop garden coordinator said.
He added the hive grew so big they had to split it in two. They will have honey to sell this fall.
Two Texas women are launching a fundraising campaign to provide a proper funeral for a homeless man killed in an accident.
Duc Van Tran lived below an overpass in Houston. Two women, Adriana Castro Garcia and Rosa Quintero would notice him. They brought him food and other items. They would check in on him to see how he was doing.
Then one day, he was gone.
“I really don’t watch TV or listen to the radio so I had no idea what happened until the beginning of this month,” good Samaritan Rosa Quintero said.
On May 12th, a man named Jamie Dorn was driving drunk. He jumped the curb near where Tran was sleeping and ran over him, killing him.
Quintero called the medical examiner’s office to see if anyone had claimed Tran’s body. No one had claimed it, but the employee told her that it would be “very expensive” for Quintero to do it.
“I just want to be able to provide him a nice funeral,” Quintero said.
“I mean he was somebody he needs somebody to at least say hey we saw you here and you are part of us even though there was no communication you mattered to somebody,” Castro Garcia said.
The two have raised over $5,000 for the funeral thus far.
A 9-year-old Washington girl believes “everyone should have a place to live.”
For Hailey Ford, it’s more than something she says. It’s something that she lives out every day.
Hailey is building 8 foot by 4 foot wooden structures designed to give one homeless person a place to sleep.
“It just doesn’t seem right that there are homeless people,” Hailey told the King 5 News. “I think everyone should have a place to live.”
But a home is not where Hailey started…it was with a garden.
Hailey met a homeless man named Edward who found himself on the street after losing his job at a grocery store. Hailey’s mother provided Edward with a sandwich on the day they met but Hailey wanted to do more. So she started a garden, Hailey’s Harvest, which donated 128 pounds of produce to feed the homeless in 2014.
Hailey teamed with Together Rising, a non profit who gave Hailey a $3,000 grant toward her project.
“We can’t think of a better example than our Hailey — she’s proof that no person – or act of kindness — is too small to change the world,” Together Rising founder Glennon Doyle Melton said in a statement provided to The Huffington Post.
Hailey says the first completed shelter will go to Edward.
The faith of a child was on clear display at an Alabama Waffle House when a five-year-old boy made sure a hungry man could eat.
Josiah Duncan was eating the Waffle House in Prattville, Alabama with his mother Ava Faulk when he noticed a homeless man outside the restaurant. He asked his mom about the man.
“He’s homeless,” the little boy’s mother explained. “What does that mean?” he responded. “And I said, “”Well, that means he doesn’t have a home,”” Mom continued. And apparently, the unnamed man didn’t have any friends to lean on, either.
“He came in and sat down, and nobody really waited on him,” Faulk explained. “So Josiah jumped up and asked him if he needed a menu because you can’t order without one.”
The restaurant brought the man a full meal. However, before he could eat, Josiah made sure something happened.
“I wanted to say the blessing with him,” Duncan said.
And he did in front of the other customers and the Waffle House staff.
“God our Father, God our Father, we thank you, we thank you, for our many blessings, for our many blessings, Amen, Amen.”
A homeless man who left an 18 cent donation to a North Carolina church along with a message that melted the hearts of all who read it is asking to remain anonymous despite a media campaign to identify him.
The note read: “Please don’t be mad. I don’t have much. I’m Homeless. God Bless.”
One of the organizers of the Muffin Ministry of First United Methodist Church of Charllotte said that the man told her he wants to stay behind the scenes.
“He’s a very humble person he doesn’t want to be noticed or recognized,” Ann Huskey said in an exclusive interview with People.
The pastor said that he met with the man and said that many church members made offers of support.
“I said, ‘There are people that are willing to help you financially. They are concerned about you,’ ” Pastor Patrick Hamrick said.
The man rejected the offers, saying the gift was between him and God. The pastor hopes that the man will accept the invitation for a job interview offered by a local businessman.
A homeless couple stood on a street corner in Southern California with a sign that read “Family Needs Help God Bless.” Robert Wessely and his wife were begging for money to pay for a room for themselves and their four children.
They had no idea that God was about to bring a stranger into their lives that was the first step in life transformation.
The family was in Eureka, California asking for help when a woman drove up and gave them ten dollars. Robert immediately went to a gas station and bought food for his children, all under the age of seven. The woman then came back to the corner and gave the family her husband’s cell phone number.
He was going to offer Robert a job at his construction company.
The man, Carl Hawkins, then went further than offering a job as a day laborer. On Christmas Eve, he welcomed the entire family into his home.
“He started working for me the day before Christmas Eve. I felt the Lord saying ‘Christmas is all about me and my love. Show [them] my love,'” Hawkins explained. “It started out that they were just going to live with us over the holidays. It was after that that the Lord impressed upon me to really open the doors and offer him a place to live with his family, if they were willing to live by God’s design.”
The family was required to attend church, have family worship time during the week and managing their finances appropriately to plan for the future.
Now, Robert and his family live in their own home near Lake Elsinore and give back with their own ministry to help homeless families.
“Instead of looking at a trickling of water on a curb, now on our front porch, I get to look at a lake. The beauty behind God is a true blessing,” Robert said. “We literally went from curb to castle.”
The owner of a Chick-Fil-A franchise in Birmingham, Alabama is gaining national attention after a customer secretly videotaped him showing Christ’s love to a homeless man.
The unidentified man walked into the store last week and asked owner Mark Meadows if he could work for some food.
“We made eye contact and I asked him what would he like, what we could do for him and then he asked if he could do some work to get something to eat,” Meadows told ABC News.
Meadows responded by having the man sit down and they gave him a meal on the house. As the man was waiting for his meal, Meadows noticed he was rubbing his hands together and asked if the man had gloves.
When he said no, Meadows went into his office and brought out his gloves and gave them to the man.
Meadows was not intending to tell anyone about the incident but a customer recorded the encounter and posted it on social media.
“[My son] Bryson and I are sitting in Chick Fil A on 280. A man walked in to get warm with all of his earthly possessions on his back,” patron Andrea Stoker wrote in a status that has now gone viral. “The manager, who is on his break, got up and asked the man if he could get him anything. Before the man could even answer, the manager asked if the man had any gloves and handed him his, then got him the meal of his choice.”
“There is still so much good in this world and I’m so grateful that Bryson saw it all unfold,” she continued.
A new study from the National Center on Family Homelessness says that 2.5 million American children are now homeless.
The number is the highest level recorded to date.
The report was based on data from the U.S. Department of Education and the Census Bureau. In addition to the number of homeless children, the report outlined hundreds of thousands of children who were in danger of losing their housing or living in unsafe, unsanitary conditions.
Single women were the highest for homelessness with children. Single black and Hispanic women were more likely to be in poverty and on the verge of homelessness than any other demographic.
The study said that African American families experience homelessness at a greater rate than any other demographic.
The worst states for homelessness was Alabama and Mississippi.
