Please take a stand with the following social justice groups for affordable housing and civil rights on January 20, 2010! To endorse and get involved click here. For more information on the action and our demands click here.
Action Organizers
Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency
Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco
Los Angeles Community Action Network
Sisters Of The Road
Street Roots
Street Spirit (more…)
PRESS CONFERENCE AND RALLY
December 31st, 2009, New Year’s Eve
7:00 PM Board of Supervisors
1221 Oak Street, Oakland, in the Plaza
The General Assistance (GA) population includes the disabled, veterans, seniors, victims of domestic violence, transition age youth and women. Before November, 2009 the GA loan was at most $336.
The county has slashed the GA grant:
· up to $84 if a recipient lives with a roommate and
· $40 unless the person receives Medi-Cal.
· Up to $231 unless the landlord signs the W9 or
· Up to $231 if the recipient’s rent is over the GA grant.
After January 2010, GA recipients can only get aide 3 months out of 12 months if Social Service deems the recipient employable. There are no plans in place to how “employability” will be determined. (more…)
Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures, released in November 2006, documented the direct correlation between the advent of contemporary homelessness in 1982 and the draconian cuts to HUD and USDA affordable housing programs that began in 1979.
Our report has been downloaded over 30,000 times from the WRAP website. Advocates, community organizers, service providers and educators from across the country use it to reframe the affordable housing debate and to organize for smarter public policy that reflects the realities of homeless people’s experiences. Homeless Coalitions across the country have copied and distributed the report to their memberships and also to state and federal legislators and local city officials. (more…)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Last summer, police responding to complaints about campfires under a highway overpass found dozens of homeless people living on public land along the Cumberland River.
Eviction notices went up — and then were suspended by Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, a Democrat, who said housing for the homeless should be found first.
A year later, little has been found — and Nashville, with help from local nonprofits, is now servicing a tent city, arranging for portable toilets, trash pickup, a mobile medical van and visits from social workers. Volunteers bring in firewood for the camp’s 60 or so dwellers. (more…)
“HOPE VI has accelerated the loss of public housing,” House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA) said in her opening remarks at a July 29 hearing, “Academic Perspectives on the Future of Public Housing.” Chair Waters spoke throughout the hearing on her concerns about the program, including that HOPE VI has resulted in a net loss of more than 50,000 public housing units, the displacement of public housing residents, and a low rate of return to the redeveloped public housing units by original residents. (more…)