NEWSBYSHANNON MORIARTY

If you think "homeless" is synonymous with "unemployed," think again. Twenty-eight percent of homeless adults work. They serve coffee, mop floors and flip burgers. But no matter how hard these people toil in minimum wage jobs, they can't afford housing.

What's a working still-homeless single mother to do when the bootstraps have been pulled and homelessness persists?

Just look at Tanya Smith. She lives in a homeless shelter in the St. Paul/Minneapolis area with her two kids. She works not one, not two, but THREE jobs, yet she's been homeless for three years.

This is a circumstance that doesn't discriminate based on your geographic location. Walk into any family homeless shelter, from California to Massachusetts, and you're likely to meet a single mother who works long hours at a local fast food joint or big box department store. Despite her hard work, she can't make ends meet. Fold into the equation the lack of benefits in low-paying jobs, including lack of paid sick leave or family friendly policies, and you've got a mother who is one sick child away from a reduced paycheck, missed rent and a homeless shelter. It's unsustainable and it's unfair.

A homeless shelter may never be as safe or accommodating as the Ritz-Carlton, but there is a reasonable expectation that it will serve as a refuge that is a step up from the dangers of the streets. Every now and then, however, that security is compromised, forcing us to ask the question: how safe are our homeless shelters?

Earlier this week in Cleveland, a homeless veteran with a history of mental and behavioral problems attacked and killed the shelter's director with a small ax. When police arrived on the scene, they shot and killed the attacker. Today, as the city mourns the loss of director Rita Ciofani, people are raising important questions about the safety standards of city homeless shelters. Could a simple security measure have prevented this attack?

While the vast majority of homeless shelters are perfectly safe, it's important that any organization serving the homeless re-visit and re-evaluate its security regularly. Homeless service organizations, particularly emergency shelters, are often the point of entry for people suffering from serious mental illness or substance abuse, which is often magnified (and un-medicated) after the stress of living on the street. As the tragedy in Cleveland illustrates, these individuals may not only be a danger to themselves, but also to the people who are there to help them.

The number of homeless families with kids in New York City shelters has not just increased in the past two years -- it has skyrocketed. Today, the city has 51 percent more families with kids seeking shelter than it did in 2008, including 16,000 homeless children.

To say that Mayor Bloomberg's 2004 goal of reducing the city's shelter capacity by two-thirds has failed would be a gross understatement. But failed policy goals aren't always a bad thing. In this case, the city's ability to expand shelter capacity is one of the small bits of silver lining in this story.

Since the demand started increasing, New York City shelters have not had to turn any families away. Officials are diligently adding shelter beds to meet the rising demand. The bad news? There's a trade-off. Living conditions in the newly added accommodations are less-than-ideal, to say the least. And since the city's stock of affordable housing options remains unchanged, families moving out of shelter may not be any better off than they were before becoming homeless.

Still, many families are grateful for the temporary accommodations. Karen Diaz, for one, isn't complaining about the conditions of the NYC homeless shelter that she, her husband and two daughters currently call home. Dirty communal bathrooms, crowded bunk beds and sketchy housemates are better than the alternative.

Smart homelessness policy requires long-term planning focused on eradication, and short-term emergency services to see that nobody ends up on the street. New York is effectively delivering the latter. The former, it seems, is easier said than done.

Photo credit: Giles Clement

Rosa Bracero should have graduated from high school this week. Instead, she was forced to make an impossible decision between fulfilling her educational aspirations and helping her homeless family gain admittance to a shelter for the night.

Rosa was supposed to take the Regents exam at her Brooklyn high school last week -- a requirement for graduation in New York. But on the day she was scheduled to take the test, her family was evicted from their apartment. When the family went to a homeless intake center, staffers said they would be denied shelter if the entire family was not present for the seven-hour process -- even if it meant Rosa would have to miss her graduation exam.

According to the New York Daily News, the entire family was stunned at the cold, heartless lack of flexibility of the school and the New York shelter system. Rosa herself summed it up best: "I'm homeless so I have to be set back in my goals for my life? Isn't it enough that I'm homeless?"

This year, schools across the U.S. have been dealing with an unprecedented surge of homeless students. The National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth says that in the past two years, the number of homeless students has increased 100 percent. Though the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act provides a number of guaranteed protections for homeless students, it can be extremely difficult for these kids to keep up (nevermind excel) when they are without a stable home.

We all like easy answers. We like things to be black and white, right and wrong. But sometimes, with a complex issue like homelessness, things just aren't this simple. And perhaps nothing illustrates this better than the debacle surrounding Jessica's Law and the soaring rates of homelessness among sex offenders in California.

Jessica's Law, passed by voters in November 2006, bars sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a park or school. Though these tough housing restrictions were meant to protect children from the threat of recidivism, it has further limited the already sparse number of affordable housing options for ex-offenders, causing thousands to become homeless. Since Jessica's Law was enacted in 2006, the number of homeless sex offenders in California has increased a whopping 2,400 percent. Homeless and children's advocates alike have argued that Jessica's Law is nothing more than "forced homelessness." A tough issue, indeed.

Even the California Supreme Court more or less straddled the issue this week, according to SF Weekly. On Monday, the Court ruled at a broad level that it is constitutional for the state to enforce the residency restrictions of Jessica's Law on paroled sex offenders. Then it passed the buck. Now, smaller trial courts will need to decide -- on a case by case basis -- whether Jessica's Law is unreasonable, vague, overly broad or unconstitutional for individual parolees within their jurisdictions. Since every sex offender's case, and the threat they pose to children, is different, that's a lot of cases.

When you tune in to the Winter Olympics next week, be on the lookout for bright red tents dotting the snowy Vancouver scenery. The Red Tent Campaign is taking to the streets of Vancouver, distributing 500 red pop-up tents to the city's homeless to draw attention to this crucial issue and encourage Canada to adopt a national housing strategy.

Many of the tents are emblazoned with phrases like End Homelessness or Housing is a Right. Volunteers and advocates are being encouraged to join the campaign by sponsoring a tent or even taking to the streets themselves for a night.

The demonstration, sponsored by the Pivot Legal Society, has some critics shaking their heads. Why, they wonder, is this group trying to make the city look bad during its big moment in the world spotlight? Organizers contend that homelessness is a reality in Vancouver; it's important to the world to see the city as it really is. And if it just so happens that the additional media attention shames federal lawmakers into adopted a long-overdue national housing strategy? Well, that's just icing on the cake.

The Red Tent Campaign follows a December 2009 court decision that grants homeless people the right to sleep on city property if shelters are full. According to the organization, the broader impact of this decision is profound; homeless people can now sleep at night on public property free of harassment by police. Coincidentally, this decision also made the Red Tent Campaign's open source protest/advocacy tactics fair game during the Winter Games. Still, the mayor and some city council members are trying to halt the tent strategy before the opening ceremonies.

If you believe it's prudent policy for a country with a homeless population to adopt and implement a National Housing Strategy, then you should support the campaign. Even if you can't travel to Vancouver to join in the advocacy next week, there are plenty of ways you can get involved. Sponsor a tent, spread the word on Facebook, or visit the Red Tent website. Amid Vancouver's Olympic displacements, gentrification and criminalization, here's a chance to harness the Olympics to do some good for Canada's homeless population.

Photo credit: nimish gogri

They're your parents. You've relied on them for your genes, holiday meals and unsolicited advice. But these days, they're serving another important role. They might just be be your last line of defense before spiraling into homelessness. (Or, sadly, you might be theirs.)

As unemployment rates skyrocketed over the past year, relatives began dishing out loans and assistance to stave off the threat of homelessness. With shelters packed and tent cities popping up from Sacramento to Providence, it's not far-fetched to say that this crisis might have been much worse if not for the generosity of families.

Parents, siblings, kids, aunts, uncles and grandparents are preventing homelessness among their financially unstable relatives, according to a piece in the New York Times last weekend. They are, in essence, serving as the personal safety net before the social service safety net. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that more than half of 708 unemployed adults surveyed nationwide said they had borrowed money from friends or relatives. Most of the individuals had strained finances; nearly 80 percent of those who reported borrowing money said their family's financial situation was "fairly bad" or "very bad."

Of course, anyone who's ever seen "Judge Judy" knows that borrowing from a family member can be a sticky situation. Not only does it require putting one's pride aside to reach out for help, repayment agreements are typically tabled until the crisis blows over and job prospects improve.

Given the slow speed at which things are turning around, this could take awhile.

Photo credit: Merlign Hoek

I recently met a woman whose story blew my mind. I'll call her Nadia. She is a single mother with eight kids. She and her husband were middle-school sweethearts, and although they struggled financially, both working two minimum-wage jobs, they were somehow managing to make ends meet.

Sadly, Nadia's world fell apart two years ago when she came home from work one day to discover that her husband had committed suicide. Since then, life has been a whirlwind for Nadia and her children; they are struggling to deal with their devastation while going in and out of homelessness. Last November, when they came to the homeless service center where I work, Nadia and her children were living in a tiny one-room studio apartment just outside of Boston.

Under any other circumstances, my organization may not have been able to help Nadia and her family right away. They may have stayed on a waiting list or had to move into a shelter before getting the housing assistance they needed. But this year, it was different. We used money from the Recovery Act to find Nadia and her kids a four-bedroom apartment. They moved in just two days before Christmas.

There are hundreds of success stories like this, all originating from the tiny chunk ($1.5 billion) of Obama's $800 billion Recovery Act bill that was dedicated towards the Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing Program (HPRP). Since then, this money has slowly trickled down to cities and towns across the country, moving folks into housing and keeping at-risk families in their homes. It isn't enough to help everyone, but it is changing lives.

Talk about out of touch. Tomorrow is the fifth annual PJ Day in Denver, when Mayor John Hickenlooper will be sporting fuzzy slippers and pajamas in an attempt to raise awareness about the city's homeless problem. Only this time, instead of parading around his office in silk jammies, he's also decking out the high-powered, deep-pocketed Denver business community.

What a sight this will be to see: the people in Denver who are perhaps best-positioned to take real, effective action towards helping the homeless will be donning matching pinstripe pajamas, essentially mocking the suffering of those in need. It'll be like wearing a "WE'RE OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY" team uniform.

Last year, I called out the Mayor's attempt to bring attention to the plight of the city's homeless by hosting "PJ Day," when city employees wore bathrobes and bunny slippers to the office. Later that night, he hosted a "Pajama Party" fundraiser, complete with a bedtime story read by the Mayor himself. This year, he decided to take this brilliant idea to the next level. He has challenged 10 corporations to donate $10,000 to Denver's Road Home. Businesses who pony up the dough get to join the exclusive "Pinstripe PJ Club," which includes a posh pair of logo pinstriped pajamas.

Now don't get me wrong -- the fundraising efforts are admirable. But can't it be done without this ridiculous homelessness-pajamas connection? It may not seem like a huge deal, but it is indicative of a largely out-of-touch politician making loose and wholly inaccurate assumptions.

In just three years, the number of homeless sex offenders in California has increased a whopping 2400 percent. Who or what is to blame for this skyrocketing figure? Believe it or not, it's Jessica's Law, passed by voters in November 2006 and designed to protect children from paroled sex offenders. What's a state to do when a law intended to bolster public safety is actually exacerbating the threat of recidivism?

Today, there are 2,200 paroled sex offenders who are homeless in California. This is up from 1,257 a year ago and just 88 in September 2007. The causal link between the passage of Jessica's Law and the onslaught of homeless sex offenders is undeniable. What, you ask, is at the heart of the issue here? Housing.

Jessica's Law bans sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children "regularly gather," according to the Mercury News. These strict requirements have created real difficulties for paroled sex offenders looking for places to live. Even if housing is available within approved areas, it may be unaffordable. The requirements have also created clusters of sex offenders in places like unmonitored motels, which are not sustainable forms of housing nor necessarily safe for children.