NEWSGOVERNMENT ANTI-POVERTY PROGRAMS

As we reported last month, previous New York State Governor Paterson vetoed a bill that would have provided additional rental assistance to residents who are living with HIV/AIDS. The legislation would have put a cap on rent paid by HIV+ persons based on a percentage of their income. Now New York has a new Governor, Andrew Cuomo, and activists are hopeful he will prove to be more sympathetic to the needs of HIV+ New Yorkers. They are hopeful this bill will finally be passed.

As we discussed in the original post, HIV management cannot exist without people having their basic needs met, especially housing.

The battle continues in Gainesville, Florida to overturn an inhumane 130-meal-limit at local soup kitchens. Advocates have been fighting for months and show no signs of backing down until this ordinance is abolished.

One local group that has been very active in this cause is the Coalition to End the Meal Limit Now! They recently organized a protest outside the mayor's annual State-of-the-City speech event and they presented city officials with a mock-Oscar award for "Best Fantasy." Now that's creative activism!

Change.org members have also come out in large numbers in support of this cause. We continue to tell Gainesville officials that this is inhumane and just plain wrong. To date, the petition has close to 6,000 signatures.

While the meal limit remains in place, it seems some local political hopefuls are gaining sympathy for the cause. Three city commission seats are up for grabs in a March 15 election. Thirteen people are vying for the positions, and four of them have spoken out against the meal limit.

The city of Gainesville, Florida recently served up a 130-meals-a-day limit to area soup kitchens, forcing providers to cease offering food to the hungry once the facility has reached the absurdly inhumane cut-off.

Fortunately, some of the candidates running in the upcoming Gainesville City Commission elections are voicing their opposition to the restriction, an encouraging sign that this cruel and unjust rule is headed for a change.

To find out where they stood on important local issues, including the soup kitchen meal limit, The Gainesville Sun posed a series of questions to the City Commission candidates. Of the thirteen candidates aiming for the three available positions on the March 15th elections, four of them spoke out against the meal limit, while five believe it should remain (the rest are presumably playing safe politics).

The heated debate in Gainesville, Florida continues.

As this cause has reported, Gainesville officials have enforced a meal limit ordinance to area soup kitchens. The rule states that soup kitchens can provide meals to only 130 people. If you are number 131, you do not eat. It is as simple and crude as that.

This story has garnered attention from activists and media around the country. There is collective outrage and disgust at this petty and inhumane limit. Yet, the rule remains. There has been little to no movement from Gainesville officials.

In the hope of making some positive movement in eradicating the limit, Kent Vann, Executive Director of the St. Francis House soup kitchen at the heart of this debate, recently made an appeal to officials.

Other than racking up 2,500 miles on my road-weary motorhome, emptying the bank account to pay for gas, and adding to global climate change, what did our two week Southern (Dis)Comfort tour accomplish in the world of helping homeless people?

At my last post, Pat LaMarche and I were headed to Birmingham, AL, "The Magic City," to nudge a much-needed movement to house homeless youth ages 19-26. The event brought together community members, social service types, media and experts - two courageous young men who knew life on the streets from living there, Courtney Brooks and Josh Pugh.

New Orleans, the city reshaped by Mother Nature, NOLA lovers and hucksters, is a perfect laboratory to demonstrate what works, what doesn't and what is needed in the world of ending homelessness.

Our ever-changing, weather-dependent Southern DisComfort tour travel plans gave us the gift of an unplanned day in the Big Easy, which filled as quickly as the levees on a rainy day.

My HuffPost blogging friend Pat LaMarche and I soon found ourselves transported through a culinary wasteland (west bank of NOLA) into Cafe Hope, a jewel of an effort to give at-risk youth a chance at success by teaching them a trade that opens doors to a hopeful future. Martin Gutierrez, head of Neighborhood and Community Services for Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans (CCANO), was our affable chauffeur and guide.

Isolation does strange things to people, and we’re no exception.

Yesterday’s massive storm that debilitated the bulk of the country forced us into hibernation in, of all places, New Orleans, the place deemed to be the best spot for people watching by Travel and Leisure magazine.

This Southern DisComfort tour had, until yesterday, proceeded without a hitch. We’ve traveled over 2,000 of our 3,000 mile 8-state journey.

But Big Mamma Storm had other plans.

We naively thought we’d been through the worst as we got blasted by rain, winds and thunder in Mobile. Ha. My Blackberry had a message about cancellations of events in Lafayette, LA due to the big storm. Huh?

We’ve all been waiting.

Some of us might be angrier than others. But, it’s safe to say that most Americans have been waiting for an executive perp walk – a line of businessmen and maybe a few women rounded up and hauled in to face charges for the economic turmoil, tsunami of foreclosures and layoffs they unleashed on the world.

It’s also safe to say that with the economy still in flux many of us have decided to settle for rigorous oversight of high-interest and high-risk financial products. We'll take the regulatory equivalent of a beat cop, if that cop is well armed.

I'm an optimist. But what I've been seeing across the country, including what Pat and I have witnessed in the first few days of our "Southern (Dis)Comfort" tour, gives me the willies.

I, the stalwart one, find myself struggling with our ambitious 2,000 mile homelessness-awareness tour. It's the little things—leaky roof, balky step, lack of water for the night. If I'm feeling it, what do families living on the edge in poverty and homelessness feel about more daunting realities?

Pat LaMarche, my travel companion, and I have been in plenty of shelters. We just visited one that (sadly) reminded both of us of what we've seen in too many places: buildings not intended to house humans converted into emergency housing by well-intentioned people wanting to offer a haven to the unhoused people in their community. What typically results is a facility that is, um, shabby. I know—I ran a shelter carved out of a former municipal incinerator that at times was shabby.

If you were to say that handing out jaywalking tickets is an ineffective means of addressing homelessness, you'd be right; at least according to the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN).

Following over four years of Skid Row's Safer Cities Initiative, a controversial policing effort championed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, LA CAN recently released a human rights assessment of the city's program revealing some extremely troubling results.

Purported to increase public safety in downtown LA and bring additional homeless services to the community, according to the report the Safer Cities appears in some cases to be actually increasing homelessness and violating the human rights of many in the homeless and very low-income communities of Los Angeles.