NEWSINTERNATIONAL HOMELESSNESS

The homeless are often targets of hate crimes. They are regularly told by cops to move along. They are unwelcome guests at some public places like libraries. They are sometimes even prevented from "loitering" in front of the shelter where they live. They are an underprivileged class that many people love to hate. But it really takes the cake when the government of the wealthiest nation on earth is pushing the homeless around.

What's more is that viable solutions to homelessness are often just beyond reach due to NIMBY-ism — for instance, renters not wanting the government to house the homeless in their apartment complex — and by a solution working too well.

In my previous post I mentioned that homeless people from Silver Spring, Maryland were being sent to Washington, D.C. to receive homeless services and that D.C. officials were pushing back by trying to require that those seeking shelter in the District prove residency. Then there is the case of Mayor Michael Bloomberg giving many homeless people one-way tickets out of New York. I was truly appalled to hear from another homeless advocate that many of the homeless are sent to Alaska without coats. This is so inhumane that it should be considered a crime.

During the recently-concluded election season, Mayor-elect Vincent Gray was asked about the prospect of housing all D.C. residents. He responded by referring to a housing program in Paris that was so good that the homeless came from other parts of France in order to be housed. Gray said that he didn't want to draw homeless people from other parts of the country, due to the strain that it would put on the city's budget.

As Tropical Storm Tomas nears Haiti, more than a million people in Port-au-Prince who are still homeless from January's earthquake are being told to seek shelter. Well, if they could, they would. Some have nothing except a tarp to protect them.

Civil protection official Nadia Lochard told the AP, "We are using radio stations to announce to people that if they don't have a place to go, but they have friends and families, they should move into a place that is secure."

Here's the rub: many of Haiti's homeless, as many of the world's homeless, don't have anywhere to go. In Haiti, it's because an earthquake tore down their homes and businesses. In the U.S., it might be because they escaped abusive marriages, or were kicked out by their parents when they came out as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, or because they lost their jobs.

It became clear that people are trapped outdoors in September, when it was reported that a wealthy landowner wanted some Haitians left homeless by the quake off her property. NGOs were trying to install temporary toilets at the same time residents were being told to move it along. Rosena Desriveaux, 21, lived there with her unemployed husband and their infant. She complained of the police harassment, saying, "They tell us, 'Get out of here, you're nothing but dogs'," but said she stayed because there was nowhere else to go. I wonder where Rosena, her husband and their baby are as Tropical Storm Tomas approaches.

As discussed in my last post (and its comments), to the surprise of many there is no absence of technology in the homeless community. In fact, cell phones and computers have proven to be lifelines to critical services and resources for many homeless individuals and families. But technology's impact on the homeless doesn't end with signing up for food stamps and searching for jobs, at least not if you live in Canada.

Daniel Cross, a documentary filmmaker who focuses on social justice and the homeless, has created Homeless Nation, a forum where Canada's homeless community can share their stories with each other and the world. It calls itself "the only website in the world created by and for the street community." (Worldwide, it's worth checking out the International Homeless Forum and, in the U.S, We Are Visible for web tutorials.)

The goals of the non-profit effort include building and strengthening street communities, both virtual and actual, across Canada; providing training and access to the internet for the country's homeless population; and recycling and re-purposing technology for use by homeless people.

Homeless Nation currently boasts almost 5,000 users on its online forum. There, users can upload audio and video, post blog entries and comments, search for missing persons and access resources. Even better, the online presence is complemented by the organization's outreach staff, who work with the homeless community throughout Canada, improving access to computer equipment and assisting those who want to have their voices heard.

Australians apparently call mosquitoes "mozzies." Too bad a cute name isn't enough to make them any less bothersome.

Darwin, Australia in the Northern Territory is currently seeing the worst mosquito plague since officials started keeping records in 1979. Local homeless people are, of course, bearing the brunt of the bites.

This is just one more of the myriad risks that come with living outdoors. We've written about the prevalence of lice, the dearth of fresh drinking water and the general health risks that come with sleeping in the open air. For homeless people who spend most of their time outdoors or sleep outdoors, the threats just keep coming.

The fear is that these mosquito bites will compound existing health issues for people living in camps. Local non-profits are stepping in with insect repellent and other tools to drive away the bugs, but anyone who has ever itched through the night knows there's no 100 percent effective way to avoid them. Experts expect to see an uptick in the number of cases of Ross River fever, an infectious and nasty condition carried by mosquitoes that, luckily, isn't a threat in America.

Yesterday was the first ever "World Homeless Day," a day of activism in recognition of the continuing problem of worldwide homelessness. It was an international grassroots event, but the focus was on local measures. After all, if every community wiped out its unique "homeless problem," there wouldn't be any more homelessness.

Did you observe it? How?

Here are some ways that people around the world participated in World Homeless Day and raised awareness among their neighbors:

In preparation for 10/10/10, the Portland Rescue Mission in Oregon provided lists of 10 things to say to a homeless person, 10 things to donate and more for concerned citizens.

Community groups in Calgary organized a pancake breakfast and barbecue in a park where homeless and housed people broke bread together. The owner of a bakery called Sugar Shack Cakes baked 700 cupcakes for the picnic.

In San Francisco, radical housing advocates and their group, Creative Housing Liberation, took over an empty building to draw attention to the discrepancy between empty space and people living on the streets.

Look at this touching photo of children in wheelchairs demonstrating to recognize the day in Bangladesh.

Brazil's soccer team may not have been able to claim the gold trophy earlier this summer, but the country can now take pride in having won a World Cup that is helping to improve lives across the globe. The Homeless World Cup came to a close this past Sunday with Brazil's men's and women's teams claiming victory in the tournament, and all the participants claiming a victory in the fight against international homelessness.

Of the 64 countries that took part in the eighth annual week-long event, all of the players have been homeless at some point over the past year, are asylum seekers or earn their primary income as street newspaper vendors. In addition to providing a proactive opportunity for the players improve their own lives and change public perceptions about homelessness, the Homeless World Cup has also generated a powerful ripple effect, inspiring local grassroots soccer programs around the globe.

Many of the clubs began with individuals involved with local street papers, which is not too surprising, considering that the Homeless World Cup founders have both had a hand in operating street papers themselves: Mel Young is the co-founder of The Big Issue in Scotland, and Harald Schmied is the editor of Megaphon in Austria.

With an estimated 100 million homeless individuals worldwide, Young and Schmied know the work is far from over, but they sure are optimistic. Young tells The Independent: "We need to create a world where homelessness does not exist ... The Homeless World Cup is a gigantic effort creating real, significant change. When human beings decide to move forward, they can move mountains. More people getting involved will turn the trickle into a torrent and we will change the world forever." 

Last week Time magazine reported that when a devastating earthquake killed more than 200,000 people in Haiti earlier this year, more than 75 families fled to a small church for safety. The church, owned by preacher Samuel Farncois in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince, is no more than a small shack, but it was still a structure.

The survivors settled into a makeshift tent camp — as the homeless do everywhere. At first, when the devastation was a "natural disaster" and pity and compassion for victims was running high, the land's owner — a wealthy Haitian business woman — tolerated the survivors. But recently, once NGOs began installing latrines and providing other aid, she balked and demanded that the families leave.

According to Time, "She refused an offer to rent the land until better shelters could be found for the refugees; since then, residents say they have faced police harassment aimed at forcing them to leave. 'They tell us, 'Get out of here, you're nothing but dogs',' says Rosena Desriveaux, 21, who still lives in the Delmas camp in a threadbare tarp shelter with her unemployed husband and 8-month-old baby." She said her family has nowhere else to go.

Sound familiar? The landowner, who is known as Madame Biton, isn't stopping there. She is trying to tear down the church, which she personally approved. And, she has gone as far to have dump trucks pour loads of earthquake rubble on the lot to force people away. Call it the equivalent of police shredding tents. Biton even had the latrine walls torn down and now the refugees say they only use the facilities at night when they can't be seen.

Social change through social media, an increasingly popular idea, is real. Here's one way it works: a couple of months ago Rich was contacted through the networking site LinkedIn by Alexander Hogendoorn, a social worker and homeless advocate from The Netherlands. Alexander was on holiday in New York City for a couple of weeks, and he and Rich met for a few hours to share ideas and stories of their work on the front lines of the movement to end homelessness.

In the early 2000s, Alexander worked on creating supportive housing programs in Rotterdam, the second largest city in The Netherlands. According to Alexander, in 2002 the general sentiment in The Netherlands was that homeless people were a problem. Homelessness was their fault, they were drug addicts, and the country needed to get rid of them. Sounds familiar.

The government in The Netherlands is parliamentary, so they have a prime minister and they govern through coalitions. When Rich asked if this made it more difficult to advocate because you are dealing with multiple parties in power, Alexander said no, because the politicians in his country are very interested in compromising and coming to an agreement satisfactory to all. If only our polarized politicians were like this.

Some Netherlands legislators visited NYC in the early 2000s and learned about "zero tolerance" policies in the city designed to "motivate" the homeless and decided to implement them back home. As in America, they didn't work. No surprise there.

We were very excited to see Change.org contributor and InvisiblePeople.tv founder Mark Horvath given the opportunity to educate millions of people about homelessness via YouTube this past Sunday. While he may not be able to reach as many viewers as Mark did, one man in Canada is using another platform to raise awareness of the issue to new heights: a scissor lift. (Apologies for the pun abuse.)

Donovan Carroll, the operations director at Souls Harbour Rescue Mission in Regina, Saskatchewan, is spending this entire week atop an elevated work station raised 30 feet off the ground to call attention to homelessness in the small Canadian city, where it often goes unaddressed. You may be thinking of Donovan's plan as merely a silly stunt, but combined with the other events and speakers organized around his mission's first-ever Homelessness Awareness Week, the event will hopefully encourage more people in the community to get involved with helping the homeless.

While spending the week outside on the scissor lift may draw comparisons to the oft-criticized "Sleep Outs for the Homeless," I don't get the impression that Donovan's aim is to recreate the experience of homelessness. Instead, like a recent human billboard effort in Austin, TX, his time on the lift will serve as a highly visible reminder of a portion of the population that usually remains invisible to most passersby. According to Donovan: "In some small way, I hope that even if it makes them stop and think for a second or even just to be grateful for what they have.  Usually when you're grateful, you usually think of giving back to the community in some way, shape or form."

The days of the United States being a net industrial exporter are long gone. In 2008, the U.S. trade deficit was almost $700 billion. But despite the United States' vanishing competitive advantage in manufacturing, the country continues to export science and technology. Judging from a recent article in Australia's National Times, the United States exports  not only products stemming from "hard" sciences like pharmaceuticals and military technology, but it also exports "soft" science knowhow — including (you guessed it) homelessness and housing policy.

In Melbourne, Australia, a new $47 million facility for the homeless opens this month, and the developers have made no secret about where they got their inspiration: New York City's Common Ground. Minister of Housing Richard Wynne took a trip to New York City and brought back with him the holistic, wrap-around approach (a.k.a. supportive housing) that has made Common Ground so successful.

In addition to adopting an effective social services model from New York (Common Ground boasts a 0.9 percent eviction rate), Wynne also brought back a unique — albeit sometimes controversial — economic analysis as well. According to reports, Wynne believes in Malcolm Gladwell's "Million Dollar Murray" theory.  That is, that all-encompassing homeless policies actually provide net financial benefits for governments and communities that invest in them. San Diego just instituted a policy to target the city's 25 most costly homeless, with this concept in mind.