Housing News:

BERKELEY MAKES LIST OF TOP TEN MEANEST CITIES FOR THE HOMELESS!

Berkeley makes the top ten list of the meanest cites for the homeless to reside
in, according to the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty!

See stories and links below...


National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty

http://www.nlchp.org/

http://www.nlchp.org/view_report.cfm?id=312

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L.A. tops cities 'meanest' to homeless

Published: July 15, 2009 at 10:20 AM

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/07/15/LA-tops-cities-meanest-to-homeless/UPI-16\
541247667653/


LOS ANGELES, July 15 (UPI) -- Los Angeles is the "meanest" city in the United
States when it comes to the treatment of homeless people, advocates for the
homeless say.

The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty asserted that the California
city's adoption of ordinances "criminalizing" behaviors associated with
homelessness, such as lying down on sidewalks, makes it the "meanest" city in
the country toward those living on the streets, the group said in a release
accompanying a report on the issue titled "Homes Not Handcuffs: The
Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities."

"Even though most cities do not provide enough affordable housing, and food to
meet the need, many cities use the criminal justice system to punish people
living on the street for doing things that they need to do to survive," the
report's authors say.

Los Angeles topped the NLCHP's list for reportedly spending of $6 million per
year to police the city's skid row while paying only $5.7 million for homeless
services.

Also making the top 10 "meanest" cities list were St. Petersburg, Fla.;
Orlando, Fla.; Atlanta; Gainesville, Fla.; Kalamazoo, Mich.; San Francisco;
Honolulu; Bradenton, Fla.; and Berkeley, Calif.

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(Published in San Francisco Bay View Newspaper on June 26, 2007)

War on the homeless heats up in Berkeley
by Lynda Carson

Tuesday, 26 June 2007

Berkeley – Berkeley’s war on the homeless heated up June 12 when its full
City Council voted yes on some measures giving marching orders to the police to
sweep homeless people off the streets of Berkeley.

Mayor Tom Bates and the downtown merchants have teamed up to get tough on the
homeless in an effort to bring more business to the city, despite the common
knowledge that parking problems are the main obstacle to bringing shoppers to
downtown Berkeley.

Cynically called the “Public Commons for Everyone Initiative” – “except
the homeless,” they and their advocates say – these latest proposals are an
assortment of incoherent, wacky, punitive measures that are meant to harass the
homeless out of Berkeley.

According to Berkeley City Councilman Kris Worthington, Roland Peterson was
behind the initiative against the homeless, and Councilman Gordon Wozniac was
originally going to take credit for it as his own proposal. “As it turned out,
they felt that Wozniac was too right-wing to get enough support for the
initiative, so they decided to let Mayor Tom Bates run with it,” said
Worthington.

Roland Peterson is executive director of the Telegraph Business Improvement
District and chairman of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce.

“This was a victory, because they did not get everything they wanted. No new
laws have been passed yet. We stalled them until the end of the year, and if
enough people step forward to speak out against these proposals, we might be
able to stop them from going all the way with these attacks against the
homeless,” said Worthington.

More anti-homeless proposals are being scheduled to come up for another City
Council vote sometime this fall. They include strict enforcement of laws against
noise disturbances such as yelling, parking a bicycle against a window or a
parking meter, smoking near buildings, unauthorized possession of a milk crate,
obstructing or restricting use of the sidewalk, sitting or lying down on
sidewalks, littering, hitching animals to fixed objects, unauthorized possession
of a shopping cart, increased fines for using the great outdoors as a lavatory,
and public drunkenness or drug abuse.

Currently, the People’s Park bathroom that is frequented by the homeless
closes at 10 p.m. and all other public restrooms in the city close at the same
time most businesses shut down, leaving the homeless stranded without facilities
throughout the night.

To mitigate the harm of these draconian measures against the poor, the city is
offering to install better directional signs to public bathrooms. And to cover
the expense of targeting the homeless for removal, it is raising parking meter
fees and installing more meters.

Osha Neumann, an attorney who defends the homeless in Berkeley, has much to say
about the anti-homeless proposals: “What was passed recently by the City
Council is a watered down commitment to laws meant to harass the homeless. They
didn’t get what they wanted, but it was enough to send a message and to give
the police their marching orders to go after the homeless.

“The homeless know what is going on. They feel frightened and some are
already talking about leaving town. The downtown police bike patrols get to know
the homeless hot spots and get to know the homeless on a first name basis,
making it very easy to target them for removal,” he said. “None of this
makes sense because they are talking about raising parking meter fees and
installing more parking meters downtown, which will be a further obstacle to
shopping in the city.”

“They’ve cut funding for meals and drop-in services for the homeless,
there’s never enough shelter beds for those in need and most people avoid
shelters due to the problems associated with the stringent rules that apply.

“I believe that people need to do whatever is necessary to stop this attack
on the homeless by calling City Council members, writing letters and showing up
at future City Council meetings to speak out against this attack on the poor,”
said Neumann.

During May 2006, in a case known as Jones vs. Los Angeles, the 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals decided the 8th Amendment forbids the police from arresting the
homeless on grounds of public intoxication or drug abuse, unless other
contributing factors involve a misdemeanor or felony offense. The ruling states:
“We hold only that, just as the 8th Amendment prohibits the infliction of
criminal punishment on an individual for being a drug addict ... or for
involuntary public drunkenness that is an unavoidable consequence of being a
chronic alcoholic without a home, ... the 8th Amendment prohibits the City from
punishing involuntary sitting, lying, or sleeping on public sidewalks that is an
unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless without shelter in the City
of Los Angeles.”

By targeting homeless hotspots, rather than targeting the city as a whole,
Berkeley officials are trying to skirt this appeal court ruling against the Los
Angeles Police Department’s policy of arresting the homeless during a
crackdown on quality-of-life public nuisance violations.

Lydia Gans, who works with Food Not Bombs to feed the homeless at People’s
Park in Berkeley, is very concerned. “We feed the homeless five days a week,
and it seems that most of them are Vietnam veterans. We serve around 50 to 100
people a day, and life is hard on them. With the new proposals targeting the
homeless, I think it will only add to their burdens. I believe that the latest
anti-homeless proposals are unconscionable.”

Berkeley’s Housing Authority has recently been shattered by funding cuts,
corruption and incompetence, while in Oakland and San Francisco there are
proposals to tear down much needed public housing in the name of replacing them
with higher priced “mixed-income” housing. Meanwhile, as the poor are dumped
from their low-income housing and many become homeless in the process,
right-wing “liberals” in public office follow up with policies to
criminalize and drive out the growing homeless populations as fast as possible.

In March of 2006, Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies
concluded that the nation is losing around 200,000 mostly low-rent housing units
to demolition per year, while only around 100,000 more expensive housing units
are being built to replace those lost, putting the squeeze on the nation’s
poor. “We are taking one step forward and two steps back as gentrification in
some neighborhoods and continued deterioration in others leads to the removal of
vitally needed lower-cost rental housing,” said Nicolas P. Retsinas, director
of the Joint Center.

As the nation’s housing stock rapidly declines, according to the Population
Division of the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. population is rapidly rising and
surpassed 302 million in 2000. In the U.S. in June of 2007, it’s estimated
that there is one birth every seven seconds, one death every 13 seconds, one
international migrant every 27 seconds and a net gain of one person every 10
seconds.

As Berkeley moves towards being one of the nation’s meanest cities for the
homeless, at last ranking according to the National Coalition for the Homeless,
the top 10 meanest cities are 1. Sarasota, Fla., 2. Lawrence, Kan., 3. Little
Rock, 4. Atlanta, 5. Las Vegas, 6. Dallas, 7. Houston, 8. San Juan, Puerto Rico,
9. Santa Monica, Calif., and 10. Flagstaff, Ariz.

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule@....