NightBlogger

USA Today
More families with children are becoming homeless as they face mounting economic pressures, including mortgage foreclosures, according to a USA TODAY survey of a dozen of the largest cities in the nation. Local authorities say the number of families seeking help has risen in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Washington. “Everywhere I go, I hear there is an increase” in the need for housing aid, especially for families, says Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates federal programs. He says the main causes are job losses and foreclosures. Other factors have been higher food and fuel prices hitting families with “no cushion,” says Nan Roman of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. More

OpEdNews
Big Finance it seems is still living high on the hog, spending freely on parties and bonuses while the world’s poor go deeper into poverty and Americans worry about their jobs, retirement, health care and making ends meet. The first post-bailout outrage was the massive insurance giant AIG. After receiving an $84 billion tax payer bailout they had a party for their executives – the cost $440,000. There was outrage on Capitol Hill including threats to ‘get the money back.’ “They were getting their manicures, their pedicures, massages, their facials while the American people were paying their bills,” thundered Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD). But, instead the Federal Reserve gave them $38 billion more after their party. More

The Star
…tent cities have sprung up in Seattle, San Diego, Fresno, Calif.; Columbus, Ohio and Chattanooga, Tenn. In Seattle, where as many as 150 homeless persons have been moving around to thwart authorities, they have dubbed their community Nickelsville, named for Mayor Greg Nickels.

“It was the damndest thing I’ve ever gone through,” said 44-year-old Dan Foley who lived three weeks in Reno’s tent city. “You couldn’t sleep at night. There was no curfew, no quiet time. Everyone was drinking or coughing or getting high or talking about getting high.” Foley is thinking of heading to San Diego, maybe linking up with a brother in North Carolina, in search of work. “This is a casino town. If you’re not hooked up with them, you’re dead,” he says.

On this day, Jessica Seitz, a 29-year-old mother of four, was looking for whatever she could get for her children at a second-hand store near the tent city site. She and her husband, Matt, moved to Reno from nearby Carson City in May because they could no longer afford the rent and the gas needed for the 30-minute commute. “We’re trying to make it,” she said as she strapped nine-year-old Alyssa, seven-year-old Cameron, four-year-old Autumn and two-year-old Logan into a borrowed van. “My husband works his butt off, but he’s making $12 an hour in a warehouse. You can’t keep going as a family of six on $12 per hour.” More

Three Polish doctors and six nurses are facing criminal prosecution after a number of homeless people died following medical trials for a vaccine to the H5N1 bird-flu virus. The medical staff, from the northern town of Grudziadz, are being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350 homeless and poor people last year, which prosecutors say involved an untried vaccine to the highly-contagious virus.

Authorities claim that the alleged victims received £1-2 to be tested with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was actually an anti bird-flu drug. The director of a Grudziadz homeless centre, Mieczyslaw Waclawski, told a Polish newspaper that last year, 21 people from his centre died, a figure well above the average of about eight. More

Guardian
Homeless people living in cars and motorhomes across the US are being joined by a new breed: the middle class. As mortgage foreclosures continue to rise, growing numbers of middle-class professionals are losing their homes and downsizing from four bedrooms to four wheels. With numbers rising, New Beginnings, a homeless agency in Santa Barbara, California, has launched a safe parking scheme, whose aim is to provide a refuge of sorts for those who have nowhere to go other than their vehicle.

Guy Trevor lost his job as an interior designer when the sector contracted thanks to the foreclosure crisis. With his furniture sold and his belongings in storage, he now lives in his car, spending the nights in one of the 12 gated car parks in Santa Barbara run by New Beginnings. “I see myself as a casualty of a perfect storm,” he said. “The people sleeping at the [car parks] are … just like me. They come from normal, everyday homes. I think a lot of people in this country don’t realise that they, too, are a couple of pay cheques away from destitution.” More

You can bet this isn’t just happening in Los Angeles, but in every big city with warm year- round climates.

WJLA.com
Having lost her job and her three-bedroom house, Darlene Knoll has joined the legions of downwardly mobile who are four wheels away from homelessness. She is living out of her shabby 1978 RV, and every night she has to look for a place to park where she won’t get hassled by the cops or insulted by residents. “I’m not a piece of trash,” the former home health-care aide said as she stroked one of five dogs in her cramped quarters parked in the waterfront community of Marina del Rey. Amid the foreclosure crisis and the shaky economy, some California cities are seeing an increase in the number of people living out of their cars, vans or RVs.

Acting on complaints from homeowners, the Los Angeles City Council got tough earlier this year by forbidding nearly all overnight parking in residential neighborhoods such as South Brentwood. But some people are just crowding into other parts of the city, including the seaside community of Venice, where dozens of rusty, dilapidated campers can be seen lined up outside neat single-family homes. The stench of urine emanates from a few of the vehicles, and some residents say they have seen human waste left behind. More

BOGOTA, Colombia (CNN) — Flooding in central Colombia has left at least 14 people dead, 100 injured and 100,000 homeless over the past week, officials said Wednesday. Torrential downpours have caused the Magdalena River, the nation’s principal waterway, to overflow. The flooding has flattened houses, killed animals and crops, made highways impassable and isolated entire villages. The downpour has been thrashing the country for three months. But the storms have worsened in recent days, causing a number of rivers to overflow and unstable areas to collapse in landslides. More

MSNBC
Critics say school officials’ plans could ‘drive a wedge’ in family, funding
Many public school students…could soon benefit from an approach that’s more often reserved for the well-to-do: boarding school. Chicago school officials are asking for proposals to run such schools. The idea poses big challenges, not the least of which is the high cost and opposition from some homeless advocates. “The idea of having a stable home situation is ideal. If that’s not the case, that shouldn’t preclude you from being able to focus in school,” said Josh Edelman, head of the office of new schools in the nation’s third-largest school system. Read more

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Press TV
High house prices in one of the wealthiest US cities have forced increasing numbers of women and elderly people to sleep in their cars. According to organizers of a program that makes it possible for the homeless to sleep safely in their cars at night, more people are living in their cars in the city of Santa Barbara, while many of them even hold part time jobs.

The organizers believe the high house prices, which average at around $1 million, are driving many people to bed down for the night in their vehicles in the exclusive coastal city. New Beginnings is the organizer of the program. It runs 15 car parks that open from 7pm to 7am in the rich city allowing the homeless to park at night.

New Beginnings Coordinator Nancy Kapp said the demand for the program was growing due to the economic recession. “The way the economy is going, it’s just amazing the people that are becoming homeless. It’s hit the middle class,” she said. Meanwhile, New Beginnings Executive Director Gary Linker also said that one third of the people who use the program have part-time jobs.

Video courtesy of www.LongDaGe.com
BBCNews
Almost five million people have been left homeless by Monday’s devastating earthquake in China’s south-western Sichuan Province, officials say. They said the extent of the problem only became clear when communications were restored. So far, 22,069 deaths have been confirmed and thousands remain missing. It is feared up to 50,000 may be dead. China has announced an investigation into why so many schools have collapsed. Read more

Photo courtesy of nighthree

Could be a another Bob Dylan or Jack Kerouac riding in those boxcars.

Mike Brodie aka “The Polaroid Kidd” is a somewhat accidental documentary photographer. By photographing his friends, their homes, and lifestyles, Brodie has captured a marginalized segment of the American population. His haunting photos of hobos, punks, and squatters criss-crossing the country in boxcars are reminiscent of Horace Bristol’s Grapes of Wrath era pics that captured migrant workers on their way to California…except now they have facial tattoos.
See photos