During the summer months, Jo Clark is hitting the local garage sales to find good deals. The deals aren’t for her — or anyone she knows.

Clark, executive director of StandUp for Kids in Bremerton, is searching for essential items, such as warm coats, for homeless kids who may not have them.

“I encourage an attitude of empathy rather than scorn, especially since it’s becoming so prevalent,” Clark said of teen homelessness.

The Bremerton chapter of StandUp for Kids started in Kitsap County in 1992 and was resurrected in 1998 when Clark joined. StandUp for Kids is a national nonprofit spread across 28 states in the country that supports homeless and at-risk youths.

Although not always easy to calculate the numbers of homeless teens since some do not identify themselves as being homeless if they are crashing on a friend’s couch or find shelter for one night, Clark said numbers are “definitely on the rise.”

This school year, Clark’s organization provides meals for 20 homeless students in two Bremerton schools while last school year they were serving 14. The group also provides 180 healthy snacks daily and 13 Kitsap Transit bus passes a month for homeless youths. Teen homelessness is not only a problem in Bremerton but in North and South Kitsap as well, Clark said.

“Homeless happens everywhere,” she said.

They come into homelessness for various reasons. Some could be drug and alcohol related, others could be a lack of an adult role model and on the rare occasion they are kids leaving home to lessen their parents’ burden of feeding them, said Clark. A lot of the kids go to school without eating breakfast — some having to even skip dinner the night before, she said.

“How they handle it, I really don’t know,” Clark added.

Each year the federal government requires all states to conduct homeless counts and the report for 2011, which was conducted in winter 2010, states that 108 of 633 homeless Kitsap County families have children. The number of households without adults — kids identifying themselves as homeless — was three, said Phedra Elliot, with Kitsap Continuum of Care Coalition.

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via Bremerton Patriot

Jamie Grey dreams of having her own apartment where she can cook, clean and care for her baby girl, due next month.

“I would love to be waking up in the middle of the night to my baby in her crib and feeding her in my own apartment and preparing to go to college,” she said.

But for now, the 27-year-old woman sleeps in Waterville’s overflow homeless shelter in the First Baptist Church basement.

She comes in at 6 every night, sleeps in a single bed in a large room with a dozen or so other women and has to be out by 7:45 the next morning.

During the day, she walks to the soup kitchen at Sacred Heart Church or Notre Dame Church for lunch; sometimes she goes to the evening sandwich program at the Universalist Unitarian Church.

“I go to the warming center (on Water Street),” she said. “I utilize the public library a lot. I have case management and I get help connecting to services.”

She and her boyfriend had been living in a trailer in Winslow, but struggled to pay rent after he lost his job and had no luck finding a new one, she said. They eventually had to leave and found themselves on the street.

Now he sleeps in the men’s section of the church basement at the corner of Elm and Park streets and looks every day for work, she said.

Like the other 33 people, including four pregnant women, staying at the shelter, the couple has fallen through the cracks. They are among a growing number of people in the area who are finding themselves without a home, without a job and hungry.

To donate: Send contributions to Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter, 28 Ticonic St., or P.O. Box 2612, Waterville, ME 04901 and mark the check “for overflow shelter.” Or go to shelterme.org.

To volunteer or donate items: Call 872-8082.
Items needed: Coffee, cups, trash bags, laundry soap, rolls of quarters for doing laundry, packaged snacks.

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via Online Sentinel

How do you encourage your children to follow their dreams, even when you’ve fallen on hard times as a parent? Leo Garvey knows a lot about that. His daughter, Samantha, was named a semi-finalist in the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search for her marine biology research, even as their family was being forced into homelessness.
Samantha’s story has propelled her into the national spotlight. On Tuesday, she attended the State of the Union speech, and on Wednesday she appeared on TODAY, with her proud papa watching from the wings.
“Sometimes it brings tears to my eyes to see her,” Leo Garvey told TODAY Moms in a green-room interview. “I’m just so happy they are reaching their goals.”

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via TODAY

The homeless population in Muncie is 260, close to a 14 percent decrease compared to the 2011 numbers, according to Wednesday’s National Point-in-Time homeless count.

But according to local social service providers, that figure does not come close to the real number of people in the area in need of homeless services, a number the count is never intended to report in their opinions.

“We’ve been fighting this for years,” said Susie Kemp, executive director for Bridges Community Services, a housing agency in Muncie. “This is the most frustrating thing in the world. We’re not giving the country an accurate account of who needs services in our community. We’re just giving the government the number they want to hear.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the agency that coordinates the count, defines people as homeless if they are living in an emergency, transitional or domestic violence shelter or if they are living somewhere not meant for humans to inhabit such as parks, sidewalks, automobiles or abandoned buildings.

Those living with friends and family members — people who have lost their jobs or houses or apartments for various reasons — are not considered homeless by HUD standards and cannot be addressed in the count.

Many other states, such as California and Nevada, try to collect the number of homeless who are “doubling up” in homes with friends and family on the same day as the Point-in-Time count, but that’s not the case in Indiana.

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via The Starpress

The number of elderly homeless people in New York City shelters has shot up 55% in the last 10 years, a hidden and growing population among the city’s most vulnerable adults.

A Daily News review of homeless statistics found that as of December, there were 2,234 single adults over 55 in the shelter system, compared to 1,437 in 2002.

In the last two years alone, there was a 28% jump. Nearly 500 of today’s residents are over 65, coping with the premature ravages of aging along with no permanent roof overhead.

Those who work with the homeless say it is a troubling trend exacerbated by economic hard times.

Nearly one-third of homeless adults in the U.S. today are over 50, compared to 11% in the 1990s, according to national studies.

Karen Jorgenson, who has run the only shelter in the city for older New Yorkers since 1988, said today’s elderly homeless are different than what the city experienced in the late 1980s, when the predominant group of women had severe mental illness, and the men were largely alcoholics and drug addicts.

“As time has gone on, there have been more and more economic homeless,” said Jorgensen, director of Valley Lodge shelter in Morningside Heights. “They are people who did the right thing, but they didn’t have a pension plan or a nest egg when they retired, and their rent started to equal their income.”

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via New York Daily News

The homeless are frequently portrayed as unfortunate people or objects of pity. We deliberately choose not to do that.

“I was raised in poverty and was lucky to make my way into the fashion world. I understand what it’s like to be an object in society under the best and the worst circumstances. There is something about both worlds that for me became disconnected and apart from the mainstream. I know all too well what it means to be a target of judgment,” says Elena Davis, whose life experience has spanned the extremes of fortune.

I Am Waters brings together some of the most highly photographed American models in history to discuss the commonalities between these two seemingly disparate groups. The participants will share ideas surrounding the issues of objectification, their insight into the I Am Waters project and how it relates to all of our lives.

Guests of the event are supermodels of the 80’s: Cheryl Tiegs, Kim Alexis, Kelly Emberg, Joan Severance,Tara Shannon, Kim Charlton, Dianne deWitt, Tony Spinelli and Jack Scalia. All have graced covers of the most established and prestigious magazines in the world, including Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Town & Country, Glamour and many others.

Since 2009, the I Am Waters Foundation has established a unique way to engage with the homeless and create a dialogue by organizing portrait photography sessions at various shelters. Photographer, Peter Duke, captures images of homeless men, women and children including families, veterans and the elderly in a positive light. “The homeless are frequently portrayed as unfortunate people or objects of pity. We deliberately choose not to do that.” says Peter.

The foundation uses these images as a vehicle to talk with individuals about their feelings of being homeless and their prospects for the future. The photos bolster the image homeless have of themselves, while providing a valuable keepsake (many had not seen a their own photograph in years). I Am Waters sees the images as a tool used to dispel stereotypes and bring a human face to an issue that impacts us all.

The mission of I Am Waters is to bring physical and spiritual hydration to American homeless by delivering branded water bottles with messages of HOPE, PEACE, DREAM and LOVE to homeless shelters and service providers. I Am Waters is the only organization of its kind in the United States.

FOUNDER BIO:

In the 1980s and 90s, Elena was best known as a top fashion model. For over fifteen years, her image graced the covers of magazines, appeared in ads, on the pages of fashion’s most prestigious magazines, and she has been in more than 40 national TV commercials. She married Gregg Davis in 1994, and retired from her successful modeling career after the birth of their first child. Since 1997, Gregg and Elena and their three children have called Houston home.
Elena was one of four kids raised by a single mother on less than three thousand dollars a year and food stamps. Elena lived on the margins of society, attended a dozen schools, and finally dropped out of school in the 8th grade to work and support her family. She moved to Paris to pursue modeling at age 16. After a year of modeling overseas, Elena returned back to the States and signed with the renowned Ford Agency.

FOUNDER QUOTE:
Homelessness is a national problem that gnaws at our country’s economic recovery and future. I am so impressed and inspired by the many great organizations that help the homeless with housing, job skills and food. I Am Waters compliments these groups with our mission to provide free, clean drinking water to the homeless. Water is the body’s most fundamental need. Our image-based awareness and education campaigns work concurrently to bring a human face to the American homeless to promote compassion and understanding.

For more information contact: Jayson Cooke | 14-Forty | 323-662-1440

I Am Waters mailing address: 3262 Westheimer Road, Box 229, Houston, Texas 77098

Download This Press Release in PDF

The number of homeless female veterans is on the rise, and the Department of Veteran Affairs isn’t adequately prepared to handle it.

In four years, the number of homeless veteran women more than doubled — rising to 3,328 in 2010 from 1,380 in 2006, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

But even as more veteran women are becoming homeless, the VA still isn’t prepared to deal with it, the report found. Nearly a quarter of VA Medical Center coordinators surveyed for the report said they didn’t have plans to temporarily house homeless women while those women wait for housing in other programs aimed at housing homeless veterans.

The VA “does not have sufficient data about the population and needs of women veterans to plan effectively for increases in their numbers as servicemembers return from Iraq and Afghanistan,” the authors wrote in the report. “Further, without improved services, women — including those with children and those who have experienced military sexual trauma — remain at risk of homelessness and experiencing further abuse.”

The report also found that nearly two-thirds of homeless female veterans are between the ages of 40 and 59 years old, many of them living with children. That’s an especially large problem, seeing as 60 percent of the VA’s Grant and Per Diem Programs that serve homeless women — an effort that gives community agencies funding to provide veterans with services — don’t house children.

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via Huffington Post

With four final exams and a paper due before Christmas break, Amy Liang devoted every free minute to studying.

Except for one very special block of time.

Liang’s Saturday mornings, without exception, belong to the homeless men and women of Winston-Salem. For the past four years, Liang, 21, has participated in Wake Saturdays, a student-led organization that serves meals on Patterson Avenue to the city’s homeless.

Beyond serving food, the program stresses building relationships with the men, women and children who stop by for meals.

Liang used to fret that the program ate up too much of her Saturdays.

“I can’t think of it as time away from studying, but as, ‘This is how I spend my Saturdays,’” Liang said. “These are things that are really important.”

For her work with Wake Saturdays and other programs focusing on homelessness, Liang was recently given a Community Impact Student Award, which Gov. Bev Perdue gives each year to 20 college students in the state.

Liang has become well-known among some of the city’s advocates for the homeless, including Willis Miller, the assistant director for Samaritan Ministries. While some well-intentioned students may show up to serve in the ministries’ soup kitchen for a few months before losing interest, Liang’s commitment has been unwavering, he said.

“Each year, she keeps coming back. That, in itself, shows that she really likes the people she’s working with. She’s got a good attitude and is a well-focused young lady,” Miller said. “She has been a blessing to us.”

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via Winston-Salem Journal

For a few hours after school, Ryan Johnson is just like most 16-year-olds. He lounges on the couch with his favorite Xbox game or checks his Facebook page.

But then reality sets in. He decamps from his cousins’ house for the Howard County cold-weather shelter. Dinner is a meal with his father and 20 other homeless people. He goes to bed early, on a green plastic mat next to strangers, who also have no other place to go in one of the state’s wealthiest counties.

“It has been really hard,” said Ryan, a junior at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia. “I look at it like a detention I have to do every day, even though I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Ryan’s experience is becoming increasingly common. The number of homeless students in Maryland has more than doubled in the past five years, rising from 6,721 to 14,117 last school year, according to the Maryland State Department of Education.

The largest increases in homeless populations are notable for where they are occurring: in the suburban rings around cities. Anne Arundel County has seen a 231 percent increase in homeless students since 2005, Baltimore County a 140 percent increase and Howard County a 150 percent increase. The increase in Baltimore City, which still has the largest number of homeless students, was 75 percent.

Upper-middle-class families who once lived in $500,000 houses are telling school officials that they have lost their homes. In one case, school officials said, a family lived in the woods after losing their place. And many are temporarily living with family or friends, moving from house to house.

Nationally, the number of homeless children rose 38 percent from 2007 to 2010, including those too young to attend school. A new report by the National Center on Family Homelessness found that the recession left one in 45 children in the United States homeless.

The recession and the housing crisis led to widespread foreclosures and hit family finances hard. In Maryland, it can be particularly tough to recover as some areas lack affordable housing and the cost of living is higher. According to one study, the income needed for a two-bedroom apartment here is $24.43 per hour, or more than three times the minimum wage.

And the problem isn’t abating with the slow economic recovery. Several suburban Baltimore districts reported last week that the number of homeless students is expected to be higher this school year than last.

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via Baltimore Sun

When Genivive Jones lost her job last year and started bouncing between friends’ homes and motels with her toddler daughter, she inadvertently joined one of the fastest-growing groups of state welfare recipients: homeless families who receive aid known as CalWorks.

Over the last five years, the number of CalWorks families without a permanent place to live has grown by 98%. That’s nearly four times the growth of non-homeless families who are also getting assistance.

The increase shows how difficult it is for people on the lower rungs of the financial ladder to improve their situation in the current tough economy, experts say, especially because the average amount that Los Angeles County families get from the state has shrunk from $560 a month three years ago to $490 last October.

“The largest growth has been at that level of need where people are at the ledge of homelessness,” said Michael Arnold, executive director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Grants could become even smaller if Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget passes. Brown wants to reduce CalWorks by about $1 billion.

“If some of these safety-net programs are cut, it will push a lot of people to homelessness,” Arnold said.

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via Los Angeles Times