A Home for Everyone: The Veterans Inn
By Rupal Ramesh Shah We can put a man on the moon. We can blast a bomb 5,000 miles away from us and hit our target the size of a postage stamp, yet we cannot figure out how to put a roof on everyone’s head in America,” said Sean Cononie. With this thought, Cononie — head of the COSAC Foundation — started the Veterans
Read Article…
Hostile Architecture: The Indirect Public Fight on the Homeless
By Andrew Fraieli Defensive architecture; hostile architecture; anti-homeless spike; bum-proof benches; urban planning; well-being; right to public space. These are the keywords in a research paper debating the ethics of architecture in public spaces that “exclude ‘unwanted’ behaviors and people.” Unwanted behaviors like skateboarders roughing up ledges, and unwanted people like the homeless sleeping in public places; public property being used by the
Read Article…
The Dark Days Aren’t Over
By Andrew Fraieli A documentary of the homeless in 1990s New York tried to bring attention to housing issues that still persist today. The Broken On August 30, 2000 the documentary “Dark Days” was released. It begins with the bangs and whistles of an Amtrak train leaving the station, then flatly cuts to a man walking down a dark road. Jumping back to
Read Article…
The Pottinger Agreement Abolished
By Rupal Ramesh Shah The homeless are once again set up to struggle against the city of Miami and its police as the Pottinger Agreement was abolished in federal court on Feb. 15, 2019. The city claimed, in its legal filing to end the agreement, that it had created numerous homeless outreach services including shelter beds, new jail-diversion programs for the homeless and
Read Article…
Billy Albert: A Man of Many Hats at COSAC
By Andrew Fraieli Billy Albert’s favorite color is midnight blue. Or maybe maroon too. It’s a hard question he says. This, after elaborating on a bath salts twitching person in the fetal position that he came upon and was able to help. Helping people in bad situations, mostly the homeless, has become his job and his every day. Having been at the shelters for
Read Article…
America’s First Nonprofit Motel
By Andrew Fraieli In Lake City, Florida a new motel called Motel 8 has been opened, and it’s completely run by formerly homeless. Sean Cononie, the head of the COSAC foundation which has been helping the homeless since 1997, says it is “America’s first nonprofit motel.” He started the project hoping to give the homeless skills for the hotel industry and the opportunity to
Read Article…
Miami’s Pottinger Agreement and How It Affects The Homeless
By Andrew Fraieli The homeless population in Miami has recently been the subject of much debate, specifically on the agreements and lawsuits that protect them from a past history of police harassment. Before a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1988, police would routinely destroy the property of homeless living on the street and arrest them on misdemeanors of trespassing on
Read Article…
HUD report details increase in “worst case housing needs.”
Written by Adam Sennott The number of “very poor” families struggling to pay rent without the help of government subsidies increased between 2013 and 2015, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said. About 8.3 million unsubsidized families spent more than half their income on rent, lived in “severely substandard housing,” or in some cases both in 2015, according to HUD’s Worst Case Housing Needs
Read Article…
Medical Emergency at Homeless Voice Shelter
This homeless man’s oxygen was at 73 percent when we got to him. This was very critical. It was important for us to get his oxygen up as much as possible before EMS arrived. We finally got his Oxygen up to 95 percent. Our in house medics are our homeless people who took a first responder course to be able to use oxygen, AED’s
Read Article…
Such a BIG heart tucked behind two little pockets
I have lived with Georgia in Room 220, the Psyche Ward, since 2005. She and I had so much in common with our birthdays in April – only six days apart – so much “fire” in one room. In a room filled with nothing but girls, one second we were celebrating our birthdays together with a “room birthday party” filled with treats, cards, music,
Read Article…