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Posts Tagged ‘homeless’

Generous Humans

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 18, 2014| 2 Comments »

Lately, there have been so many stories about kindhearted people tucked in among the opposite kind of headline that, at this rate, if I wait another week there will be too many for one blog post. A good problem to have, of course, but I think I’ll just go ahead and give you what I’ve collected so far.

First there was the woman who went to the Toys R Us in Bellingham and paid off all the layaway plans. Then there was the woman who did the same thing in another Massachusetts town.

Next was the widow who put her engagement ring and wedding ring in a red Salvation Army bucket hoping that, if someone bought them, the charity would receive $20,000. Another widow did just that. She also put out the word that she would like to give the rings back to the first widow.

On Cape Cod, a man believed to be an emissary of a grateful resident has been showing up in fast-food restaurants, asking the manager how many people work there, and dolling out that number of $100 bills. All those generous souls are anonymous.

If you’re not full to bursting yet, how about the homeless man in Preston, UK, who gave a student his last $3 to get a taxi after she lost her money? And how about the student herself, who then organized her friends for on overnight on the streets and raised over £20,000? Now the homeless man is getting an apartment and advising on ways to help the nonprofits that had helped him.

Sam Rkaina at the Mirror writes, “A campaign to raise money for a homeless man has raised an incredible £21,000 after it went viral. Dominique Harrison-Bentzen set up the appeal for an ‘incredibly kind’ homeless man called Robbie who offered her £3 for a taxi home when she lost her bank card on a night out.

“She set up a fundraising page to pay for a deposit on a flat for him and yesterday took part in a 24 hour sleep-out on the streets of Preston. The 22-year-old says she has been overwhelmed by the support from the public after the fundraising target was completely smashed.” More on that story here.

Photo: The Mirror
Dominique, second from left, and friends experiencing a night of homelessness to raise funds.

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Wisconsin Tiny House Village

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 23, 2014| 2 Comments »

Suzanne’s Mom’s Blog has featured a number of stories about both homelessness and tiny houses, so I was intrigued when a high school friend linked to this story on Facebook. It’s about helping homeless people build their own tiny houses.

Jen Hayden wrote at Daily Kos, “Out of the Occupy Madison protests a cool idea was hatched: Building 98-square-foot homes for those without. The homes have a bed, kitchen, bathroom, storage and propane heat. Future residents take part in building the homes. [According to WMTV,]

The homes cost just $3,000 to construct, most of it funded by community donations. A revolving crew of volunteers provided the labor, including Betty Ybarra. Previously homeless, she now resides in the home she helped construct. “It’s exciting. I’ve never even owned my own house,” Ybarra told WMTV

“After getting shuffled around the city while they figured out the best place to build the village, they finally settled on a location and it officially opened this week. [Reports Jennifer Kliese at WKOW,]

‘Rather than taking people from the streets and putting them in a building, we thought we could work together to create our own structures,’ says Luca Clemente, with Occupy. ‘We don’t give houses to homeless people, we enable people to build their own houses to create their own futures.’When complete, there will be nine homes in the village made from reclaimed and recycled materials. Organizers hope to add a garden, tree orchard and chickens.”

More here.

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Tallest Street Artwork

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Time for a new post on street art. Have you been following the Banksy-in-New-York saga? He was living in the city for a while last year, creating a new piece of street art every day. People ran around to find it, some New Yorkers even trying to charge admission. An HBO movie was made about it.

Banksy is always interesting, but today I want to tell you what street artist Stik has been up to.

The Londonist website says, “Street artist Stik has just finished creating the tallest piece of street art in the world — a 38.2 metre high mural on a condemned council tower block in Acton [a district in the west of London].

” ‘Big Mother’ depicts a mother and child looking forlornly from their council block at the luxury apartment complexes being built around them. The mural is visible from not only the Piccadilly Line, but also on some London flight paths.

“Stik, who was once homeless, said: ‘Affordable housing in Britain is under threat; this piece is to remind the world that all people need homes.’ ”

And I guess in this season a homeless mother and child is especially resonant.

Thank you to @ecpulford for retweeting the story from Bernadetta Keefe (@nxtstop1).

Stik’s website is here. His minimalist, wistful beings remind me a bit of Finnish artist Tove Jansson’s children’s books about the Moomin family.

First picture below, cover of paperback Finn Family Moomintroll

Second picture: Joyce/Division
The 38.2 metre mural has been painted on a tower block which is due for demolition in 2016. Image © Stik

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Veterans Services Through Soldier On

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 11, 2014| Leave a Comment »

A few years ago Amy Wyeth wrote an article about Massachusetts veterans services for a magazine I edit. As I was thinking about what I could post here for Veterans Day, I remembered how much I appreciated learning from Amy about an organization for homeless veterans in Leeds, Massachusetts. It has since expanded to other locations.

The emphatic gentleman in the video below (“The Mission Continues”) really moved me. I got the points he made about not telling grownups what to do — instead being there to support them, one by one, in what they need. He advocates decriminalizing substance abuse so that veterans who need treatment can get it.

He notes that all the Solider On staff work directly with the veterans. Even if their job doesn’t entail social services, they all need to understand what the veterans are going through. At the end of the video, he says that the 90 percent of us who didn’t offer to give our lives for our country owe it to the 10 percent who did that, after their service, they can have a place to live and adequate support for what they want to do with the rest of their lives.

Soldier On now serves Mississippi, New York, Western Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. And it offers a separate program for women veterans, run by women veterans.

More here.

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Bicycle Library Serves the Homeless

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 10, 2014| 7 Comments »

A nonprofit book service in Portland, Oregon, has recognized that “people living outside” are as likely to enjoy a book as people who live indoors.

Kirk Johnson writes in the NY Times, “A homeless man named Daniel was engrossed in a Barbara Kingsolver novel when his backpack was stolen recently, and Laura Moulton was determined to set things to right.

“Ms. Moulton, 44, an artist, writer and adjunct professor of creative nonfiction, did not know Daniel’s last name, his exact age, or really even how to find him — they had met only once. But she knew the novel, ‘Prodigal Summer,’ and that was a start. So, armed with a new copy of the book, off she went. Such is the life of a street librarian.

“This city has a deeply dyed liberal impulse beating in its veins around social and environmental causes, and a literary culture that has flourished like the blackberry thickets that mark misty Northwest woods. It is also one of the most bike-friendly, if not bike-crazed, urban spaces in the nation, as measured by commuters and bike lanes. All three of those forces are combined in Street Books, a nonprofit book service delivered by pedal-power for ‘people living outside,”’ as Ms. Moulton, the founder, describes the mission. …

“ ‘It’s not just a little novelty act — “Oh, that’s so Portland and cute,” ’ ” says Diana Rempe, a community psychologist. “Taking books to the streets, she said, sends the message that poor and marginalized people are not so different from the ‘us’ that defines the educated, literate mainstream of the city, whether in its hipsters, computer geeks or bankers.”

More here.

Photo: Thomas Patterson for The New York Times
Laura Moulton and Matt Tufaro in Portland, Ore. Ms. Moulton founded Street Books, a nonprofit book service for “people living outside.”

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Chilean Homeless Playing Soccer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »

My, but we work hard at the office. At 4 today, everything stopped and we went to the break room to watch the World Cup. A co-worker from Ghana called his brother. Everything had stopped in Ghana, too.

In honor of the world’s fascination with soccer today, I am posting a futbol story from Bill Littlefield’s radio show Only a Game.

At the show’s website, Ellis O’Neill describes an encounter he had with homeless soccer: “It’s 9 p.m. and the sun went down long ago, but that’s not stopping this group of about 20 young men from playing soccer under the bright lights of a turf field in Puente Alto, a poor suburb to the south of Santiago, Chile.

“Homeless Soccer aims to offer the benefits of sports to Chile’s homeless. It’s been so successful that, over the past eight years, it’s grown from one team that practiced in one Santiago park to almost 100 teams all over the country.

“Domingo Correa is a longtime participant in Homeless Soccer. He first joined back in 2011, and his nickname is Jack Sparrow. With his long dreadlocks and beard, his piercings and rings and his high, sharp cheekbones, he lives up to the name. But Correa doesn’t have a pirate ship, much less any treasure. For 15 years, he lived on the streets of Santiago.

“ ‘There’s no way out, you know?’ Correa said. ‘You think everything has been lost. You have no hope of finding stable work. Also, I had been involved in crime, so I had “stained papers,” as we say here: I had a criminal history. The distance between society and living on the street is enormous.’

“One day, while Correa was watching a Homeless Soccer practice in a Santiago park, the team’s psychologist invited him to join in. He decided to take a stab at it, and he liked what he found. For the first time, there was a group of people that was always there for him – every Monday and Wednesday evening on the soccer field.”

Read how soccer changed Correa’s life, here.

Reminds me of what running means to the Back on My Feet homeless folks that my friend Meg told me about, here.

Highlights from the 2011 Homeless World Cup

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Paint by Numbers Mural Builds Community

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Zachary Sampson has a nice article at the Globe today. It’s about a project in Boston enlisting passersby to help create a mural.

The mural “was created by artist Ernest McKinley English. He joined with ArtLifting — a Boston organization that works with homeless and disabled artists — to organize the project, which he said was meant to foster collaboration. …

“Liz Powers, cofounder of ArtLifting, said English’s vision dovetails with her organization’s purpose. ‘Both Ernest and ArtLifting have the mission of bringing people together through art, building community through art,’ she said.”

The mural “held a hidden message that would be revealed upon completion. …

“The part-in-a-whole ethic resonated with many of the artists who worked on the piece, both amateur and professional.

“ ‘I think the greatest message,’ [artist Randy] Nicholson said, ‘is as a community, we can accomplish what we can’t as individuals.’ ” More here.

Years ago, Suzanne and John helped paint a beautiful mural about our town for the commuter rail station. Their names were included in the credits and we always felt proud reading them when we passed by.

Photo: Michele McDonald for the Boston Globe
Sisters work on paint-by-numbers mural outside the Prudential Center.

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Tiny House Village

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 6, 2014| 6 Comments »

Photo: Shareable
The tiny village in Austin will include tiny houses, mobile homes, teepees, and refurbished RVs,

Housing the homeless is not something that we as a country have done very successfully yet. Some solutions work for some families, but many solutions don’t.

Some communities have tried supportive housing, which provides extra services that some homeless families need. Others build wonderful programs to get people on the road to independence. But I have also read about weird little pods just big enough for one person to sleep in. (That was in a design article. You never hear afterward how these designs work out for actual humans.)

Austin, Texas, has recognized that failing to house the chronically homeless costs the city too much. So it is inaugurating a village of tiny houses that will have a lot of community-building elements and could be just the ticket. My friend Mary Ann put this on Facebook.

Kelly McCartney writes at Shareable, “In Austin, Texas, a project to offer affordable housing to some 200 chronically homeless citizens is on the move. Community First! Village, which has been in the planning stages for nearly 10 years, is set to soon break ground on a 27-acre property sprinkled with tiny houses, mobile homes, teepees, refurbished RVs, a three-acre community garden, a chapel, a medical facility, a workshop, a bed and breakfast, and an Alamo Drafthouse outdoor movie theater.

“Supporter Alan Graham, of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, notes that the price of not housing these folks costs taxpayers about $10 million a year, not to mention the emotional and psychological tolls on the homeless themselves. …

“Graham has been working with the homeless in his community for more than 14 years and cites broken families as the leading cause of homelessness. With Mobile Loaves and Fishes, Graham has not only helped feed the homeless all these years, but he has helped transition them into homes and jobs, as well.” More.

3/2/14 Update: At the Associated Press, Carrie Antlfinger describes how the movement has spread, here.

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Feeding the Hungry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The Christian Science Monitor recently ran a story by Bryan Kay about an ongoing  community service project.

“Not even the recent furlough of federal workers was enough to snuff out the latest community outreach effort of Masjid al Islam mosque in Dallas.

“On a weekend in early October, the mosque was participating in a national initiative known as the Day of Dignity, an annual event during which mosques feed, clothe, and equip people living in poverty. But federal workers who had been scheduled to attend to speak about the details of the Affordable Care Act …  had been forced to cancel because of a partial federal government shutdown.

“It was a blow to the mosque’s boosters, says Muhammad Abdul-Jami, treasurer of Masjid al Islam and coordinator of the Day of Dignity event. But it didn’t deter them from pursuing the same purpose they have had for the last several years, he says: aiding homeless people … .

“Masjid al Islam is in an area where the homeless are a ubiquitous sight. … Because of the great need every weekend, the mosque seeks to do what the Day of Dignity event, organized in conjunction with the national charity Islamic Relief USA, does on an annual basis. Through its Beacon of Light community center, Masjid al Islam feeds approximately 300 individuals in need on Saturdays and Sundays each week, Mr. Abdul-Jami estimates. That’s more than 15,000 meals per year, paid for with donations from individuals and other mosques and served by volunteers, he says. …

” ‘There are millions of Muslims in this country who are very regular people, people who [other] Americans might consider much like them,’ Abdul-Jami says. …  ‘These events help us showcase that we are concerned about the rest of humanity, not just wanting to help Muslims.’ ”

Read more here.

Photo: Walid Ajaj

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Sometimes Real Life Outdoes Fiction

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 16, 2013| 2 Comments »

Today the Boston police honored a homeless man who found and handed in a bag of cash Saturday. The Fort Pointer, @FortPointer, tweeted that the man is often seen sitting on the Summer Street bridge. I realized I had seen him last week.

Peter Schworm and Martin Finucane write about what happened at the Boston Globe: “A humble homeless man who returned a backpack full of cash and traveler’s checks to police said he felt ‘very, very good’ to do it and used a ceremony honoring him at police headquarters to thank all the people who have ever given him money on the street.

“Glen James said, ‘I don’t talk too much because I stutter.’ But he handed out a handwritten statement in which he said, ‘Even if I were desperate for money, I would not have kept even a … penny of the money I found. I am extremely religious — God has always very well looked after me.’ …

“After making his discovery, James flagged down a passing Boston police officer and handed over the backpack. The backpack contained $2,400 in cash, $39,500 in traveler’s checks, passports, and various personal papers, police said.”

For the rest of the story and a short video of the police commissioner giving James thanks, go to the Globe. The honoree listens to Commissioner Davis with the sweetest smile ever.

Photo: Boston Globe
Glen James, honored by the Boston Police for handing it a bag of cash he found.

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Runners’ Miracles

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 3, 2013| Leave a Comment »

My friend Meg is a runner. She runs for the joy of running, and she runs to support worthy causes like research on liver disease. Several times a week, she rises early and runs with friends and a few homeless folks who have found running to be a step toward getting their lives in order.

Meg blogs about running, too. Here she talks about running “with a team of homeless men and women from Downtown Crossing’s Boston Rescue Mission.”

Here she tells how she learned about Back on My Feet after seeing the program’s T-shirts being worn in a race:

“Running, as a means of teaching work and life skills to residents of homeless shelters.  Using their attendance, attitude, dedication to morning runs to gain access to job training, housing assistance, and help paying for and attaining education.  Intriguing, indeed.  Especially since I’d not noticed a single homeless person in that crowd of runners.

“A lifelong runner myself, I could evidence upticks in productivity and personal satisfaction when I was most engaged in running.  Was it possible that what worked for me could work for the city’s most troubled?

“I filled out the online interest form.  A few weeks later, I got an email confirming an evening orientation session, where nearly a dozen gathered to learn about the program. Vic Acosta, Boston Chapter Program Director, filled me with hope, enthusiasm, and energy – from that moment, I knew that Back On My Feet would be my kind of group.

“A few days later, I set that early morning alarm for the first time.

“I met the team – residents and non-residents both – that morning.  We ran a few miles, and I went home to prepare for work, still not knowing which runners were the residents [of the homeless shelter].  Then, I began to really understand the power of Back On My Feet: on those early mornings, we weren’t residents or non-residents, we were teammates.”

Now can I tell you the rest of story as it was told to me?

One day Meg mentioned to one of the homeless guys that she planned to drive up to Lowell with friends for a race. He was interested. He asked if he could come along. He said he was from Lowell and had been estranged from his family for years because of troubles with the law and with substance abuse. He wondered tentatively, hopefully, whether anyone in his family might like to see him now that he had gotten clean.

Meg took him along, and he ran with her group. At the end of the race his family was there. Cheering.

Photo: http://www.backonmyfeet.org/

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Travelers Aid Evolves (oops)

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 12, 2012| 2 Comments »

The last time I looked, Travelers Aid helped people in train stations and bus stations who were lost or confused or needed a translator. The website still notes that history.

“Travelers Aid Family Services began in 1916 as an all-volunteer effort, one of hundreds of organizations that emerged around the country in response to the needs of the thousands of new immigrants arriving in the United States each day. The agency, which was incorporated in 1920 as the Travelers Aid Society of Boston, provided help with housing, transportation, and employment to new immigrants, stranded travelers, and the poor at Boston’s train stations and docks.”

I wish when I directed a stranded Amtrak passenger to the Travelers Aid office office this morning that today it has the deeper purpose of ending homelessness. Oops.

The traveler was a pleasant if anxious man in his 40s who had come up from Virginia to meet a flight his 14-year-old daughter was taking from Greece. Not knowing our wily ways up north, he gave money to another train passenger who asked for $10. After he got off the train, he realized his wallet was gone.

Amtrak police were surly and told him to go a Boston Police station to file a report — but didn’t tell him how to get there. He wandered around for a couple hours. Then he stopped me and asked where the police station was.

I am pretty wary of these hard-luck travel stories. People of all ages make them up on the subway (one woman has a different story every day about why she doesn’t have the fare for Fitchburg or Worcester), but the traveler was only asking for directions to a police station that I didn’t know how to find.

So I sent him to Travelers Aid across from South Station. At least there will be kind people there, right? Even if he isn’t homeless and doesn’t fit their new mission? I sure hope so. if you know anything about Travelers Aid today, please tell me.

Photograph: Travelers Aid Family Services

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Keeping Food from Going to Waste

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 30, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Another MassChallenge entrant that, like Erik’s company, won start-up money on October 23 is Lovin’ Spoonfuls. I was delighted to see this worthy nonprofit  mentioned by Noelle Swan in an article on food resources in Spare Change News, sold by Homeless Empowerment Project vendors.

“The first time Ashley Stanley walked into the back room of her local grocery store in search of discarded food, she found towers of eggplants, tomatoes, and potatoes rising up around her. The produce was not spoiled or rotten; it simply no longer fit on the display shelves and had been moved off the floor to make room for fresher shipments. Dumbfounded, she asked if she could have the food. She loaded up her car with as many vegetables as she could and drove to Pine Street Inn, a homeless shelter in Boston. …

“A recent study from the Natural Resources Defense Council lends credibility to Stanley’s suspicion that the country is not experiencing a lack of food. Nearly half of the food produced in the United States never makes it to the table, according to the study released in August 2012. Food goes to waste at every link in the food chain. Farmers plow unharvested crops into the ground, grocers discard unsold food by the caseload, and restaurants pour mountains of leftovers into dumpsters. In total, Americans throw away $165 billion worth of food every year, 40 percent of all the food produced in the nation.

“At the same time, 1 in 5 Americans was unable to pay for food at some point in the last year, according to a recent Gallup poll. …

“When Stanley first showed up at the door to Pine Street Inn with her arms full of vegetables, she said the staff seemed shocked to see her. …

“Since then, the former corporate luxury retailer has redistributed more than 150,000 pounds of food to area homeless shelters, domestic abuse safe houses, and food pantries. She started out delivering food in her own car while seeking donations and grants. Today, she has three employees, two trucks, and a waiting list on both sides of the equation.

“Lovin’ Spoonfuls is just one of a handful of food rescue organizations in the Boston area.” More.

Photograph of Ashley Stanley by Mike Diskin

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Food and Hope

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 31, 2012| 2 Comments »

I liked a story in the January 25 Boston Globe. It’s about a gourmet chef taking a job at a homeless shelter and helping to train residents with the marketable skills he knows best.

“Frank Van Overbeeke used to prepare foie gras and filet mignon for the French brasserie crowd as executive chef at Bouchee on Newbury Street,” writes Katie Johnston. “Now he makes cheeseburger meatloaf for the residents at the Pine Street Inn.

“In the shelter’s kitchen, he also oversees the preparation of jerk chicken with pineapple rice pilaf for the Boston Foundation, chicken tikka masala for Simmons College, and baked ziti for doctors at Boston Medical Center.

“Van Overbeeke’s move two years ago from haute cuisine to homeless shelter was a key step in Pine Street Inn’s efforts to develop a corporate catering business to increase revenues to support its food service job-training program.” Read more.

Another job-training program in the culinary arts has been going since 1983 at a prisoner pre-release facility in Concord.

Betsy Levinson writes in a March 29 Globe article, “Four days a week, diners pay $3.21 to enter one of the drab gray buildings at the Concord rotary, drop off their licenses at security, and line up for a seat at one of nine tables in the cafe known as the Fife and Drum.

“Inmates serve as waiters, cooks, and busboys, all trained by chef Kim Luketich. Those who complete the 10-month culinary arts program get a Serve Safe food-handler certificate, making them eligible for work in restaurants.

“ ‘I love it,’ said Jacqueline Friedman, an Acton resident arriving for lunch. ‘It’s an experience. The guys are so nice and are trying so hard.’ …

“ ‘This is a premier program,’ said the superintendent. ‘No other facility has this kind of program that allows the community to come in and eat. We have some elderly who have come daily for years. It’s a great setting, a great atmosphere.’

“ ‘They learn quality skills,’ said Luketich. … “‘They learn social skills. The whole idea is that they will go back into society. That is what we focus on.’ ’’

Read more. As the article says, food service is one of the areas where there actually are jobs today, and it can be a way to get acclimated to dealing with the public.

Photograph: Bill Greene/Globe Staff

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Backyard Farmers and Food Pantries

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 19, 2011| 2 Comments »

Check out this story in the Boston Globe. It seems especially timely given the increasing numbers of people growing their own food and the concerns about many others who are struggling.

“Every summer, 40 million backyard farmers produce more food than they can use, while people in their communities go hungry. If only they could link up. Enter Gary Oppenheimer, 59, of West Milford, N.J. He was directing a community garden a couple of years ago when inspiration struck. In May 2009, AmpleHarvest.org hit the Internet, connecting food pantries and gardeners. In just 150 days, Rosie’s Place in Boston became the 1,000th pantry on the site, and the growth has continued. As of Labor Day, 4,188 pantries were listed, in all states. Oppenheimer says the nonprofit organization is actively seeking grant funding to sustain what has sprung up.” Read more here.

If you have extra produce from your garden, you can go to AmpleHarvest to find a food pantry near you.

Photographs: Sandra M. Kelly

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