@mimi Many stories in hottest rental areas where owners and landlords evict economically margin people, make some minor repairs, and then charge high rents given that the demand outstrips the supply.

Anyone, who lives with one leg on the streets and with the other leg clings to a roommate situation to make the rent, sees it.

Homelessness is not new on the West Coast. But interviews with local officials and those who serve the homeless in California, Oregon and Washington — coupled with an Associated Press review of preliminary homeless data — confirm it’s getting worse.

People who were once able to get by, even if they suffered a setback, are now pushed to the streets because housing has become so expensive. All it takes is a prolonged illness, a lost job, a broken limb, a family crisis. What was once a blip in fortunes now seems a life sentence.
— Official counts taken earlier this year in California, Oregon and Washington show 168,000 homeless people in the three states, according to an AP tally of every jurisdiction in those states that reports homeless numbers to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That is 19,000 more than were counted in 2015, although the numbers may not be directly comparable because of factors ranging from the weather to new counting methods.

— During the same period, the number of unsheltered people in the three states climbed 18 percent to 105,000.

— Rising rents are the main culprit. The median one-bedroom apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area is more expensive than it is in the New York City metro area, for instance.

— Since 2015, at least 10 cities or municipal regions in California, Oregon and Washington have declared emergencies due to the rise of homelessness, a designation usually reserved for natural disasters.

The West Coast’s newly homeless are people who were able to survive on the margins — until those margins moved.

People are willing to see that situation apparently only, if they have intimate experience with such homeless situations among their own loved ones, friends or themselves. The media is not covering it, and the human character is to not want to see how cruel they are.

Thanks for writing this up.

@ggersh in Chgo. and suburbs as well, I was born and raised on the south side of Chgo. although I now live in the burbs. and don't recall it being anywhere near as bad as its been in the last 10 yrs. I have been in the transportation industry since the 1980s so I travel regularly all over the Chicagoland area and I see the homeless and panhandlers just about everywhere now.

by our 4th estate, so yes while it seen by those
that live it the story isn't told, as MAGA only
covers the military, and #resistance certainly
doesn't entertain any thoughts of telling the story.

I agree outta sight outta mind and thanks.

@Meteor Man The only way humanity is going to survive is if we help each other out, no more of this 'everyone for themselves' insanity.

From The People's Tribune:

First They Came For The Homeless:

It is our world, not just theirs. It’s about time people start learning that, because the elite are destroying our home.
* * * * *
We at the Poor Tour, a project of ‘First they came for the homeless’, have shown how this can be done: by taking care of each other and showing the rest of society how cooperation and mutual support can be done with very little. Everything could work this way if people had the power to do it on a social and world level. This is a short history of a project in the real world that illustrates the above words:

The Poor Tour started a year ago. A group of homeless were asked by city commissioners and social workers to bring attention to the lack of progress from the HUB (centralized homeless services). The homeless were not getting helped and the HUB budget was over a million dollars. So, we occupied, with our tent community, all over the City of Berkeley, including sites around City Hall. Over the next three months the homeless were raided and moved location 17 times, had multiple arrests, and suffered injury and hospitalizations at the hands of police. We did not quit.
In early January, the Poor Tour settled on a piece of property in South Berkeley. There it has remained. For nine months no police, no city harassment, and no real problems.

During those nine months the successes have been amazing. The Poor Tour is credited with the following: They saved a life and rescued a victim of a serial predator, they protected a senior with Alzheimer’s who had been missing for weeks, they reunited a runaway with her mother, they protected a victim of domestic violence, they protected a mentally disabled girl from sexual predators, and they have helped maintain an environment of stability that has helped over thirty people get themselves housed.

http://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/2017/11/first-came-homeless-resistance...

More stories of homeless Americans on the offensive:

Homelessness has been seen in the streets of the United States for over 30 years, since the introduction of the microchip and automation into production replaced human labor and threw millions out of work forever, or into low-wage, part-time or contingent jobs that don’t put a roof over one’s head. We now have a society with astronomically high corporate profits on the one hand, and growing insecurity, misery, hunger and homelessness on the other. This is a shocking moral failure that could easily be solved by a political and economic system that takes care of people’s needs, instead of landlords’ and corporate profits.

The basic demands of the homeless for homes and for all they need to live safe and productive lives are a demand for a society that puts that as its absolute priority: a society that shares the abundance it creates and fulfills the basic needs of all.
When homeless people resist, the system trembles. That is because a system that has no use for human beings must be and will be abolished. It is time to replace it with a cooperative economy based on meeting the material, cultural, and spiritual needs of people, not the bottom line of corporations.

http://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/2017/11/homeless-resist-system-trembles/

Legalize Sleep:

http://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/2017/11/homeless-offensive-new-society/

The People's Tribune:

http://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/