Homelessness report reveals health and discrimination issues as authors call for new national strategy
Leigh Jorey was pretty successful in his mid-30s. A panel beater by trade, he’d completed an apprenticeship, owned his own tow truck company, and worked at it hard. His success didn’t stop him becoming homeless. In fact, it may have contributed to the problem.
Under pressure, Jorey began to turn to less healthy ways of coping, which led him into a downward spiral.
Continue reading...City records coldest January day in nearly a decade while temperatures across month plummet 2-6C below normal
India’s capital, New Delhi, is shivering through an unusually harsh bout of winter cold, blamed for killing scores of homeless people and leaving other hard-up residents struggling to keep warm.
The sprawling city’s 20 million inhabitants are accustomed to year-round weather extremes, from blistering summer heat to torrential downpours and thick, toxic smog at the end of autumn.
Continue reading...Advocates and displaced residents condemn move amid fears for safety: ‘They are just trying to survive’
Officials in Los Angeles have cleared a homeless encampment near SoFi stadium, where the Super Bowl will take place in three weeks, drawing backlash from human rights groups and the unhoused residents who have been displaced.
On Monday and Tuesday, the state transit agency Caltrans shut down the tent community, which visitors would probably have passed on their way to the big game, calling it a “safety issue”.
Continue reading...For nine years, New York Times journalist Andrea Elliott followed the fortunes of one family living in poverty. In this extract from her new book, Invisible Child, we meet Dasani Coates in 2012, aged 11 and living in a shelter
• Read an interview with Andrea Elliott here
She wakes to the sound of breathing. The smaller children lie tangled under coats and wool blankets, their chests rising and falling in the dark. They have yet to stir. Their sister is always first. She looks around the room, seeing only silhouettes – the faint trace of a chin or brow, lit from the street below. Mice scurry across the floor. Roaches crawl to the ceiling. A little sink drips and drips, sprouting mould from a rusted pipe.
A few feet away is the yellow mop bucket they use as a toilet, and the mattress where the mother and father sleep, clutched. Radiating out from them in all directions are the eight children they share: two boys and five girls whose beds zigzag around the baby, her crib warmed by a hairdryer perched on a milk crate.
Continue reading...‘It was clear that these two had each other in their lives, and that was pretty much it’
In the 1970s I lived in SoHo in New York, which is not far from the Bowery, but the two districts were like separate universes. SoHo was full of artists and creative types but the Bowery was known as the place where you ended up when you were at the bottom of the barrel. There were a lot of flophouses and a lot of alcoholism and drug use. It was the darkest place in New York City for a long time.
The Bowery Mission is a Christian rescue centre for homeless people. Only men are allowed to stay overnight but it feeds anybody. I used to go there around Thanksgiving and Christmas time to help serve dinner. The face-to-face contact and interactions I had with people meant that I always felt a real connection with them, and it also made me grateful for what I had in my own life.
Continue reading...Júlio Lancellotti is an outspoken champion of homeless people – a cause that makes him unpopular with Brazil’s authorities
In 2017, most Brazilians were still unfamiliar with the name Jair Bolsonaro. But for Júlio Lancellotti, there was already cause for concern in the reactionary rhetoric of the man who would be elected president two years later under the slogan: “Brazil above everything, God above everyone.”
“I am astonished that a homophobic person like Bolsonaro appears on the presidential ballot,” said the priest during mass on 7 March of that year at St Michael the Archangel parish in São Paulo’s East Zone. The sermon, in which he also preached against rape culture and sexism, was typical of the man who has devoted his life to fighting injustice, often finding himself targeted by conservative politicians as a result.
Continue reading...Wealthy overseas buyers lured by ‘golden visas’ helped create a city where workers struggle to find homes
Manuela Lopes dates her misfortune from the moment her Lisbon neighbourhood began attracting comparisons with Brooklyn. It was the mid 2010s: former warehouses in the old working-class parish of Marvila were giving way to co-working spaces, art galleries, artisan breweries, creative hubs and tech startups. In 2018, average property prices in the neighbourhood were up 79.8% on the previous year.
A short walk from Lopes’ home, a 12-building luxury residential project designed by the world-famous architect Renzo Piano is now rising from Marvila’s old industrial waterfront. Prices for apartments, some with balconies overlooking the Tagus, range from €500,000 to €925,000 (£425,000 to £786,000) and many have been sold off-plan. Promotional material for Prata Riverside Village promises a “new way of living Lisbon” for “young families, students, digital nomads and retired people” in a district “distinguished by its true neighbourhood atmosphere; quiet but full of life” .
Manuela Lopes (above and below right) was born in the Santos Lima building (right) in the Marvila neighbourhood of Lisbon. She has lived with the threat of eviction since 2017. Photographs: Goncalo Fonseca/The Guardian
Continue reading...‘You can only build a net, it’s never a wall,’ says Dr Michael Novy, who cared for 160 inmates through a flap in a locked door
From prisoners to the homeless and people living with disabilities – these are some of the at-risk communities hidden from public view during the pandemic. Now the health workers working with them share their stories.
Continue reading...40,000 people in one of the largest slums in the Kenyan capital have had their homes demolished to make way for works for a Chinese-backed toll road, with some asking: ‘this is development for who?’
About 40,000 people have been made homeless by demolition works for a major Chinese-backed toll road in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
Amnesty International Kenya says it believes the roadworks have created a humanitarian crisis, as schools, businesses and 13,000 homes spread across nearly 40 hectares (100 acres) of the Mukuru Kwa Njenga slum have been demolished since October, clearing land for a link to the Nairobi expressway.
A girl stands among the rubble of Mukuru Kwa Njenga slum, Nairobi, where 13,000 homes were razed to the ground
Continue reading...Actor and activist announces he will use future earnings to fund social projects after ‘turning point’ of organising 2019 Homeless World Cup
Hollywood star Michael Sheen has said he is now a “not-for-profit actor” after selling his houses and giving the proceeds to charity.
The actor and activist, 52, said organising the 2019 Homeless World Cup in Cardiff was a turning point for him. When funding for the £2m project fell through at the last moment, Sheen sold his own houses to bankroll it.
Continue reading...In a rare interview with foreign media, Sanna Marin says she is determined to defend human rights, despite asylum policy challenges
Equality, a well-funded education system and a strong welfare state are the secret to the success of the world’s happiest nation, according to Finland’s prime minister.
In a rare interview with foreign media, Sanna Marin – who briefly became the youngest world leader when she became prime minister of the Nordic nation in 2019 at the age of 34 – said Finland was committed to preserving its generous welfare state in an “environmentally sustainable way”, and saw the development and export of green technology as the key to its future prosperity.
Continue reading...Since the 1950s, Marin county waters have been home to a community of mariners. Now local authorities say they have to leave
For decades, a group known as the “anchor-outs” enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence in a corner of the San Francisco Bay. The mariners carved out an affordable, bohemian community on the water, in a county where the median home price recently hit $1.8m.
But their haven could be coming to an end – and with it, a rapidly disappearing way of life.
Top: Anchor-out boats sit in Richardson Bay in Sausalito, California, last month. Bottom: Jeff Jacob Chase looks out the window of a friend’s boat.
Continue reading...In the charity’s storeroom sit the cremated remains of seven former visitors – unclaimed, contested or forgotten. This is the story of three of them
Mark was a member of an online witches and vampire community and liked to wear a bit of blingy jewellery. He really liked his friend Joe’s cooking. Gordon always had a can of Jim Beam in his hand and a flaring temper but, until he was evicted for anger management-related issues, he kept his public housing flat spotless. Marianne loved it when the volunteers did her hands and nails.
Jon Owen talks to them sometimes, Mark, Gordon and Marianne, sitting as they do in their urns on a purple-fabric-swathed table in the store room just off his office. “I often find myself chatting to them,” says the pastor of the Wayside Chapel in Sydney’s Potts Point. If the day’s particularly bad, Mark, Gordon and Marianne remind Owen that we all only live for, like, five minutes and, whatever it is that’s troubling him, he should just “let it go”.
Continue reading...Care facilities for older people used to be thought ‘un-African’. But destitution caused by Covid has seen demand for care homes soar
Lunch is Angelica Chibiku’s favourite time. At 12pm she sits on her neatly made bed waiting for her meal at the Society of the Destitute Aged (Soda) home for older people in Highfield, a township in south-west Harare.
Chibiku welcomes a helper into her room and cracks a few jokes. She loves to interact with those who bring her food and supplies.
Continue reading...As Covid hit, thousands of Filipinos were left trapped in the capital without work. Many ended up on the street and are still waiting to rebuild their lives
Like so many others before her, Michelle Sicat, a 28-year-old single mother from the province of Nueva Ecija, had come to Metro Manila to get a job to support her family. She left her daughter with her parents so she could work as a shop assistant in one of the city’s busiest commercial districts. Sicat’s sacrifice was one that many Filipinos from rural areas have to make.
Despite missing home, Sicat was happy to have a job. But then the Covid-19 pandemic struck. The Philippine government placed the entire island of Luzon – where the Metro Manila region is located – under the strictest level of lockdown. The restrictions forced most businesses to close. Most people were ordered to stay at home.
For many living on the streets, there is no shelter from the elements
Continue reading...In Rajasthan a project developing self-esteem and skills is getting people off the streets and into work
Pandit Tulsidas, 52, was resting under a tree by a road junction in Jaipur, Rajasthan, where he had begged for years.
When an official approached him about a government scheme that would teach him job skills, he rejected the offer. When the man said his meals would be looked after and he would have a room to share with only one other person, he refused again.
Continue reading...Biden administration lacks authority to extend moratorium because supreme court said in June Congress would have to act
The White House said Monday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was “unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium” and asked instead that states and local governments put in policies to keep renters in their homes.
Related: US states brace for ‘avalanche’ of evictions as federal moratorium ends
Continue reading...Many blame President Jair Bolsonaro’s failure to handle the pandemic and to provide adequate support for those in need
Even before coronavirus, life was a struggle on Regeneration Street, a rubbish-strewn skid row on the north side of Rio de Janeiro.
Cadaverous crack addicts probe dumpsters for scraps of food; crestfallen down-and-outs sprawl on soiled mattresses and rugs.
Continue reading...Man faces eviction from emergency hotel accommodation because he refuses to return to his home country
A migrant rough sleeper is facing eviction from emergency hotel accommodation by a London council because he refuses to return to his home country.
A letter from Westminster council to the individual states that following assessments by the homeless charity the Connection at St Martin’s, the council was unable “to identify a service offer that will resolve your rough sleeping in the UK”.
Continue reading...At my lowest ebb, I found hope in wickedly funny Leah, who lit up the crisis centre where we met. But just months later, she was dead. Could I stop my grief pulling me back under?
Over the years there have been only a few people I would have classed as best friends. People whom I counted on in my darkest moments. When I was at my lowest, and feeling more alone than ever, I met Leah. She was an incredible person who showed me how to find joy and belonging even in the worst possible circumstances. But within less than 12 months she was dead, and life was changed for ever.
We first met at Scarborough Survivors, the mental health crisis cafe I started attending in December 2018. I was 21, homeless and sofa-surfing, and I didn’t want to be alive any more. The cafe – open until 1am every morning – was my last option. It was a Saturday night, just before Christmas. Leah came in wearing a bright pink Adidas tracksuit and one of her many pairs of Nike Airs. Her thick Welsh accent echoed around the place, and as soon as she started talking, the atmosphere changed. I could tell from the off that humour was one of her coping mechanisms. It was hard to tell how old she was; I sensed some immaturity, but also a deep wisdom. I later learned that she was only 28, and the wisdom came from experiencing unimaginable trauma.
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