Tag: Homelessness

The Destruction of Venice Beach Epitomizes California’s Idiocracy

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by Edward Ring   Venice Beach, California, used to be one of California’s great places. A Bohemian gem, nestled against the sand between big Los Angeles and the vast Pacific Ocean. Rents used to be a little lower in Venice compared to other coastal neighborhoods. The locals mingled with surfers, artists, street performers, and tourists. People from suburbs further inland migrated to Venice’s beaches on sunny weekends year-round. Venice was affordable, inviting, inclusive. That was then. Today, Venice Beach is off limits to families who used to spend their Saturdays on the sand. It’s too dangerous. On the sand, beached seaweed now mingles with syringes, feces, broken glass, and other trash, and the ocean has become the biggest outdoor toilet in the city. More than 1,000 vagrants now consider Venice Beach their permanent home. At the same time as real estate values exploded all along the California coast, the homeless population soared. In Venice, where the median price of a home is $2.1 million, makeshift shelters line the streets and alleys, as the affluent and the indigent fitfully coexist. What has happened in Venice is representative of what’s happened to California. If progressives take back the White House in 2020, it will…

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San Francisco’s Wealthy Leftists Are Making Homelessness Worse

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by Gregory Morin   I recently had the opportunity to visit San Francisco for the first time. Coastal towns tend to be a bit more interesting in terms of cuisine (seafood being one of the more varied palate options) as well as architecture (steep hill structures are ever a testament to human ingenuity) and San Francisco scores high in both categories. However one area where it currently scores quite low is in the aroma zone. At first I thought perhaps they had a very inefficient sewer system near the shoreline retail sector, but as we explored deeper toward the city center it became clear something was amiss. I learned shortly thereafter that San Francisco has a poop crisis. To be blunt — people are literally crapping on the sidewalks. Not the tourists, mind you, but the local homeless population. The situation has come to a head (or to the head to employ a nautical metaphor) primarily as a result of progressive conservatism primed with the power of centralized (governmental) authority. The outside leftist narrative of course is that this poop crisis is inevitable results of unmitigated capitalism, which drives the eternal boogeyman of income inequality. This inequality fuels gentrification of…

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Taxpayer-Funded Program Didn’t End Homelessness in Tennessee

Chris Butler
homelessness

Five years ago, Nashville officials launched an initiative to end homelessness as we know it. The program, part of the “How’s Nashville” campaign, promised homelessness would end before 2017. Seeing as how we’re more than halfway done with 2018 it’s time to assess — did the program do what Nashville officials said it would do? After all, they promised. Unfortunately, city officials did not return requests for comment Wednesday. Back in 2013, the city’s Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency paired up with the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission and announced 200 housing opportunities for the chronically homeless. They offered an unspecified amount of federal taxpayer money, via Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant money. Apparently, though, city officials didn’t get enough cash the first go-round. Last month, according to Nashville NBC affiliate WSMV, city officials announced yet another initiative to end homelessness, this time among young people, using $3.54 million of federal taxpayer money, again from HUD. “HUD is awarding $43 million to 11 local communities across the country,” the station reported. “The money will fund rapid re-housing, permanent supportive housing, transitional housing and other programs.” There were other times officials in Tennessee used taxpayer money to end homelessness as…

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UPDATE: SUSPECT ARRESTED – Police Searching For Man Believed To Be Homeless Suspected Of Attacking Woman In Belmont Area

Wendy Wilson

UPDATE: Police apprehended Jason Williams at 4:35 p.m. Tuesday off Whitsett Road in South Nashville after a foot chase through a creek bed and culvert.  Police responded to the area after a citizen on Collier Avenue saw Williams emerge from her home crawl space at 4 p.m. Police spotted Williams as he ran through the neighborhood. He ultimately surrendered and will be booked into jail on charges of especially aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery.  ORIGINAL ARTICLE Police are looking for a man they believe to be homeless suspected of brutally raping, kidnapping and robbing a young woman in the Belmont area Monday morning. Jason Jarrell Williams, 31, is accused of attacking the 25-year-old victim in her Portland Avenue apartment around 4 a.m., according to a Metro Nashville Police Department news release. The door to her apartment may have been unlocked, allowing him to enter, police say. Police say Williams inflicted superficial cuts on the victim with what they believe was a razor blade and then repeatedly sexually assaulted her. He later made her leave the apartment and ride with him in her vehicle to a bank ATM where he forced her to withdraw cash. After driving to the…

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Nashville’s Downtown Library ‘A Scary Mess,’ Mirrors National Trends Aimed At Helping Homeless

Wendy Wilson

Public libraries have long wrestled with how to address homeless people who walk through the door. What’s changed in recent years is that some libraries have started to pro-actively welcome the homeless and set up programs to try to help them. Nashville, with a growing homeless population, is on the cutting edge of this approach and has drawn national attention for its efforts at the downtown library on Church Street. But critics say that while well-intentioned, reaching out to the homeless can distract from a library’s main mission and make it a less welcoming place for the general public. “The Downtown Library is a Scary Mess” was the title of an article  in the Nashville Scene in August 2016. Writer Betsy Phillips described encountering bad smells, out-of-order toilets, dirty laundry on restroom sinks, and men darting in and out of doorways by a reading room making her feel unsafe. “There’s not a good way to talk about this without sounding like you’re being mean to homeless people,” Phillips wrote. But talk about it we must, she said. “This is a library. A library. If there is any place in town where you should not be afraid to walk into a…

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Homeless Man Arrested In Stabbing Death Of Young Nurse In Nashville

Wendy Wilson
Tennessee Star

Police charged a man they consider homeless Wednesday night with the murder of a young nurse at her Wedgewood Park apartment in Nashville in a case that has prompted concerns about transients in the area. Christopher Drew McLawhorn, 24, was charged with criminal homicide and especially aggravated burglary for the Feb. 28 murder of Tiffany Ferguson, 23, an ICU nurse at St. Thomas West, according to a news release issued by the Metro Nashville Police Department. A person of interest in the case, McLawhorn was found by police at 3rd Avenue North and Broadway early Sunday morning. He had two bottles of alcohol and was carrying a small amount of marijuana and was arrested for misdemeanor drug possession. He denied any knowledge of Ferguson’s death. He remained in jail and police later collected evidence and witness statements that allegedly connect him to Ferguson’s murder. Police say McLawhorn stabbed Ferguson multiple times while burglarizing her apartment. He had prior arrests in Nashville for public intoxication, misdemeanor theft and failure to be booked on the misdemeanor theft charge. Police consider him homeless but say he stayed with a friend from time to time on 14th Avenue North. On Tuesday, Wedgewood area residents…

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