"With business owners sounding increasingly worried about the threat they believe the homeless pose to Columbia’s economic surge, the City Council approved a plan this month that will essentially evict them from downtown streets. “People are afraid to get out of their cars when they see a homeless person,” said Richard Balser, who owns a luggage store downtown. “They haven’t been a problem. They just scare people.” The city is also planning to impose limits on meal service for the homeless on public property. And it plans to station a police officer at a strategic location between the city’s shelter and downtown to “monitor and control foot traffic.”
What, there are NO CRIMES like RAPE, ROBBERY, or MURDER, in South Carolina? Gotta have cops on the beat and manning a post to watch those homeless now, huh? Talk about total corporate tools dre$$ed all in blue! This nation and its governments are acting more and more like their Israeli controllers every day!
Good Lord, the homeless are now akin to TERRORISTS! They SCARE PEOPLE! They THREATEN what is a "a sustainable business model” and "giant risk to business.”
That's odd, because I see them around here and aside from giving them a few bucks in the past, I never felt endangered. I felt pity and fear, thinking that could one day be me.
Oh, and you know, if the economy is so great why are the numbers of homeless rising? Job losses? Fraudulent foreclosures? Crap corporate media lies? How can crime be down and up at the same time? It's whatever version is needed for that moment, huh?
You know what I hate, readers?
"South Carolina city to get tough on homeless; Some say needy hurting economy" by Alan Blinder | New York Times, August 26, 2013
There is one of them, yeah.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — In South Carolina’s capital, officials declare that their tree-lined Main Street, clogged with shops, banks, restaurants, and hotels, is evidence that a long-sought economic revival has arrived.
But mere blocks north, a dozen or so of the county’s approximately 1,500 homeless people sit on a short wall near an empty parking lot, waiting for private shelters to open. They sporadically shout curses at passersby while they smoke cigarettes and endure the summer humidity.
I wonder how many of them are veterans and female.
With business owners sounding increasingly worried about the threat they believe the homeless pose to Columbia’s economic surge, the City Council approved a plan this month that will essentially evict them from downtown streets.
The unanimous vote epitomized how Columbia’s dueling realities — a rush of self-confidence among political and business leaders and continuing poverty for others — have become driving forces of public policy here.
Among metropolitan areas in the South, the nation’s fastest-growing region, Columbia is late to a boom period....
Speculation is rampant that a minor-league baseball team will relocate to Columbia.
Yeah, you aren't a city in AmeriKa unless you have a $ports team.
Less flashy projects also abound, but business owners are warning that rising homelessness in Richland County — up 43 percent in two years, according to the South Carolina Coalition for the Homeless, an increase many blame on an absence of affordable housing options and a sluggish national economy — is imperiling the area’s prospects.
Why don't you just kill them and eat them then? That solves a couple problems right there.
“People are afraid to get out of their cars when they see a homeless person,” said Richard Balser, who owns a luggage store downtown. “They haven’t been a problem. They just scare people.”
But one executive cautioned the City Council in an e-mail that “our staff members and our guests no longer feel safe” and that it is “virtually impossible for us, or anybody, to create a sustainable business model.”
$ieg Heil!
Of course, that is unfair to the Nazis because they put the kibosh on the private central banking enslavement model. That's what happens when the Jewish narrative of history is taught in schools and blared through the media levers they control. You get a totally distorted view of the world, past and present.
Comments like those have galvanized city officials, whose controversial plan was widely supported by business leaders.
That's the first I've seen of any "controversy" in this piece.
Under the new strategy, the authorities will increase enforcement of existing vagrancy laws and offer the homeless three options: accept help at a shelter, go to jail, or leave Columbia.
The city is also planning to impose limits on meal service for the homeless on public property.
Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention you can also STARVE!
Of course, this is the GOVERNMENT that SO LOVES and CARES ABOUT YOU that it LIES and STEALS from you to PROTECT and SERVE YOU!
And it plans to station a police officer at a strategic location between the city’s shelter and downtown to “monitor and control foot traffic.”
“If we don’t take care of this big piece of our community and our society, it will erode the entire foundation of what we’re trying to build in this city,” said Councilman Cameron Runyan, who wrote the proposal and has suggested moving Columbia’s homeless shelter as far as 15 miles from downtown. “What I see is a giant risk to business.”
He has also cited a report from the police that showed increases in crime last year among the homeless, including assault and trespassing.
Opponents of Runyan’s plan, which will also keep the city’s 240-bed shelter open two months longer than the previous November-to-March schedule, have said it would do little more than degrade Columbia’s neediest.
“You’ve got to get to the root of the problem: why we’re homeless,” said Jaja Akair, a homeless man who spoke to lawmakers during a City Council session that stretched past 3 a.m. “You can’t just knock us to the side like we’re a piece of meat or a piece of paper.”
Our societal masters and controllers view us all that way.
Other critics have warned that they are considering court challenges to the plan, which will take effect in September.
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Also see:
Homeless man turns in cash-filled bag
Police honor homeless man’s good deed
Donations pour in for homeless man who returned cash
Someone else who can't find a home:
"Cherokee father loses adoption battle" Associated Press, July 18, 2013
COLUMBIA, S.C. — An American Indian child at the center of a custody suit that went to the US Supreme Court should be returned to the Charleston-area couple seeking to adopt her, South Carolina’s highest court ruled on Wednesday.
In a 3-2 decision, the state Supreme Court ruled that Matt and Melanie Capobianco are the only party properly seeking to adopt the 3-year-old girl named Veronica in South Carolina and ordered a Family Court to finalize the couple’s adoption.
‘‘We are thrilled that after 18 long months, our daughter finally will be coming home,’’ the couple said in a statement Wednesday.
South Carolina courts originally said the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act — a federal law intended to keep Indian children from being taken from their homes and typically placed with non-Indian adoptive or foster parents — favored her living with her biological father, Dusten Brown.
A member of the Cherokee Nation, Brown had never met his daughter and, after the girl’s non-Indian mother rebuffed his marriage proposal, played no role during the pregnancy and paid no child support. But when Brown found out Veronica was going to be adopted, he objected.
Brown took custody in 2011 and has been living with his daughter in Oklahoma since then.
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"SC orders Cherokee girl transferred from Okla." Associated Press, August 08, 2013
COLUMBIA, S.C. — A Cherokee girl living in Oklahoma should be immediately turned over to her adoptive parents in South Carolina after her biological father missed a scheduled meeting with them accompanied by the girl, a judge has ordered.
Matt and Melanie Capobianco have been trying to adopt 3-year-old Veronica since her birth in 2009 and raised the girl for two years. She has been living with her biological father, Dusten Brown, in Oklahoma since 2011, when South Carolina’s Supreme Court ruled that federal law governing the placement of American Indian children favored him as her custodian.
The Capobiancos, a couple living in the Charleston area, appealed to the US Supreme Court, which ruled the state should determine the girl’s placement. The state’s highest court subsequently ordered Martin to finalize the couple’s adoption of the girl, which he did last week.
According to the court, Brown failed to show up, with the girl, on Aug. 4 for the first of several scheduled gatherings as part of a transition process to gradually reintroduce the girl to the Capobiancos.
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"Okla. gov. signs order for Cherokee girl’s dad" Associated Press, September 05, 2013
OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed an extradition order on Wednesday to send the father of a Cherokee girl in the middle of a custody dispute to South Carolina to face a criminal charge for refusing to hand his 3-year-old daughter over to her adoptive parents.
But a lawyer for Dusten Brown said he doesn’t believe his client will be extradited because he has not committed a crime.
Brown and Matt and Melanie Capobianco, of James Island, S.C., have been fighting for years over Veronica. The Capobiancos were finalized as her adoptive parents in July, but Brown did not turn over the 3-year-old girl, who has been staying with her grandparents on Cherokee land.
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Also see:
Wow, is she ever cute!
A bit closer to home
:
"Mass. to end placing of homeless in motels; Cites cost, inadequacy; aims for ’14 phaseout" by Jenifer B. McKim | Globe Staff, January 02, 2013
The state government plans to eliminate a controversial emergency shelter program that places about 1,700 homeless families in motels and hotels paid by taxpayers, but housing advocates are worried officials will not be able to come up with better alternatives.
Then hit the streets!
Aaron Gornstein, undersecretary of the state Department of Housing and Community Development, said the state aims to phase out the program — now near peak levels — by June 30, 2014.
Also see: Slow Saturday Specials: Mass. Unemployment System a Mess
Is it just my imagination, or....
And maybe if they were not shoveling tax loot to already profitable companies they wouldn't have to worry about costs for the homeless.
Related: Intel cut Hudson jobs after tax deal expanded
What? The driving sector of the Massachusetts economy? No big deal to the politicians?
Homeless families are placed in motels when the 2,000 rooms in the state’s family emergency shelter system reach capacity. The program has been around since the 1980s, but the struggling economy and high foreclosure rate have created a steady overflow since 2007.
The overflow began before the Grand Depression and hasn't ceased? Then there has been no recovery, and the bu$ine$$ pre$$ is lying to you!
The effort costs taxpayers $80 per night per family, or about $45 million in fiscal year 2012.
That's a cost I wouldn't mind bearing so people can have a roof over their head and walls around them. We can take it out of the hundreds of millions of dollars of debt service interest payments that Massachusetts pays banks every month.
“Everyone agrees” that the motel system is not an efficient use of taxpayer money or an adequate home for children, Gornstein said in a recent interview. Instead, he said, the state will increase homeless prevention and expand affordable housing options.
As if they gave a damn about the efficient use of taxpayer money.
“The motels have no cooking facilities. There is no play space. It is difficult in terms of transportation, child care,’’ Gornstein said. Eliminating the motel system, he said, “is better for the families and it is better for the taxpayers. That is why we are moving forward.”
Although motel housing was originally envisioned as temporary, families stay for an average of six to eight months, and some of them for more than a year, Gornstein said.
Nothing is ever temporary when it comes to government programs. They are alway$ permanent, which is why I argue so strongly against them.
And have you ever noticed that the few good things they do get cut first?
While many housing advocates agree that the motel system is not ideal, they worry that the state will not be able to provide the resources to eliminate the need for motels.
Already the state tightened eligibility requirements for emergency shelter last summer, a move that prompted an outcry among advocates who say it leaves desperate families living on the street or their cars.
Can't move to South Carolina.
“A lot of children with their parents have nowhere else to go,” said Robyn Frost, executive director of the Lynn-based Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless. She said extremely low-income families need more long-term rental housing vouchers to avoid homelessness.
Massachusetts is the only “right to shelter” state in the country, guaranteeing eligible needy families a roof over their heads. Family shelters are separate from temporary housing provided for individuals in places like the Pine Street Inn or Rosie’s Place — a system of shelters around the state.
For years, state officials have been struggling with what to do with the motel system, where families with children live in one-room homes in places like the Days Inn and Motel 6, often located by busy thoroughfares.
Over the past several years, the number of motel families escalated — skyrocketing from 771 in December 2010, to just under 1,700 last month, according to the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
I suppose all the fraudulent foreclosures by banks did not help.
Numbers reached a peak last fall — near 1,800 — before beginning to drop last month, partly due to an increase in rental vouchers for needy families, the state said.
Concerned about the growing number of families needing shelter, the state last summer tightened eligibility requirements and increased funding to help them avoid homelessness.
Now families must not only meet monthly income limits — $2,209 for a family of four — but also must meet one of four other criteria, including proving they were victims of flood, fire, or natural disaster; victims of domestic violence; or that their situation poses health and safety risks to children. They also must prove they are Massachusetts residents.
Yeah, they tightened up the program when more people needed help. WTF?! That's serving us?
And NOW the illegal sanctuary state of Massachusetts all of a sudden cares if you are a citizen?
Gornstein said the state is working to provide help to needy families through a myriad of programs, providing short-term and long-term funding. Among them is a recently announced plan to create 1,000 additional units of “supportive” housing, which includes services and housing for low-income families in Massachusetts.
In 2011, the state created the HomeBASE program to provide eligible families rental assistance or financial help of up to $4,000 a year to avoid homelessness or to transition out of emergency shelter.
That is like $pitting in their hand when you consider how much this state lavishes on well-connected corporations.
And WhereTF can you RENT an APARTMENT for LESS than $350 a MONTH?
NOWHERE, that's where!
“There is no other state that has this level of resources that we are providing now for homeless families,’’ Gornstein said. “It’s still a major challenge to find affordable housing, and we are doing everything we possibly can to make that easier.”
Yeah, you guys are great.
Chris Norris, executive director of the nonprofit Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership that administers the HomeBASE program in the Boston area, said he would like to eliminate the motel program. However, he worries that some people who have been helped may fall back into homelessness this year. Among them, he said 6,000 families who receive rental assistance are expecting to see the financial help expire within two years, starting this summer. If they don’t get more help, many will end up back at the state’s emergency shelters, he said.
“We should have a goal of having an adequate supply of permanent housing,” he said. “We can’t do something with nothing.”
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