BUSINESS
December 11, 2012 | By David Lazarus
How much would it cost to end homelessness in the United States? About as much as we spend on Christmas decorations every year. According to the latest report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the national homeless population held pretty much steady from 2011 to 2012, which is good or bad, depending on how you look at it. What's needed to turn things around, says Mark Johnston, acting assistant housing secretary for community...
NATIONAL
November 28, 2012 | By Richard Simon
WASHINGTON - Unclaimed clothing forgotten by harried passengers at airport security checkpoints would be distributed to needy veterans under a House-approved bill. The Clothe a Homeless Hero Act now goes to the Senate. “As cold weather approaches across much of the country, this legislation will be a greatly needed help for homeless veterans while we work to end homelessness for good," Rep. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.), the bill's chief sponsor, said Tuesday. The Transportation Security Administration collects from 500 to 1,000 garments a day, according to Rep. Gus M. Bilirakis (R-Fla.)
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 23, 2011 | Steve Lopez
Every year around now, I get requests from people who want a recommendation on where to volunteer at a soup kitchen, emergency shelter or housing facility on Thanksgiving or Christmas. I appreciate these good intentions, and so will the people who benefit. But there are 363 days in the year besides Thanksgiving and Christmas, which happen to be the only two days when there's plenty of extra help. If you're interested, I've got a suggestion on how you can make a more meaningful contribution to thousands of desperately needy people in what is often referred to as the homeless capital of the United States.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 13, 2011 | By Jean Merl, Los Angeles Times
The crowd was sparse at a recent candidates forum, and only half of those running in Tuesday's special election to fill a South Bay state Senate seat showed up. But that didn't seem to bother political hopeful Mark Lipman, who enthusiastically outlined his plan for getting the state out of its budget deficit. "I'm a veteran and I've been homeless," Lipman, who is from Los Angeles, told the audience at Century Villages, a housing complex in Long Beach whose residents include formerly homeless families and veterans.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 2, 2010 | By Alexandra Zavis, Los Angeles Times
Dozens of elected officials, law enforcement representatives, social service and housing providers, philanthropists and community leaders pledged support Wednesday for a plan that aims to get all homeless veterans and the chronically homeless off the streets of Los Angeles County within five years. The ambitious plan, released by a group of business leaders Nov. 9, is the latest of numerous initiatives to reduce the county's homeless population, which numbers more than 48,000 on any given day. It proposes reallocating about $230 million in existing resources each year to pay for a rapid increase in permanent supportive housing, which includes counseling and treatment, for the most hard-core street dwellers.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
November 27, 2010 | Steve Lopez
Out near LAX, a dozen military veterans man a war room, strategizing day and night. Their mission is to bring other vets in off the ledge, to gather them up from the streets and shake the dust off them. With a budget of just half a million dollars a year, the team of "wild cowboys" is intent on saving lives, says the general of the nonprofit National Veterans Foundation -- an Alabama-raised, Lebanese Catholic Vietnam vet named Floyd "Shad" Meshad. Meshad used to have a big job at the West L.A. Veterans Affairs complex, but he's a guy with no patience for bureaucracy, so he had to get out, way back in the 1980s, and start his own thing.