In Los Angeles, homeless capital of America, (yes, a dubious honor, indeed), they pay homeless people to count other homeless people during the yearly Point in Time Count. Author (How To Increase Homelessness) and advocate Joel John Roberts asks, “Is Using Homeless People To Count The Homeless Effective?”
Archive for January, 2007
“The days are numbered for all rescue missions, the paradigm of christian service has changed a lot over the past 50 years, it’s the dawning of a new age, a better age, where christians actually get involved in the lives of others, instead of just writing a check to someone else to do their ministry for them.”
Twenty years ago, 100% of Triad Health Project’s clients were white, male homosexuals. Times have changed.
Today’s THP clients:
- 62% male; 38% female
- 78% black; 18% white; 4% other
- 56% hetero; 28% men having sex with men; 13% IV drug users; 3% other

A baby’s activity center sits in the middle of a homeless camp we visited near downtown Greensboro during the homeless count.
“If you receive federal funding and state funding, you’ve got to count… They not only look at how many we count, but how we count and where we count… It used to be if someone was sleeping on someone’s sofa, you counted (that person) [but] they’re not counted anymore.”
– Gail Haworth, director of the Servant Center, chair of the Greensboro subcommittee of the Homeless Prevention Coalition of Guilford County, and co-chair of HPCGC’s 2007 Point In Time Count of the Homeless, quoted in the News & Record
fear
makes you relieved when you return
to your own home
on your own side of town
away from them
who cause your fearfear
means you see everything about them
that’s different from you
and nothing that is the same
Read more on to those who live (& write & speak) in fear… may you be free…
Reading this post made me want to weep… and throw up:
“The reelected Governor of Tennessee is having his inauguration as I write this. I can see the proceedings from the 3rd floor of this library. Just a few minutes ago, the prayer service for the Governor let out. It was held at my church, Downtown Presbyterian Church.
“Downtown Los Angeles is the epicenter of the largest homeless population in the United States. The Downtown Los Angeles Homeless Map takes raw data about those sleeping on the streets and transforms it into a visual tool for understanding the situation.”

“I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
A new study published by the National Alliance to End Homelessness reports that 744,313 Americans experienced homelessness in 2005. The numbers were compiled from local point-in-time counts of the homeless done all over the nation during 2005 for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Acknowledging the difficulties in counting homeless people, NAEH says that “the counts included in this report are not perfect and have numerous limitations, but they are the best data available at this time.”



The Troublemaker recently posted the “2006 Top 20 Crime Locations” for Greensboro. I was having a hard time visualizing all those addresses in relation to one another, so I decided to put them on one map (above.) I noticed that the one place where the dots clumped together was downtown. I also broke the list into categories (shown above), and I found that seven of the 20 addresses belong to the city or county. Interesting, huh?

