ChosenFast.com

2 more homeless friends just started paperwork for housing voucher. StreetWatch is referring another for veterans housing program. Progress!

Susanna Birdsong of the NC Coalition to End Homelessness, in the Catawba Valley Citizen:

“The amount of federal dollars allocated to homelessness every year is based in part on U.S. Census data, and people who experience homelessness have historically been grossly underrepresented in the Census. They don’t have mailing addresses. They are misinformed about eligibility. They don’t get counted, and so perpetuate the current underfunding of solutions. Census data informs over $400 Billion in spending on things like schools, job training and housing every year.

Read more on Accurate US Census count will help NC homeless…

Homeless man badly burned hand in campfire. Needs sponsors to pay for hotel. Must keep wound clean/dry. Possibility of housing voucher soon!

Everyone is telling us “God bless you” before we can say it. God is good all the time. Never doubt. Next step: HOUSING.

GOOD meeting at Greensboro Housing Coalition re: Cotton. Hopeful.

Pharmacy has to order Cotton’s RX. Long line at DSS. Return later. On to apply for housing. http://tweetphoto.com/6596185

Cotton spent 16 days in med unit at jail. Tent too close to RR. $600/day would have paid 16 MONTHS in housing. Taxpayer $. Priorities?

Cotton spent 16 days in med unit. Tent too close to RR. $600/day would have paid 16 MONTHS in housing. Taxpayer $. Priorities?

Cotton stayed at shelter last night. Getting RX now, then DSS, then apply for housing. She doesnt want to go back to woods.

SAVE THE DATE for the HOUSING SUMMIT 2010

Housing Matters for a Sustainable Greensboro:
We’re on the path to a green, health, affordable, fair future!

When: February 23, 2010
Time: 8:30am – 1:30 pm
Location: Greensboro Coliseum

Read more on Housing Summit 2010…

Urban Ministry estimated it served 4,000 meals Thursday.

Sam Wood appreciates the warm food and kindness of the volunteers.

He has held retail and odd jobs his whole working life, but when he lost his last job and got divorced, he found himself on the streets for nearly two years.

Read more on The importance of a good sleeping bag…

I wrote about the guys on the block (and more) for the News & Record: “When there’s nowhere to go,” by Michele Forrest; published Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009.  It’s online here, and reposted below:

On the block. Image credit: Michele Forrest / ChosenFast.com

My ministry partner, Audrie Keen, and I provide a street outreach to the homeless in Greensboro, and we’ve made a lot of friends along the way. We eat together, go to church together and have cookouts. Sometimes our homeless friends stay with us. We visit formerly homeless friends in their homes.

When we say “homeless friends,” we really mean friends.

Two Friday mornings ago, we visited “The Block” at Lee and South Eugene streets. It had been 11 days since my last visit, when we’d talked about the artistic bench installed, then removed, from along the new stretch of the Downtown Greenway in that area. Neighbors said the bench attracted drug addicts and prostitutes.

The guys on The Block dismissed that notion. One said: “The problem is not as serious as they say it is on the news. And the bench has nothing to do with it.”

Read more on When there’s nowhere to go…