May Round-Up of News from the Homeless Blogs

When I started this blog, I did a fairly exhaustive hunt for blogs by and/or primarily about homeless people. I found a good number though not as many as I'd hoped, and put them on my blogroll. That was almost a year ago.

Since then, five or six blogs have disappeared or become inactive. If a blog owner hasn't written in five months, I figure they're gone. Two blogs about New Orleans homeless haven't been updated since February, when the injunction prohibiting the destruction of public housing was denied and the tent city that had grown up across from City Hall was forced to dismantle. Clearly, these blogs are linked with the state of organizing. I'm hoping they and the organizing recover.

Many bloggers seem to be taking a moment to think deeply about the bigger picture and root causes. Tim Harris at Apesma's Lament talks about how the huge growth in the prison population and the number of homeless people that began in the 80"s is linked to globalization. Oldtimer Speaks Out has been writing about how psychological and physical damage affects veterans, and how it can lead to homelessness. The latest post is about Rand Corporation's study, "The Invisible Wounds of War." Wandering Vets has the last part of a series on Counting the Homeless, who it serves and how homeless counts obscure the truth. Homeless in Abbotsford, B.C. is blogging about homeless counts, too: the post title is Herd Management.

Jackie Dowd at the 13th Juror is writing about how her home state of Florida is Number One again in documented violence against homeless people. By the way, USAToday has an article on how several states, including Massachusetts, are looking to toughen laws against violence against the homeless. (Couldn't find any reference to it at the Commonwealth's website, but without a docket number, that's not unusual.)

Last but not least, Kevin Barbieux at The Homeless Guy has an apartment! And Homeless Man Speaks talks about what to do with a $5 donation.
Graphic from Riacale's photostream at Flickr.