LEFT OUT IN THE COLD

Santa Monica Daily Press - Jan 2, 2013 The temperature will be in the 40s all night and is projected to be 41 degrees at 7 a.m. this morning in Santa Monica. It is very cold and we’ve had plenty of rain. In Los Angeles County more than 32,000 people have no shelter and must sleep outside on the ground. With only 19,713 shelter beds and over 51,000 homeless people, two out of three homeless have nowhere but the sidewalk for a bed, a toilet and a storage locker. For the last 10 years the only model that nonprofit and government homeless agencies have been using is the “housing-first” model. The public was told that access to services only enabled the homeless to be homeless and that the only way to end homelessness was to cut homeless services like shelters. Their model was to take a chronically-homeless person straight from the street to a permanent apartment. More: http://www.smdp.com/letters-left-out-in-the-cold/116101