All posts tagged "Poverty"

You wouldn’t know it to look at them. Junior Alaska Airlines flight attendants say they are barely getting by on poverty level wages, many of them building up debt and scrambling to make rent. Yes, they look sleekly professional on the job. But some with children qualify for food stamps and housing assistance. Some who live in cities far from their airline base resort to sleeping in their cars in crew parking lots the night before a flight, unable to pay for a hotel. Flight attendants Rebecca Owens, 34, and Thresia Raynor, 54, both based in Anchorage, set up a private Facebook page in Septembe......

Los Angeles (AFP) - When Carlos Schmidt beds down on the hard streets of Los Angeles, he has nothing but a backpack and an old blanket, like thousands of other homeless people in one of the richest cities in the world's richest country. "At nighttime, I just find somewhere quiet like a park or a bus bench, where there's not a lot of chaos," the 37-year-old told AFP. "And I'll try to rest up right there for as long as I can." Schmidt is one of some 75,500 people living on the streets of Los Angeles and its sprawling suburbs, according to a January survey. The figure is up 70 percent since 2015,......

The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors voted in November to spend $1.3 million on a North Highlands parking lot for 30 homeless people. An official said the lot would help those who were “currently living in vehicles” on Roseville Road. But they aren’t there. Many of the residents meant to benefit from the parking lot at 4837 Watt Avenue were evicted from their encampments over the summer, months before the board’s vote. The missing encampments — which lined the road that crosses from the city of Sacramento into North Highlands’ county jurisdiction — show one of the pitfalls of these evict......

PHILADELPHIA — In the wake of a controversy about how Norristown, Pennsylvania, officials are treating people in homeless encampments, a small and quiet group of protesters gathered at a borough council meeting Tuesday night. Some of them, subdued but pointed, were critical of Council President Thomas Lepera, who has told people he'd planned to bus individuals living homeless to Villanova University. The campus is the workplace of an anti-homelessness faculty member who said Lepera had cursed and castigated her during a brief meeting in late May to discuss some 20 encampments in Norristown. Le......

SAN DIEGO -- Every morning before the school day begins at Perkins K-8, there's somebody at the main gate to greet every family walking in. Most days it's the dean of students, Moises Villalpando — his students know him as Mr. V. "Buenos días, mi niña," Villalpando says. "Good morning, Mom." "¿Cómo estás?" Moms pushing strollers with babies accompany their kids to class. Children not 5 feet tall walk to school holding their little siblings' hands. Dads lean in for a fist bump with Villalpando. Kids run, without saying a word, to give him a hug. At Perkins, school staff and volunteers are fight......

NEW YORK — National Guard troops are being deployed to New York City's homeless shelters to assist day-to-day operations as the shelter system remains near a breaking point due to a huge influx of Latin American migrants, the Daily News has learned. It was not immediately clear how many National Guard members will be part of the unusual shelter deployment, but a source familiar with the matter said troops were already at eight Department of Homeless Services sites citywide as of Wednesday. DHS spokeswoman Neha Sharma confirmed that National Guard troops have been “providing core operations sup......