A little late

Sorry there was no new Rio Grande Report yesterday. I had no internet access for the better part of last week.
Expect a new edition some time this week, and some special editions throughout the rest of the month of December.
---your editor

A multitude of ways to help people who are homeless for the holidays

With the approach of winter and the holiday season, more attention falls upon those people in need, and their need is greater. Here are some easy and some fun ways to help your homeless neighbors right here in SLC. Thanks to these organizations and the people who make their work possible. I have also linked to a few national and international sites. Of course there’s not the time or space to include everyone, so why not help your editor by leaving comments and links to your favorite charity. As you donate goods, money, and time, please keep in mind that homeless people need your help the entire year...

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Fun Events:

Utah Food Bank Fundraiser with Cameron Rafati this Saturday at In The Venue .

The good folks at Northplatte Records hit us with the lowdown on a great cause, and for music fans in Utah, it's a no-brainer. Headlining this gig is Cameron Rafati, who has worked with the likes of The Fugees and who just completed recording his first... Read More 

cityweekly.net 5 Spot: Coat Exchange With Deanna Taylor
By Rachel Piper

Six years ago, Deanna Taylor organized Utah's first annual Community Coat Exchange. The coat exchange takes place every year on the day after Thanksgiving (also referred to as Black Friday or Buy Nothing Day) at Library Plaza from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Coats are being collected now at four drop-off points, and on the day of... Read More

 

More sites to visit:

Local:

Salt Lake City Mission

Salt Lake Street News

 

Local News Coverage... By John Hollenhorst

Local News Coverage... By Julia Lyon

Crossroads Urban Center 

 

Thank you Harmon’s, Ten Thousand Villages, and Indian Walk-in Center.

 

The Road Home 

for the Red & Blue Rivalry Classic click on the pic above

Rescue Mission of Salt Lake 

Salvation Army 

United Way of Salt Lake (Season Of Sharing) 

(in partnership with 1430 KLO & Now 97.9)

Utah Food Bank 

Volunteers of America (VOA):

Homeless Youth Resource Center (HYRC)

Watch the video: (CBS News story on Utah’s homeless youth)

Homeless Outreach and Housing 

National/International:

Street News Service (SNS)

National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH)

International Network of Street Papers (INSP)

North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA)

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The holidays are a time for giving, not just to friends and family, but to all who are in need. Won’t you please share with them? Please leave a comment to tell how you help those in need, or to make others aware of ways to help of which we might not be aware. Look for updates from now until the New Year, have a great holiday season, and blessed be for helping.

---your editor

 

NAEH weekly bulletin

National Alliance to End Homelessness website

Friday News Roundup: Youth Aging Out, Elderly Homelessness, and Domestic Violence

22nd October 2010 written by Catherine An
So, truth – it was a pretty slow news week. It seems like the news media covers homelessness in cycles: it gets really good (covering solutions and strategies and communities) and then it gets really bad (covering pan handling and camp outs).
I think we’re in an in-between phase.
This week, we noticed a very long feature on youth aging out of foster care in the Seattle Post Intelligencer written by reporters at Investigate West. While we at the Alliance wholeheartedly agree that this is an oft-overlooked and very important issue, we took serious issue with the article’s wildly inaccurate depiction of our own organization:
“At the national level, it’s barely on the radar of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a powerful advocacy group that provides information the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.”
In fact, not only is youth homelessness a 2010 Policy Priority for the Alliance, but in the last year alone, we’ve:

• published a series profiling the way some communities are using HPRP funds to assist youth,
• launched a youth site visit campaign encouraging legislators to examine the issue in their own communities,
• hired new staff to work on the issue,
• and – just this week – wrote a toolkit encouraging communities to fully incorporate youth in their January 2011 point-in-time counts.

I’m hoping that next time, before writing such inflammatory remarks, it would occur to a journalist to pick up the phone as I’m always happy to chat!
Moving right along: On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times put out a piece on the elderly living at (or below) the poverty line. Hat tip to writer Alexandra Zavis for covering an issue that, in my opinion, doesn’t get examined enough. We focus on children and adolescents and their parents but rarely, I think, do we shed any light on those in their golden years.

And it turns out, the years aren’t so golden. Zavis reveals that too many California seniors are just barely scraping by – and we agree. Last year, the Alliance published a brief called Demographics of Homelessness: The Rising Elderly Population in which we project that elderly homelessness will grow by a third by 2020 and double by 2050 if the current rate continues. It’s time to start talking about this problem.
And finally, Kamala Harris (currently the District Attorney of San Francisco and the Democratic nominee for California Attorney General) penned a piece for the Huffington Post on protetecting survivors of domestic violence.
In the piece, Harris writes about a San Francisco-started-turned-state law that prohibits landlords from evicting tenants who are survivors of domestic violence. Harris explains that in California, domestic violence is one of the leading causes of homelessness for women and families. And for such vulnerable families, homelessness makes everything worse: women are less likely to access services or press charges, children’s schoolwork, health, and well-being suffers.
The relationship between domestic violence and homelessness is little acknowledged but significant. Here at the Alliance, we’re paying more and more attention to this relationship and researching ways to divert survivors from homelessness. Kudos to Harris for pointing it out so eloquently.
And that’s a wrap from us – have great weekend!
Tags: Youth Site Visit Campaign