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 South Pinellas-County makes pledge to help the homeless March 15, 2006 4:54 AM

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/03/14/Southpinellas/County_makes_pledge_t.shtml County makes pledge to help the homeless The County Commission approves a 10-year plan to help end homelessness and accepts a grant to expand medical van services. By NICOLE JOHNSON Published March 14, 2006 Pinellas County has given itself a 10-year deadline to end homelessness in the area. On Tuesday, the Pinellas County Commission unanimously approved a multistep plan it says will help achieve that goal in the next decade. In a separate move to help the homeless, commissioners also accepted a $265,000 federal grant to expand its medical van services. The grant will enable the county to hire two advanced registered nurse practitioners to provide mental health services to the homeless. The county plans to spend a total of $455,458 this year on its medical services van, which provides care to the homeless and medically underserved. The larger 10-year plan comes from the Homeless Policy Group, which consists of local elected officials from Clearwater, Tarpon Springs, Largo, Pinellas Park and St. Petersburg. The group joined forces with the business sector and law enforcement to shape the 10-year plan. "It's really critical that we act on this in a new way," said Sarah Snyder, executive director of Pinellas County Coalition for the Homeless. "The issue of homelessness affects everybody, and it was important for everybody to be at the table to think about it." In recent years, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has encouraged communities to develop strategies to end homelessness, Snyder said. On any given night in Pinellas, an average of 4,450 people go to sleep homeless. Of those, about 98 are families with children, according to the 2005 Homeless Survey conducted by the county. It is estimated that Pinellas spends $13-million annually on homeless-related services. The 62-page report, developed by the policy group, outlines about 200 strategic goals for fighting homelessness. The key themes are better coordination between localities, seeking more funding, outreach and preventive measures. Preventive measures include mentoring for families at risk of becoming homeless and incentives for employers to give jobs to the homeless, according to the report. "It's really critical that we address prevention," Snyder said. "If we take everybody off the streets today, there would be new people on the streets tomorrow." The goal is to adapt a "housing first" approach, said Cliff Smith, assistant director of Pinellas Human Services. That means that once people are brought into a shelter, they are provided with services that they need such as employment and health care. Smith estimates it could cost an additional $6-million to fully implement the 10-year plan. The homeless task force is scheduled to meet on a monthly basis. The group expects to take some of its strategies to the streets within one year, Smith said. "We're going to be asking for more staff to do outreach in the community," Smith said. "We're going out into the streets talking with people. It will be a community effort." Though a noble effort, at least one county commissioner questioned whether the goal of ending homelessness in 10 years is realistic. "I've said this before, and obviously no one heard it," Commissioner Bob Stewart said during Tuesday's meeting. "For Pinellas County to offer a program to end homelessness ... it is not going to happen." The goal may be unrealistic, but the new approach is better than what's been tried before, Smith said. "That term came from the federal government," Smith said. "You're never going to end homelessness, or end people suffering from mental illness and substance abuse, but you can do it better than we're doing it now." Nicole Johnson can be reached at njohnson@sptimes.com or 727 445-4162. [Last modified March 14, 2006, 21:09:02] *fair use*  [ send green star]
 
Harmony March 15, 2006 6:05 AM

Yeh, it was touch and go there for awhile. Some didn`t want it to go through because the "Homeless are still around after all these years anyway". How did people ever get this cold or were they always like this?  [ send green star]
 
Donna- March 15, 2006 7:06 AM

Beats me, Donna! I am still seething after reading this hate piece by Don Feder: Social & Domestic Issues Hey, Over Here, Look at Me -- I'm Blaming the Victim by Don Feder Posted Mar 14, 2006 Of all of brain-dead liberalism's mind-numbing catchphrases, possibly the most inane is "That's blaming the victim!" -- variations on which include: "How dare you blame the victim" and "Oh, my God, he's blaming the victim!" The cliché rests on one of the pillars of modern liberalism -- that actions, in fact, do not have consequences, and individuals bear no responsibility for their behavior. It's hard to say exactly when the phrase first came in vogue, or in what context, but liberals have gotten enough mileage out of it to circle the solar system several times. The formula can be applied to any situation where it's politically convenient to deny personal responsibility, including: a.. Welfare -- From time to time, conservatives have suggested that if young women from the inner city don't want to end up dependent on taxpayers, it is well for them not to get pregnant at 15 by love-em-and-leave-em lotharios. "You're blaming the victims," self-styled welfare advocates wail. "It's society's fault that there's a shortage of CEO positions for single mothers who are junior-high dropouts." b.. AIDS -- During the epidemic of the 1980s, when horrible homophobes observed that the individual who was HIV positive after years of unprotected anal sex really didn't qualify as a victim, we were almost tarred-and-feathered. The gay lobby managed to raise AIDS patients to the status of holy relics. Suggesting that promiscuous, high-risk sodomy has consequences became sacrilege. c.. The Homeless -- Formerly called bums, this is a sanctified victim group whose existence we were totally unaware of prior to the Reagan presidency. Suddenly, there they were -- sleeping in doorways, defecating in public and annoying passersby with incessant demands for alms. To suggest that most of these unfortunates were alcoholics or addicts, and no one forced them to become chemically/Thunderbird dependent (others were mentally ill and on the streets thanks to liberalism's last compassion crusade -- de-institutionalization), was condemned as blaming the victim. But no one can play the don't-blame-the-victim card like feminists, who insist that women should be able to do whatever they please (wherever and whenever), regardless of how imprudent or dangerous. If they end up raped, dead or in relationships where they're abused -- society is to blame, because we didn't provide them with enough protection, because men are beasts, or because we haven't yet created a world in which the improvident are completely insulated from the foreseeable consequences of their dopey behavior. Which brings us to the tragedy of Imette St. Guillen, a graduate student from Boston who disappeared from a Manhattan bar late last month. Seventeen hours later, the 24-year's nude body (wrapped in a blanket) was discovered in Queens. She had been brutally raped and sadistically murdered. Darryl Littlejohn, a bouncer at the bar and a parolee with an extensive criminal record (once described by the New York State Parole Division's "a menace to society"), will likely be charged. Police just announced that DNA evidence ties Littlejohn to the crime. On the evening of February 25, St. Guillen went out drinking with her friends. The latter decided to call it a night (or morning) around 3am. St. Guillen went to another bar, alone. She was last seen being escorted from an establishment called The Falls, at around 4am. The bouncer, who escorted her out of the bar, is the prime suspect in the case. Boston talk-show host John DePetro took his life in his hands by stating the obvious -- "As tragic as it is, your first reaction is she should not have been out alone at 3 or 4 in the morning, because look at what can happen." "Are you saying she asked for it?," the harpies sputtered. "Are you condoning this horrible crime?" "This isn't about what St. Guillen did -- or didn't do -- but what was done to her." Making the TV chatter circuit, Wendy Murphy -- a former prosecutor -- was in Hillary overdrive. Murphy: "One of the most grotesque things I've heard about this case is people suggesting that she shouldn't have been out that late..And no one should judge this woman because the fact that she was out is her constitutional right. She has the right to drink. She has the right to walk around.and that doesn't give anybody the right to take advantage of the fact." I have a constitutional right to go skydiving without a parachute. (If I end up looking like a pressed flower, am I a victim of gravity?) You have a constitutional right to go away for a week and leave your house unlocked, with a sign on the door -- "Valuables inside; doors open." Angelina Jolie has a constitutional right to walk into a bikers' bar in a sheer negligee. In certain circumstances, the exercise of your constitutional rights can be lethal. Although it shouldn't be necessary, we will willingly stipulate to the following: 1) St. Guillen did not deserve to be raped and murdered. 2) Her death was horrible and tragic. 3) Her killer is an animal who deserves to be tossed out of a plane over Gaza, naked, with an American flag tattooed on his chest. Still, honesty compels us to admit that St. Guillen's actions contributed to her death. If you can't deal with that, then you can't deal with reality -- which would make you a liberal. (more)  [ send green star]
 
Don Feder's hate piece, continued March 15, 2006 7:13 AM

Men and women both are more vulnerable after spending a night drinking. Petite, attractive women who drink by themselves at 3 am -- in the city where criminals never sleep -- are particularly vulnerable. Except in action movies, the average woman can be subdued by the average man. The average large man can overpower the average petite woman in a New York minute. Liberalism's leniency toward career scum has led to an explosion of urban predators. Feminism has taught young women that they have a right to be reckless. On top of all that, we're raised a generation that thinks personal responsibility is a four-letter word. Liberals think cause-and-effect is a vast rightwing conspiracy. For them, reality is completely malleable. While worshipping what-should-be, they studiously ignore what-is. To glimpse the world they've created, consider a news story in The Boston Globe of March 9th, in the aftermath of the St. Guillen slaying ("Fearless in the city: Some women still party as if invulnerable"). The reporter surveyed bars in Boston and New York. In a bar two blocks from The Falls, "A young woman named Jovana is in the corner, kissing a young man she met hours earlier." (Is he a crack-addict -- a sex-offender? Does she care?) In response to St Guillen's murder, a young lady in serious need of a dope-slap comments, "It happens here. It happens everywhere. (In church, on Sunday morning?) What can I do about it?" The story notes that TV shows like "Sex In The City," have given some young women a sense that sex is an amusement park ride (both thrilling and safe). Cell phones give them a false sense of security. And, to annihilate the few remaining inhibitions, female binge-drinking is the latest trend. The Globe (Boston's liberal paper, by the way) reports: "Visits to nightclubs in New York and Boston this week found many young women slurring words, making out with men they hardly knew, and, in one case, sobbing alone in a back alley, shoeless, after a night of drinking. Seven of the 12 women at the clubs interviewed by the Globe said they didn't think they would ever be victims of violent crime and felt no need to change their behavior to avert becoming one." If one of these net-less trapeze artists ends up dead, don't dare to suggest that her carefree attitude and bizarre behavior contributed to the tragedy. By not talking about the mistakes victims make -- by not demanding that twenty-somethings start acting like adults -- we are helping to create more victims. Why make liberalism's job easier? Mr. Feder is a former syndicated columnist for the Boston Herald and author of Who's Afraid of the Religious Right? (Regnery) and A Jewish Conservative Looks at Pagan America. He works as a freelance writer and media consultant and serves as the president of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation. ==================== ==================== At any rate, Mr.Feder's opinion is a prime example of a mind-set which willfully excludes any awareness of social and economic equality and justice - his writing is a good example of the sort of thing we are up against in our educating the public and being active for social change.  [ send green star]
 
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Tampa Bay HOMELESS COMMUNITY AID (HCA)
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