“Many Veterans, Especially the Homeless, Simply Avoid VA System” is the title of a story from KFBK NewsRadio in Northern California’s Placer County. The system is overloaded, says radiation oncologist Dr. Darryl Hunter, a member of the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He founded and runs a nonprofit organization, the Sacramento Community Veterans Alliance, whose mission is to connect homeless vets with health care services, a process that starts with free checkups.

Dr. Hunter has said in the past that some Vietnam veterans were made to feel ashamed of the war in which they participated. Also, a large number of vets from all eras are simply unaware of the services available to them. Whatever the reasons, former military personnel are “disappearing in the shadows.”

Throughout the country, veterans seeking help for medical and/or psychological damage have faced so much obstruction and indifference that they have simply stopped trying. Many now prefer to steer clear of bureaucracies, and some purposely hide. Remember, these people were trained to endure hardship, to improvise, to live off the land, to conceal themselves. A lone veteran who does not want to be bothered can vanish much more successfully than, for instance, a civilian single parent with 3 or 4 kids.

Missing, Not in Action

Two years ago, Joe Leal told NBC News that in Southern California he has personally encountered thousands of homeless veterans – not just hard-core old-timers left over from the Vietnam era, but military personnel who served and were discharged post-9/11. His team of vets and active duty soldiers searches the canyons and underpasses, finding burn-out cases, both male and female, who are shockingly young.

Leal, an Iraq veteran, founded the privately-funded Vet Hunters Project, which since 2010 has placed more than 2,500 veterans in either temporary accommodations or permanent homes. The preparation offered by the government for transition from military life back to civilian is totally inadequate. There are even reservists, technically still on active duty, who are homeless. Leal is quoted:

A lot of the active-duty people are getting out even though they don’t have a plan. They’re so fed up after five to six deployments. They say, ‘I don’t care what I do when I get out, I’ll just figure it out when I get out, but I know I don’t want to do this any more.’ That’s what I’m running into.

House the Homeless previously called attention to the efforts of George Taylor, who searches the byways of Florida with the object of rescuing veterans.

Shad Meshad founded the National Veterans Foundation and is himself a retired medical officer. Under his guidance, teams comb the Los Angeles area twice a week, looking for the lost. Journalist Siri Srinivas writes:

Meshad says that the VA’s estimate of homeless veterans may be a mere fraction of the actual numbers – he speculates that veteran homelessness may be five times the problem that the VA acknowledges.

Housed people who do volunteer work or interact informally with the chronically homeless may form a vague suspicion that all the vets on the streets are not officially accounted for. But when professional experts believe that the veterans experiencing homelessness are chronically undercounted, the whole situation begins to look even more serious. Currently, the number in just one city, Los Angeles, is estimated to be around 6,000. How many is that? If you lived in L.A. and had time each day to meet with one homeless vet, and listen to his or her story, that number would supply you with 16+ years of daily coffee dates.

Reactions?

Source: “Many Veterans, Especially the Homeless, Simply Avoid VA System, KFBK.com, undated
Source: “Fewer homeless vets this year, but advocacy group sees ‘alarming’ rise in younger ex-service members.” NBCNews.com, 12/10/12
Source: “’They don’t care’: how a homeless army veteran was forgotten by the VA,” TheGuardian.com, 11/11/14
Image by waferboard

Last time, House the Homeless paid respect to several people who made life better for people experiencing homelessness, and who passed away recently. Fortunately, many such heroes are still alive and at work among us.

In mid-2012, Ray Castellani served his one millionth sandwich to residents of Skid Row in Los Angeles, under the auspices of the nonprofit group he founded in 1987. For many years, Castellani was tethered to this life mission by empathy cultivated by three aspects of his own earlier years: as a military veteran, a recovering alcoholic and an occasional Skid Row homeless person himself. When the former Marine started to make a good living from painting houses and from the occasional acting job, he was prompted by spiritual convictions to give back.

During the years when the Frontline Foundation operated at its peak, it made and served more than 6,000 meals every month. In 1990, when the group’s truck was stolen, that well-publicized crime brought an outpouring of generosity from the community. In 1995, Castellani was summoned to Washington to receive the President’s Service Award, which is the most significant prize a volunteer can get.

Ups and downs

With the economic recession, donors cut down their giving significantly, and the foundation had to close its Van Nuys facility. But the day was saved by a generous donation from a storage company, so despite financial setbacks (and two heart attacks), Castellani continued to deliver as much food as he could, as often as he could, to the inhabitants of L.A.’s scruffiest district.

As recently as March of 2013, he was still active at age 80, and friends organized a celebrity golf tournament to raise money for Frontline Foundation. The photo depicts one of the birthdays he celebrated, with a little help from his friends, on Skid Row. Daily News writer Susan Abram describes another occasion when the longtime activist was interviewed:

On a recent day at his home, Castellani said he was awaiting a volunteer to bring him some ingredients for the sandwiches, likely hundreds of them, he’ll serve on Skid Row today. He’ll have tuna fish, peanut butter, and egg salad sandwiches, along with some chips and candies. He likes to give the homeless a choice, he said, because they have so few.

In Dallas, David “the SoupMan” Timothy has been serving the homeless for ten years. An interview with KERA News reporters Courtney Collins and Rick Holter revealed that Timothy’s own childhood was blighted by food insecurity. He pointed out that hunger is hard enough to deal with, but the really painful part is when a person doesn’t know when or if there will ever be anything to eat again.

Normally the SoupMobile sets up near a city park, but on Christmas Eve, Timothy hosts a gala at a downtown hotel. For this special occasion, as many as 2,500 volunteers help out with an event that creates a special holiday for 500 people experiencing homelessness. There is a huge banquet, with gifts of new clothes and other necessities, and the guests stay overnight so that “when they wake up on Christmas morning, it’s in a warm, safe bed.” Of course this haven is only temporary, but the following week Timothy and the SoupMobile are back on the streets again along with the disenfranchised poor. He told the news team:

Every day when we feed the homeless, not just feeding their stomachs, but we feel like in a very powerful way that we’re feeding their souls with some hope and some caring and some love and compassion. And we just think that makes a real long-lasting difference.

Tomy Bewick, a man with a reputation as one of Toronto’s best slam poets, demonstrates that Canadians also have compassion. Several years ago he established an annual grassroots initiative called Straight to the Streets, which collects winter clothing for distribution to people experiencing homelessness. Workers also buy or put together “survival kits” containing socks, gloves, scarves, hygiene products, water bottles and other useful items. Writer KJ Mullins makes an interesting point about the event:

Giving to others may seem like the main focus of Straight to the Streets but it’s not. It’s taking the time to interact with another person. For many of the volunteers it was the first time that they had a true respectful conversation with someone living on the streets. Those conversations help to change lives. The lives changed are those of the volunteers who finish the day wanting to do more.

Straight to the Streets shows that one man’s decision to make a difference does just that… Once a person can see that they, a single person, can make a difference in the world they want to continue helping others. It’s a never ending circle of good.

Reactions?

Source: “Ray Castellani serves up his one millionth sandwich to homeless,” DailyNews.com, 05/12/12
Source: “The SoupMan On Making Christmas Bright For 500 Homeless Men, Women and Children,” KERANews.org, 12/24/13
Source: “Op-Ed: One man’s vision — Straight to the homeless of Toronto,” DigitalJournal.com, 12/16/12
Image by Frontline Foundation

Last week, House the Homeless deplored the mismanagement of a certain project, and it turns out there is more to say. Here are some excerpts from the official government webpage:

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) has founded a National Call Center for Homeless Veterans hotline…
Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
You will be connected to a trained VA staff member.
Homeless Veterans will be connected with the Homeless Point of Contact at the nearest VA facility.
Contact information will be requested so staff may follow-up.

Thanks to Office of the Inspector General, and the investigative journalism practiced by WNDU-TV, several things became evident regarding the project’s first year of operation. As we mentioned, the “trained counselors” were missing in action during many of their scheduled work hours, and didn’t do a heck of a lot even when they showed up.

The most outrageous discovery was that over 20,000 calls were relegated to a bank of answering machines, and 13,000 veterans were never called back because (supposedly) their messages could not be understood or because they did not leave contact information.

Verbal Deconstruction

Let’s parse this sentence: “The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) has founded a National Call Center for Homeless Veterans hotline.” Consulting several dictionaries, we find that a “hotline” is universally agreed to have certain characteristics. As a means of communication, a hotline is direct, immediate, and in constant operational readiness. Also, the caller is likely to be in crisis. Nowhere in any definition of “hotline” do the words “answering machine” appear.

Now, for the most diabolical aspect of the whole sorry tale. Who are the clients? Veterans with serious and even life-threatening problems. What is their situation? They live on the streets or in shelters or transitional housing. It’s all there in the project title: “National Call Center for Homeless Veterans.”

Another Definition

Homeless means without a residence or permanent abode – in short, without a home. And for many of these homeless veterans, the only way they can access the help line is by leaving a message on an answering machine and waiting to be called back. Called back where, and at what number, and when? Most shelters kick everybody out at the crack of dawn. Sure, in a large urban area a day center with a phone may be open, where there is a slight possibility of receiving a return call – if it isn’t mealtime, or if someone else isn’t tying up the line with their own crisis.

At least in the old days, there would be a phone booth, or a pay phone attached to the wall of a laundromat or pool hall, where a person could stay, hoping for the phone to ring. Eventually, the message-leaver would have to go find a place to pee or would be chased away for looking suspicious. Try to find a phone booth now, or any spot where a person experiencing homelessness can hang around all day, every day, waiting for some VA “counselor” to call back.

But Don’t They All Have Cell Phones Now?

Contrary to popular belief, all street people do not have cell phones. Some do, and manage to figure out how to renew the service without a bank account, and cleverly find ways to recharge their devices. Some did have cell phones, but they were stolen by other street people or by thugs from the allegedly more decent housed population, or ruined by water damage, or just plain lost. Or thrown away by police officers, with the rest of their belongings, in what the housed people call a “sweep.”

Speaking of which, check out the news from Tucson, Arizona, which generously allows people experiencing homelessness to sleep on the sidewalks that border a certain park – as long as they don’t step inside the park, which can get them arrested. So can owning more than three items. That’s right, a homeless person is legally allowed to possess a blanket, a bedroll, and a beverage. Period. It’s an ordinance that leaves no room for a phone.

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless Veterans,” VA.gov, undated
Source: “Court: Confiscation rules at Tucson park unfair,” Tuscon.com, 12/26/14
Image by DaveBleasdale

At this time of year we hear about memorials being held in more than 150 American cities for the people experiencing homelessness who died during the year. Equally sad is the loss of people who spent their lives helping. For the first person mentioned here, it’s necessary to go back a little farther to the fall of the previous year when a humble nun from the Daughters of Charity died in Albany, N.Y., at the age of 84. She was Sister Mary Rose McGeady, former president of Covenant House.

The organization’s current president and CEO, Kevin M. Ryan, took on the task of writing about his predecessor, calling her “our greatest leader and champion.” At the age of 19, she had started her career by working in a home for destitute and abandoned children. In 1990, her Covenant House assignment began with the difficult task of restoring the reputation and efficacy of an organization disgraced by inept management.

Sister Mary Rose spent 13 years as Covenant House president, starting new programs and persuading powerful secular leaders to see things her way, to the point where six countries served lost young people through crisis centers, outreach programs and long-term residences. By the time she died, Covenant House was affecting the lives of 57,000 children per year.

Ryan describes how Sister Mary Rose’s deathbed was surrounded by pictures of the kids she had helped, as well as letters from them. Ryan says:

She was the Mother Teresa of street children, a Holy tornado of determination and compassion. She lived and died every day with the successes and failures of our kids … and she saw God in the tired faces of beautiful, forgotten kids.

Because she was so good at dispensing love and respect, personally and through the charity she ran, thousands of children were able to thrive, and to learn what for many were extremely difficult skills — how to trust, how to accept care and kindness, how to respect and value themselves…. There can be no greater legacy of love.

January of 2013 was brutal, with news of the deaths of two major figures published on the same day, and then a third only two days later.

Carol Walter, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, died at the age of 53. Described as relentless, fearless, unwavering and “one of a kind,” she always stayed focused on the importance of getting people housed as soon as possible. Since her teen years, when she insisted on attending an alternative high school that gave her activism more scope, Walter had been tuned in to the rights of minority groups. After college she worked in New York City and acquired a crack cocaine habit, and then dealt with it by attending a rehab program. Anne M. Hamilton, writing for The Courant, says:

Back in Connecticut, Walter lived in a halfway house for a while, and worked at Columbus House in New Haven, then as associate executive director at the Shelter for the Homeless in Stamford. She became director of the Stewart B. McKinney Shelter in Hartford, where she dealt with the myriad of problems that cause and perpetuate homelessness.

Needless to say, the background of personal experience was of great value to Carol Walter’s interactions with street people. Professor Dennis Culhane wrote of her, “She was certainly one of the most effective and creative advocates in this country, whose loss will be felt for many years to come.”

In Port Orange, Fla., Sue Benton died at 67 after a long career of teaching Sunday School and collecting from fellow parishioners the items needed by people experiencing homelessness. The First United Methodist Church has a cold-weather shelter called Room at the Inn, where Benton made sure guests got more than rest and food. She began modestly by suggesting that parishioners bring back bars of soap and bottles of shampoo from hotels where they stayed on vacation. Eventually the collection of toiletries and hygiene items was so successful that a Daytona Beach shelter could also be supplied.

Another sad loss was the death of Ann Marie Tarinelli, the Connecticut woman who spent many years caring for people experiencing homelessness. She started a nonprofit foundation, recruited other volunteers, and collected clothing and other items that strangers would leave in bins outside her home. Food was the big donation item, and Ms. Tarinelli made home-cooked meals, then traveled on Sundays to parts of Bridgeport where the young and healthy feared to venture, and fed hundreds of hungry people. The cook, who lived to be 75, was especially known for her Thanksgiving dinners.

In March, we lost Dr. Daniel H. Dietrich, who was named Physician of the Year by the Nebraska Medical Association a dozen years ago. In 1988 he helped found a mobile medical clinic, an 18-foot motor home called the Hopemobile that served the disadvantaged and homeless people of the Omaha area. Dr. Dietrich’s area of expertise was in recruiting other health care professionals as volunteers.

Earlier this month, a memorial was held in Boulder, Colo., to remember not only the 15 homeless people who died there in the past year, but three activists who provided support and service — Rev. Deacon Donald Burt, Dr. Peg Rider and Bruce A. Enstad. Such events, expressing a community’s love for people who serve others, are beautiful and meaningful. But we look forward to the day when they are no longer even necessary.

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless Kids Lose a Mighty Advocate,” HuffingtonPost.com, 10/16/12
Source: “Carol Walter: A Relentless Advocate For Poor, Homeless In Connecticut ,” Courant.com, 01/14/13
Source: “Sue Benton had a passion for children, homeless,” News-JournalOnline.com, 01/14/13
Source: “Trumbull woman who fed the homeless dies,” CTPost.com, 01/16/13
Source: “Dr Daniel H. Dietrich,” FindaGrave.com, 03/30/13
Source: “Ceremony to mark Boulder County’s 2013 homeless deaths,” DailyCamera.com, 12/20/13
Image by Bill McChesney

It is the season of fun and jollity and celebration and family togetherness and all that good stuff, and what a bummer, House the Homeless is talking gloom and doom. Here’s the thing: the veterans who cope with these obstacles do not get a day off. Their pain and distress exist every day of the year, while the agencies set up to help them, paid for by the already overstressed taxpayers of America, perform abysmally.

Thousands of veterans are on the streets or in shelters, while others are poised to become homeless if they do not soon receive the help promised to them by Uncle Sam when they signed on the dotted line and raised their oath-taking hands.

In mid-2012 the Veterans Administration opened the Homeless Hotline Call Center, at a cost of $3 million per year. Its mission was to provide homeless and at-risk vets with information about housing, healthcare, training programs, and employment opportunities. Sadly, the Office of the Inspector General found discrepancies which WNDU-TV formatted as bullet points for easy comprehension:

• The OIG found that of the nearly 80,000 phone calls made to the hotline, there were roughly 40,500 missed opportunities…
• The Inspector General could not account for a significant amount of the counselors’ time.
• Counselors often did not log in or did not spend the entire day logged into the Call Center telephone system.
• Counselors who worked the night shift were not logged into the telephone system and were unavailable to answer calls an average of 4 hours each night.

Other news sources offer details and reactions. For FreeBeacon.com, CJ Ciaramella notes that in fiscal 2013, the first full year of operation, the hotline failed miserably. Hotline staff was unable to even answer more than 21,000 calls from homeless veterans. Another 3,000 provided all the required information to be referred to a VA medical facility, but never received referrals. (50,000 referrals were made, but as for quality control monitoring or followup – forget it.)

Apparently, that $3 million bought a slew of answering machines and not much else, except for 60 so-called counselors who have better things to do than actually answer calls or provide counseling. The “missed opportunities” occur when callers are not referred to medical facilities, or when cases are closed for no discernible reason. Arnaldo Rodgers of Veterans News Now reports that in 2013, nearly 80,000 incoming calls were logged by the system.

A bit of rough math shows that to be 219 calls per day. Divided by 60 workers, that’s 3.65 or nearly 4 entire phone calls per day to be handled by each counselor. Sure, people get days off – which might raise the number to perhaps 6 calls per day for the ones on duty. So, this big, elaborate, expensive system invented by the most powerful entity on earth, the U.S. government, cannot manage to have the needs of 6 clients per day handled by the average employee? Come on, that’s only 3 before lunch and 3 more between then and quitting time.

It Gets Worse

Apparently, that paltry accomplishment is too much to ask, because some 21,000 callers never even got as far as a human contact, but were left to tell their tales of woe to answering machines. So they left messages asking for return calls, 13,000 of which were never made because “messages were inaudible or callers didn’t leave contact information.” Really? Really?

Sure, inaudible messages happen to the best of us – especially when cell phones are involved. But here is a pertinent question. Doesn’t modern telephone technology – and Uncle Sam can afford the best – provide a method of determining from what number a call was placed? We bet it does.

If the caller is too sick or weak to speak up properly and leave a coherent message, it just might be a high-priority call that needs to be answered with the utmost haste. Maybe the troubled veteran is operating on 30% lung capacity, or has PTSD or a head injury, or suicidal intentions, or didn’t get his lips sewn back on correctly. If the vet can’t be easily heard or understood – what is to stop the alleged “counselor” at other end from calling back?

“Shameful” is Not Too Strong a Word

The title of counselor implies a certain amount of sympathy and understanding. When a message does not include callback information, what prevents the “counselor” from retrieving the phone number from the all-knowing machine and calling back? Is it laziness? Are they playing video games or watching porn? Do they have a punitive attitude toward the veterans whose calls go unreturned, thinking it serves them right for not leaving a proper message?

Let’s give everybody, including ourselves, a holiday gift by holding lawmakers responsible to fix this. No, not just throw more taxpayers’ money at the VA, like the $17 billion emergency bill in July. No. Somebody needs to figure out how to make these people do their jobs. If the most powerful government on earth can’t keep a bunch of bureaucrats at their desks, engaging in productive activity, then something is incredibly, unconscionably, inconceivably wrong.

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless veteran hotline audit reveals multiple failures”, WNDU.com, 12/11/14
Source: “Busy Signal: Thousands of Homeless Veterans Couldn’t Reach VA Call Center”, FreeBeacon.com, 12/15/14
Source: “Hotline to Help Homeless Veterans Falls Short”, VeteransNewsNow.com, 12/15/14
Image by Torley

The capital of Texas is such a happening place, and exemplary in so many ways, and of course the home of House the Homeless. Though the organization’s concerns are national in scope, it’s only natural for this blog to concentrate on Austin now and then, and not everything would fit in last week’s edition. In fact it won’t all fit here either, but what a year it’s been! 2013 started out with the traditional HtH Thermal Underwear Drive, which reminds us that another one is underway!

The South by Southwest festival is huge in Austin, and in 2012 a marketing ploy involving homeless people stirred up a lot of controversy. An ad agency hired people from ARCH (Austin Resource Center for the Homeless) to walk around and sell access to mobile wifi hotspots. According to a spokesperson from Front Steps, the group which currently administers ARCH, 11 of the 13 participants are now housed.

What SXSW offered homeless workers in 2013 was the expansion of a small but ambitious program from one ice cream vending cart last year to four vending carts this year. Mark Horvath reported:

Today I was invited to a training and started to talk to a few of the homeless vendors. To my surprise, they are not living in a shelter. All of them are sleeping outside. To me, that makes this program even so much cooler. See, often opportunities like this go to sheltered homeless. Providing a social enterprise for street homeless people takes a lot of trust on everyone’s part. That trust alone may be better at restoring a life than the money these vending carts will generate.

The spring saw a return of Austin’s Public Order initiative, whose stated object is to curb violent crime in the downtown area using the services of undercover police officers. When interviewed by Fox News, House the Homeless founder Richard R. Troxell said:

It’s clearly a coincidence, but it’s a coincidence that keeps occurring every time we have another event, whether it’s South by Southwest or we have Formula 1 or whatever…. It’s ludicrous to even suggest that there’s even a connection between public solicitation and violent crime.

The Austin police have been breaking up an average of two temporary settlements per week in the Barton Creek Greenbelt, cheered on by headlines such as “Homeless Camps Lurking in Austin Parks” (from KEYETV) and promising, “One camp at a time, APD will continue to keep the parks safe making sure your hike is just that.”

In September, upwards of 400 homeless advocates gathered in Austin for the Texas Conference on Ending Homelessness. In conjunction with the event, Pat LaMarche wrote about an interesting organization called Art from the Streets, through which homeless artists have been selling artwork for 20 years. Here is an interesting side note on how obstacles are constantly erected on the path to getting everybody housed:

HUD regulations changed this year. They now require that agencies prove their clients don’t have anywhere to live. Luckily, Art on the Streets doesn’t receive HUD funding and the participating artists don’t have to jump the often out of reach administrative hoop of proving a negative in order to participate.

The group Mobile Loaves and Fishes is in the process of creating what one local business owner called “the very first ‘yes, in my backyard’ project!” although, being 10 miles outside Austin, it’s technically in Webberville’s backyard. At any rate, the backyard “sits on a 27-acre master-planned community and will provide affordable, sustainable housing for approximately 200 chronically homeless disabled people in Central Texas.”

The plan is for a gated community made up of tiny storybook houses and tents and mobile homes, each with a garden around it. There will also be a community garden, a medical facility, an interfaith chapel, an outdoor movie theater and a woodworking shop. The residents will pay low rent from their disability benefits, and House the Homeless is poised to help them through the red tape of the system. Meanwhile both agencies, and others, are concerned with helping homeless Austinites through yet another unexpectedly cold winter.

In March, Richard R. Troxell announced an ambitious project. Andrea Ball wrote:

Troxell, 62, is crafting a piece he calls “The Homecoming,” a life-sized statue depicting a scene between a homeless Vietnam veteran, his young daughter and a “bag lady,” as Troxell calls her. The idea, he said, is to present an emotional snapshot of life on the streets. Ultimately, he’d like to see the work displayed somewhere in Austin…. It will take a lot of money to make the project happen, probably $200,000, Troxell said. He hopes to raise the cash through donations and sales of 12-inch replicas of the sculpture.

If realized, the sculpture will take up a 17-by-8-foot space in the park near the Lady Bird Hike and Bike Trail, where the Homeless Memorial service is held each autumn. In the ensuing months, there was controversy. Ed Morrissey wrote:

Art, however, has a lasting impact and message, one that might well provoke enough attention and concern to prompt more public but hopefully private efforts to reduce homelessness and poverty for a much longer time. That is why art and culture matters, why it is … upstream of politics, and why engagement with it is crucial for public policy and development. If Austin has the cash to do this without soaking taxpayers or shorting services (which is a big if), it’s not an irrational option.

Sculptor Timothy P. Schmalz has taken an interest in the project and believes it can be completed for around half the original estimate, or about $100,000. In November, Schmalz visited Rome, where he presented to Pope Francis his sculpture depicting Jesus as a figure asleep on a park bench.

Two weeks ago, Pope Francis blessed another statue by Schmalz at about the same time Schmalz and Richard signed a contract to sculpt Troxell’s statue of homelessness. And one last thing: the Pope was named Time‘s Man of the Year in part for his efforts to shape thinking about the world’s poor.

Reactions?

Source: “Homeless Who Participated in SXSW Wi-Fi Stunt Now Have Housing ,” ABCNews.go.com, 03/13/13
Source: “At SXSW Helping Homeless People Is Delicious With Street Treats,” HuffingtonPost,com, 03/10/13
Source: “Is APD’s initiative targeting crime or the homeless?,” MyFoxAustin.com, 03/04/13
Source: “Homeless Advocates Cooperating: It’s an Art Form,” HuffingtonPost,com, 09/27/13
Source: “Homeless To Be Housed In Tiny House Village In Austin,” Samuel-Warde.com, 11/20/13
Source: “Homelessness memorialized: Advocate making statue to depict life …,” Statesman.com, 03/02/13
Source: “Should Austin spend $175K on statue honoring homeless … or on the homeless?,” Hotair.com, 08/29/13
Source: “’Homeless Jesus’ sculpture presented to Pope Francis,” News.va, 11.20/13
Image by Woody Hibbard