Homeless Helpers

( – promoted by TheMomCat)

Mystery donor rents rooms for homeless in Colo.

December 25, 2009

AP

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Fifteen homeless people are getting hotel rooms for Christmas, thanks to a mystery donor who paid for the rooms.

Employees at the Express Inn in Colorado Springs say a woman paid $640 Tuesday for four rooms for a week. She insisted the rooms be given to homeless men and women camping along Fountain Creek.

She gave the name “Linda Craft,” but the Gazette newspaper could not find anyone by that name. She said God told her to buy the rooms.

For volunteers, canceled dinner for homeless was a call to serve

December 26, 2009

by Cassie Clark

Dallas Morning News

Offering meals to the homeless on Christmas Day was an annual tradition for Cornerstone Baptist Church in South Dallas until this year, when a money shortage forced church officials to cancel just weeks before Christmas.

But thanks to the generosity of a Richardson church, the hot holiday meals were served Christmas morning.

More than 60 volunteers from The Heights Baptist Church drove the icy roads early Friday to the Cornerstone soup kitchen on Grand Avenue just south of downtown.

A Warm, Safe Holiday for Homeless Youth

by Susan Dominus

December 25, 2009

NY Times

It’s hard to wake up teenagers in the morning. It’s even harder to wake up homeless teenagers. They stay out late. They sleep poorly. They have bad dreams. And they may have nowhere to go.

The Overnight shelter in Harlem has a 9 a.m. deadline for its 18 guests, ages 16 to 21, to be up and out, and rousing them is one of the most stressful aspects of the job for her staff, said Liza Zaretsky, the director of the shelter, which is run by Streetwork, a division of the Safe Horizon victim assistance organization.

Then there is Christmas.

Once-homeless man ‘rescued’ from streets isn’t there yet

Chicago Sun-Times

December 25, 2009

by Stephanie Zimmerman

The story could have been short and sweet:

Businessman meets homeless man, decides to help, raises money, a life is saved …

But real life is seldom so simple.

As the businessman puts it now, 20 months after he met the homeless man, “It’s not as easy as raising a couple bucks and putting someone in a house.”

Streetwise

(this is the organization referred to in the previous article)

StreetWise is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to empower men and women who currently are, or at risk of becoming homeless. StreetWise accomplishes this mission by publishing a weekly magazine which is sold to these men and women(whom we refer to as “vendors”), and they in turn sell it on the street for a profit. The publication is not a hand-out, but rather an opportunity for these vendors to become financially self-sufficient through gainful employment.

Family, formerly homeless, thankful for Christmas miracle

by Kyle Wind

Daily Freeman

Kingston

December 25, 2009

KINGSTON – Last Christmas, Jonathan Dole and his family had gone from riches to rags.

Dole (not his real name) was a paralegal assistant, and the attorney for whom he worked died, leaving him to hunt for jobs in the worst employment market in recent memory.

Meanwhile, a judge evicted his family from the small hotel in Hudson they had been leasing with the option to buy because the owner reneged on the deal after receiving a better offer.

Mobile Loaves & Fishes provides hope to homeless

December 23, 2009

by Dane Anderson

Westlake Picayune

Just after dawn on Christmas morning, most Americans will be rustling in their sleep, dreaming of the treats under the tree bearing their names. Alan Graham and his family will be doing something different.

Just as they have done for the last 10 years, Graham and his family will be hitting the streets with a league of volunteers, offering a warm breakfast and friendship to Austin’s homeless. Graham is the founder of the West Lake Hills-based Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a social outreach ministry for the homeless and indigent working poor based out of Saint John Neumann Catholic Church. The group’s mission is to provide food, clothing and a moment of dignity to those who live on the streets of Austin, San Antonio, New Orleans, Nashville and Providence, R.I.

Every Christmas morning, Graham and a legion of about 90 volunteers load up their trucks and hand out coffee, tacos, boiled eggs, pig-in-a-blanket and any other type of morning food they have to offer. The 70-90 volunteers disperse, taking their food and their friendship downtown, and to weekly motels and housing projects in north, south and east Austin.

Church sells window to keep shelter doors open

by Shannon Moriarty

homelessness.change.org

December 23, 2009

A small church in Brattleboro, Vermont is learning the hard way that desperate times call for desperate measures. With fledgling funds, the congregation faced a difficult decision: cut off services to the homeless, or sell an invaluable piece of church history?

ABC News reported last night that members of the church have chosen to part with a valuable Tiffany’s stained glass window that has been displayed in the church for over 100 years. They believe selling the artwork will raise $75,000, all of which will support keeping the doors to the church’s shelter to open to the area’s homeless population.

The need for their community homeless shelter is greater than ever; in the past year, the number of families and individuals at the shelter have more than quadrupled, according to church officials. Though the money is supporting an important cause, it does not make parting with such an important piece of church history any easier.

UPDATE:

Cash casts light on Vt. church’s stained glass

December 26, 2009

BRATTLEBORO (AP) – A struggling Vermont church’s wrenching decision to sell off a Tiffany stained glass window to raise money so it can stay open has prompted a flood of donations from around the country.

Ron Andrews, head of collections for Brattleboro’s First Baptist Church, says a trickle of donations began earlier this month after The Associated Press carried a story about the church’s situation. Now they’ve grown to a flood, with more than 100 donations flowing in just in the early hours of Christmas Day.

Andrews says it’s unclear whether the plan to sell the century-old Tiffany stained glass window will change – it would take another vote of church leaders. Meanwhile, the donations will go to support the church’s homeless shelter.

LAPD to hand out 10,000 pairs of shoes

by Andrew Blankstein

December 25, 2009

L.A. Times

In the season of giving, authorities have come up with a way to help the homeless through items they have confiscated: Hand out about 10,000 pairs of counterfeit athletic shoes.

The shoes, which include knockoff Nike and Adidas sneakers minus the labels, were seized for trademark infringement by the Los Angeles Police Department’s anti-piracy unit.

The LAPD, working in conjunction with the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, plans to distribute sneakers Monday to 1,800 residents at the Union Rescue Mission downtown. Several winter homeless shelters in Culver City, Glendale, downtown and West Los Angeles will also receive shoes.