By guest blogger Joseph Jacques
www.harmonichumanity.org
They stand in front of the grocery store and on highway entrances. They are our nation’s homeless population. Over the last twenty years, homelessness has increased significantly in the US. On any given night, approximately 750,000 men, women, and children are homeless, many of them veterans, most of them unemployed, some of them with families. Some progress has been made across the United States, however, through government subsidized low cost housing, residential health care and substance abuse programs. But, more is needed.
One solution is to help the homeless create income for themselves.
Local street newspapers like The Real Change in Seattle and the Street Sheet in San Francisco and others that operate in large cities offer a product that vendors can find expression in and sell on the street to create income (and hopefully more stable housing) for themselves. San Francisco has had a street sheet for 20 years now – vendors buy the paper for 35 cents and sell it for $1, keeping the profit. The Director of The Coalition on Homelessness –Street Sheet-, Bob Offer-Westort says,
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