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Chatbot Helps People Facing Homelessness

A British programmer has developed a chatbot to help people find housing after being evicted and to prevent homelessness, The Washington Post's Karen Turner reports. Joshua Browder had already created an online robot for people to challenge their parket tickets in London and New York City.

The DoNotPay bot now allows people to "easily file for government housing without paying a cent." One legal aid attorney, however, told The Post that "tenants often need in-person legal assistance to help them fight eviction from landlords armed with their own lawyers."

Domestic Violence Is Third Leading Cause of Homelessness

The Huffington Post's Melissa Jeltsen has a feature about how women often have to choose between leaving partners who are abusing them and having housing. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, domestic violence is the third leading cause of homelessness among families. Jeltson, who focused her piece on New York City, reports that there are going to be 683 city-run units where families can stay indefinitely. "But in a city of 8 million people, it’s simply not enough to meet the need," Jeltsen writes.

DOJ: Criminalizing the Homeless Sleeping Outside Is Unconstitutional

Civil rights lawyers from the Department of Justice have lambasted a law in Boise, Idaho, that bans people who are homeless from sleeping in public places, The Washington Post's Emily Badger says. The DOJ said in a court filing such laws are unconstitutional when there aren't enough beds for homeless people to sleep indoors: "' When adequate shelter space does not exist, there is no meaningful distinction between the status of being homeless and the conduct of sleeping in public. Sleeping is a life-sustaining activity — i.e., it must occur at some time in some place. If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless.'"

"Things haven't gotten that good in the middle and the top to really lift up the bottom level"

Submitted by Amaris Elliott-Engel on Thu, 11/28/2013 - 12:51

While the American economy has been officially out of recession for four years, social service providers told me for a piece I did for the Stamford Advocate that the need for assistance for the least well-off has not slackened. On this day of Thanksgiving, the need for social services is a reminder to give if you have the means to do so and to be grateful for the means that you do have.

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An excerpt of the story:

Robert M. Arnold, president and CEO of Greenwich-based Family Centers, which provides education, health and human services to children, adults and families in Fairfield County, said the economic recovery has been uneven, and people at the lowest rung of the economic ladder have had the lowest level of recovery.

"Things have to get really better up in the middle and the top to lift up the bottom level," Arnold said. "Things haven't gotten that good in the middle and the top to really lift up the bottom level."

Many people are working jobs on which they can barely subsist, Arnold said.

Jason T. Shaplen, chief executive officer of Stamford-based Inspirica, Inc., one of the largest providers of services to the homeless in Connecticut, said that the demand for his organization's services is at a record level. The number of people living in the street in Connecticut has increased 82 percent in the past three years and the number of homeless people in Greenwich and Stamford increased 45 percent in the past year, according to Shaplen.

Nationally, 100 million Americans live in poverty or live within 50 percent of the poverty line, Shaplen added.

Historically, homelessness was connected to people having mental health problems, substance abuse problems or lack of education, Shaplen said. While all those things still cause people to become homeless, the new driver for homelessness is people being unable to find work or make enough money from their work to meet all of their needs, especially in a housing market as expensive as lower Fairfield County's, Shaplen said.

The winter is an especially hard time for people in poverty in Fairfield County because they have the additional seasonal expenses of heating, warm winter clothing and maintaining vehicles that are not in great repair to survive winter weather, Arnold said.

 

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