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The Congregation of the Mission, abbreviated CM and commonly called the Vincentians or Lazarists, is a Catholic society of apostolic life of pontifical right for men founded by Vincent de Paul. It is associated with the Vincentian Family, a loose federation of organizations that look to Vincent de Paul as their founder or patron.
Homelessness in Canada was not a social problem until the 1980s. The Canadian government housing policies and programs in place throughout the 1970s were based on a concept of shelter as a basic need or requirement for survival and of the obligation of government and society to provide adequate housing for everyone. Public policies shifted away from rehousing in the 1980s in wealthy Western countries like Canada, which led to a de-housing of households that had previously been housed. By 1987, when the United Nations established the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless (IYSH), homelessness had become a serious social problem in Canada. The report of the major 1987 IYSH conference held in Ottawa said that housing was not a high priority for government, and this was a significant contributor to the homelessness problem. While there was a demand for adequate and affordable housing for low income Canadian families, government funding was not available. In the 1980s a "wider segment of the population" began to experience homelessness for the first time – evident through their use of emergency shelters and soup kitchens. Shelters began to experience overcrowding, and demand for services for the homeless was constantly increasing. A series of cuts were made to national housing programs by the federal government through the mid-1980s and in the 1990s. While Canada's economy was robust, the cuts continued and in some cases accelerated in the 1990s, including cuts to the 1973 national affordable housing program. The government solution for homelessness was to create more homeless shelters and to increase emergency services. In the larger metropolitan areas like Toronto the use of homeless shelters increased by 75% from 1988 to 1998. Urban centres such as Montreal, Laval, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary all experienced increasing homelessness.
In the United States, the number of homeless people on a given night in January 2023 was more than 650,000 according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Homelessness has increased in recent years, in large part due to an increasingly severe housing shortage and rising home prices in the United States.
Homeless shelters are a type of service that provides temporary residence for homeless individuals and families. Shelters exist to provide residents with safety and protection from exposure to the weather while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact on the community. They are similar to, but distinguishable from, various types of emergency shelters, which are typically operated for specific circumstances and populations—fleeing natural disasters or abusive social circumstances. Extreme weather conditions create problems similar to disaster management scenarios, and are handled with warming centers, which typically operate for short durations during adverse weather.
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. Founded in 1943 by the Bishops of the United States, the agency provides assistance to 130 million people in more than 110 countries and territories in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Centrepoint is a charity in the United Kingdom which provides accommodation and support to homeless people aged 16–25. The Prince of Wales has been a patron of the organization since 2005; his first patronage. His mother Diana, Princess of Wales, was patron of the organization before she died.
The McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 is a United States federal law that provides federal money for homeless shelter programs. It was the first significant federal legislative response to homelessness, and was passed by the 100th United States Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan on July 22, 1987. The act has been reauthorized several times over the years.
So Others Might Eat (SOME) is a nonprofit organization that provides services to assist those dealing with poverty and homelessness in Washington, D.C. The organization provides affordable housing, job training, counseling and other healthcare services, and daily needs such as food and clothing to the poor and homeless. It spends the largest portion of its annual budget on affordable housing, with a majority of its residents recovering from addiction. SOME describes its mission as helping "our vulnerable neighbors in Washington, DC, break the cycle of homelessness through our comprehensive and transformative services".
Homelessness, also known as houselessness or being unhoused or unsheltered, is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. It includes living on the streets, moving between temporary accommodation with family or friends, living in boarding houses with no security of tenure, and people who leave their homes because of civil conflict and are refugees within their country.
The Clara White Mission (CWM) is a non-profit organization in Jacksonville, Florida, USA, founded by Dr. Eartha M. M. White that advocates for the poor and provides social services. According to its website, "The Clara White Mission is to reduce homelessness through advocacy, housing, job training and employment by partnering with business and local community resources." CWM has created an extensive and diverse network of public and private funding sources.
Project HOME is a nationally recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides housing, opportunities for employment, medical care and education to homeless and low-income persons in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Hockey Helps the Homeless (HHTH) is a volunteer-driven charitable organization established in 1996. HHTH annually hosts Pro-am and Collegiate hockey tournaments in 15 cities across Canada where all funds raised locally will directly make an impact in their communities. HHTH's mission is to leverage Canada's affinity for hockey to raise awareness and financial support for the homeless through education, fundraising, and partnering with solutions-based local homeless support agencies. Over the past 25 years, HHTH has grown into one of the largest funders of homelessness support programs in Canada.
Robert G. Marbut, Jr. is an American homelessness consultant and professor who served as the Executive Director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness from 2019 to 2021 after being appointed by then-President Donald Trump.
The San Francisco Bay Area comprises nine northern California counties and contains five of the ten most expensive counties in the United States. Strong economic growth has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, but coupled with severe restrictions on building new housing units, it has resulted in a statewide housing shortage which has driven rents to extremely high levels. The Sacramento Bee notes that large cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles both attribute their recent increases in homeless people to the housing shortage, with the result that homelessness in California overall has increased by 15% from 2015 to 2017. In September 2019, the Council of Economic Advisers released a report in which they stated that deregulation of the housing markets would reduce homelessness in some of the most constrained markets by estimates of 54% in San Francisco, 40 percent in Los Angeles, and 38 percent in San Diego, because rents would fall by 55 percent, 41 percent, and 39 percent respectively. In San Francisco, a minimum wage worker would have to work approximately 4.7 full-time jobs to be able to spend less than 30% of their income on renting a two-bedroom apartment.
Family Promise is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in the United States, founded by Karen Olson in 1988. Family Promise primarily serves families with children who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, with the mission of "help[ing] homeless and low-income families achieve sustainable independence through a community-based response."
The Foyer housing model is a method of transitional housing for youth that evolved from temporary housing for laborers in Europe. After World War II, foyers were used to provide accommodation for a movement of people from rural France to cities seeking work. The term "foyer" means hearth in French. They later developed to house migrant workers, primarily from Algeria, serving as a path to independent labor and accommodation.
Arise for Social Justice is a grassroots organization focused on furthering the rights of low-income people formed in 1985 in Springfield, Massachusetts. Founding members centered the early activism of the group around their shared identity as women on welfare.
Homelessness in the United States has differing rates of prevalence by state. The total number of homeless people in the United States fluctuates and constantly changes, hence a comprehensive figure encompassing the entire nation is not issued, since counts from independent shelter providers and statistics managed by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development vary greatly. Federal HUD counts hover annually at around 500,000 people. Point-in-time counts are also vague measures of homeless populations and are not a precise and definitive indicator for the total number of cases, which may differ in both directions up or down. The most recent figure for 2019, was 567,715 individuals nationally that experienced homelessness at a point in time during this period.
Columbus, the capital city of Ohio, has a history of social services to provide for low- and no-income residents. The city has many neighborhoods below the poverty line, and has experienced a rise in homelessness in recent decades. Social services include cash- and housing-related assistance, case management, treatment for mental health and substance abuse, and legal and budget/credit assistance.
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