Tag: homelessness

According to the Low-Income Housing Coalition, there is no state or county in the United States where someone working full-time at minimum wage can afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. This column explores why that is through one women's personal experience in Las Vegas.

The value of my homeless experience lies not so much in having learned how to live outside — at least not in the geographical sense. The value of my homeless experience lies in having learned how to live outside the box.

This week's Roundup carries several news stories worth reading. We write a regional update on homelessness, the rising hostility on progressive churches, an upcoming event in support of Palestinians, a 65-voice choir coming to Spokane, a unique piece of history about the LDS church and more.

We need to stop mandating people who live outside to housing in situations they would not choose of their own free will. We need to stop focusing on “getting them housed” and start accepting that people have a right to sleep outside on public land, and that homelessness may well be here to stay. 

Andy Pope writes how his point of view evolved from someone who lived inside most of his life to someone who lived outside for 12 years to someone who began to live on the inside again. Each season, he wore a unique pair of glasses through which he saw the world.

I mentioned that on July 17, 2016, I prayed fervently to be released from years of demeaning homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area. I also reported that ten days later, on July 27, 2016, I stepped off a bus in Moscow, Idaho, and have been inside ever since. So how did this remarkable change of circumstance come to pass?

I often compared homelessness to a turnstile at a BART station. I was stuck in the turnstile, as its wheels rolled me rapidly around and around. Eventually, I would be spewed out of the turnstile, on one side of the other: either inside or out.