When in Seattle, I peruse Real Change; in Portland I keep up with Street Roots. Both newspapers, of course, are by and for homeless folks, and they regularly serve up readable news not found elsewhere. The Rose City version is particularly tireless in hanging on to sticky constituent issues – like badly crafted loitering laws or under-trained private rent-a-cops. The paper's terrier-like persistence is wonderful to behold.
I recently started following the bookmark-worthy Street Roots blog. On my latest spin through it, I checked out the Street Roots wiki, which has a very good resource list for everything from food and clothing to housing and legal help. The wiki format makes it slightly more user friendly than the Real Change counterpart guide, which nonetheless is still a good resource.
All this info can be relevant, even to those of us with roofs overhead. I figure that pretty soon most of us will give up on the usual New Year's resolutions and just might consider trying out some of the ideas for helping adults and children who are homeless. A good idea-provoker is the list maintained by King County's Committee to End Homelessness.
Even better is a version of 50 ideas that came out of Seattle some years ago, and which lives on on a variety of sites and blogs. One or more of these ideas will work nicely regardless of the doer's zip code, politics, energy level, or wallet thickness.
