The Iron Ring

I have been reading (online) the Philadelphia Inquirer's three part
series on homelessness in Philadelphia. It can be found here.


Homeless people used to just feel like part of the fabric of our city. In the last mayoral election, someone named Jesus White turned in his signatures to run and listed his address as St John's hospice.

But I feel lately that the problem has gotten out of hand. Homeless people can be found sleeping in the baggage claim at the airport (while the police try to control traffic outside). Just yesterday morning I found two(presumably) homeless people sleeping in an engineering building on campus. I called security but by the time they came the two had left. I got the feeling from the security people that this was a common occurrence.

According to today's peice, there are approximately 1200 homeless in Philadelphia, costing us roughly $20,000 each per year. And at that rate, we could have them all in programs to find homes and jobs. I will add this to my list of items to talk to Mayor Nutter about soon.