As part of its Bearing Witness 2.0 project, the Huffington Post is rounding up a few of the best local stories of the day.
Attila Streyar and his toddler daughter Layla are homeless reports Barbara Grijalva of Tucson's KOLD News, and because he is a single father, Streyar had been turned away from several shelters. "I'm a single dad and I have this baby and we've fallen upon hard times," he said through tears. "I needed some help, just to get shelter. There was no place in this town that I could find that takes care of men with children by themselves."
Streyar found some assistance at the Primavera Foundation, which offers temporary housing, food and relief to struggling families. It operates the only local shelters that will accept single fathers, workers told KOLD. Primavera placed Streyar and his daughter in a motel it uses for temporary family housing.
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Police officers in Kingston, N.Y., are going door to door on their time off to fight impending layoffs, reports Adam Bosch of the Times Herald-Record. The city administration is looking to cut jobs because of budget deficit.
Residents have been eager to sign petitions; already over 1,600 have pledged their support, and the police expect to get 2,500 total signatures by the Nov. 5 budget hearing. "The idea of cutting police here is asinine," said Corteckia Lightfoot, whose 16-year-old son was shot and killed in 2007. "You've got our backs; we've got your backs," she told the cops.
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The state legislature in South Carolina acted Wednesday to send millions of dollars in benefits to the unemployed, reports Yvonne Wenger of the Post and Courier. The state legislature acted to correct an "oversight" that prevented the use of stimulus funds, Wenger reports, extending benefits for five months. About 113,000 residents have exhausted their benefits so far this year.
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Twelve thousand new workers at the CityCenter mega-complex in Las Vegas are in high spirits now that they have new jobs, reports Amanda Finnegan of the Las Vegas Sun. "This is like early Christmas. This is like the best gift I could unwrap for myself," said one man who'd been laid off in February. Nearly 160,000 people applied for the jobs.
HuffPost readers: Seen a good local story? Know of a neighbor going to bizarre lengths to get through the recession? Tell us about it! Email jmhattem@gmail.com.