Overcrowded Homeless Shelters Nationwide Look For Help This Winter

Shelters across the country are doing everything they can to provide homeless individuals with warm beds this winter season. In Arizona, they're opening overflow shelters. For Coloradans, that means bringing in extra beds. Florida declared last Tuesday and Wednesday "cold nights," which means shelters can't turn anyone away.

Most importantly, they're all asking for your help.

In Phoenix, Ariz., shelters are seeing a different demographic as temperatures dip below 40 degrees.

Irenee Augustine, of Central Arizona Shelter Services, told FOX:

"We're seeing a new face of homelessness where children and families are becoming homeless." She said there's even a waiting list for families hoping to have shelter.

WATCH:

Denver's homeless need help surviving temperatures as cold as 40-50 degrees below zero. The Denver Post reported Saturday that Denver's Road Home, a nonprofit that advocates for the homeless, was prepared this weekend to help:

The Road Home emergency plan was in place Friday night, and plans are to use it tonight, bringing the total number of beds, cots or mats available to 1,300. Anyone who doesn't have a place to stay after those beds are filled is offered a motel voucher.

In Orlando, temperatures dropped below freezing last week for three consecutive nights -- an anomaly in central Florida. Though the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida was able to provide mattresses and shelter from the cold for local homeless people, donations like coats, blankets hat and gloves are still in demand, according to WKMG.

Visit your local homeless shelter to see how you can help, or visit Central Arizona Shelter Services, Denver's Road Home, or Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida to make a donation.

Comments

[SkreetGil1]

03:53 AM on 01/25/2011

What I don't understand is that there are these lavish churches everywhere. And they are pretty much empty most of the time. Except for mass or services. God, have some compassion! Let people stay there!

It's god house right? So why aren't they open to the homeless. Talk about loving gods people.

But we mustn't soil the carpet. God forbid. Right.

[GreenPowerMan]

09:45 PM on 01/13/2011

Declare an emergency and open up the countless homes foreclosed on by wealthy bankers-- homes that sit empty while bankers and wealthy corporate executives sit in their mansions buying and selling human beings to the highest bidder.

[Jeremyewilliams]

09:22 PM on 01/05/2011

Awful.

[LucidPanther]

08:46 PM on 01/05/2011

Ronald Regan launched class warfare on the middle class and began the redistribution of welath form the middle to the top -triclke down economics he called it. Others called it voodoo economics.

Before then, homelessness was rare and limited mostly to skid row alcoholics and hobos who chose that lifestyle. Reagan gave us the phenomenon of mass homelessness with entire families, the mentally ill and disabled, and veterans living on our streets.

[Oscar Nunez]

07:00 AM on 01/05/2011

How sad is this when we sent all kinds of money all over the world to help other countries in trouble and we don't take care of home. Goverment needs to provide job training and drug & mental health programs to help these people.

[LucidPanther]

08:40 PM on 01/05/2011

We spend only a pittance on foreign aid. We spend the vast amount of our welath on weapons of war and on killing foreign women and children ( collateral damage ) in Afghanistan and Pakistan with drones.

America spends a higher percentage of it's GDP on war than any other nation on earth; we spend more on the military than China and Russia combined.

We can destroy the planet 100 times over but we keep adding more bombs.

The only time we "help other countries in trouble" is when we want something in return - like suing their airspace for military purposes, or opening up their markets to our corporations, or installing a dictatorship friendly to us.

[medic628]

12:14 AM on 01/05/2011

Who needs a break? Wall Street? The top ten percent of the country? Big business to send more jobs overseas? That whole trickle down thing the repubs want us to continue to accept is working really good. Is it not?

[TeeLolly]

11:41 PM on 01/04/2011

How much longer will it be before the Republicans start publicly advocating that we just let these people freeze to d e a t h ?
 

[jojack66]

10:08 PM on 01/04/2011

My older sister is dying of Inflammatory Breast Cancer.My younger sister and a friend of hers,as well as another family friend did the 3 day walk for the cure.Just those three raised and contributed $15,000.00 and walked 60 miles.The amount of money this organization raises is beyond belief.I am just angry that any money we all raised and contributed,in honor of my beautiful sister who's life is ebbing away slowly, is being used in anyway other than as intended by contributers.Shame on you SBK.I am truly appalled.

[jane8877]

07:53 PM on 01/04/2011

Wait until they deeply cut or end SS and all other safety nets, there will be tens of millions more homeless, mostly elderly, sick and disabled, but that of course is what the cat food commission was picked to do. It will be the same with hunger. As Food Stamps get cut millions more will be trying to get food at food pantries that will never be able to keep up. The dying, as Medicare and Medicaid get cut to the bone or ended, will be dying in the streets as the wealthy step over them.

Third world nation???? America is going to become a country where 98% of us will wish we had it as good as third world nations.

FDR and LBJ must be turning over in their graves to watch Democrats tied to the hip with Republicans do this to us and undo everything for which these two caring Democrats who genuinely cared for the middle class and the poor fought.

[oilfield]

09:43 PM on 01/04/2011

you would be surprised at how fast expenses would go down if no one had money.....energy would stay high but rent would drop dramatically. i think section 8 keeps rents artificially high for anyone that is a middle class working renter.

[gwilder]

06:40 PM on 01/04/2011

Obama has signed quite a few bills into law, I'd like to see him sign a bill condeming and eradicating homelessness of every kind.

[jane8877]

08:01 PM on 01/04/2011

No, those aren't bills Obama really wants or will fight for. A president who forms a commission made up of mostly right wing entitlement hating, war and taxes cuts for the rich loving people to head it, a President who is planning at least two cuts to Food Stamps is not a President who cares about helping the poor.

Think about it, Obama has mentioned the middle class even though he's done little to help them but when was the last time you heard him mention the poor? Obama runs from the word poor the same way he runs from the words Liberal and Progressive and not just Obama but almost all Democrats. Most of the newly elected Democrats like NYS's new governor only talk about not taxing the rich and then follow it with the "Hard choices" line about the poor having to sacrifice while those that have it all never do. Then of course these "Democrats" also throw all the blame on unions, IOW, working people.

With the exception of a very few like Bernie Sanders there are no politicians on either side that GAS about anyone other than WS and those at the very top.

[Manq]

06:28 PM on 01/04/2011

I don't want to ask others to help. I want to help the problem myself.

I would even offer the spare room in my house to a family to stay warm inside from the snow. But I could not risk danger to my family over it.

Perplexed.

[TeeLolly]

11:55 PM on 01/04/2011

I almost took in a homeless woman I met standing in line at a bank years ago. She had a truly tragic story and had been victimized by one person after another. Before offering her my spare room, I took her to lunch, and it was only during a protracted conversation that it became apparent that she had severe mental issues that I wasn't equipped to deal with as a single female living alone out in the boonies. I ended up giving her enough cash for a few nights in a motel, and felt guilty for months for not doing more 

[gwilder]

06:12 PM on 01/04/2011

Obama has signed quite a few bills into law, I'd like to see him sign a bill condeming and eradicating homelessness of any kind.

[Manq]

06:32 PM on 01/04/2011

War on homelessness! Yes!

Oh wait, no money in it.

[TeeLolly]

11:59 PM on 01/04/2011

I'd like to see him do something for poor and working-class people that doesn't primarily benefit corporate and Wall Street execs ... and isn't the token morsel he gets back in exchange for a huge benefit to the wealthy.
 
We need a real progressive in the WH ...

[SEXYLEO]

06:04 PM on 01/04/2011

And Americans yawn...that must be the case, since 'they' keep electing repugs; who care not one iota about American citizens.

No doubt, some of the 'new' homeless, bought the repugklan's crap; racism was more important than a real chance at a comfortable life. Neither American political party seems to really care about America's CITIZENS; but for damn sure the repugs care less. This is where a better educated American citizen would come in handy..it was this same repug party that got us into the 'great depression'.!

[TeeLolly]

12:01 AM on 01/05/2011

It was the same Republican party that, since Reagan, has presided over the dumbing down of the American electorate. Way too many will buy anything Faux tells them, and wouldn't know where to begin if asked to verify the truth of the pablum they swallow every day ...

[edgarcaycedoc]

06:01 PM on 01/04/2011

"Are their no prisons? Are there no workhouses??" This will be the response of the Sunday fundie neanderthal can'tservative RepubliK-K-kants to the news that we need housing for the homeless.

[TeeLolly]

12:01 AM on 01/05/2011

The MSM will be on board as well.

[Latwanda]

05:57 PM on 01/04/2011

No child need be hungry an cold, they all needs a home.!!! why do they not do more to help

[AG creative]

06:40 PM on 01/04/2011

why do they not do more to help?

answer: we = they