I wonder if Obama really does read The Huffington Post. If so, I hope he sees this since I sincerely doubt I'll be getting an invitation to the White House anytime soon.

When you're poor, everything costs more and that old adage that education is the great equalizer is only...

Homeless. To many that word might as well be a scarlet "H" stamped across your forehead once you end up in it but as I often tell people, it is an experience, not a personality trait. Yes, it's hard to tell people you're homeless but it's even harder to pretend...

Kudos to Tavis Smiley and Cornel West as they embark on their Poverty 2.0 tour but as a homeless mother, I'd like to know when they'll be in Seattle soon, or better yet, the city of Kent. Kent is where I landed after I lost my apartment in April of...

A friend of mine running for public office once asked me what he could do for folks like me and although I know he means well, I don't think he has any idea of what he's really asking. For one thing, we need living wage jobs and plenty of them!...

I had the opportunity to take part in a panel discussion about poverty on HuffPost Live a few days ago and enjoyed it very much. Outside of some minor technical difficulties, I thought the segment went well and wished there was more time to talk about the realities of homelessness....

I run into situations all the time where a family or person in crises gets an ugly awakening when they find out they can't get immediate help to keep them from losing their housing and ending up homeless. They often end up taking a nosedive into depression, anger and eventually...

I find it sad that even among homeless people, there's this warped attitude that someone can be less homeless than anyone else who is not housed. The fact is, homeless is homeless no matter how you try to quantify it. No one person's experience will define everyone's homelessness so it's...

While working on one of my garden plots in Seattle this weekend, an old neighbor stopped to chat for a while and I was stunned to hear him regurgitate the same myths about homelessness I've heard over and over again. It was during this conversation however, that it occurred to...

My name is not hopeless and neither is yours. Regardless of how you came into homelessness, you are still a human being. Keep sharing your experiences until the truth about homelessness becomes common knowledge -- because the way things are going, it might as well be. Let's face it. Homelessness...

This past week I have been helping a mother of newborn. Some people from Kent got involved but they are completely clueless about the reality of how homeless providers in King County work. They seem to forget that I've been dealing with this issue for over eight years now and...

If you've been watching my blogs on careyfuller.com or my tweets, you'd know that the homeless mothers I've been working with in the city of Kent need a lot more than flowers or a nice Sunday brunch. What they need is permanent housing and a support system that...

Used to be when you got together with friends and family, you talked about everyday things, the way things used to be and the way you think things will turn out in the future. Now that the economy tanked, I hear a different kind of conversation and usually it's about...

I see a big problem with some churches in Kent that seem to be "competing" over how they help the homeless -- and little do they know that I've had some experiences with said churches when I first became homeless back in 2004. It's because of those experiences that I'm...

I would like to personally thank the city of Kent's Chamber of Commerce for writing a letter openly declaring just how paranoid about the homeless they truly are. A cartoon in the April 6th edition of the local paper, The Kent Reporter will attest to that; just...

I am from Seattle and although we've never met, I feel your pain all the way over here. I'm an advocate for homeless youth and out here, every day is a risk, especially if you're a person of color. There is so much I want to say but the only...

Recently I had a cancer scare. For three months I couldn't explain the pain on my lower right side. Due to a family history with cancer, my doctor scheduled me for several tests which thankfully turned out negative for cancer but showed that I had ovarian cysts. Again because of...

For the past few days I've been in a state of shock. Someone decided to give a homeless mother a surprise gift. Only in a fantasy would someone give a new car as a gift to a stranger. And no, it wasn't Oprah who sent me a black Honda Odyssey....

If there's one thing I've learned about the topic of homelessness, it's that everybody has a perception about it. Some are based on facts, but sadly, most perceptions come from a shallow understanding of homelessness that stems from no real experience or a temporary one. Even more mind boggling is...

I just read your post about the "Rebuild your life project" and although I commend your efforts to "demystify" homelessness I wanted to share with you just how non-mysterious homelessness actually is. I too am a single parent but my experience for the past 8 years is not...

If you never had a relationship with your father but knew he was homeless, would you bother to look for him? That's what Michelle Hallagin did. She didn't know who I was when I sent her a letter via Facebook asking if by any chance she happened to be related...