There is one certainty in life -- we are all going to die. How and where we die are the only issues.

Will we die quickly or have a lingering death? We don't know. However, most of us housed people are pretty sure we will die indoors in some health...

I didn't expect my life to change as a result of my research for articles about
homelessness for The Huffington Post. But that's exactly what happened.
In the course of my research, I contacted several lead agencies of Continuums of Care (CoCs) in California to learn...

It's time to volunteer, get trained and help count homeless people!

The 2013 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, directed by Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), consists of counting homeless people within the City and County of Los Angeles, excluding Long Beach, Pasadena and Glendale that conduct their own...

For some time now, we have been aware of homelessness in our midst. In the 50s, we called people without homes "hobos." The hobos were generally men who we believed chose the free and easy lifestyle of riding railroad cars and doing odd jobs for housed country folk in exchange...

On Saturday, August 25th in San Diego, California, Susan Hunt, a 61-year-old woman, was struck by a car driven by a 69-year-old man.

In the accident, Susan hit her head and suffered severe brain trauma. She was on life-support at Scripps Hospital until September 4th, when, following her previously...

Would you appreciate the opportunity to be inspired? Do yourself a favor and watch this video, "Dream What Could Be Done," sung by children of Lanai High and Elementary School (LHES) Fifth Grade Class of 2020 under the direction of Matt Glickstein, educational assistant for the Department of Education, State...

Recently, my friend Bobby died. A San Diego, Calif., native, Robert Eugene Ojala, 56 years old, was homeless. Bobby was grateful for the hospital and residential hospice care he received that enabled him to spend his last several weeks indoors and free of pain.

After run-ins with the law, Bobby...

"Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this...

There is no question that every political issue has at least two sides -- the pros and the cons. Issues involving homelessness are no different. However, when weighing the impact of both sides of homelessness issues, often one side appears to have a greater impact upon humanity than the other....

We're all aware that the United States economy is going through some hard times. A number of businesses are experiencing financial down turns. Some housed people believe that all homeless people spend a great deal of time hanging out in bars and, by their very presence in those bars, negatively...

Violence. We all know that some housed people fight with each other in physical, hand-to-hand combat. But why do some homeless people, living bereft of everything, fight?

To find out why some homeless people fight, I interviewed a 48-year-old man who lives in the streets. I thank him for...

Really? Do some housed people really believe that homeless people have too much food to eat? Actually, yes. And they provide what they consider the evidence, "Of course they have too much food to eat. See how fat they are!"

This myth leaves me stunned because I believe its falsehood...

Do homeless people need money? Of course, housed or unhoused, we all need money. Some housed people believe that homeless people have enough money to get what they need.

However, do homeless people really have enough money to get what they need? I think not. For example, one of...

At around 8:30 p.m. the evening of July 5, 2011, Kelly Thomas, a 37-year-old, mentally ill homeless man, was in the parking lot of the Fullerton bus depot when he was approached by police officers. Approximately 33 minutes later, Kelly was unconscious and taken to the hospital where...

Homelessness, a challenge composed of many issues, spans our globe. Because homeless people seem to be everywhere, many of us feel that homelessness is too big an issue to be solved. And because of the complexity of the issues of homelessness, we may feel too overwhelmed to affect change.

Sometimes...

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet began his first official visit to San Diego on Wednesday, by offering two parts of his three-part symposium, "Compassion Without Borders: Science, Peace, Ethics" by taking part in a panel discussion entitled "The Global Impact of Climate Change" at University of California,...

Many of us believe that we are compassionate people. But are we really? Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary formally defines "compassion" as the "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it."

In our daily lives, some people think of compassion as "love in action." Many religions encourage...

At 4 a.m. on Friday morning, January 27th, hundreds of volunteers left deployment centers throughout San Diego County to count homeless people. Called, "We All Count," this annual enumeration of homeless people in the county is run by the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless.

Beginning in...

CS: On July 14, 2011, your partner, Larry Dean Milligan, champion of homeless people, passed. You seem content despite your loss.

JA: Yes, you could say that. I feel that his life is such a gift to me. And despite the physical separation...

Some housed people believe that homeless people don't have a care in the world. They think that because many homeless people don't appear to work, that life on the streets is carefree. Truly, nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth is that homeless people have extremely challenging...