Tick Tock Sheptock

  Donate on behalf of Michael Stoops It saddens me to report that MichaelStoops of the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) has fallen quite ill. He was found on Sunday, June 7 th , 2015 collapsed on the floor at the office where he worked about 70 hours per week. It is good that this very private man had his health crisis at the office rather than while home alone. It would have been better for him not to have had a health crisis at all. I received two calls about Michael on Monday and have visited him on Tuesday and today, June 10 th . With Michael's next of kin being his sister who lives in Indiana, the hospital has designated Jerry Jones of NCH, Michael's sister and a close family friend as the three contacts who are privy to the prognosis reports. Even so, NCH might not have the capacity to field innumerable calls. People are coming together to figure out both how best to support Michael through his recovery and how to fill his shoes in both the immediat...

DC Mayor Vince Gray is using DC's business improvement districts to move the homeless to parts of the city that are away from the attractions and away from all of the hustle and bustle. He might even be trying to move them out of town right before he gets booted out of office. I recently learned from a caseworker who has assisted homeless people for 27 years that at least some of the business improvement districts in Washington, DC are giving homeless people $50 to leave that BID's part of town, possibly going over the line into Maryland or Virginia. Mayors in various cities use BID's to do their dirty work. (I'm not surprised that a BID would do the bidding of the mayor, no pun intended.) It is apparently a trend. As early as next week the aforementioned caseworker might connect me to a homeless recipient of such funding. This person wants to "sing like a canary" about how the business community is working to get the homeless "out of sight and ou...

It is the mission of SHARC to engage the poor, homeless, formerly homeless, community activists and concerned citizens in advocacy efforts for the poor and under-privileged community with an emphasis on self-advocacy. SHARC's efforts to meet with Mayor Gray Below is an article which I recently wrote and am trying to have published. It describes the trouble that DC homeless advocates are having getting a meeting with Mayor Vincent Gray. I delivered hard copies to the Washington Post and the Examiner on December 10th, 2012. On December 11th Mayor Gray was the first mayor to visit an Inter-agency Council on Homelessness (ICH) meeting. On that day I got a card from his special assistant as the mayor told me to set up a meeting through him. hopefully this will cause things to take a turn for the better..... To whom it may concern, I am Eric Jonathan Sheptock, a relatively well-known homeless advocate in Washington, DC. Since I began advocating in June 2006 in opposition to for...

MY APOLOGIES if you already received this blog post, as I WAS fixing a technical problem. I'VE FOUND A WAY AROUND THE TECHNICAL PROBLEM THAT WOULDN'T ALLOW ME TO SEPARATE MY POST INTO PARAGRAPHS. I THINK WE'RE BACK TO NORMAL FUNCTIONING NOW... .. Last year I received a call from Pam Fessler of NPR (National Public Radio). She'd interviewed me twice in the past. But this time she wasn't asking for an interview. she just wanted to ask me a question. It would turn out to be the toughest question to date that I've ever had to answer as a homeless advocate. She said, "Eric, I used to be the White House correspondent for NPR. Now I cover poverty. And it seems that, ever since I started covering poverty, everybody wants to hug me. Why is that?" I was completely dumbfounded by the question, but have never been in the habit of denying a person an answer to a question -- especially a question about homelessness. If I don't know the answer, I try to poi...

It is with great sadness that I say that Mary Ann Luby -- the woman who gave me my start as a homeless advocate -- passed away on November 29th, 2010 after a short battle with cancer (less than 2 weeks). While it stands to reason that she might've had cancer long before it was detected, I can definitely appreciate the fact that her suffering was cut short. She is greatly missed by myself and others nonetheless. Mary Ann was one of two women who entered the Franklin School Shelter in mid-June 2006 to tell its 240 residents about the plans of former DC mayor Anthony Williams to close the shelter and to re-open the Gales School as a shelter with 120 beds, leaving half of us with nowhere to go. Mary Ann was a nun of the Dominican Order who did outreach work for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. The other woman was a community activist named Becky Sambol who fought for several different causes. They called a meeting amongst the shelter residents and about a dozen att...

On July 10th about 100 community activists began a tent city on a vacant which is owned by DC Government ( and the citizens of DC ) called "Parcel 42". This action was part of a national effort to bring attention to the need for housing as a human right. Many of the participants are part of the National Right To Housing Movement. This particular plot of land was chosen for the action so that we could highlight the broken promise of the out-going mayor Adrian Fenty to build affordable housing on this lot that has sat vacant for several years and promises to sit vacant for at least 2 more. Plans were drawn up and development slated to begin in December 2009. No ground has been broken yet and the official word is that it may be at least 2 more years before ground is finally broken on this "planned" project. Community activists have floated ideas for interim uses such as a community garden, outdoor theatre or a recreational facility. But no one has stepped forth so ...

I posted an article that was forwarded to me via e-mail. It makes some very important points about why homelessness is not being ended in our country. Read and enjoy..... Can Life Be Lived in Dignity by Every San Diegan? BY Rocky Neptun November 12, 2009. East Village, San Diego…………… Bill Foster rolls his tattered sleeping bag up carefully, not to disturb the layers of newspaper underneath, avoiding the dirt soiled sidewalk and looks at me with a smile. He knows I’ll be good for breakfast and plenty of coffee. Almost clean-shaven, ruddy-faced without many wrinkles to show his 54 years, Foster often panhandles enough change for only one meal a day. He tells me he’s just no good at it, even after all these years. He sleeps in the downtown because “there is safety in numbers;” having been attacked by territorial transients along the San Diego River bank and by neighborhood youth when he moved to a creek near Bancroft Street in Spring Valley. “I have enoug...