Courtesy of Theatre of the Oppressed

Tony Horton, homeless actor who died last week, standing center during a curtain call.

​Tony Horton spent decades living on 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue.

But the big difference between him and his Upper East Side neighbors is that Horton, an actor and an artist, lived underground.

The homeless New Yorker died in a fire on Sunday at the F train stop at that intersection where he had lived for many years. It was news earlier this week when we happened to be writing about a Monday night performance of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, where Horton was an actor.

Runnin' Scared spoke yesterday afternoon with Katy Rubin, founding artistic director of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, to hear about the troupe's response to the loss of one of its members and to learn a bit more about the life of Horton -- a homeless man in his 40s who hated shelters, loved giving gifts, and frequently played the role of police officer in the troupe's performances.

More >>

Dilan

​About two years ago, Picture the Homeless tried to get the City Council to make a yearly inventory of the New York's vacant properties -- asking Councilman Eric Dilan, housing and buildings committee chair, to give the group's proposal a hearing.

The City Council refused, with one member reportedly saying that "it would cost millions of dollars" to conduct an annual census.

Picture the Homeless, however, did its own study -- and found that it only cost $150,000 to analyze 1/3 of New York.

The conclusion: There are more empty buildings and lots than there are homeless people -- and more than enough property to give every New Yorker a place to live.

More >>

​Some of these folks have never acted on a stage before, but then again, this is most definitely not your traditional performance.

Tonight, Theatre of the Oppressed NYC is partnering with nonprofit group Housing Works to put on a show centered around the experiences of being homeless and HIV-positive in New York City.

The actors, who have been collaborating on all aspects of the performance since September, are all HIV-positive (except one staffer from Housing Works), and all have experienced homelessness themselves. The production, called The Worm in the Big Apple, aims to tell the personal stories of these New Yorkers and shed light on some of the larger challenges this population faces.

And the audience gets on stage, too.

More >>

Banking on Vacancy

​New York City has more than enough vacant space to provide housing for every homeless person in the city, according to a study released yesterday by Picture the Homeless and Hunter College.

The study represents the first effort to catalog New York's vacant spaces, and includes a survey of community districts from all five boroughs, encompassing roughly a third of the city.

More >>

​City Council plans to try and stop a new policy from the Mayor's administration that would require homeless people to prove they have nowhere else to go before they can be admitted into a shelter. Council Speaker Christine Quinn described the policy as "cruel and punitive"; the pending suit represents the first in Quinn's six-year tenure as speaker, according to the Times.

More >>

​A group of homeless people have been camping out beside the Prospect Park lake for the last two months and hunting small game for food, reports the Post. The poachers stuck to the lake's southern end, where they littered the area with cans and trash and killed "wildlife" like squirrels, ducks, and cygnets using quite cruel methods. They roasted the meat over illegal fires or just ate it raw. Disgusting! Barbaric! And is it even hunting season?

More >>

Coon

​Today the New York Times City Room blog covers the story of Chris Coon, who you may have seen with a clipboard talking to folks in Union Square recently. Coon, who is 29 and has two kids -- and is homeless -- has undertaken a kind of Internet-era crowdsourcing plan of asking a million people for money. He has a website (a woman gave him a laptop after hearing about his experiment) called AskAMillion, upon which he explains that "this is A Social Experiment to both Help me to get out of Homelessness, take care of my two daughters and to take care of my daily living."

More >>

NewsOne

​Coalition for the Homeless, an organization that develops cost-effective strategies to end mass homelessness in NYC, released their annual report today. According to the report, homelessness increased 8% in the past year, and has gone up 34% since Mayor Bloomberg took office in 2002.

More >>

​Along with the rest of the internet, and now apparently the real world, we've been singing the praises of Ted Williams, the Ohio homeless man who sounds like Don LaFontaine, but better. He lost his way and was panhandling with a sign promising a "God given gift of voice" until a local newspaper's video went viral. Then came the job offers, including one from the Cleveland Cavaliers, a free house and oodles of celebrity. But that's where things get complicated -- Williams is having trouble flying to New York for a television appearance.

More >>

Ted Williams, a homeless man in Ohio, may very well be famous yet. In the above clip from the Columbus Dispatch, Williams is shown panhandling on the side of the road. "I have a God given gift of voice," read his sign. "I'm an ex-radio announcer who has fallen on hard times. Please!" He's not joking about the voice.

More >>