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Isaiah Thompson, who is just one man, is engaged in a tight race with Team Illadelph in the Philebrity Award for General Excellence in Writing for a City Publication.
Let's take a look at what Thompson wrote for today's paper:
First, in the Naked City lead, Isaiah takes a look at the federal stimulus funds being allocated for homeless programs and how the efforts are just not doing much to address the issue of chronic homelessness.
When the economy cratered in November 2008, Mayor Michael Nutter forced city departments to make deep cuts — and the Office of Supportive Housing (OSH), which administers the city's homeless programs, was no exception. Loath to eliminate beds, OSH directed its shelters to cut even more resident services — including what was left of case management —instead.
But with the stimulus, things were looking up. The city was awarded about $21 million in stimulus money over three years — a little less than $7 million a year. That's hardly chump change. OSH's total annual budget is $100 million, about $38 million of which comes from the city. In October, the money began flowing in.
It was with some surprise, then, that most shelter operators learned they wouldn't be getting much of that assistance — and neither would many, if not most, of the shelters' residents.
It's a thoughtful look at a problem that doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon.
And then, in his wildly popular Man Overboard! column, "167 Seconds," Isaiah takes on the bike/car battle (another problem that also doesn't appear to be going anywhere anytime soon
I'm getting all lawful lately. Not that I was some terror of the streets before, but suddenly I find myself sitting at empty intersections, on my bicycle, waiting for every single light. Like I'm a car. It hurts, but not much — waiting at every light costs me 167 seconds of my 20-minute commute to work. And you can have those seconds, Philadelphia drivers. But only if you stop acting crazy.
And "crazy" is the word for it. Following two recent deaths of pedestrians at the hands of bicyclists, long-simmering anti-bike sentiments exploded, taking shape in the form of aggressive laws proposed by Councilmen Jim Kenney and Frank DiCicco, which include such reasonable measures as a fine for wearing headphones that's nearly three times that of blowing a red — in a car! If only there were such a thing as double-italics!
The councilmen say they're just starting a "conversation." Good idea, but don't start by spitting. The past two weeks have seen much foamy-mouthed anti-bike whining, embodied by the Daily News' Stu Bykofsky, who — apparently because his own commute utilizes Pine and Spruce streets, which now host the only two east-west bike lanes in Center City — seems hell-bent on getting revenge for cars having to share the road with bikes. If anyone deserves revenge, it ain't drivers. In the last five years, 174 people, including 18 cyclists, have been killed by cars in Philly, according to the Bicycle Coalition. The number of pedestrians killed by bikes over the same period? Three.
Thompson's reporting the shit out of the city. He's taken on bikes, homelessness, casinos, soccer stadiums, union heads, library funding and scrap collectors, for starters. We think you should give him your vote.
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