Antonio Calanni / AP
A woman begs for money amid passersby in downtown Milan, Italy, on Jan. 8. Unemployment in the 17 EU countries that use the euro rose to 11.8 percent in November, as the number of jobless people in the region rose to 18.8 million, the highest figure since the single currency was founded in 1999.
Albeiro Lopera / Reuters
Miguel Restrepo, 62, looks up from his sewer home in Medellin, Colombia, Dec. 4, 2012.
Albeiro Lopera, Reuters — Former drug addict Miguel Restrepo, 62, has been living in an abandoned sewer with his wife and dog Blackie for 22 years. Their home, fitted with a kitchen, fan, television, chair and bed, is a 64.5-square-feet tunnel that leaks when it rains and requires a manhole cover.
In a video on the BBC website, Restrepo says that he lives better than the president of Colombia.
Albeiro Lopera / Reuters
Miguel Restrepo, 62, and wife Maria Garcia, left, prepare Christmas decorations outside their sewer home in Medellin, Colombia on Dec. 4
Albeiro Lopera / Reuters
Maria Garcia cooks in her sewer home in Medellin, Colombia, Dec. 4.
Raul Arboleda / AFP - Getty Images
Miguel Restrepo, left, rests with his wife Maria Garcia and their dog on a bed inside their sewer home in Medellin, Colombia, Dec. 4.
A Colombian man claims he has lived inside a sewer for more than 20 years. NBCNews.com's Alex Witt reports.
Tsering Topgyal / AP
A homeless family sleeps under an overpass in New Delhi, India, on April 25, 2012. Already the second most populous country on the planet with 1.2 billion people, India is expected to overtake China around 2030 when its population soars to an estimated 1.6 billion even as hundreds of millions of people remain trapped in abject poverty.
See more PhotoBlog posts relating to population issues and watch a video about the challenges India faces:
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Angelica Cervantes, 36, sits on a rock in the campground where she has been staying with her aunt Benita Guzman, 40, and their children, in Santa Paula, some 65 miles northwest of Los Angeles, California. Guzman and Cervantes are homeless but stick together in an effort to keep their children together as a family, and not taken away and separated in foster homes.
Reuters photographer Lucy Nicholson followed a homeless family in southern California, reporting on how they survive in a campground:
“It’s scary, especially at night,” says Guzman. “I’ve always been spoiled. I have a large family and when we went on camping trips, I was the princess.”
At first they slept in a rental van. Then they picked up a couple of tents at a thrift store.
Now, after three weeks of sleeping at a campsite in Santa Paula, the family can no longer afford the rental van to ferry the kids to school in Port Hueneme.
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Angelica Cervantes, 36, packs up tents in the campground where she has been staying with her aunt Benita Guzman, 40, and their children, in Santa Paula.
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Benita washes her hair in the sink of a public restroom after dropping her children at school.
"I’m living moment by moment, day by day," says Guzman.
"I’m holding it all together. There are times I break down. I try not to let the kids see me. They tell me, ‘If you crack, we all crack. If you break Mom, we all break, because you’re the one who holds us together.’ So that’s what keeps me going."
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Benita takes her belongings into a motel room in Port Hueneme. After three weeks of sleeping at a campsite, the family could no longer afford a rental van to ferry the kids to school and had to find a cheap motel room for the night, so the children could walk to school.
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Angelica Cervantes' children Alma Cervantes, 4, Preciosa Cervantes, 9, and Veronica Cervantes, 9, sleep in a motel room in Port Hueneme.
See more pictures and read more about the story at Reuters' Photographers Blog.
Andre Penner / AP
Marta dos Santos sits with five of her six children in room of the occupiped Prestes Maia building in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil on Thursday, Feb. 23. Occupied since 2002 by about 350 homeless families, the building lacks electricity, elevators and running water. The families are part of Brazil's "roofless" squatter movement that's been around for years and hasn't abated despite the nation's economic boom. Squatters say their meager incomes, often earned in Brazil's informal economy, would never allow them to afford rent, even in slums.
Andre Penner / AP
The Prestes Maia building in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Andre Penner / AP
Boys sit outside the occupied Prestes Maia building in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Andre Penner / AP
A woman looks down from the staircase in the occupied Prestes Maia building
Andre Penner / AP
A woman plays with her cat in the front door of her apartment in the occupied Prestes Maia building.
AP reports that the "roofless" movement mirrors the "landless" movement in Brazil:
Building owners are in the courts arguing the residents have illegally seized others' property. Leaders of the roofless movement say it's a societal crime to let abandoned buildings stand empty when so many homeless are living on the street.
See more images in PhotoBlog of evicted homeless people in Sao Paulo.
Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP - Getty Images
A resident looks outside from a peephole at the entrance of an ilegally occupied building before being evicted in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, Feb. 9.
Forced evictions in Sao Paulo, Brazil have left hundreds of families homeless as organizations such as the Frente de Luta por Moradia (Struggle for Housing Front), FLM, have begun to stage occupations of abandoned buildings to draw attention to the housing situations in the city.
According to FLM, most of the families that occupied these downtown buildings have been evicted from their homes by authorities and have no suitable shelter.
Amnesty International has called on the Brazilian authorities to address the needs of some 1,600 families made homeless by recent evictions in a settlement in Sao Paulo.
Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP - Getty Images
Squatters watch from an ilegally occupied building before being evicted, in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, Feb. 9.
Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP - Getty Images
A pregnant woman is carried out from an occupied building during a meeting with city authorities before being evicted in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Feb. 9.
Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP - Getty Images
Some people from the 230 families evicted from an ilegally occupied building eight days ago, stay in makeshift tents on the sidewalk in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Feb. 9.
Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP - Getty Images
A homeless young man sleeps on the sidewalk in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, Feb. 9.
Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP - Getty Images
A homeless man eats hot food given by Russia's Emergencies Ministry officers in Moscow on Feb. 8, 2012.
The temperature in Moscow dropped to minus 13 degrees Celsius Wednesday, Agence France Presse reports, but due to high humidity and wind experts said it would feel more like minus 21.
See more images from the biting European winter on PhotoBlog.
Photos by Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Lilly Earp, 8, changes the diaper of her five-week-old sister Emily, Jan. 25, 2012, in their apartment at Hope Gardens Family Center, a homeless shelter for women and children, run by Union Rescue Mission on 77 acres of countryside on the outskirts of Los Angeles, Calif.
By Lucy Nicholson, Reuters photojournalist
Lilly Earp changes the diaper on her 5-week-old baby sister Emily with the confidence another child would have cradling a doll. She's only 8, but she already shows the street smarts of an older child as she helps her mother. It helps to be resourceful when you're homeless.
Her mother, Doreen Earp, 38, who is originally from Germany, and her three children ended up on the street after her relationship with Emily’s father fell apart. They stayed in a hotel for a month, then with people from their church and eventually ended up with no roof over their heads.
Children attend an after-school class at Hope Gardens Family Center. One in 45 children, totalling 1.6 million, is homeless, the highest number in United States' history, according to a 2011 study by the National Center on Family Homelessness.
A child's drawing is seen on the wall of the center.
Today, they're lucky to be among the 150 or so homeless women and children living at Hope Gardens on the outskirts of LA. It's a place where those at the end of the line are given a life line.
The shelter for families is an oasis compared to where most of LA's massive street population lives on a grim patch of downtown's Skid Row. While homeless services are concentrated downtown, it's no place for a child.
Doreen Earp, 38, of Germany looks at her five-week-old daughter Emily in their apartment at Hope Gardens Family Center.
The number of homeless children is at an all-time high in the United States. One in 45 children, totaling 1.6 million, is currently homeless, according to a 2011 study by the National Center on Family Homelessness. California is ranked the fifth highest state in the nation for its percentage of homeless children. An increasing number of children are dependent on poverty-stricken single moms.
The Earps are amongst 45 mothers, 96 children, and 24 elderly women being helped by Hope Gardens, a homeless shelter for women and children, run by Union Rescue Mission on 77 acres (0.31 square km) of countryside on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Elizabeth Lepe, 26, (left to right) Nancy Jimenez, 35, and Sheriill Stubblefield, 31, laugh during a therapy session at Hope Gardens Family Center.
The mothers are given therapy, and classes in life skills, parenting, financial planning, and encouraged to apply for further education, so they can get more than minimum wage jobs. They can stay at the center for up to three years if they’re in college.
All the children attend after-school classes, and the teenagers are taught about domestic violence, job interviews, how to have healthy relationships, and how to communicate better.
Kids grow up fast when they lose the safety and comforts of home.
Earp's 10-year-old daughter Lindzy overhears a woman telling her mother that she is going to an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting. Lindzy persists in quizzing her mother about what that means. After hearing her explain it as simply a class, the girl retorts: “I know what NA is. I just wanted to see what you would say.”
These moments of maturity are eclipsed by the normal trappings of childhood at the shelter – the games and toys that replace those the children lost with their homes.
Doreen nurses her newborn as her older daughters run and shriek in the playground with other children. Birds chirp in the surrounding pine trees. A stream gurgles into a koi pond.
“They’re able to be kids here,” she says.
Lindzy Earp (2nd right), 10, plays in the playground at Hope Gardens Family Center.
See more of Lucy Nicholson's picture story about Hope Gardens and an earlier set of photos of an after-school tuition program for homeless kids.
Erik de Castro / Reuters
A boy retrieves recyclable materials from his family's gutted house after a fire burnt around 500 houses at a slum area in Quezon City, Metro Manila, the Philippines on Feb. 8. Some 5,000 families were left homeless and investigators are still looking into what caused the fire.
These photos moved today of homeless children who use the open space outside a temple in Kathmandu as their home. According to Reuters, Association for Protection of the Children, a child aid agency, provides food, basic education and shelter to street children whose number is rising in the streets of the Nepali capital, a growing problem in one of the world's poorest countries.
Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters
Subash Thapa, 12, a homeless child engages in drawing near a temple in Kathmandu on Friday, Jan. 28.
Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters
Yamu Budhamagar, 8, a homeless child stands under the sun near a temple in Kathmandu, Jan. 28. The open space outside the temple is his home. Association for Protection of the Children, a child aid agency, provides food, basic education and shelter to street children whose number is rising in the streets of the Nepali capital, a growing problem in one of the world's poorest countries.
Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters
Ashok Karki, 8, center, a homeless child engages in drawing near a temple in Kathmandu Jan. 28, 2011. The open space outside the temple is his home.
Adnan Abidi / Reuters
Homeless people warm themselves up by a bonfire on a cold morning in the old quarters of Delhi, Jan. 13.
According to local media reports there are over 67,000 homeless in Delhi, of whom 15 percent are women and 10 percent children, Reuters reports.
You can see more photos of homeless seeking refuge from the cold in India here.
They served during times of war and peace from 1940 through the 1970s. Over time they’d fallen on hard times, eventually becoming part of New York City’s homeless population. When they died, their remains went unclaimed.
Several groups came together Saturday morning to provide the veterans with the tribute they deserve.
Mary Altaffer / AP
A military honor guard folds the American flag that draped one of the 20 U.S. military veterans' caskets whose remains were unclaimed during their burial ceremony at Calverton National Cemetery, Jan. 8, 2011, in Calverton, N.Y. The ceremony, sponsored by the Dignity Memorial network, has provided services for more than 850 veterans since its inception in 2000.
Mary Altaffer / AP
Veterans stand at attention during the burial ceremony.
Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
The casket of one of the U.S. military veterans whose remains were unclaimed is seen inside a hearse during their burial ceremony.
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