Three nights at Overflow

I just made it out of Overflow [aka Winter shelter] after a three-night stay. On the third night, on the day that Sister Libby and VOA CEO & Pres. Leo McFarland had ballyhooed the need for Overflow to remain open past its scheduled June 30 close, Maria, the Overflow director, was threatening to immediately close the facility, herself, because of suspected marijuana use.

As people who have stayed there must know, the place is a nightmare. It gobbles up an enormous amount of homeless people's time, while offering very little as a "Shelter From the Storm." Indeed, being inside Winter shelter is the storm.

As Kenny – a central member of the staff – was telling someone during a day's long, drawn-out intake session at the so-called staging area, "You're getting a free night's place to stay, be grateful."

Yes. I, too, chose to stay at Overflow -- in deference to an unlikely-to-succeed effort getting a bed at the Union Gospel Mission, or staying awake all night, or sleeping at a hospital emergency-room lobby. Yep. It was my choice.

But, truly, the one thing staying there had going for it was the hope, against hope, that things had improved, since the Neto bad times, and that being at Overflow would feel OK.

Of the myriad problems, there were these:

• The buses broke down. One had a decommisioning flat tire; another, bad brakes.
• One of the two men's bathrooms flooded.
• They ran out of linen and blankets. One night, I and others slept on bare mattresses.
• They ran out of food. I don't eat much, usually, but one night's meal was a portion of a sausage, a third-cup of overboiled brocolli stalks and two pieces of bread.
• While many on the staff are capable and likable, all are usually cranky and some are vain pigs. The staff is untrained, having no customer-service skills.
• The guy who is supposed to unlock the storage shed to give people their belonging, hadn't arrived more than an hour after my bus arrived at the staging area, one morning.

Checking in for a bed one has, or securing a bed, is a mindboggling experience of confusion. Men seeking shelter need to get to the staging area, in the parking lot at Loaves & Fishes' Delany Center, before 4pm. Woman (and children) need to get to Mary's House, nearby, even earlier. Then, basically, you wait and wait and wait -- sometimes until 7:30pm while slowly and great-painstakingly bed assignments are determined in a confused and byzantine process.

Kenny is clearly the staff expert at the process. On my third night he was reviewing the lists that Maria and another woman were in charge of.

But even with his knowledge of how the paperwork flows, Kenny, like the others, gets flustered frequently, and seems oblivious to the frustrations that people trying to secure beds have. The process to get a bed changes every night; there's no regularity about how things are done, and information about how busses will load is given out piecemeal. People are rightly confused about what is happening and what is expected.

True, too, is that things are made all-the-more difficult since many of my brother homeless are without timepieces to remind them to check in on time or are cognitively impaired [due to many of the problems that cause and plague homelessness, including brain changes due to injury, mental illness, substance abuse, medication side effects, etc.]. Regularity re how things get done would be helpful, but that doesn't get established.

In Overflow culture, the staff communicates with the sheltered in Parent-to-Child transaction mode, rather than Adult-to-Adult, which would be proper. While this is a problem elsewhere in Homeless World Sacramento, it is at its worst at the Overflow shelter.

Parent	Physical - angry or impatient body-language and expressions, finger-pointing, patronising gestures, Verbal - always, never, for once and for all, judgmental words, critical words, patronising language, posturing language.
Child	Physical - emotionally sad expressions, despair, temper tantrums, whining voice, rolling eyes, shrugging shoulders, teasing, delight, laughter, speaking behind hand, raising hand to speak, squirming and giggling. Verbal - baby talk, I wish, I dunno, I want, I'm gonna, I don't care, oh no, not again, things never go right for me, worst day of my life, bigger, biggest, best, many superlatives, words to impress.
Adult	Physical - attentive, interested, straight-forward, tilted head, non-threatening and non-threatened. Verbal - why, what, how, who, where and when, how much, in what way, comparative expressions, reasoned statements, true, false, probably, possibly, I think, I realize, I see, I believe, in my opinion.

While it is very time consuming getting in and out of the shelter, even at the shelter there is unrelieved and unnecessary tedium. EVERY night there is a House Meeting at 8:30pm. Everyone of the some 250 sheltered and staff are expected to attend, which serves as an opportunity for the senior staff person there to give verbal gold stars for good behavior and then regale against problems that occured because of some sheltered person's mischief. Because there is no organization to the meeting, a lot of time gets spent on the problems of single individuals. It does not seem to occur to the meeting leader that it is a misuse of time to investigate a soletary indivual's problem in the presence of everyone.

One might suppose that sleeping time, at least, would be honored. But sleeping is made difficult since the staff chooses to play music, loudly, and converse, noisily, in the kitchen area. All. Night. Long.

Meals are notably spare, compared to elsewhere. Dinner is served on a small plate. Breakfasts are better, but always either cold cereal or instant oatmeal packages -- with donuts, fruit, milk, coffee and juice.

But the most obnoxious thing is the time it takes out of homeless people's day being at Overflow. It is impossible to get or keep a job while sleeping there, except for Loaves & Fishes employees or a select few who have part-time jobs, midday.

Sacramento Homeless Connect 2009 Flyer

I have been worried that this year's Sacramento Homeless Connect wasn't getting the word out. But today a flyer was being passed out at Friendship Park which provides some information about the event to be held Saturday.

The event will be held at Sacramento City College; 3835 Freeport Blvd., on Saturday May 30 between the hours of 10am and 3pm.

It is advertised as "A day of helpful services for people who are homeless or at risk of losing their home." The event includes "a free lunch, Blues music and easy access to services. All in one place."

Attendees cannot bring their pets. [Pets may be left at the kennel at Loaves & Fishes.] Childcare will be provided at the event. Belongings may be left at Friendship Park [presumably, the Day Storage shed will be open on the day of the event]. Update 5/29: Word is that storage will be available in a train/ship container at Loaves & Fishes' Delany Center parking lot. Friendship Park will not be open on Saturday.

City College is easily accessible by light rail at the City College station via the Blue line.

Also, shuttles will take visitors to and from the event from stops near Loaves & Fishes. It is also my understanding that a shuttle will leave the Winter shelter to take addendees, who are utilizing the shelter there, to and from the event.

Idealistic fervor on display at Loaves & Fishes news conference, today

Sister Libby Fernandez began the formal part of her press conference this morning saying, "Shame on us. Shame on our government." Whatever shame there was on "us" was unnamed and forgotten while the local government bore the whole of accusations that were deemed shameful.

At issue are three shelter closures at the end of June, all run by the local chapter of the organization Volunteers of America. The three shelters that are scheduled to close, due to lack of funding, are Winter shelter [aka, Overflow] (204 beds, plus 18 couch sleeping spaces) and the Aid-in-Kind shelters on A Street and on Bannon Street (an aggregate of 142 beds).

The pronouncement that 346 beds are being cut [204+142=346], [or 328 beds; though I don't know how that total was derived] as several speakers claimed today, is a dubious statistic. Winter shelter, as its name suggests, has not in the past been a shelter for all seasons. In years past, the shelter has closed at the end of March. It is only this year that the bed capacity was increased and the duration it will be open was extented three months into early summer.

It truth, based on years past, there will be a shelter-space loss of 122 beds beginning on July 1st, unless funding comes forth to increase summer capacity. Winter shelter was extended twice this year. Its bunkbed spaces have never been funded for the summer. The two Aid-in-Kind shelters have, in the past, cut back from 142 beds to 122 beds in the spring. Currently, beds for summer residents are not funded.

Still, concern for there being greatly inadequate shelter space beginning on July 1 is valid. And disgust with local government [primarily, the county, but the city, too] exists because they had seemed, in the wake of the Oprah-inspired media blitz of compassion for the homeless, to find means to meet demand. But now, with huge deficits projected for their new fiscal years, beginning July 1, the city and county representatives have chosen not to fund homeless shelters at all.

Shelters in Sacramento are now full. I am told or know personally that Union Gospel Mission and Winter shelter were both full last night. Salvation Army, St. John's and Mary's House are each full with waiting lists.

Leo McFarland, President and CEO of VOA, said at the press conference that the Department of Human Assistance, the county's welfare operation that oversees VOA, was hoping to save one or two of the shelters scheduled for closure. But McFarland opposes this effort, to save just two, as inadequate.

SacHo is hopeful that just ONE of the VOA shelters remain in operation after June 30, in slimed-down, short-hours, no-frills mode. Winter shelter SHOULD close; it's a nightmare operation that gobbles up homeless people's time. ONE of the Aid-in-Kind buildings should be run on-the-cheap, made to hold 120+ people with hours from 8:30pm to 6:30am, serving dinner and breakfast on either side of an eight-hour sleep period.

SacHo is also hopeful that Loaves & Fishes will "walk the walk" and make available the large empty lot now on its property for a small legal tent encampment.

And SacHo expects that police must fully stop rousting homeless people, with or without camping gear, when they sleep outside.

A shelter idea

Tomorrow at 10AM Sister Libby of Loaves & Fishes and officials from the local chapter of Volunteers of America will be holding a "press conference" at L&F's Delany Center parking lot to rev-up demand that the city and, particularly, the county provide funding for shelter space for our metropolis's homeless. Loaves & Fishes, today, ballyhooed the "press conference" for the benefit of denizens of its facility to stir up attendance tomorrow. [There's a substantial threat of loss of beds, as of July 1.]

Since SacHo ardently wants what's best for us homeless – practical shelter and aid to uplift us all into position to again be thriving and productive citizens – we, mostly, want L&F and VOA to succeed with their effort tommorrow. But we mustn't be fooled: the county has a staggeringly large deficit and the homeless aren't a political force. [There is some hope, though, that via an end-around, stimulus money for mostly-new programs will, somehow, "free-up" funds for shelter for the esconced homeless.]

One necessary component to get the whole homeless-aid situation turned around, though, is reform of Loaves & Fishes and Volunteers of America, themselves.

Loaves & Fishes has long been identified, and properly so, as an "enabling" organization – "homeless daycare." While the organization can be pivotal toward aiding homeless people to pull they lives together and set them on a path of happiness and productivity, it is very often, too, an obstacle and frustration for homeless folk because of its unreliable hours of operations and services.

Homeless people find their lives wasting away, walking in circles, at the L&F complex, or stuck in the tarpit of Friendship Park, waiting for the narrow, specific time in a day when a needed service might be offered.

Volunteers of America has become a bloated bureaucratic nightmare that gobbles up homeless people's time. Its administration of Winter shelter has been condemnable, amounting to a ~16-hour daily lockup of people forced by circumstance to have to stay there.

Volunteers of America promised great improvement to Winter shelter when the city provided a massive infusion of funds to expand it and keep it going three months beyond its March 31 close. There were no significant (or even noticible) improvements. Same old; same old.

But here's an idea. Loaves & Fishes a few months ago tore down a building on its property that was being used, in part, as a kennel. Today, the space is just dirt surrounded by a fence. That space, a good fractional part of an acre, would be perfect for a small tent city. You want shelter, Sister Libby? YOU provide it – at least in part. You can talk the talk (when the cameras are rolling and there's no danger of arrest); but can you walk the walk?

The first-person dimension of alcoholism

A series has been started. This post, like the one I wrote on schizophrenia, attempts to delve into the life experience many in Homeless World have, as a means for the rest of us to apprehend the others' suffering. This is also an attempt to know how to treat people with certain problems and to learn what homeless-aid personnel can empathetically, properly do when angry or wild behavior manifests.

From About.com,

... the most simple way to describe [alcoholism] is "a mental obsession that causes a physical compulsion to drink."

Did you ever wake up in the morning with a song playing over and over in your head? ... No matter what you did, that silly tune kept on playing. You could try to whistle or sing another song or turn on the radio and listen to another tune, but the one in your head just kept on playing.

... Such is the nature of the disease of alcoholism. When the drinking "song" starts playing in the mind of an alcoholic, he is powerless, ... the only way to get it to stop is to take another drink. The problem is the alcoholic's mental obsession with alcohol is much more subtle than a song playing in his mind. In fact, he may not even know it's there. All he knows is he suddenly has an urge to take a drink -- a physical compulsion to drink.

... In its early stages, taking one or two drinks may be all it takes to get the "song" to stop. But soon it takes six or seven and later maybe ten or twelve. Somewhere down the road the only time the song stops is when he passes out.

From a New York Times blogpost, written by Jim Atkinson,

[Dr. Mark Willenbring, director of the division of treatment and recovery research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism] argues that the main thing that alcoholics share is a natural tolerance for alcohol, which leads them to overindulge without knowing it. Repeated overindulgence, in turn, changes their brain chemistry and literally creates the inexplicable ache by altering the activity of two systems: the brain’s “reward system,” which sends the message that drinking feels good; and the excitatory and stress response systems, which become “recruited” and, over time, produce an elevated anxiety when one is without alcohol in his system.

...

If you are among the 80 percent of people who drink “normally,” think of your relationship to booze as a minor friendship that strikes up at certain times of the week, or even the year. Think of the drunk’s as a torrid, reckless and self-destructive affair. Whiskey she is a bad lover, and all that. It is a decidedly adolescent affair, a kind of puppy love that overtakes all good judgment and reason.

A writer for Mutineer tells us that the viddie, above, a Japan commercial for a brand of whiskey, shows us what it is like to be alcoholic. Sean Connery comes into a room, swaying a bottle of booze. Suddenly, he's seated, working on a sketch, glances at his doberman. Grimaces. Sets aside the sketchbook and pencil. The booze captures his attention. Heavenly music plays. He lovingly pours himself a drink. He admires the drink. He swirls the ice. He smells the drink. He takes a sip; he's delighted. The sketchbook and pencils blow off his sidetable. The booze is everything. His relationship with "man's best friend" and his work is impeded.

Below, another booze commercial that shows alcohol attachment, in a less-heavenly way: "... and only here you get close to what really matters in life, sharing precious moments with some[thing] you love. [Can I have my f*ckin scotch, you f*ckin moron.]"



This from Addiction: Why can't they just stop?:

He says it was almost like watching someone else – someone in a movie. Like he left his body. He felt a sense of horror, he says. Horror and also, incongruously, reckless delight. He sipped the Scotch. He breathed it. The taste was "heaven." he sipped again. "Glorious." he drained the glass. The reaction inside his head was instantaneous and intense. "I was filled with electric warmth," he recalls. "A smoldering fire was rekindled. I felt enlivened. The taste was ... and I felt so ..." He could not find the exact words. " I was horrified and felt perfect, both, but perfect won.

The Reality of Relapse

Again, from Addition: Why can't they just stop?:

Relapse is heartbreaking for addicts. it is heartbreaking for those who care about them. relapse can be devastating. Recovering from relapse is likely, but nonetheless, every relapse comes with the possibility of death. "There are psychological and biological reasons that relapse sometimes is fatal," says Tom mclellan, PhD, co-founder of Philadelphia's Treatment Research institute. "A biological reason is their previous use probably built up slowly to a high level of tolerance and adaptation. Without slowly building up again, they easily can do too much and overdose. The psychological reason is what is called the 'absinence violation effect' – the despair and defeat an addict feels when they leave an abstinent lifestyle. They may feel that they don't want to come back from a relapse."

Addiction stop-and-go switch:

Addiction - Stop and Go Switch - The Brain's Control Circuitry [post is a work-in-progress]

What needs to happen on July 1

The clock is ticking.

Unless something changes, 346 people will be dumped out onto the street on the morning of July 1.

Things may, already, not be as bad as that sounds. Many are likely to get placement in temporary housing. That was the promise of the city for the Tent City evacuees which number, perhaps, fifty. Plus there is stimulus money out there. It's not targetted for the established-homeless, but some funds may come our way, if only as a result of other funds being "released" as a result of usages the stimulus money is directed toward.

In more-normal times, Overflow [aka, Winter] shelter would already have closed. This year it's set to close after the last day in June. Since the weather is already warm and many have tents and sleeping bags, we can expect that closure of Overflow will result in what happens every year: people find a place for themselves on the streets or along the river.

What's unusual this year is that people now in VOA's A Street and Bannon Street shelters will need to leave and find a place to 'sleep and be' elsewhere. Typically in the transition from winter to spring, the population at these two VOA shelters drops from an aggregate 142 to 122.

What we, the Sac'to Homeless, will be losing in shelter space, then, is 122 bed slots. As I've proposed to a VOA executive by email, what ought to happen is that one of the two shelters ought to stay open, operating as a basic, no-frills men's shelter [with the Salvation Army upping the proportion of women they house]. One of the VOA shelters should adequately house all the guys that had been housed at the two shelters before July 1. The shelter ought to operate from 8:30pm to 6:30am -- just eleven hours each night. It should provide a basic dinner meal; a bunk bed to sleep on; a shower; and a muffin and coffee in the morning. Maybe funding can be found for that. Hey, Oprah, are you listening?

Meantime, I am hopeful that the police will enact a "no rousting of the homeless" policy; efforts will quickly go forward to create a Tent City, if only a legal mini-sized one; and Val Jon Farris will find funding and lots of support for his SERV proposal.

SacHo to be official media at Sacramento Homeless Connect 2009

This year's Sacramento Homeless Connect will occur on May 30 at Sacramento City College, from 10am to 3pm. Tom Armstrong (that is, I) will be one of the "official media" people at the event, getting a badge and whatever other perks [donuts!?] come with that. As a media person, I intend to witness what occurs at the event and interview attendees, staff, volunteers, booth/kiosk experts, jazzband members, other media people, and whoever else wanders by.

The 2009 event will be the second annual Homeless Connect. The inaugural H.C. was held on May 31, 2008, at Cal Expo in the building that is currently operating as the homeless shelter known as Overflow.

This year's event isn't rolling out as impressively as last year's did, as I recall. But then, of course, last year's event was the very first, so it may have needed an especially big build-up. This year, now nine days away from H.C., there is little I've seen that would make people aware that an important date for homeless people in the metropolis is acoming.

At the Hands on Sacramento website, we're told this:

This year we expect over 700 guests, 400 volunteers, and 200 staff to participate.

At Sacramento Homeless Connect, guests access:

• Housing and employment programs
• Vision and dental screenings
• Free identification cards
• Alcohol and drug assessments
• Legal counseling [Val Jon Farris will be the coordinator.]
• Bicycle repair
• HIV and Hepatitis C tests
• Veterans Benefits
• And more!

Benefits of Homeless Connect:

• Connects homeless individuals to important services all in one place, reducing frustration and increasing awareness about possible sources of assistance.
• Inspires community members to help end homelessness.
• Businesses, faith-based groups, and colleges have the opportunity to make personal connections with people in need.
• Helps debunk common myths and stereotypes about people who are homeless.

Re that last bulletted list, I don't know why Homeless Connect would "inspire community members to help end homelessness." I mean, THEY are not the ones coming to the event.

Also, I don't know why the event should help debunk myths and stereotypes about the homeless. The general public isn't going to be visiting the Homeless Connect event. And media coverage is not going to be all that widespead.

If the event "only" serves to inform, help and entertain many members of Homeless World Sac, that would be plenty nice. I, for one, would be mighty happy with that.

Snips from "Tips for New Paupers"

Snips from a brilliant blogpost in The Exiled that is more true today than when written October last. So far - in Sacramento and in America, generally - the middle class is hanging on; but soon, even if the economy starts more of an uphill climb, people in our country and city will loose their grip on middle-class comfort and perks. The post is called "Tips for New Paupers," written by John Dolan. It relates to a fall into homelessness by him and his wife in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Snip:

My wife and I fell through many layers of poverty in a few months. First we revisited the genteel poverty known to grad students, the sort of poverty where you have scary dreams about the rent and eat a simple, wholesome diet towards the end of the month. But we fell right through that into the sort of Dickensian privation spoiled first-worlders like me never expected to experience. That’s the kind of poverty a lot of people are going to be experiencing soon – because I’m here to tell you, it can happen here and it can happen to you. And it’s remarkably unpleasant.

Snip:

... it’s very hard to think clearly when your life has collapsed. These are what they call the old verities, the truths of life before the middle class was (briefly) in session.

Snip:

You are going to realize that cold is the most frightening thing in the world. In older English dialects, “to starve” meant “to freeze.” You will see why.

Snip:

Shame is an affectation. I don’t even need to say this, really. Once you’ve experienced actual cold and hunger, your good old Ouldivai Gorge mammal body and brain will take over, and believe me, shame won’t be a problem.

Snip:

[Regarding the people you'll meet in Homeless World Vancouver...] They’re flinchy people, mainly, who spend a lot of time waiting for things. When you’re waiting, you get very frustrated but you don’t want to shake things up. So they’re tense, bitter, sociable, gossipy and treacherous—a fine cross-section of the population. ... They’re not going to mug you. They are going to try to get any cash you have, and God did they get a huge chunk of our last resources, but it was friendly, schmooze-based extortion, just like in the middle-class world. All that was missing was the deodorant.

Snip:

Antidepressants. Get on them right away...

Snip:

If you want a break from the relentless olfactory fact of being around unwashed large mammals, sidle up to somebody who smokes. That’s the one good thing about cigarettes ... Don’t smoke just for that, though. Cigarettes are insanely expensive and turn lots of poor people into cringing beggars.

Snip:

How do you tell your story? That’s going to matter, because you’ll be brooding about what went wrong 24/7 ... This raises the issue of denial, a vital and deeply misunderstood mechanism. Denial, like Kurtz* said about Terror, is your friend…or it is an enemy to be feared. You need some denial to keep your ego from being crushed completely.

Snip:

...if you get a break you can’t grab it. After months of applying for teaching jobs without even getting answers, the perfect job opened up for me at a local college. ...But when the interview started I realized I was no longer someone who could talk the quiet, polite, oblique version of self-promotion demanded by academic hiring committees. I was too deeply, permanently spooked by our condition. I was just plain wrong, unhireably wrong in every way. No hot water on the boat, and I needed to shave the graying wisps of hair on my big bald head, so I’d shaved in the McDonald’s men’s room on the way to the interview, with a cheap Bic shaver. You can guess the results: it looked like a bobcat had tried to roost on my scalp, and been evicted after a violent struggle. The used sport coat we’d spent our last $20 of Visa credit on at Value Village didn’t seem to fit nearly so well, once I was inside that humming, immaculate classroom where the interview was held. And I had become a louder, more desperate, excessive person. When I tried to sound positive, it came out furious. ... After months of being a bum, I was the wrong volume, the wrong temperature.

Be aware that most people who "fall" into homelessness – in Sacramento, especially, which has a warm climate – won't find things as deparately bad as John Dolan did, but many will be suffer from the kind of shock of being rather-suddenly homeless that Dolan describes.
---
* in reference to Col Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness," who says at one point, "Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies."

Thanks go to the blog That sticks and stones should fall [link], through which I found the blogpost "Tips for New Paupers."

More bad news from the county because of budget gap

While specifics are lacking, news from a pubic Sacramento County budget workshop, Thursday, tells us funding for programs relating to the poor are going to get cut, deeply. Very deeply.

"What we're really talking about, in essence, is an unraveling of the county's safety net," said Department of Human Assistance [DHA] Director Bruce Wagstaff, quoted in a May 15 Sacramento Bee article.

The article tells us social service officials say the proposed cuts will mean "more unchecked abuse, more untreated disease and more mentally ill people in the jail."

As background, the meta-problem is this, quoting the article,

County officials are working to close a projected $180 million general fund shortfall in the fiscal year that starts July 1. That's about 8.5 percent of the current year's $2.2 billion general fund budget, but department heads say the practical effect is greater because every year brings increased costs and caseloads.

With respect to the DHA and the Behavioral Health Services Department, which most serve as safety nets for homeless people's needs, the article tells us, "[DHA] is looking at 54 layoffs and eliminating some programs for the homeless. The Behavioral Health Services Department would cut $17 million in adult mental health services."

County hopes to lessen the impact of shelter-bed cuts

According to an article yesterday in the Sacramento Press, "Homelessness: County aims to lessen blow of proposed cuts," officials for the County of Sacramento are hopeful they can successfully work around proposed cuts of funding support for three Sacramento shelters. They believe that stimulus money, which can be used to provide housing for the homeless, will lessen the overall pain of losing shelter services the county can no longer affort to provide. Also, they hope the stimulus money might "free up" other funds that can be used to provide shelter beds.

Bruce Wagstaff, director of Sacramento County’s Department of Human Assistance, told Press staff reporter Kathleen Haley the department is working with the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (SHRA) on plans to alleviate the damage that would be caused if the county Supervisors approve Wagstaff's proposed cuts.

“We don’t want to take a big step backwards,” Wagstaff told the Sacramento city Council at its May 12 meeting.

The county's stimulus money targetting homelessness, totalling $4.7 million, can be used for homeless people to rent housing and for the prevention of homelessness.

The article futher tells us,

While [Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program] funds are not intended for expenses with shelters, the new federal stimulus funding may free up money in county pots that could be used to address the possible cuts [which could total as much as $1.5 million] to county shelters, Wagstaff said.

The first-person dimension of homeless Sacramentans suffering from Schizophrenia

"Disabilities and dysfunction process from having been shunned and denied access to needed opportunitites and networks of support."
~ the brothers Lysaker in Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self

What is schizophrenia? How many are homeless Sacramentans?

Perhaps 15% of the Sacramento homeless population suffers from schizophrenia. The percentage is difficult to determine for many reasons that branch from both the fuzzy definition of the malady and that many people within the homeless community who have the illness (1) are in denial and are undiagnosed and (2) have the illness as a diagnosis only – the disability can be faked by people who are successful claimants of social security and other benefits.

What is schizophrenia? One webspace gives us this definition: The most chronic and disabling of the severe mental disorders. Typically develops in the late teens or early twenties. The overt symptoms are hallucinations (hearing voices, seeing visions), delusions (false beliefs about commonly held views of reality) and bizarre thought patterns. Another webspace adds this: Psychosis characterized by the breakdown of integrated personality functioning, withdrawal from reality, emotional blunting and distortion, and disturbances in thought and behavior

According to a study by Amador, et al, "Awareness of Illness in Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective and Mood Disorders" in the Oct 94 issue of General Psychiatry, between a third and two-thirds who have the malady deny or are unaware they have the mental illness.

According to Dr. Joseph Pierre's commentary in the Feb 2009 issue of Psychiatric Times, "What do you mean, I don't have schizophrenia?":

...in my patients' world – and in the wake of the Contract With America Advancement Act of 1996 – a diagnosis of schizophrenia is one of the best ways to gain access to a disability income and other social services that are unavailable for those who "only" have a substance use disorder ... [M]y patients were far from relieved when I "took away" their schizophrenia diagnosis or an antipsychotic medication. On the contrary, their very existence was threatened.

Viewed from this perspective, I realized that malingering, if present, was often [caused by the medical establishment] – incentivized by increasingly restrictive criteria for disability incomes or access to care that characterize addiction as a lifestyle choice. I'd find myself thinking of Jean Valjean: given existing conditions, who wouldn't steal the loaf of bread as a simple act of survival?

Thus in homeless communities in America, there are many undiagnosed schizophrenics, and many with other problems but who get a schizophernia diagnosis but don't have the malady.

The number of homeless in Sacramento who are schizophrenic is approximately 420. But this educated guess could be off by a hundred or more, either up or down.

Blunted affect and diological self

The medications that schizophrenics take will relieve their hallucinations and delusions and bizarre thinking to great extent, but do little for emotional blunting and withdrawl. Schizophrenics faithfully keeping up their medication regimen will be placid and unnoticed, but from their experience, they are alienated nothings.

From the book Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self:

... blunted affect ... generally refers to a lack of emotional expression in inflection, expression and gesture. A person described as having blunted affect would show a limited range of emotions, perhaps appearing wooden or lifeless in the midst of a celebration or a time of sadness. In contrast to a drepressed person who might silently be consumed by pain, someone with flat affect would feel emptiness. If confronted with something painful, pleasurable, surprising, or disgusting a person with flat affect would show the same emotional response: nothing. ...

[As an example, one schizophrenic, Glass, describes his experience thus:] Glass tells us that he is in a cloudbank, suggesting a hazy, undifferentiated state within which direction is elusive. Moreover, none of the events wherein his life unfolds produces any particular effect in him, as if each self-world interaction were just more mist and vapor, including his own role therein.

When one becomes fully emotionally flat like this, it disrupts one's sense of self. You have nothing to animate your character. Internally, for the schizophrenic, there is nothing to stir him to converse with others. But the schizophrenic does suffer from a sense of "nothing," feeling as if he is barely there and fading away.

Without an animating self, there is a lack of volition. There is simply nothing to compel one to pursue any particular course of action in a day.

It should be of no surprise, then, that the most common cause of death for a person with schizophrenia is suicide.

Problems for schizophrenics who are unaware of their illness

From Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self:

Imagine having a vague sense that one was faring less well than before, but maintaining the belief that the likely symptom of and thus key to one's diminishment was irrelevant to one's situation. Presuming one's assessment was mistaken, one would continue to fare poorly, and perhaps waste time addressing unrelated situations. This is precisely the kind of scenario we think occurs when people lack insight into, or an awareness of the symptoms associated with schizophrenia - the dialogical compromises they affect continue unabated. The point is not simply that such folk are unlikely to seek help, but also that their lack of awareness prevents the development of a meta-position, for example, self-as-ill, which could help them interpret and thus delimit the influence of the unusual experiences and/or beliefs they find themselves having.

Lack of insight into one's condition is also likely to intensify social alienation. Without a plausible account of one's trouble, it would be nearly impossible to talk to others about one's experiences and the difficulties that often surround them.

... If dialogical breakdowns lead to a sense of self as diminished, and particularly with regard to one's agency, awareness of illness could be overwhelming. ... one of our [the authors'] central claims is that sense of self derives from interanimating play of self-positions. As that play proves increasingly disordered, sense of self will suffer, finding little to hold onto besides its diminishment. ... the thought that one is nothing but diminishment can be devastating. So it may be that a refusal to see one's symptoms as sympoms allows one a sense of self that is disoriencted and diminished, but at least not the nothingness that seemed to loom on the edges of paranoia.

Sorry, kind readers, for posting such a big block of text, but what's written here is important, I think.

In layman's terms from what I glean from the above: People, generally, use a lot of their energy trying to cope with and cover up their deficits. But for the large number of schizophrenics who are undiagnosed and unaware of their mental illness, things are triply bad. They can lose the ability to have a meta-position with respect to their self. [A meta-position, as I understand it, is how you fluidly present yourself as your interactions with others change during the course of short-range spans of time.] Not having access to more-resolved meta-positions, schizophrenics can be prone to more delusional thinking, and that leads to greater social alienation.

The authors believe that successful, orderly and accepted "play" between the different selves we each have makes us "normal." A schizophrenic experiences a sense of failure in transactions with others, disorder and unacceptance. Thus, there is a downward spiral toward feelings of disorientation, alienation and "nothingness." At this stage, a schizophrenic person might experience himself as disembodied.

Psychosocial rehabilitation

In a final, very short few paragraphs at the end of their book, the brothers Lysaker write about "pychosocial rehabilitation." They suggest vocational programs for supported employment; peer support and guidance and case management.

Also, the brothers are keen on creating social situations for schizophrenic people that elicit and support self-positions such that sense of self is celebrated and stabalized.
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Helpful links:

Glossary Of Schizophrenia Terminology
Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self at amazon
Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self at Oxford University Press
Definition and description of schizophrenia in The Free Medical Dictionary
Schizophrenia, wikipedia entry
schizophrenia.com : In-depth information
"Recommended first-aid for schizophrenia or psychosis" from schizophrenia.com
Schizophrenia at the National Institute for Mental Health website

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This post was first published in the blog Homeless Tom several days ago. Because the blogpost is very important to readers of SacHo it is now, also, appearing here.

Loaves & Fishes attempts to rig county hearing testimony

Somehow Loaves & Fishes always finds a way to take the low road.

With a stack of sheets at the Info Kiosk in Friendship Park this morning, users of Loaves & Fishes services were given the opportunity to take a flyer that encouraged their attendance and testimony at a Sacramento County hearing, tomorrow, regarding a proposed elimination of funding for emergency shelters in the fiscal year beginning July 1. Since the kiosk is where shower reservations are made and lunch tickets are distributed, it is a place where most visitors to the park are likely to need to go to.

So far, so good. Certainly it is appropriate and laudable for L&F or anyone to want county Supervisors to be keenly aware of the hardships visited on homeless people by the proposed budget cuts.

But with the overly specific instructions that guests – which is what L&F calls users of its services – were given on what to say as testimony, the effort on the part of L&F violates a key tenet of freedom and democracy: the ideal that hearing testimony is valid, freely-given and truly representative of what some of the public thinks.

Below, closely replicated, is the text of the sheet:

Hearing on Sacramento County Cuts to Homeless Programs Thursday, May 14th at 9 AM Sacramento County Board of Supervisors 750 H Street Closure of Aid in Kind Shelters Closure of Winter Overflow Shelter Sacramento County needs to make draconian budget cuts. The Supervisors will be hearing about proposed cuts to homeless programs. 350 of the 800 shelter beds in Sacramento will be closed -- a 41% cut in shelter beds in one fell swoop. We need your help with media coverage. We also need staff members and guests to testify at the hearing. Suggested approach for guests in their own words can be 1. I was able to stay at the overflow shelter, and because of that, X happened. X being something good -- I saved money to move into an apartment; I heard about transitional housing, etc. Or 2. I couldn't get into a shelter and Y happened, Y being something bad -- I had to stay in my car with my two kids, I slept outside and was scared.

It is the opinion of this writer for this blog that the bare, noble truth of the circumstance of homelessness is plenty good enough to win favor with the public and advance the cause of greater aid and support for suffering people.

Much of what Loaves & Fishes does "in the name of advocacy," ain't advocacy – it takes pristine information and skews it, twists it, massages it, and mauls it until it is unrecognizable. L&F does much the same kind of stuff for the homeless and to the city and county of Sacramento that the Republican party has done to the country for the past eight years. In the long-run, what Loaves & Fishes does is terrible for the welfare of homeless people in our metropolis. Enough! Enough! No mas, no mas.
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UPDATE 5/13 5:30pm: Per a Sacramento Press story Tuesday, the county hopes to "free up" funds to pay for shelter-beds as a result of stimulus money covering costs of other ongoing services the county provides for the homeless. Thus, there is great hope that at least some of what beds are lost on July 1 will be restored.

Loaves & Fishes's misdirecting May newsletter

In their lastest donation-seeking newsletter, Loaves & Fishes misleads its "friend[s] and supporter[s]" by trotting out that now-discreditted construct that homelessness in Sacramento is being beseiged by a tsunami of bewildered families that have been dumped onto the street.

This is especially troubling since Loaves played a part in crafting the Hooverville whooper in the first place with actions that it took in February.

The newsletter refers to the January, 2009, county-homeless count, that was done by the Department of Human Assistance, and says this:

The numbers are staggering! There is a 14% increase of homeless families compared to last year’s count! There are over 2,800 men, women and children who are homeless any given night! Last years’ count there was only 2,678. Of those 2,800 homeless folks only 1,600 of them found shelter. The rest are sleeping outside. Even more staggering– of those sleeping outside, 77% are NOT chronically homeless, which means that they have been homeless less than one year and are most likely NOT disabled.

With numbers in the thousands appearing in the paragraph, readers would never suspect that the "staggering" 14% increase in homeless families represents exactly 24 in number. AND, that if one excluded the increase in those who are tucked away, being cared for in transitional housing, there was actually a DECREASE in homeless families, in emergency shelters or on the street, of 12 families.

Yes, that's right. There was a DECREASE from January 2008 to January 2009 of truly homeless families in Sacramento county. Since the paragraph refers to homeless who "found shelter" or "are sleeping outside," one would think that that is what the stats are that Loaves & Fishes is refering to – but not so.

Utilizing the art of misdirection, donors and potential donors are here being intentionally misinformed by Loaves & Fishes. I know that sounds like a tough charge, but Loaves & Fishes was informed that their abuse of this data was misleading, but chose to use it in the way they have, anyway.

As for the "even more staggering" high count of not-chronically-homeless people sleeping outside, it is worrisome that Loaves & Fishes chooses to do what it often does, demean those who are esconsed in homelessness and deserve services and attention at least on a par with other categories of homeless people. Included in high proportion of those who are chronically homeless are a large proportion of people who are schizophrenic or have other mental illnesses and have been long-neglected by our look-the-other-way society.

Indeed, sometimes when it suits Loaves & Fishes to beat the donor-motivating drum, they are most likely to picture chronically homeless people in their literature, and pluck cloyingly hard at heartstrings.

The Feb+Mar+Apr international media blitz re homelessness in Sacramento occured because Loaves & Fishes, the Oprah Show, and others, helped to create the wholly false impression that Sacramento had a full-fledged new Hooverville within yodelling distance of its downtown. While others have caught wind of the truth, L&F continues to cut with that same old discredited saw. And hopes to profit from the misdirection, too. Shame on you, Loaves & Fishes. What you're doing is deceitful.

Their newsletter also says this:

The Overflow shelter will now shelter almost 200 homeless folks. But where will they go after June 30th? St John’s Shelter for women and children is still turning away 200 calls each day for emergency shelter. Salvation Army still has an average of 80 men on the “Waiting List” to get into the shelter any give night. DO NOT let other news fool you about providing enough shelter and housing for these folks!

SacHo – which is not the "other news" the newsletter refers to, btw – is greatly concerned about what happens to the homeless after June 30. Indeed, the homeless displaced from emergency shelters may be many more than 200, due to cuts by the county in funding others of VOA's shelters.

But Loaves & Fishes should know better than to use misdirection with respect to the count of people on waiting lists to inflame concern about homeless people's well-being. People on waiting lists are usually NOT people now living on the street. People who have stayed a good while at the Overflow shelter are required to be on the Salvation Army waiting list to keep their bed at Overflow, for example. St. John's is a program, and not just a shelter in the true sense of the word. Many of the women on the waiting list there are wanting to "move up" from the emergency shelter where they are now staying, or to exit a difficult home situation.

Shame, shame on you, Loaves & Fishes. You choose the low road of truthiness when the high road of truthfulness is easiest, morally correct and better for everybody in the longrun.

Thoughts on what effect county financial crisis will have after June 30

The county of Sacramento reports that there is a $187 million projected budget gap that needs to be closed for its upcoming fiscal year, which begins on July 1. To close the gap, the head of the county Department of Human Assistance has proposed closing three VOA-run shelters which provide beds for between 122 and 346 people, (dependent on when in the year you count the beds).

This shelter-closing thing is a sudden, huge threat to the security, life-experience and opportunity to escape the homeless trap for hundreds. After the media buzz of Feb+Mar+Apr and the city's response, for there, now, to be threat of a massive backslide, by the county, in services made available to the homeless community is traumatising.

Quickly, efforts must be made to forestall or reduce the county's cuts to fund shelters. And, ideas need to emerge of other means to keep homeless people from being pushed onto the street at night.

Bruce Wagstaff, the DHA director who proposed the cutbacks, suggested that part of the $4.7 million the county was receiving in stimulus funds directed toward homelessness might be utilitzed for shelters. Maybe. The problem here, quoting Wagstaff from a recent Bee article, "[The stimulus-funded] programs will focus on 'homeless prevention' and 'rapid re-housing' and not emergency shelters."

An obvious candidate-idea to help is to quickly create a legal encampment for the homeless. In order to be satisfactory to public officials in these tight-wallet times, the enterprise would have to be as simple and cheap as possible. It would need to happen with a cost to the county and city of something less than $12.50 per tent per day. And, such a Tent City would need to have residents all of whom are responsible and mature. Since, now, even Stockton may try an encampment for the homeless, it is time, at last, for Sacramento to try "safe ground" – by whatever definition you like, of that phrase – too.

Maybe, something can come together to run the Aid-in-Kind and Bannon Street VOA shelters very spare, providing only base necessities: Open from 8:30pm to 6:30am, providing just a light dinner; showers; a bunk bed; and a muffin and coffee in the morning. And, perhaps doing something along the lines of what New York City now does – charge the sheltered rent as a percentage of income – could help with costs.

Perhaps, there is something UC Davis MBA designers can think of to help here. You think?

Hannity remarks on Tent City

In a section of his blog Hannity's America, the far-rightwing media pundit Sean Hannity of Fox News channel had something to say about Tent City today. The section in his post was called "Tent City Tricks." Here are his remarks:

Liberals love to talk about homelessness, you know, because new crops of homeless people require new forms of government intervention.

Recently, Sacramento's tent city, which is home to a large homeless population, has attracted a lot of media attention. Oprah, for example, sent a correspondent to tent city in order to "humanize the recession," and suggested that tent city sprang up as the American economy tanked and Americans were forced out of their homes.

But apparently, the facts suggest otherwise. According to a Sacramento homeless activist, the homeless have camped there for decades, and while media outlets peddled the idea that families were driven from their homes, the reality is that, "90 percent of encampment residents were 'chronically homeless' single individuals living on the streets for extended periods."

Then again, the mainstream media aren't exactly famous for letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

While Hannity is certainly right that the media – mainstream, included – didn't let facts get in the way of the "humanize the recession" story everyone was after, he's narrowly wrong about several things.

There have been stray tents and small groupings of tents in the Tent City location, east of Blue Diamond Almond, but never the more-significant community that was there beginning in late November. Police roustings of small groupings of tents in Sacramento, including the collection of tents near North B and Bannon and in so-called Crack Alley led to a more significant population in the Tent City location. The population there was never more than 300, and not the 1200 souls that some news organizations reported.

While Hannity is right that there simply were not many families in Tent City, it was not the case that 90% who were there were among the chronically homeless. It was a high percentage, but not that high. The chronically homeless is usually defined as people who have been homeless for a year or more, including the past three months.

Also, being a wingnut, Hannity loves to mischaracterize liberals. Liberal don't love government intervention, they just dislike human suffering. Go figure.

Gimme shelter

Now that we, the Sac'to Homeless, have that shelter-axing proposal thing hanging over us like a swinging sword of Damocles, other issues seem tamed and trivial in comparison. As Shakespeare could've said, "Uneasy lies the head that doesn't have a pillow." Yes, Bill, especially so on cold, rainy nights.

It is probably the case that the county is playing a game of chicken.



Eventually, either the county or the city or the stimulus fund will pony up and allow the homeless to survive. Maybe. Each thinks in regard to the other: It's your problem!

But the homeless have no political power! We donate so extremely little to campaign funds! Agencies that advocate for themselves – I mean "us" – are so slimy and morally compromised. But politicos, listen to them! to them!

Val Jon Farris wrote a nice piece, yesterday, called "The Anthology of Homelessness," about the path to existence devastation.

Existence devastation is at hand, y'all.

One might think that when times got tough, the government would extend its hand to the homeless as more, from the middle class, were added to its ranks. One might think that we would all pull up our boots, pull on our work gloves, and make sure that everyone is taken care of. That nobody falls in the cracks. But that is never what happens.

People fall in the cracks. Because other people forget their basic good natures when they are made busy worrying about themselves.

But what the government does, even with the wise Barrack Obama at the helm, is it contracts. And those that scream the loudest – meaning the rich, per usual – retain the greater portion of gov't largess. The homeless get pushed off the cliff, because Oprah viewers have only so much patience. And care only, really, mostly, about themselves. They care about the homeless only so far as it has liberal cache.

In his excellent blogpost, Val Jon writes,

... until we can place ourselves intimately inside the emotional experience of these remarkable people we will have no true compassion or appreciation for them. And ... until we learn how to engage with the homeless population from a place of profound respect and dignity, a place in which we work with them on solutions rather than dictating to them what we think they need, our efforts will be ineffective.

To successfully explore the Anthology of Homelessness I ask that you set aside whatever reasoning you may have about why people become homeless and simply accept the fact that it happens.

After that, Val Jon shows the path – but I'm not sure that just asking people, as he has, to, flatly, without justification-finding or blame-seeking, accept that homeless people are in a circumstance of misery, is enough.

Maybe, if we sit quietly, we can bring to the fore our natural empathetic instincts, the most formitable level of which is empathetic concern, full-throttle compassion. Or, in contemporary Buddhist terms, Great Karuna.

Sacramento County may close three VOA shelters with 346 beds

Facing a $180 million general fund shortfall for the county, Department of Human Assistance Director Bruce Wagstaff has proposed cutting off funding for three Volunteers of America-run shelters. The three shelters are Winter shelter at Cal Expo, and the two Aid in Kind shelters on A Street and Bannon Street, which in aggregate provide 346 beds to the homeless.

This news comes from a first-page article in today's Sacramento Bee, "Proposed Sacramento County cuts would close 3 homeless shelters".

Mayor Kevin Johnson Johnson said the decision "is penny-wise and pound-foolish" and "could set back the progress we are making" on the issue of homelessness. The mayor has made [quoting the article paraphrasing Johnson] "finding beds for the city's homeless one of his top priorities." Of course, the city's mayor has no authority over nor direct influence with county officials.

According to the article,

The cuts in shelter programs would save the county about $1.5 million. Wagstaff said he hopes that about $4.5 million in federal stimulus money targeted for homeless programs will help make up for the county cuts. Those programs will focus on "homeless prevention" and "rapid re-housing" and not shelters, he said.

Friendship Park: Open, Closed, Open, Closed

	Proposed new logo for L&F after name change to "Loaf & Gone Fishing."

If it were a business, it would still be making buggy whips.

Friendship Park when I went to it, today, shortly after 1:00 PM was closed. This after being told yesterday, when to my surprise, I found the park open at about noon, that the scheduled three-day-close was cancelled.

On Monday, yesterday, in the afternoon, I spoke with Garren, who runs the park, who told me the three-day close was cancelled because of the rain thing. You see, rain is, supposedly, a reason not to close because one wants Friendship Park to be open to aid the homeless on miserable rain-swept days.

But on Monday, Natasha told me the closure of the park for spring cleaning was cancelled, for the time being, because rain impeded cleaning and painting in the park.

Last week, there was no reason to think that Friendship Park would be closed before, maybe, Memorial Day or the day following. Yet, suddenly notices at the Info kiosk said it was to close Monday Tuesday and Wednesday of this week even though Friendship Park had been closed for three days about a month ago and we were told that employees used that time to clean.

When I was there on Tuesday, Rod was in the cul-de-sac picking up litter. The gate was closed and locked. He told me they notified the denizens over the loudspeaker of the closure. That same day. Over a loudspeaker that no one can understand unless one is standing within a few yards of the damn sound-distorting speakers.

When Loaves & Fishes is having a rally, they put up a banner in the park. When Loaves & Fishes wants people to turn out for a hearing regarding a summary motion downtown, they distribute flyers and close the park – as if pressuring a judge with high attendance of homeless people in his courtroom would sway the outcome favorably. As if a capable judge can be/should be swayed by popular opinion. As if this isn't just another Sister Libby vanity thing.

Loaves & Fishes continues to fail to notify those it serves the times when its services are available and when they will not be made available.

If Loaves & Fishes was a business, it would be out of business. If its donors knew how badly and incompassionately Loaves & Fishes was run, it would be out of business.

Is Sacramento the cutting edge of the economic turnaround? or not?

From an above-the-fold article, "Where Home Prices Crashed Early, Signs of a Rebound," in the New York Times today:

SACRAMENTO — Is this what a bottom looks like?

This city was among the first in the nation to fall victim to the real estate collapse. Now it seems to be in the earliest stages of a recovery, a hopeful sign for an economy mired in trouble and anxiety.

The article tells us that other areas in our country that were the first to suffer from the economic decline – Las Vegas, parts of Florida and the Inland Empire in southeastern California – seem to be showing signs similar to those of Sacramento, which is that housing values are perking up and that banks in the areas are becoming more relaxed and willing to give residents the loans they seek.

But while these signs are precisely what economists look for when things move into recovery mode, it's too early to know if the hopeful signs are just blips instead the beginnings of a steady and sure recovery.

Quoting the article:

“It’s fragile, and it could easily be fleeting,” said an MDA DataQuick analyst, Andrew LePage. “But history suggests this is how things might look six months before prices bottom out.”

BUT, in sharp contrast to the New York Times article is an article in today's Sacramento Bee, titled "Almost 24,000 homes, apartments vacant in Sacramento area." This article begins thus:

Nearly four years into California's housing downturn, close to 24,000 Sacramento-area homes and apartments are vacant, a number that climbed 40 percent in the past year, according to a Bee analysis of federal data.

Roughly a third, or about 7,200, of the six-county region's vacant homes have been empty longer than a year. About 3,500 have been empty longer than two years.

The vacancy count, revealing a vast excess of unused shelter in a region that overbuilt during the housing boom, stems from a U.S. Postal Service survey of houses and apartments where mail has not been picked up for 90 days.

So, maybe signs of recovery are chimerical?

Homeless World Sacramento needs the Wolf

Yep. We people stuck in the Big Muddy Muddy of Homeless World Sacramento need the Wolf. That is, we need someone like Pulp Fiction's Winston Wolfe who is a Fixer of any – and I do mean any – problem.

You might recall the character The Wolf in Pulp Fiction, played by Harvey Keitel, who was called in to fix the fix that Jules and Vincent found themselves in. Seems the movie's principle characters had a bloody corpse in the backseat of their Dodge.

The Wolf had been called to the scene by Marsellus Wallace, boss of our sociopathic protagonist heros, to clean up the incriminating mess, which he did lickitysplit – and in impressive fashion, otherwise.

We need someone like The Wolf in Homeless World Sac. Not to clean up incriminating messes, but to straighten up to make fly right fallen lives.

Damn it, the most frustrating thing about the world I'm in has to do with all the impressive men who have so much to offer the world and no means out of their mudhole to offer it.

What's rather weird – and unknown to the world outside the world of the outside – is that homelessness is a wonderful training exercise in humility (though many would attest it hasn't taken with me). And since so many people in Housed World Sacramento are such vainglorious pistols, a bit of humble splendor would be exactly the right pat of butter for their bread.

Whether you live hidden away out in back of the outback, or trundle you body back and forth between Overflow* and Loaves**, there's no egress from Miseryville. Now, that's not to say there's ABSOLUTELY NO egress from Miseryville, but effectively that's the case for beat-up folks who don't know their virtues and are unaware of their shadow aspects.

Shadow aspects? Yep. "Everyone carries a shadow," Carl Jung wrote, "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."

Quoting wikidpedia,

According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to project: turning a personal inferiority into a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. Jung writes that if these projections are unrecognized "The projection-making factor (the Shadow archetype) then has a free hand and can realize its object – if it has one – or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power." These projections insulate and cripple individuals by forming an ever thicker fog of illusion between the ego and the real world. Jung also believed that "in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness – or perhaps because of this – the shadow is the seat of creativity."

So, am I envisioning a psychologist for this Fixer position? Hmm, well, maybe. But it needs to be an all-purpose fixer who knows a great deal and has terrific instincts. Someone who can quickly get people jobs and housing and get their lives unstalled.

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* Overflow: the shelter also known as Winter shelter, even though it's spring. Overflow is so named because of the people who flow out of it after being caged there for (effectively) 17 hours each day. The place is also known as Night Prison of the Unconvicted.

**Loaves: the daytime facility known formally as Loaves ampersand Fishes

More on Sac'to Homeless & swine flu

As readers of this blog will know, SacHo is concerned that anything approaching a pandemic of swine flu might have dire consequences in our homeless community for three reasons: (1) cold and flu pass through the community quickly, since we exist in close quarters, (2) officials may restrict our movement to a greater extent to contain the flu and (3) since we are homeless, we suffer during illness more than others and may need hospitilization.

These words in a New York Times Online article, today, are encouraging:

The disease is expected to drop off during the summer, because flu viruses do not thrive in heat and humidity, but it could rebound in the fall and winter.

But these words made me worried, again:

The World Health Organization said that the flu vaccine given to millions of people for the most recent flu season appeared ineffective against the A(H1N1) strain [better known as "swine flu"], but that health officials were talking to manufacturers about creating a new swine-flu vaccine, which would take four to six months to produce.

What flu is and its symptoms

The flu is a contagious infection of the nose, throat, and lungs caused by the influenza virus.

The flu usually begins abruptly, with a fever between 102°F and 106°F. (An adult typically has a lower fever than a child.) Other common symptoms include a flushed face, body aches, chills, headache, nausea, and lack of energy. Some people have dizziness or vomiting. The fever usually lasts for a day or two, but can last 5 days.

Somewhere between day 2 and day 4 of the illness, the "whole body" symptoms begin to subside, and respiratory symptoms begin to increase.

The most prominent of the respiratory symptoms is usually a dry, hacking cough. Most people also develop a sore throat and headache. Nasal discharge (runny nose) and sneezing are common. These symptoms (except the cough) usually disappear within 4 - 7 days. Sometimes, the fever returns. Cough and tiredness usually last for weeks after the rest of the illness is over.

What to do if you get the flu

If you have mild illness, take these steps:

• Rest as much as you can
• Take medicines that relieve symptoms and help you rest (likely, Mercy Clinic at L&F will help)
• Drink plenty of liquids
• Avoid aspirin (especially teens and children)
• Avoid alcohol and tobacco (!!)
• Avoid antibiotics (unless necessary for another illness)
• If the flu is diagnosed within 48 hours of when symptoms begin, especially if you are at high risk for complications, antiviral medications may help shorten the length of symptoms by about one day.

Update May 5, 2009: Per a Sacramento County Public Health Media Release:
Sacramento County Health Officer Dr. Glennah Trochet continues to recommend:

• Stay at home when you are sick with flu-like illness which means a fever of 100.4 degrees or higher, experience achiness, a sore throat and/or cough
• Cover your cough or sneeze by using your sleeve or a tissue
• Wash your hands frequently to prevent spreading illness

Ticket to ride

Found this is today's Modesto Bee [emphasis, mine]:

Remember a few years back when we caught San Jose buying one-way bus tickets and shipping their homeless folks to Modesto? Well, our neighbors to the north are about to try something similar.

Our friends at the Stockton Record report that their fair city is planning to borrow an idea that Sacramento has used to reduce its homeless population. Under the program, one-way tickets are given to homeless men and women who can show that they have a place to go where friends or family will provide food, shelter and other assistance.

The newspaper's editorial noted that "such a program requires trust be built up with the homeless person, and that can take time. But if that happens and there is a place elsewhere for the person, a ticket to ride helps that person and, let's be honest, helps the city, too."

If it works in Sacramento and Stockton, perhaps it can in Stanislaus County as well.

Yep. There is such a program in Sacramento.

Many on the street will remember Karl Jones who came to Sacramento from Arkansas. He came here about nine months ago because he had read that there would be jobs in Sacramento relating to green energy ideas.

Well, there were no jobs of that nature. I believe that the only work Karl got was a part-time job bussing dishes at a downtown restaurant. He lost that job, got frustrated and got Francis House to help him get a Greyhound ticket to return to his wife and young son in Little Rock.