Homeless Campers bitter over last week's sweep

[Psst. This article was written twenty years ago by then Bee staff writer Dale Maharidge (who won a Pulizer Prize in 1990 for a book that was an indictment of the tenant-farming system). Except for the name of the mayor and others, the article reads like something that could have been written today.] This is starkly so because the police rousted the homeless who were sleeping on the sidewalk in front of Union Gospel Mission last night. -- Tom

Jose Chaparro scratched his toe in the dust of the vacant lot and talked bitterly of the city work crew that came last week and leveled his crude shelter – and, he says, destroyed his work tools.

"I'm a roofer. I can't work without my tools," said Chaparro, 38, a working homeless man who came to Sacramento from Phoenix, Ariz., two months ago. "I figured I'd work, make some money and get a house."

On Tuesday, Legal Services of Northern California met with Mayor Anne Rudin, who apologized to Chaparro. And then Legal Services filed a claim in behalf of Chaparro and five others – including a pregnant woman – who say their personal property was destroyed by the city.

Their sleeping bags and other possessions were crunched in a garbage compactor as part of a continuing city policy to sweep the homeless from the Discovery Park area. Sacramento, like at least 10 other California cities, has instituted hard-line policies against the homeless who camp illegally.

Chaparro admits it was an illegal camp. But the law and reality are two different matters. There's no room in any of the emergency shelters, according to the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency. The homeless had nowhere to go.

So, about a month ago, they built a few huts in some bushes near 11th and North D streets. The people in the five little homes became "like a family."

Chaparro was waiting for lunch July 25 at Loaves and Fishes, a downtown soup kitchen, when a friend ran up and said city workers were trashing their homes.

"Evidently the campsite was vacant when we went in to do the cleanup," said Dennis Kubo, code enforcement officer for the city Neighborhood Services Division.

Kubo said an occupant of the camp came by when the cleanup workers were almost finished, but by then, they'd used a garbage truck to compact most of the things found on the site. Kubo said the items found appeared to be mostly debris. Juvenile offenders from a work program were used to do the labor, and Kubo said they did not mention anything of value found on the site.

"If there was, we definitely put them off to the side," said Kubo. "I did find one bag that had a wallet, and some identification, and some medication, and I put that off to the side."

Chaparro said he lost knee chaps, hammers and an electric saw that he took to job sites – items he said are necessary for him to get work. Another friend who is a roofer lost some tools, too, he said, and thyroid medication. They estimate the value of these items to be at least $500 and maybe as high as $700.

"I don't like what happened," said Mayor Rudin. "I don't want to see people's property confiscated. Yet I can't order staff to stop litter control. They're doing what the council directed them to do."

Rudin said she wants to study ways to revise city policy so that the belongings of homeless people are not destroyed without warning.

And she said she would attempt to expedite the claim against the city filed by the six homeless people.

"I think the mayor is sincerely concerned about homeless people," said Barrie Roberts, a staff attorney for Legal Services of Northern California who filed the claim in behalf of the homeless people.

"She's also serious about upholding the law," added Roberts about the city's commitment to keep homeless people from such camps.

"There we have a difference of opinion. We think these people should be left alone unless they are causing a public hazard. There's no reason to treat them like dogs.

"They (the city) need to start seeing them not as invisible pieces of trash, but as people, at least as important as an abandoned car. At least an abandoned car gets ten days' notice before it is removed."

Is Loaves dumber than a breadstick and a guppy?

Hoy-day! What a sweep of vanity comes this way!
They dance! they are mad women
Like madness is the glory of this life.
As this pomp shows to a little oil and root. *
~Wm Shakespeare: homeless Apemantus in The Tragedy of Timon of Athens

	A World Shelter U-Dome, dubbed a LibbyPod. Loaves and Fishes owns two which were recently donated. Without extras, the pod retails for $2495.

The future will show what actually happens, but the rumormill is rife with information on what Loaves is planning for its rally & march on July 1. Some of the scuttlebutt tells us Loaves' brainpower continues at ebb.

One rumor, the likeliest to be true, is that Sister Libby is in hope of getting arrested.

Last April, when the Oprah-fuelled media blitz was in full-frontal Jerry Springer mode, the Chief-Exhibitionist-Officer of Loaves & Fishes was touting her hopes of getting into a local jail via the backdoor. Here, from an April 6 Bee article, just before Tent City came tumbling down, written by the homeless-help-industry's best friend, reporter Cynthia Hubert:

Fernandez and others said they will engage in nonviolent civil disobedience if campers are forced to leave, and said they will risk going to jail to make their point.

With astonishing cowardice, Fernandez and others DID engage in nonviolent civil disobedience AFTER the Tent City campers where ALL forced to leave. They held hands and sang songs while cameras took it in, in the empty field where the encampment had been, and were of course not arrested.

And here from another Hubert article, on April 22:

Fernandez urged the audience to inundate political leaders with calls and messages demanding [a safe and legal encampment]. "Safe ground!" she led the crowd in chants. "Safe ground!" She told the audience she planned to unroll a sleeping bag on the south steps of the Capitol and risk being arrested to prove her point, but police never pressed the issue.

So now, Libby and the gang are planning a rally at a parking lot at the L&F facility, followed by a march, followed by an encampment by der CEO in a LibbyPod, with staff and cronies gathered round, possibly at the Capitol or more-likely elsewhere. The latest rumor is that the green hats, park staff members at Loaves & Fishes, are instructed to not, themselves, try to get arrested.

But let us back up. Loaves has announced its rally for 10AM, which will feature nu-metal band Papa Roach. Rumor has it that to allow staff and interested homeless to take in everything from the festival-like occasion, the facility will close for the event and for the rest of the day.

Loaves & Fishes has a history of always seeing to it that homeless people can get a mid-day meal at the facility [except on Thanksgiving, when the nearby Salvation Army takes over midday feeding]. I'm told that on the day of the rally, burritos will be served in the morning, with bag lunches available beginning before noontime.

There will then be a march, to a location that is undisclosed. The Safe Ground Sac website says this: "Tough times demand creative solutions. Sacramento has public land that no one is using – land that, along with a unique 'WorldShelter,' can provide a homeless person with a safe place to stay for only $2 ** a night."

It is probably the case that the Capitol is not the destination of the march. Likely, they'll go to unutilized public land, give speaches, yell and scream, and there set up an encampment for a night (or two?). In hope of getting lots of publicity.

The problem here, though, is that this effort doesn't make a lick of sense. Tent City was shut down because the site was toxic and the publicity was toxic to a metropolis that would like to seem to be welcoming to business and tourism during a tough economic meltdown.

And here's a clue: The homeless people, themselves, are on the side of new business because that means job opportunities which many, many homeless people are eager for, contrary to the stereotype of homeless people that columnists like Marc Breton insist on maintaining.

So while the writer of this blog and the homeless-help industry and just about every homeless person I know favors a proper Tent City, it ain't gonna happen for a long, long while, if ever. There was a chance for safe ground, by whatever definition, when the time was ripe, but you blew it then, Libby. And now the time is rotten.

It is time, turn, turn, turn, for the homeless-help industry to grow up, respect the city and county government, discuss things honestly with them, and try mightily to best meet the real, doable needs of homeless people AND the considerable needs of the kind citizens of our metropolis, who are ALSO achey in the face of service cuts and rising fees and fares.

But hopefully it's all a dream, the rumormill is wrong, and the scuttlebutt has all been an effort in Tom foolery.
-----
* What the homeless character Apemantus means is that all the vain commotion is properly seen as madness by someone outside the thrall of it.
** Dick Fischbeck in the first comment to this blogpost explains how it's possible to rent a WorldShelter U-Dome for two-bucks a day when it retails for $2495: $2 * 2people * 365days * 2years = $2920. He also tells us "They say the U-dome has a 5 year life span." Fischbeck is associated with RanDome Shelter.

Link found between smoking and brain damage

The July issue of the Journal of Neurochemistry will include a report that demonstrates a link between smoking and brain damage.

Though there is already ample evidence of the harm that cigarette smoking causes, this new evidence may cause yet more people to stop their habit of smoking. As Woody Allen joked, "My brain? That's my second-favorite organ." Yep. For many, risk of damage to one's brain is scarier than mere death (though perhaps not as scary as risk of damage to one's first-favorite organ).

As those in Homeless World Sacramento readily know, smoking in the community is very common, despite its high expense. Rollies are frequently shared, serving both a social purpose and a function of calming the smoker.

According to a Medical News Today article, researchers with the Indian National Brain Research Center (NBRC) "have found that a compound in tobacco provokes white blood cells in the central nervous system to attack healthy cells, leading to severe neurological damage." The compound is known as NNK.

The article tells us that "unlike alcohol or drug abuse NNK does not appear to harm brain cells directly. However, the research team believes it may cause neuroinflamation, a condition which leads to disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis."

SacHo will follow-up on this story after the research report is made available.

UPDATE 6/25: Polling by Gallup shows the poorer a person is, the more likely it is that he/she is a smoker. This information suggests strongly that much of the revenue gained from increased cigarette sales taxes should be used to help poor people quit the smoking habit. Otherwise, the tax is alarmingly regressive.

Loaves takes lead in third "Safe Ground" event

A clock on the homepage of Loaves & Fishes' website counts down the seconds until 10AM on July 1 when a "March for Safe Ground," featuring Papa Roach, will begin at the intersection of 12th & Ahern.

"12th & Ahern" is really the parking lot of L&F's Delany Center, according to where a pin is placed in L&F's map of the spot. In the back of the Center, several of us have seen the construction and temporary instalation of pod-like geodesic tent structures made from corrugated polypropylene, dubbed LibbyPods, which are clearly going to play a part in the First of the Month event. [The pods are actually World Shelter U-Domes which retail for $2,495.]

There have previously been Safe Ground events on December 23, 2008, and on April 21, 2009. The December event was a march from the Loaves & Fishes facility to Ceasar Chavez Park, downtown, where a rally was held. The April 21 event was a rally at the state capitol.

One distinctive and troubling difference between the two past rallies was the definition given by L&F as to what safe ground means. SacHo addressed the matter in a blogpost last April: Last December it meant "a ... location where the homeless can camp legally with access to basic needs such as running water, toilets, and trash cans. Safe Ground does not yet exist." Whereas in April safe ground had eroded to mean "safe campground(s) where homeless folks can have running water, bathrooms, and trash services until our City, County and State are willing and able to provide adequare shelters and affordable housing for the growing numbers of homeless folks due to our depressed economic times."

How is safe ground defined now, for the July 1 event? Hard to say. The webpage at the Loaves & Fishes webspace has the eroded April definition, while a flyer that was briefly posted at L&F's Friendship Park seemed to be using the December definition. [The eroded definition would mean that a Safe Ground encampment would be disbanded in the event of unfull shelters or general recovery from hard economic times.]

A new website, solely for Safe Ground Sacramento, has been created by joint auspices of Loaves & Fishes; Francis House; and the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee (aka, Paula Lomazi). [See there business-card-like logo, at right.] Neither the L&F webpage nor the new website are founts of information about what the promised rally-followed-by-a-march on the 1st will entail nor what effect the event will have on regular daily services for the homeless at the Loave & Fishes facility on that date.

Unreliable rumor has it that the L&F facility plans to close early on the morning of the 1st. Breakfast burritos will be served and bag lunches will be given to those coming to the facility for food.

County announces first death from H1N1 (Swine) Flu

In a press release, the county of Sacramento has announced the first death in its jurisdiction from H1N1, better known as Swine Flu. The death occurred today. It is just the ninth death from the disease in California.

The decedent is identified as being a 24-year-old woman who died in the UC Davis Medical Center. There were no other details about the individual.

The announcement came from Sacramento County Public Health Officer Glennah Trochet, M.D.

Dr. Trochet offered advice on actions people should take to deter spread of the illness:

• Cover your mouth when you cough and sneeze, preferably with a tissue. Dispose of the tissue after each use. If you don't have a tissue, cover your mouth by coughing into your elbow or sleeve, not your hand.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth, even after washing your hands.
• Avoid close contact with sick people.
• Stay home from work or school if you are sick.

Taking precausions like the above are particularly important in Homeless World Sacramento because many of us are not particularly careful when we sneeze or cough and because we are in close quarters when we eat and sleep.

UPDATE 6/24: A Sac Bee article, today, reveals some information about the flu victim. Her name is Beth Kizere. She had just returned to the Sacramento area following a trip to Las Vegas when she came down with symptoms that seemed to indicate pneumonia. It took awhile before tests were done to determine the specific disease Kizere suffered from.

The young woman's mother told the Bee reporter "her daughter had been in good health before the Las Vegas trip and that she suffered from no chronic illnesses, unlike other victims of the virus."

Merton's "the Vision in Louisville"

Originally posted in Homeless Tom.

Below is a quote -- a whole short section, really -- from Trappist monk Thomas Merton's 1966 book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander that I found by way of a snip in Bad Buddha, the blog of ebwrite's (aka, Ed). I understand, from further research, that the quote below is a rather well-known bit of Merton's writing, later dubbed by fans "the vision in Louisville."

The realization that Merton experiences is as pure a demonstration of Plotinus's path to spiritual awakening as I could ever have hoped to find. Again, my other blog, Homeless Tom, from a post on the Roman philosopher, here is Ken Wilber's pithy statement of Plotinus's Path that Merton fulfills: Flee the Many, find the One; having found the One, embrace the Many as the One.

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. Not that I question the reality of my vocation, or of my monastic life: but the conception of “separation from the world” that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion: the illusion that by making vows we become a different species of being, pseudoangels, “spiritual men,” men of interior life, what have you.

Certainly these traditional values are very real, but their reality is not of an order outside everyday existence in a contingent world, nor does it entitle one to despise the secular: though “out of the world,” we are in the same world as everybody else, the world of the bomb, the world of race hatred, the world of technology, the world of mass media, big business, revolution, and all the rest. We take a different attitude to all these things, for we belong to God. Yet so does everybody else belong to God. We just happen to be conscious of it, and to make a profession out of this consciousness. But does that entitle us to consider ourselves different, or even better, than others? The whole idea is preposterous.

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And I suppose my happiness could have taken form in the words: “Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.” To think that for sixteen or seventeen years I have been taking seriously this pure illusion that is implicit in so much of our monastic thinking.

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake.

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

This changes nothing in the sense and value of my solitude, for it is in fact the function of solitude to make one realize such things with a clarity that would be impossible to anyone completely immersed in the other cares, the other illusions, and all the automatisms of a tightly collective existence. My solitude, however, is not my own, for I see now how much it belongs to them—and that I have a responsibility for it in their regard, not just in my own. It is because I am one with them that I owe it to them to be alone, and when I am alone, they are not “they” but my own self. There are no strangers!

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed …I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift.

Again, that expression le point vierge (I cannot translate it), comes in here.* At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

Several things that I have learned from my dive into Christianity these last few months I find in Merton's words here.

Merton tells us his "seeing" is unteachable or unmapable -- it's a gift. Paul wrote about the gift of love in I Corinthian 13. Paul, much like Merton, wrote of the delicious future event when men might no longer "see through a glass, darkly," but instead see each other "face to face," knowing each other, completely, likening it to how we are known by God.

Merton uses the phrase "shining like the sun" to refer to what people really are like. This comes from the books of Matthew and Revelation and is used in one of the so-called 'extra' stanzas of Amazing Grace, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Here, the line from Matthew that describes Jesus:

And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light.

And here, Stowe's stanza of Amazing Grace:

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining like the sun,
We've no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.

------
* A few pages earlier in his book, Merton wrote, "Massignon has some deeply moving pages in the Mardis de Dar-es-Salam: About the desert, the tears of Agar, the Muslims, the 'point vierge' of the spirit, the center of our nothingness where, in apparent dispair, one meets God -- and is found completely in his mercy."

Regaining Control

Helplessness is the enemy of happiness and the ally of fear. A vital element of feeling happy is having a sense of control, of being free to shift your attention to the things that are important to you and mold your behavior accordingly. ~Dozier

Traumatic events in people's lives usually have this in common: they create a sense of helplessness.

Loss of a spouse, a child, a limb, or having to face death, oneself, are surely some of the most emotionally affecting challenges people face.

But few challenges impose a sense of helplessness more than the cascading events where a person suffers loss of job and watches as belongings are lost, and then one's apartment or house. And then, being in a state of homelessness fully scrambles ones relationships with family and friends. It is a disorganizaing and disorienting experience. Then you get screwed up further.

In his highly regarded book Fear Itself, Rush Dozier writes about people put in traumatic life circumstances,

... you tend to feel at the mercy of events that threaten to overwhelm you. This creates intense fears that have a negative effect on the immune system. Studies have placed groups of rats in enclosures that give them mild electrical shocks. One set of enclosures allows the rats to stop the shock by turning a wheel or pushing a lever. The other enclosures give the rats no control whatsoever. The results of such studies invariable show that the rats with no control suffer many more health problems.

Other studies have compared people in high-powered, stressful jobs with lower ranking employees of similar age and health. These have found that despite the pressure of their jobs, top executives tend to have a significantly lower mortality rate than their subordinates. The most important variable between these two groups is the control they have over their environment.

Executives tend to perceive themselves as in charge of their destiny, whereas employees usually feel much more at the mercy of decisions made by others. Greater control appears to mean a more robust immune system and greater protection against stress-related disorders like high blood pressure.

But the sense of control must be subjectively perceived or there is no benefit. ...

If science has uncovered one important technique for managing fear and stress it is this: Try to avoid, whenever possible, circumstances in which you feel helpless and
vulnerable. If this cannot be done, then, despite the circumstances, try to maintain a subjective attitude of optimism and reasonable control.

Unhappily, if not unconscionably, homeless-help nonprofits operate in a manner to preserve (that is, control) their funding sources [be it private donations or government contracts] at the expense of doing what is best for homeless people and at the expense of getting the truth out to the public about what homelessness is all about and what it is like.

In Sacramento, many so-called homeless-help organizations are the barrier for people trying to re-establish their lives. Truly, it is a strange tangle and a diabolical situation: The whole of the homeless-aid aparatus is one of controlling homeless people.

Sacramento's quasi-organized vast homeless-help bureaucracy has wholly forgotten its original purpose and is nowadays solely in the business of keeping itself in business. [You could appropriately liken it to the Military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against, three days before he left office: "Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded."]

The news today is that for the year of July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010 the county – with help from federal stimulus funds that will show up on October 1 – will provide shelter for the homeless that will be much the same in the new year that it was in the fiscal year that will end at the end of this month. Same old; same old.

The horribleness and rampant wasteful spending will continue unabated. The public and county Supervisors have been fooled, again. The homeless-help bureaucracies will live on, like a growing cancerous tumor, living on the blood of conned donors and others in the public sphere. And left to suffer are the controlled homeless, made helpless, who have little control over their own lives. And have no help finding an exit to their circumstance, because money is funnelled to perpetuate homelessness.

Eisenhower ended his Military-industrial complex speech in a way that applies today to the matter under consideration in this blogpost:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

N.Y. Times praises new claymation movie that includes a homeless man/angel

A new claymation film, titled $9.99, got a rave review today in the New York Times online. A central character is a sinister homeless man who turns into a grumpy and sarcastic angel, pictured above (yeah, yeah, he's the guy with wings), who is voiced by Geoffrey Rush.

The Times review tells us the story in the movie is both "elusive and strange."

To watch [the film, by Israeli writer Etgar Keret] is to enter an eerily realistic parallel universe where people and emotions are at once perfectly recognizable and completely bizarre.

You can view the trailer with clips from the film at the Times website.

More from the review about the film:

The gestures and expressions of these handmade citizens of a meticulously realized city are given more poignancy by the slight hesitancy imposed by stop-motion animation. They seem to be pausing to think before each action or utterance, even when they are being rash, heedless or irrational.

And the environment around them is dense with meaning and full of life. Both large structures — parks, buildings, streetscapes and rooms — and tiny objects like bottle caps and coins have been modeled with exquisite, almost compulsive care.

Indeed, Ms. Rosenthal’s work is so scrupulous and unassuming that after a while you might begin to take it for granted and to allow astonishment at the film’s visual texture to give way to impatience with its story.

And impatience may be among the responses that Mr. Keret, who wrote the screenplay, intends. His work proceeds from the recognition that life is tedious and confusing as well as, occasionally, charmed.

The film currently has an 85% Fresh rating from the webspace Rotten Tomatoes.

The movie is opening today in limited release. It is not yet out in Sacramento.

Latest on July 1 and the shelter beds thing

Beds and rumours of beds.

From what I understand, both the A Street shelter and the Bannon Street shelter that are currently being administered by Volunteers of America are going to be funded beyond June 30. At least one of the facilities, according to what I've heard unofficially, will be operated by Salvation Army beginning on July 1.

Winter shelter, which is also currently being administered by Volunteers of America is not set to continue beyond June 30. This is not surprising; the shelter has always been seasonal, and as it is it will be in operation nine days into summer. Never before, so far as I can tell from a search of Sacramento Bee articles in years past, has the facility ever been in operation past March 31 ... until this year.

A problem remaining is what additional shelter will there be in the winter of 2009-2010. Winter shelter is not only not getting its current operation extended, it's not yet funded for next winter.

As many know, Winter shelter [also known as Overflow] is badly operated and devours homeless people's time, eating up more than 16 hours of each sheltered person's day. Truly, it is an extra-legal prison. A leaner, sleeker shelter operation for next winter would be better, for both the cash-strapped county and homeless people, themselves, who need a chance to get something done in their day ... such as WORK, or get some meager pleasure from being alive.

At both Loaves & Fishes' Friendship Park and at Francis House, small flyers advertise a Safe Ground rally for July 1, which apparently replaces the "Help Keep Shelters Open" Day of Shame that L&F's had been promoting on that date. This is a clear indicator that the shelter bed issue has been somewhat solved by the county, for now, unofficially -- and all the homeless-help "players" are quietly aware of it.

With beds to be available in summer 2009 in roughly the same quantity they were available in summer 2008 [~650 beds] the period of Hysterical Whining [by the "usual suspects" in the Sacramento homeless-help industry, worried about their jobs] is abated for a while. The issue now, again, becomes one of keeping the police from rousting people who must sleep in bags or tents outdoors – or simply choose the freedom of sleeping outdoors.

Update 6/18/09: From a County of Sacramento memo, from Department of Human Assistance Director Bruce Wagstaff to the Board of Supervisors re "Report Back On The Number Of Homeless Individuals/Families Served by Federal Stimulus Funding":

Since the start up for this new program is October 1, 2009 the number of units of assistance for Fiscal Year 2009-2010 is estimated to be between 250-300. While a portion of these resources can and will be used for the homeless who no longer have access to shelter services, the resources will also be used to prevent individuals/families from becoming homeless and/or rapid rehouse those that have recently become homeless, thereby diverting the recent homeless away from shelters.

In addition DHA plans to fund family shelter beds with Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Contingency Funds (ECF). The new shelter beds that will be available through this funding are 74, (62 at the Bannon Street site from October to June and the continuation of 12 additional year-round beds at St. John’s). In addition, the Sacramento Area Emergency Housing Center (SAEHC) indicated on June 11, 2009 the possibility of adding additional capacity at their shelter for an additional six families.

What does this mean? Lots of funding for shelter beds. Though it will be mostly targetted to the newly homeless, these newly homeless will thus NOT be in there scrapping for beds at the long-established shelters, thus keeping a reasonable supply of beds for the long-time homeless.

Alice & Kev, homeless characters in The Sims 3

The game The Sims 3, released just a few days ago, includes two characters who are homeless, Kev and his daughter Alice.

Looking at the blog Alice and Kev of Robin Burkinshaw, a game designer in UK, having the game unfold centering on those two characters may only further instill the worst of stereotypes.

In this new version of the SIMS game, players give their characters traits. Burkinshaw has made Kev "hot-headed, mean-spirited, and inappropriate. He also dislikes children, and he’s insane. He’s basically the worst Dad in the world. He is a horrible human being, but he’s also amusing to watch." In other words, I think we can say, homelessness gets savaged.

In his welcoming blogpost, Burkinshaw writes,

I have attempted to tell my experiences with the minimum of embellishment. Everything I describe in here is something that happened in the game. What’s more, a surprising amount of the interesting things in this story were generated by just letting go and watching the Sims’ free will and personality traits take over.

Following, my own synopsis of what has taken place in the story of Alice and Ken in the beginning of the Burkinshaw storyline:

• Kev meets another man in a park, says the man's mother is a llama. A fight breaks out when Kev tries to kiss the man to apologize.
• Kev dislikes children; blames young Alice for everything. Alice goes to sleep on the playground bench and ends up being taken in, briefly, by the Joy family.
• Kev, meantime, is sent by Burkenshaw to break other characters' hearts. Being insane he ends up dirty and without clothes and unsuccessful when he confronts a woman.
• Next day, Kev rummages in the trash instead of helping Alice with her homework. Alice, in need of food, goes to the Grampas' house and eats ice cream. The Grampas tell he she is being inappropriate. She goes to take a shower. The Grampas burst in on her while she's showering. She's embarrassed, but then goes to sleep in a good mood.
• Kev meets a new woman and behaves fully inappropriately.
• Suddenly, Alice is a teenager. She and Kev have a verbal fight.
• Ken mocks his daughter and threatens physical violence. Alice hates her father.
• Alice is now too old for her teddybear. No one loves her, but she is happy for a spell on the swings. She cries before going to sleep on a bench.

Well, it goes on from there, but I think you get the picture.

Thanks to blogger Joel John Roberts who alerted his readers, including me, to the new Sims characters with a blogpost, today, "Homelessness has Gone Virtual," in L A's Homeless blog.

Homeless people profiled in SN&R cover story

In its current edition, the Sacramento News & Review [SN&R] has a cover story, called "Living Homeless: Faces and Stories from the Streets of Sacramento" that pictures 17* Sacramento homeless citizens and tells us a little, in their words, about how they became homeless and what their lives are like.

I know three or four of the people that are profiled.

I appreciate that it is a good idea to have the public come to better know homeless people as individuals, rather than as an amorphous crowd. I think that SN&R did an earnest job and was appreciative of the people interviewed.

Still, knowing several of the people, I'm disappointed about how they "came off." The people I know, animated by their spirits, as opposed to caught in hard-focused photographs, are fully splendid.

The brief bios of each person seemed incomplete, to me. But that is likely to be because I want the public to know more and feel closer to each person. SN&R was probably wise not to exhaust its typical readers with too much content.

I am hopeful, though, that the project/article makes a good impression on the public, presenting homeless Sacramentans in their variety. NOT knowing the people profiled probably results in a fully good impression of the individuals, on the whole.

Sadly, I've lost my earphones and cannot hear some of the people's stories, taped for Capitol Public Radio. Hopefully, y'all who read this blogpost will have a speaker or earphones and will be moved to click to the SN&R story and hear the audio.
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Of additional interest. Three posts in Kevin Fiscus Photography blog about Fiscus taking pictures for the SN&R article: "Last week I participated in an event at Sacramento City College"; "Sacramento News and Review - Homeless Connect"; and "Robert."
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* Only 14 of the people are depicted in the hardcopy edition of the story.

It was Jimmy Night last Wednesday at the mission

It was "Jimmy night" Wednesday night at the mission, and, per usual, Jimmy Roughton came with something interesting and fresh to say that made rousing and interesting points.

The best of it was well into his talk when Jimmy told us about how being a Christian positively affected his life, giving him happiness, hope and joy.

Less persuasive were things he said early on in his sermon about the lives and thought processes of non-Christians, or non-ripe Christians who didn't (yet) have a close, personal relationship with Christ and weren't joyfully anticipating their afterlife in heaven.

Pascal's wager

As he does often, Jimmy evoked one of his variants of Pascal's Wager. Last night, he did so near the beginning of his talk, citing Pascal explicitly. Pascal's Wager is this: "Even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because so living has everything to gain, and nothing to lose."

Jimmy's variant involves wagering that God exists (and that Christianity is The Way) because it is the reasoned bet. He tells the mission congregants that they lose nothing by becoming Christians, and very potentially have everything to gain by being in heaven for an eternity. Faith, Jimmy tells us, is what you choose to believe.

The best argument against making the wager is one that I make: "I'm not at liberty to choose what I believe. My beliefs choose me. I endeavor to be open to whatever seems true." Daniel Dawkins expands on this argument writing that "Pascal's Wager could only ever be an argument for feigning belief in God." In addition, according to Dawkins, an omniscient God would presumably see through the deception.

Jimmy told us Wednesday night that we must choose to believe something with respect to God. Even choosing nothing is a choice. Fence-sitting agnosticism, he told us, is the only impossible position. With respect to God, we are compelled to reach a determination, if we think on the matter; it is an issue of infinite importance.

Christianity and science

But beyond saying there was more than a twinkle of a chance that God exists, Jimmy disparaged science-based and other non-believer arguments against God's existence, and told of conclusive evidence of God's/Jesus's existence which should convince even the most hard-hearted science lover.

He said that science has shown that the universe and earth were so perfectly suited for humans that surely it is evident that only a designer [God!] could make this so. If the orbit of the earth was off track "by only an inch" human existence would be made impossible.

I think what Pastor Jimmy is alluding to, here, is the idea that the forces of nature seem carefully atuned to make the universe possible, that it can only have happened by design.

Holmes Ralston makes this point in his paper "Shaken Atheism,"

Both astrophysicists and microphysicists have lately been discovering that the series of events that produced our universe had to happen in a rather precise way—at least, they had to happen that way if they were to produce life as we know it. ...

Astronomer Fred Hoyle reports that his atheism was shaken by his own discovery that in the stars, carbon just manages to form and then just avoids complete conversion into oxygen. If one atomic level had varied half a per cent, life would have been impossible. "Would you not say to yourself . . . 'Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom, otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly minuscule' ? Of course you would. . . . The carbon atom is a fix.

The arguments against the fine-tuning designer may sound less likely to many people, but they are more convincing to me.

One argument against is the "Inverse gambler's fallacy" which posits that of course we only exist where life is possible for us. Because a man takes shelter from the rain in a cave, instead of staying out in a field where he would remain wet, doesn't mean the cave was created for the man. Or, if you're looking to catch a fish, you don't search in trees; you search in the place that fish can exist, in a body of water. In may be that the universe we exist in is the one that came after a million "failed" universes where life couldn't manifest.

Another argument against the fine-tuning designer is that the incubation of a universe, likely, necessarily involves a balancing of the forces of nature. Superstring theory [or one of its cousin string theories or M-Theory], which most astrophysicist think is valid, is most accommodating to this idea. The basic elements of matter and energy are string-like and vibrate, thus, these elements resonate with one another, creating harmonies and disharmonies. Thus from this interaction, the forces of nature are forged together.

A third argument is that mind and matter interpenetrate each other. Thus being constituent of one another, each only could exist in league with the other. As Buddhism's Heart Sutra tells us, "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is not other than emptiness; emptiness is not other than form."

A fourth argument addresses the element of "life as we know it." In other universes, with different laws of nature, life would be different. In a different universe, where carbon molecules weren't possible, life might exist in combinations of other molecules, including ones that could only come into existence on this other universe.

Jimmy also told us the resurrected Christ, witnessed by 500 people, was one of the most verified events in history. [A good article, detailing the evidence of Christ's resurrection, is "Evidence for the Resurrection" by Josh McDowell.]

The case against the resurrection of Christ, in other than a body of light, is made by Richard Carrier in a long article "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story," made from a series of lectures he gave.

You make the call. It seems to me that people who have the proclivity to be True Believers read the Bible as being true and constantly and consistantly self-affirming until the truth of it seems obvious and absolute. True Believers are highly respectful of authority.

Skeptics read about the history of the Bible, including evidence of how it was written, and see why those who examine ancient documents relating to it think it might be fiction in significant part, and know politics was in play in the assembly of the books that make it up. Skeptics are much more inclined than True Believers to trust in science since skeptics appreciate the truth-seeking nature of scientific methods with its peer review and welcoming of tests and examination of any seeming 'established truths.'

What being a Christian is like for Jimmy Roughton

In the last part of his sermon, Jimmy explained to us what being a Christian was like for him.

He mentioned first the importance of having a home, which is poignant for a chapel full of homeless people. Then, he told us about his recent circumstance being on the road evangelizing while staying in a motor home. He missed the comforts and familiarity of his own house.

Then, Jimmy talked about being in his own home with the items and arrangement of things that he knew. And, he talked about coming home from being on the road and how happy he was to, again, have the companionship of his beloved wife. Being Christian, he and his wife are servants of each other; their love is heightened.

Jimmy then talked of his intimate relationship with Jesus and how it brought him profound joy.

He told us about how he often imagines what heaven might be like, where good and goodness always abound. He saw himself in heaven or on the new earth engaged in work given him by God that benefitted others. THIS was his true home, not the 'worldly' world we know.

A close look at Loaves & Fishes' recently released public-disclosure document

NOTE: The Form 990 referenced in this article can be viewed at the bottom of the Sacramento Press article "Why shouldn't Loaves & Fishes pay to shelter homeless rather than the cash-strapped county?"

Woe the dull, albeit necessary, title of this article! But in the mud of L&F's report of money movement in its operation in 2008 are points of interest to those interested in social policy in our fair metropolis of Greater Sacramento.

And, since Loaves & Fishes is the self-anointed Goliath aid-and-advocacy charity for the thousands trudging the streets in Homeless World Sac, its muscularity and weaknesses, efficiency and wastefulness, are of prime importance to any who feel for the least among us, the dispossessed.

And, if you have donated money, or your time as a volunteer, to L&F, or are thinking of doing so, it should matter to you greatly if the charity is getting much "bang for the buck" from the resources you've given it or might give to it.

Form 990

Form 990 provides the public with financial information about nonprofit organizations. Loaves & Fishes' Form 990, for calendar year 2008, was completed on May 13. It is posted, in two parts, as pdf documents immediately after the article here.

As reported earlier by me in a Sacramento Press piece, "Why shouldn't Loaves & Fishes pay to shelter homeless rather than the cash-strapped county?", L&F has amassed $1,549,155 [$1,154,672 in 2007 and $394,483 in 2008] of unspent funds in the last two years [See line 19 on the first page of the Part 1 of Form 990, below]. And, at the end of 2008, the organization had $2,286,282 [$513,124 + $1,774,470 - $1,312], in cash and other liquid assets [See line 1,2, & 4 on page 11 of Part 1 of Form 990, below]. That's a big pile that we would have to believe has been augmented in 2009 what with the Oprah-initiated media blitz that began in February. Loaves & Fishes' mission statement [at the top of the last page of Part II of Form 990, below], tells us that "feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless" is precisely what it is dedicated to do.

Interesting odds and ends

There is good reason, based on the Form 990, to believe that in most instances the Loaves & Fishes organization gets good "bang for the buck." Only one employee makes over $50,000:
James Peth, Board of Directors member and Friendship Park Director makes $61,067 when unspecified "other compensation" is included. [See page 7 in Part I] CEO and Board member Libby Fernandez, as is well known, is uncompensated as she is a Sister of Mercy and has taken a vow of poverty.

In matters of pay, Loaves & Fishes looks good, especially in comparison to Volunteers of America which is criticised for paying its national President/CEO over $300,000/year. L&F also looks mighty good in comparison to the local charity WEAVE, of similar size to L&F, but with seven employees being paid over $50,000/year and four of them being paid over $80,000/yr. [See WEAVE's Form 990, schedule A. Registration with GuideStar may be required.]

One particularly curious matter on L&F's Form is a program identified thus [on the last page of Part II]:

Volunteer Placement and Orientation (Brother Martin's Ministry) $289,453
Placement and orientation service that included a complete tour of the facilities 1 to 2 times a week for the public interested in volunteering at Sacramento Loaves & Fishes. A total of 750 people attended the weekly 10 A.M. Thursday orientations and 110 people attended the first Saturday orientations. 3,880 people throughout the Sacramento region volunteered their service to Sacramento Loaves & Fishes.

This "Volunteer Placement and Orientation" Program, uniquely, goes unmentioned at the Loaves & Fishes website page of its programs. Yet, with expenditures of $289,453 attributed to it, it ranks as the fifth most expensive thing that Loaves & Fishes does.

If you look at the description of the program, it is hard-to-impossible to fathom how so very much money can be spent accomplishing so very little. Apparently, for the benefit of 860 people [750 + 110] who went through orientation as volunteers, $289,453 was spent. That's $329 per person.

I wrote Sister Libby for an explanation of this program expenditure. She at first wrote [on May 28] that it is "the money that we save but need to calculate, by having volunteers instead of paying employees." But that cannot be, the amount is an element in the Form as a program expenditure and the Form does not show donations of people's time as a revenue source.

In a follow-up email, also on May 28, she wrote, "In the 08 Annual Report under Vol Placement (Brother Martin's Min) this total amount includes salaries for grounds keeping, day labor, employee taxes, medical, contributions to other non-profits, etc."

I've gotten no response to subsequent emails to Ms. Fernandez, asking if the "program" had really become a catch-all of general operational expenses of the facility. This would, of course, be a not-insignificant accounting irregularity, misrepresenting the activities of the organization to the public.

I wrote Board of Directors chairperson Karen Banker about the matter, but did not get a response.

Nutrition

In describing its "dining room" program [See page 2 in Part I], which served noon-time meals every day except Thanksgiving, in 2008, we are told the meals are "nutritionally balanced containing the appropriate amounts of proteins and vitamins."

At best this depiction of Loaves & Fishes meals is misleading. The meals have huge oversized portions and are heavily loaded with carbohydrates.

I wrote the following in my blog, Homeless Tom, in June 2008, referencing a meal that was then served very frequently, perhaps weekly, at L&F:

The cover story in the June 23 issue of Time reported on the unhealthy lunches served to children. A tray of food, pictured as a full two-page spread, and cited as "From Bad to a Whole Lot Worse" for children, was not dissimilar to what denizens of L&F might eat for lunch. The menu was nachos topped with cheese and beef; salsa; refried beans; mexican rice; peaches; two chocolate-chip cookies and a beverage of orange juice. The portions pictured were much less than what people eating at Loaves & Fishes see. Such a meal was cited in the magazine as junk food.

While there certainly are days eating Loaves & Fishes' meals when vegetables abound, they are not typical, and are usually accompanied by mamouth mounds of macaroni, cheese and beef.

More recently, last April, in one of my blogs, I suggested Loaves & Fishes change it's name to Buns & Weanies, due to the prevailing junkfood that was being served at that time.

Frankly, from first-hand knowledge, I know the claim that Loaves & Fishes serves nutitious food to be ludicrous. The organization doesn't accept government funds, which might result in a requirement that the food served be vastly more healthful. I am very certain that no one is now or has been trying to measure the protein or vitamin content of any of the organization's meals.

Indeed, when you include the mountain of sugar-topped sweets and pastries denizens of Friendship Park consume as breakfast, Loaves & Fishes is contributing to the ill-health of users of its services. Many homeless people get the majority of their calories from Loaves & Fishes and if they are not suffering now for it, many will be when they get older.

County Board of Supervisors meeting on shelter situation [and more] tomorrow

There will be a meeting of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors at 9:30, tomorrow, Thursday, to discuss matters relating to Human Assistance and Health And Human Services, in context of the 2009-2010 county budget gap of $180 million.

The meeting will be at 700 H Street Suite 1450; Sacramento, CA 95814 [map] [agenda].

Funding for General Assistance, Mather Community Campus, Homeless Shelters, and Primary Care are important topics of the meeting, which will allow members of the public to address the board for several minutes, each.

It is expected that many homeless-aid and -advocacy people will be at the meeting to give their points of view, pressing for restoration of funding (or to find funding in forthcoming stimulus monies) for programs that are scheduled to end or be significantly cut on July 1. It is expected that many homeless people will be at the meeting and that many will address the board, as well.

Of prime interest is the shelter situation beginning on July 1. Winter shelter is neither funded after June 30, nor funded for the winter of 2009-2010 [approx Nov 15, 2009 - Mar 31, 2010]. Funding ends for VOA's 'A' Street and Bannon Street shelters on July 1; they are set to close.

The following are SacHo's ideas on how to bridge the forthcoming shelter shortage in these dire economic times. [These ideas would help a lot, but there must also be provisions for winter.]:

• Have Loaves and Fishes fund a 125-bed shelter at either A Street or Bannon St. that is no-frills, 8:30pm-to-6:30am, just "dinner, sleep and simple breakfast." This is the type shelter that upward-striving homeless people need and that will do for the needs of many who are snared in homelessness (until housing becomes available). L&F has been stockpiling funds the last two years and can easily afford to meet its mandate and fund this program (instead of immorally sitting on the money it has).
• Create a small encampment of tents [for ~30 select people] where a building was raised in the L&F facility. Again, L&F has been stockpiling funds and can now, in hard times, fund this effort.
• Allow Union Gospel Mission to expand their number of beds [from ~80 to 120]. [UGM had once requested an expansion to 200 beds that the county denied.] There are space constraints, but, perhaps, men could sleep in the dining room on mats the county could provide and homeless people's property could be kept in a locked shipping container that the county could provide in property adjacent to the mission, on property owed by the county.
• The Board of Supervisors should designate areas in the county where homeless people may pitch tents without fear of being rousted by police.

Reasons to live on the streets instead of in shelters

Very interesting recent article "Why I Choose Streets Over Shelter" in change.org's Ending Homelessness blog where an Oakland, CA, homeless man, using the moniker SlumJack, provides five reasons why he prefers sleeping on the street to staying in an emergency shelter.

SlumJack's first reason will resonate with anyone who has been subjected to the nightmare of Sacramento's Winter shelter:

1. Shelters usually require that you enter early in the eve and then remain there until early the next morn when you must leave. This can totally waste HOURs of otherwise possibly productive time, just sitting around in unpleasant to worse circumstances -- at a time when EVERY resource, including time, must be marshalled.

SlumJack's other reasons are affected, I think, by his use of a bicycle towing a cart to haul his property. He's subject to having property stolen and has trouble finding a somewhat secure place to keep his things. [As the Sacramento homeless know well, bicycles, themselves, are often and easily stolen.]

Also, very contrary to my experience in Sacramento, SlumJack finds his brother homeless to be "some of the worst people."

Anyway, SlumJack has an interesting perspective. I am happy to find that SlumJack has re-started a blog he first began in 2008 called homeword unbound. In his first new post of 2009, "I am resuming/continuing this blog,"put up just yesterday, SlumJack gives us a list of why the blog had sat idle.

In celebration of finding SlumJack's blog, I am, of course, adding it to the blogroll in the right-sidebar in SacHo.

I Heart Sacramento

Sometimes, conversation at the shelter, while we await entry into the chapel, focuses on what we like and dislike about Sacramento, or whether we, generally, love or hate the city or metropolis.

I, for one, love the city, the people generally, and have high hopes for the future of the metropolis.

Loaves & Fishes bails on people it's, supposedly, there to serve, again!

If it were a business or a responsible charity or the leadership in North Korea its terrible conduct would be recognized as being so very very bad, the proletariat would storm the Winter Palace [or the site of the luxury retreat or below-ground bunker] and throw the bums* out!!

AGAIN. YET AGAIN. The idlers known as Loaves & Fishes management have closed their facility with greatly-inadequate notice so they can pitch a game of horse shoes ... or whatever.

At approximately 8:30 this morning, the wastrels that are admin put up handmade notices that the facilities will be closed tomorrow, Tuesday. No park; no wash house; and who knows what no-this or no-that else. Another organization retreat was the reason given.

Donors and potential donors, take heed. Irresponsible, incompasionate and unwise children are in charge of the fairgrounds.
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* by "bums" I mean "persons who avoid work and sponge on others; loafers; idlers," and decidedly NOT homeless people.

Update: The following email was sent to the approximately 15 members of the Board of Directors of Loaves & Fishes this afternoon:

Dear L&F Board of Directors,

I will perhaps never understand why Loaves & Fishes management, and at this point I would have to include its seeming non-engaged Board, continues to treat so shabbily those it is, supposedly, there to serve.

At 8:30, after many who depend on L&F's morning services had left, handwritten announcements were posted in the park and at the L&F facility announcing the closure of the facility tomorrow.

It seems clearly unappreciated by you all that MANY homeless people are struggling to get their lives together and, as part of that, need to ready themselves for what work they can pull together.

Many men have gained recent or unsteady or part-time employment and cannot easily show up for work late or unready or shabbily attired. They are struggling to get a foothold on a job or in a better life. Loaves & Fishes ought to want to help these man, many of whom have families they are needing to support.

I wish Loaves & Fishes would pull together an understanding of what it wants its role in Sacramento to be. It would be a breeze of fresh air if Loaves & Fishes started to act with compassion and wisdom that has been so profoundly lacking.

You dare to try to shame the county. Shame on YOU people; you are greatly unworthy of the homeless people who have the misfortune of being dependent on your services.

Signed,

Tom Armstrong

Myths, Facts & Tips ... from Soloist website

Following are Myths & Facts and Tips re the homeless as given at the website for the recent film The Soloist. Hmmm. Sound mostly pretty good; thought I'd share 'em.

Myths & Facts: The truth about homelessness and mental illness


Debunk The Myth: Help eliminate stereotypes and myths about people experiencing homelessness and mental illness.

Myth: Most homeless people are panhandlers or old men on park benches.
Fact: On any given night, 37% of homeless people are families with children; 63% are individuals.

Myth: Homeless people are lazy - they just do not want to work.
Fact: Many adults in shelters have jobs yet still can't afford housing. A survey of 23 U.S. cities found that 17.4% of homeless adults who had children were employed. 13% of single adults or unaccompanied youth were employed.

Myth: Homeless people commit more violent crimes than housed people.
Fact: Homeless people actually commit less violent crimes than housed people. They are, however, more likely to be the victims of violent crime.

Myth: All homeless people are mentally ill or substance abusers.
Fact: Around a quarter of homeless people are mentally ill and about 40% are alcohol or substance abusers, with around 15% suffering both disabilities.

Myth: Setting up services for homeless people will cause homeless people from all around the migrate to a city.
Fact: Studies have shown that homeless people do not migrate for services. To the extent they do move to new areas, it is because they are searching for work or have family in the area.

Myth: Homelessness has declined dramatically in recent years.
Fact: The criteria through which the government defines homelessness can change as often as these surveys are taken. Sometimes people living in cars, or staying with their relatives are considered homeless; sometimes they are not. Therefore it is not always an equal comparison to the previous count.

Myth: Mental illnesses are brought on by a weakness of character.
Fact: Mental illnesses are a result of the interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors. Research has shown genetic and biological factors are associated with schizophrenia, depression, and alcoholism. Social influences, such as loss of a loved one or a job, can also contribute to the development of various disorders.

Myth: Children do not experience mental illnesses.
Fact: A report from the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health showed that in any given year 5-9 percent of children experience serious emotional disturbances, which can result in mental illness.

Myth: Homeless people will probably always be homeless.
Fact: The length of homelessness varies from person to person. Many spend years on the streets and then are able to get permanent housing.

Myth: Psychiatric disorders are not true medical illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. People who have a mental illness are just "crazy."
Fact: The fact is that brain disorders, like heart disease or diabetes, are legitimate medical illnesses. Research shows there are genetic and biological causes for psychiatric disorders, and they can be treated effectively.

Tips: Small ideas to make a big difference

Start Making a Difference. Every individual can take action to help solve homelessness. Here are five small things you can start doing now.

Make eye contact: Say hello – greet homeless individuals the same as you would a friend or colleague.
Give small supplies: Instead of money, give Ziploc bags of toiletries, socks, food or grocery coupons. Keep a supply in your car.
Donate clothes: Give your gently worn clothes to a local homeless facility.
Watch your mouth: Don’t call people experiencing homelessness “bums,” “transients,” or even “the homeless.” They are still people first.
Volunteer: Work directly with people experiencing homelessness.
Bust the stigma and share stories: Feeling support and being part of a community is empowering to those struggling with a mental illness. By listening to others or by sharing personal experiences, you help to break the silence that keeps people from being open about their illness.

Sacramento county announces 09-10 budget proposal: BAD news

The county released its "July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010" budget proposal and it is bad, bad news all around for homeless citizens.

Here, as best I can understand it, is what I've found:

Access to the pdf documents can be found here. The information is in two big volumes. Of most interest -- I think -- is the funding information in Section G in the second volume.

On page 198 (of 245) in Section G "HUMAN ASSISTANCE - AID PAYMENTS 8700000" we are told that the county is funding only $8,710,289 of $16,473,571 that was requested.

The Additional Information section reads as follows [emphases, mine]:

DHA has made the following reductions to its funded appropriations: Eliminate Bannon St. Aid-In-Kind (AIK) Shelter - 62 beds at a cost of $548,813; Eliminate North A Street AIK Shelter - 60 beds at a cost of $551,070; implement self-declaration of employability - estimated savings of $1,957,379; Require disabled clients to apply for Supplemental Security Income within two weeks - estimated savings of $438,550; Match 4 percent CalWORKs grant reduction - estimated savings of $622,012; Implement citizenship verification - estimated savings of $451,768; Centralize operations to the 28th St. location - estimated savings of $513,160; Timely discontinuance of cases - estimated savings of $41,200; Even with these reductions, unfunded expenditures in the amount indicated will remain. The loss of jobs and foreclosures have directly impacted GA caseloads, which have risen by 24 percent between January 2008 and January 2009. The GA program offers three months of aid for those clients deemed to be employable and has no time-limit for those clients deemed to be non-employable. The County's GA benefit levels are among the lowest statewide.

Thus, the budget proposal calls for complete elimination of funding for the VOA shelters on A Street and on Bannon Street. The shelters had 122 beds during this time of year; they [62+60=122] are fully eliminated for the year.

Winter shelter, for the 2009-2010 winter, is not even mentioned. We have to suppose that covering the expense for that shelter was not considered AT ALL.

It is unclear to me what effects there are to GA [General Assistance], a program that pays ~$271/month [before reductions for transit pass ($25/mo) and medical services ($40/mo)] for three months to county citizens with no income whatever and few assets. But it is perhaps the case that those who declare themselves to be employable will not get county assistance in the coming fiscal year.

Basically, the county gutted everything it could touch.

On page 199 (of 245) in Section G "HUMAN ASSISTANCE - AID PAYMENTS 8700000" we are told that the county is funding NOTHING of $382,380 that was requested.

This section relates to subsidised bus passes for individuals receiving GA. The county has chosen not to fund the subsidy, even as the county recognizes this is "likely" to result in a lawsuit between the county and Regional Transit.

Last year, persons receiving GA paid $25 for a monthly transit pass. On top of that, the county would put in $5 to buy the monthly passes at a steep discount. With the county, now, declining to pay its $5, the effect on the discounted-pass program is unknown. Perhaps, people collecting GA will pay $5 more for their pass.

The first hearing re the budget proposal will take place in the chambers of the county Board of Supervisors at 2pm on June 9, at 700 H. St., Sacramento.

In its new issue, The Nation looks back at Tent City.

In its June 22, 2009, issue, one of our country's major political magazines, The Nation, deftly looks back at Sacramento's Tent City in a lengthy piece "Tales of Tent City," while tangentially musing about tent encampments and homelessness, generally, and assessing the near future of homelessness in California.

With reflective time since the tarps were rolled up like scrolls, The Nation has done one thing almost every other media source has failed at: getting the facts mostly right.

Here, one paragraph that says the most:

In the end, Sacramento dealt with its Tent City with more compassion than can usually be expected. "If they had a great big rug they could sweep us under somewhere, they would," predicted Karen Hersh, and she was right. The broom, fortunately, came in the form of temporary fixes, not arrests. The city scrambled to raise money for forty additional units of subsidized housing (few of which were ready before Tent City was cleared) and fifty additional shelter beds, which quickly filled. Local advocates for the homeless had vowed civil disobedience if any arrests were made, so to avoid an embarrassing confrontation, the city came up with motel vouchers for the last few dozen holdouts. "The bulk of the people," though, said Loaves and Fishes' Joan Burke, "just dispersed to more hidden camps." By April 20, everyone was gone.

An assessment of things near the end of the article seems quite right:

The federal stimulus package will give California $189 million in homelessness prevention funding and another $100 million in community service block grants that local governments can use for homeless services. The Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act, passed in May, authorizes another $2.2 billion nationwide. But as the feds give with one hand, the state takes away with the other, and no one at any level of government is attempting to tackle the systemic roots of homelessness, or to reconsider housing as something more vital to human dignity than market forces allow.

At the top of the article, written by Ben Ehrenreich, we are told "Research support was provided by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute." Time, and the funds to investigate and get facts right appear to be the factors that resulted in this piece being in accord with the truth of things, something Big Media in the US and internationally didn't have and couldn't accomplish in the news blitz of Feb-Mar-Apr. Particularly disappointing has been the bad coverage of Tent City and homelessness, generally, by the Bee and SN&R. Neither of those two news sources has chosen to do a Tent City retrospective.

"I am for doing good to the poor ..."

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I love the quote, above, that I found at Joel John Roberts's excellent LA's Homeless Blog. But I don't like it in the way it can be commonly, easily interpreted.

WDBO, an Orlando, FL, radio station, used the quote and Fox News's uber-conservative Glenn Beck's reaction to it – "I love this quote: 'We should make the poor uncomfortable and kick them out of poverty.' I love that!" – and then gave readers at its website this skewed poll with three possible answers:

How should we handle the homeless sleeping in our parks?

Make it uncomfortable, move them along

Let them be, hand out pillows

I don't care

Arrrrrrrrgh! Beck and WDBO and those who took the poll [82% of whom voted for the "Make it uncomfortable" for the homeless option] all looked at the Franklin quote as a licence to hate.

I read the Franklin quote differently. Franklin is wanting to do what's best for the poor and is focused on "leading or driving them" out of poverty (or homelessness). Franklin favors a "whatever best works" solution, including those things that might be counterintuitive to an industy [i.e., the homeless-help industry] that gets blinded by its own feel-good catering and enabling and 'parenting' of the poor.

Franklin isn't intending to "kick" the poor. Another quote of Franklin is this [from Poor Richard's Almanak, 1749]: "Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is."

Plungers in our midst

We were surprized when the chapel at Union Gospel Mission suddenly filled to near-capacity. It was the first day of the month, afterall, and our substance-imbibing friends had gotten their mitts on their "happy checks," and are therefore out cavorting. What are all these people doing being here? my brain asked me.

But as we front-row seaters [and thus early eaters] learned as we watched the late-to-get-in-the-dinner-line folks filing in, aha!, there was Garren [Friendship Park co-manager], followed by a flock of young plungers and a woman that Mike-to-the-left-of-me* IDed as a Jesuit High teacher he recognized.

Plungers!

Plunging is the interesting effort to learn about being homeless by aping being homeless for a day, a few days, a week, or a month. Plungers (noun, plural) are the folks, young or old, rich but seldom poor, who leap from their lives in "situation normal" into the dirty pool of home-not-having out-on-the-streetness.

Four months ago, in a blogpost here, I wrote about Jesuit High plunger E. J. Borg, based on an article in a Roseville newspaper. At the time, it seemed to me what E.J. gained from his one day in the Sac'to homeless milieu was disappointing. But today, I dunno. We must let people learn what they can in their way, or in whatever way, and not worry much about what they think they've learned. Their brain's theirs; if people come away with things misunderstood, we can only hope they'll straighten things out on their own.

This morning, at the cul-de-sac in front of Friendship Park, there were young guys sitting around holding large sleeping bags. The plungers. They looked skittish, out here with all the dangerous-seeming homeless people. I asked one of the plungers if he was a plunger. He didn't know what I meant. I asked if he attended Jesuit High. He said yes.

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* as opposed to Mike-to-the-right-of-me and the many, many other Mikes in homeless world. Being given the name Michael/Mike appears to be a statistically very significant factor in being wrought homeless.

Article in Sacramento Press re Loaves & Fishes

An article I wrote for Sacramento Press, "Why shouldn't Loaves & Fishes pay to shelter homeless rather than the cash-strapped county?" is now up.

The story is a very straightforward one. Loaves & Fishes recently released their 2008 Form 990 – a glorified financial statement most nonprofits are required to complete and make available to the public – which shows they've amassed a $1.5 million addition to their general fund in the last two years and had, at the end of last year, $2.2 million in liquid assets [cash, savings and temporary investments].

Thus, I question why Loaves & Fishes doesn't, itself, pay for homeless shelter that is needed rather than try to shame the cash-strapped county to do so. Providing homeless shelter is a part of Loaves & Fishes mandated mission. And not sitting on funds is a tenet of the Better Business Bureau's Standard for Nonprofit Accountability.

Karen Banker, the chairperson of L&F's Board of Directors was asked to comment on a draft of the article, but did not respond. Curiously, this afternoon, Loaves & Fishes' website was down. I don't think that I am paranoid when I suspect a staffer went in and culled out damning text there, relating to my article's disclosures.

Update 5/2: Gulp. So much for me thinking myself or my ideas important. Loaves & Fishes website is back up, with all the bad-old stuff back up, as it was.

Update 5/3: While it's hard to tell, precisely, reaction to my piece, relative to that of other Sac Press articles, has been tremendous. I don't see any other article getting as many thumbs-up reactions nor as many thumbs-down reactions from readers. Still, just 13 thumbs up and 6 thumbs down ain't a lot compared what one would expect from more-widely read websites, like the Bee's. The comment stream was nice – eight comments, currently – but doesn't suggest that the piece is doing much to get the word out that things at Loaves & Fishes aren't all Milk & Honey. Sigh.

BUT the people at Sacramento Press – especially Geoff and Colleen – have been wonderful; SacPress is ascendant, growing both in becoming better and more popular; and I like the software of the site and it's egalitarian approach.