Warming Centers for November 24, 25 & 26.

Due to projected low temperatures, warming centers are being activated for Tuesday, November 23; Wednesday, November 24; and Thursday November 25, 2010. Open shelters are:

+Volunteers of America A Street Shelter (1400 North A Street, next door to TLCS Guest House): Men only
[open from 8:00pm to 6:00am]

+Salvation Army Shelter (12th & North B Street): Women and Men, 18 years+
[open from 8:00pm to 6:00am]

+Union Gospel Mission (400 Bannon Street): Women and Men, 18 years+ [open from 10:00pm to 5:00 am]  People seeking use of the Warming Center at UGM may beforehand come by 7:25pm to attend chapel services, followed by a meal.

The warming centers will close on Friday, November 26. An additional bulletin will follow if the dates of availability are extended. This is NOT a sleeping arrangement. This is a place to get inside and sit out of the weather. Animals will not be allowed inside.

Please pass the word forward to any persons who are interested in or would benefit from this information. Persons wanting to stay at a warming center should not arrive prior to when it opens.

**For families: Sacramento Area Emergency Housing is opening 25 additional beds for families on 11/22. Call 916-455-2160 for more information.

[Text comes from a Sacramento Steps Forward flyer, written by Kate Towson, which I kiped and made minor changes to, to suit a blogpost.]

Cold nights alert!

The Sacramento Bee puts it well in the title of an article today: "Low temperatures in Sacramento could break records this week."

It's going to be cold. Very very cold. And, possibly, killer cold if care isn't taken to get word out to the 'hidden homeless' that temperatures in the high 20s might bite — particularly so for folks living on the street that drink and think that a shot might be bracing — and that there are warming centers in operation where one can stay and stave off the bitter misery.

Overnight low temperatures forecast for tonight, tomorrow and Thanksgiving night are these:

Day & Date	Nat'l Weather Service	weather.com	Sacramento Bee	Actual
Tue. Nov 23-24	27°	28°	27°	34°
Wed. Nov 24-25	28°	30°	29°	28°
Thu. Nov 25-26	29°	29°	29°	30°

Update:  I entered the actual lows subsequently to the table above, taken from the Nat'l Weather Service records.

Friendship Park open on weekends

Loaves & Fishes has opened its Friendship Park on weekends through Christmas — or, from the report of another source, through Easter — for a foreshortened period each day.

This will be helpful for many homeless people who have a tough time pulling their day together on weekends, for lack of a place where they’re allowed to spend time.

This report will be updated with more specifics, including hours open, and what services are offered, when I receive those important details.

Using homeless Sacramentans as puppets

They [meaning, some mild psychopaths] idealize becoming advocates for people society despises, typically claiming that they are for the underdog when in fact their desire is to incite the underdog to rise up and overthrow the alpha dog. If they act altruistically it is not because they want to help the weak but because they idealize defeating the strong. For them, narcissism is not a problem but a goal. — from The Psychopathy of Everyday Life: How Antisocial Personality Disorder Affects All of Us , p. 151, by Martin Kantor, MD.

Wow. Powerful stuff. Impossible for me not to think that Dr. Kantor has administrators from the far-far-wacky-far-Leftist homeless-services nonprofits pegged.

A favored article, by these Lefties, used to indoctrinate homeless people is this: "Revolutionaries Must Rally the People to a Vision of a New World," from the August, 2009, issue of People's Tribune, a newpaper put out by the League of Revolutionaries for a New America [which was formerly the Communist League].

The organization, which is now a nonprofit, Safe Ground Sacramento, was created using ideas from LRNA.

Homeless people who are members of Safe Ground have been part of the protest in San Francisco against President Obama [on the first anniversary of his inaugeration, Jan 20, 2010] and at a big Communist conclave in Detroit on June 22-26, 2010. YET, it is the Old Lefty administrators at established homeless-services nonprofits, and their attorney(s), that are on the Board of Directors for Safe Ground.

They use homeless people as puppets for their own goofy, dangerous political games. It is grotesque.

A long line and loot

Nov 20  Sat

Winter Coat Giveaway at the Salvation Army   Willow Clinic   Winter Coat Drive Time: 9:00am-2:00pm 1200 North B Street Willow Clinic is a UC Davis School of Medicine student-run health clinic.

After a fine cornflakes and Starbuck’s day-old-pastry breakfast at the mission, I made a beeline to Salvation Army [aka, Sallies] to get a coat.

The coat I have is in one sense terrible: it’s worn out. And in another sense excellent: in its day it can have been magnificent. In any case, I needed a good coat. Overnight temperatures on either side of Thanksgiving Day are forecast to drop to freezing. And very possibly I won’t have a bed on one or both of those nights.

The coat giveaway at Sallies was organized by UC Davis Medical School students involved with Willow Clinic, an organization dedicated to volunteering time to improve others’ lives. When I got to Sallies, it was before 8am for an event advertised as starting at 9. I was Number 2 in a line on the street, fully convinced my mission for the day would be successful.

A little after 8, a group of about a dozen homeless men were pushed outside Sallie’s reception area and ‘formed’ to be the new beginning of the line. The ‘street’ line that I was in, then collapsed, and those of us who’d been in it joined at the tail-end of the new line. In this new (and official!) line, I was, then about Number 15 and still convinced my mission of getting a good coat would be successful.

As we waited, new people joined the queue, with it being very evident that more folks were merging in with those near the front than joining the back. People were spotting a friend up near the front and starting a chat and then, with false subtlety staying where they were. Dexter, a homeless man I knew very well, was one who put himself in the fifth spot. Other, more-solitary men, were sitting on the wall or standing near the front of the line snacking and smoking.

Soon, the “line” that had been in front of me was a wide column of people, yakking and teasing one another, coughing and playing around. Some women with children determined that they should be first and staged an effort to move en mass to the front. Solo women joined them, claiming in all seeming-seriousness that they had a righteous first claim — by gender, by gum! — to get a coat. Now, from what I saw, everybody in the line, front or back, was wearing a coat, and few — very few — had a coat on that didn’t fit or wasn’t fully excellent and practically new. And that included the kids I saw, who were, without exception, in line, wearing a nicely fitting coat of some distinction.

A black-haired man [whom I would later learn was with Willow Clinic] came out to tell us that tickets would soon be given out. He was met with a stream of complaint from the folks in the line, who had by this time learned that those staying at the Salvation Army shelter were receiving coats in advance of those of us in the outdoors line. The black-haired man yelled out, “We have 600 coats; everybody’s going to get a coat. Don’t push! Don’t fret!”

The primary complaint from the crowd had some merit: The men and women in the shelter didn’t need a coat as much as those of us outside who were subject to the cold and rain of wintry night. Still the griping did not ring fully true: Most in the line were staying at other long-term shelters, or were poor people with housing who heard about the giveaway.

A man, probably a Salvation Army administrator, came out and threatened to break up the line or not let anybody in to get a coat. But he relented and tried to make the line one of single-file by pushing people back. Take two steps back, he told us. Then, take more steps back. As the line narrowed and became longer, the solo men at the sides of the line merged in, making the single-file line double file. By this time, I was probably Number 100 in line, but still mostly hopeful of getting a nice, warm coat that wasn’t goofy looking.

By 8:45 it started to rain a bit and Sallies administrators determined that women and children -- and, what the hell: solo women, too -- should come forward and be let inside. So with their strollers and tots and swinging purses they pushed to the front and went in the door, looking smug and justified.

At minutes before 9:00 a man and woman walked from the front to the back of the line handing out tickets and bags. The bags were for other clothes that would be available, and hygiene items and food that would also be given out. And then, slowly, in groups of seven or ten, we men outside were let in.

Ten minutes after the first group went in, I saw Dexter leave the event, a big black trash bag full of clothes carried over his shoulder as if he were an inappropriate Santa Claus. It looked like quite a haul.

At 9:40, when I got inside, nine-out-of-ten of the coats available were cloth coats, and the rest were thin, not the most helpful for staving off wintry weather. But a nice Davis student found a fine jacket that fit me. The “other clothes” in an adjacent room looked fully picked over. I could have used a beenie or something else for my head, but there was nothing left like that, I was told.

The “hygiene kit” we were all given was good and useful: socks; a “Viral Pak” of tissues, hand sanitizer and green tea; toothpaste; toothbrush; mouthwash; floss; soaps; shampoo; lotion. And the food was good for a bountiful bag lunch.

It was nice to have gotten the stuff that I got, but what Homeless World Sacramento needs most and sees very little of is AN EFFORT TO FIGHT OFF THE NARCISSISM AND PSYCHOPATHY in the homeless community.

It was sad to see some of the woman with children that I saw this morning and see most days. Many of those kids are brutalized; they need more-loving mothers and the attention of their fathers.

And it would not be that hard to help most those homeless people who most need it. Instead, the looters push themselves forward and take what’s best. This happens all the time, everywhere, in Homeless World. Often, it’s the addicts who take the most, using what they take to further their habit.

Btw, the narcissism and psychopathy can be “fought” with wisdom [wise policies!] and compassion, and not with idiot policies, like those of Unfriendly Park [i.e. Collective Punishment]. If getting things to those who most need them is not possible, then a lottery [or pulling numbers from a hat] can, at least, give those in the most need a chance and end the incentive for subtle and unsubtle aggression, pushing and shoving and cheating and bullying.

[This blogpost, slightly altered from what's here, has been posted as a piece at Sacramento Press, there titled "Homeless World Sacramento: A long line and loot" as part of a new storyline The Homeless in Winter.]

News from SN&R

Frontpage of the Nov 18 issue of the Sac­ra­men­to News & Review.

The latest issue of the Sacramento News & Review has a few items of interest to homeless folk — and if not to us, then to me.

First off, an eight-page advertising supplement is in the middle for Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services, wherein the Food Bank, itself, is promoted and the Run to Feed the Hungry — a 10K or 5K run on Thanksgiving Day — with proceeds going to SFB&FS has a fullpage ad.

Good stuff, but it bugs me a bit when charities spend what seems to be a lot of money asking for money — even as I fully understand why that's necessary.

The start of the Run to Feed the Hungry in 2009.

Of interest to me is that there is a blurb on the sidebar on the frontpage of SN&R (which you can vaguely make out in the tiny pic) which says "Fighting Hunger in Sac

see SN&R special advertising supplement, inside."

It bugs me a bit when journalistic enterprises put advertising, or advertising about advertising, on their front page -- even as I fully understand [$$$!] why that's necessary, these days.

----

A featured article this week is about the Greyhound stations: The one that is soon to be abandoned on L Street; the new one soon to be constructed on Richards Blvd close to the Union Gospel Mission; and the future one near the Amtrak station downtown.

While the hoity-toity folks downtown will be gleeful to be rid of the Greyhound station there — because of the riffraff it attracts — there remains a question of what to do with the terminal building.  That building (and not the bus barn, next door) is a "landmark that dates back to the 1930s."  My guess is that, whatever its historical interest, its more eyesore than icon and, unless a swanky restaurant wants to gut it as utilize its retro charms, bulldozers will soon be on the scene to tear it to shreds.

I'm impressed to learn that the Richards Blvd terminal will be rather amazing and is "designed to be moved," such that it could be dismantled and positioned near the train station as part of a metropolitan transportation hub.  The amenities are all this:

This new Greyhound terminal … "will be a modern and contemporary building complete with sustainable features such as on-site storm drainage, water-efficient fixtures and stained concrete flooring. The terminal lobby will be blanketed by a soaring, overhanging roof and flanked by towering glass windows in the front and multicolored panels on the sides."

One issue that comes up in Homeless World Sacramento is What will the close proximity of the bus terminal to the Union Gospel Mission mean?  There is concern that the mission will end up getting used as a free motel by many thrifty solo-male bus passengers visiting Capital City, pushing Sacramento homeless men off onto the curbside.

With River District development underway, the Union Gospel Mission won't be hidden away in the hinterlands.  And that can only result in yet more competition for scarce resources: beds in the dorm and chairs in the chapel when Jimmy Roughton is preaching.
----

It an SN&R editorial titled "Socks and Toothpaste," Jeff vonKaenel asks readers to donate tarps, sleeping bags, warm socks [he probably means thick socks, not ones straight from the dryer], and new (and not used!) long underwear to SafeGround.  His Christmas gift-giving wish for Loaves & Fishes is shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, cough drops and all the stuff you already gave to SafeGround.

My Christmas wish for Jeff vonKaenel is that he stop assuming that just because certain charities are in an eyes-well-up-with-tears industry it means they are efficient, wise and compassionate.  vonKaenel, as the President and CEO of an important Sacramento news source, should tend to his prime task:  finding the truth and putting it out there.

News vending services, like SN&R, are the eyes and the ears of the public. See clearly and hear well, and give the public credit that it can take care of things from there.

SafeGround and Loaves & Fishes aint run by Saint Francis and Gandhi, Mr. vonKaenel. Put that truth in your pot pipe and smoke it. [And, put that in your weekly by reporting it.]

You know you see me!



This picture makes you think about your thinking.

I love this picture, found at the Union Gospel Mission website.

I was going to use the tiny pic as a starter for a blogpost, but instead used it as proper inspiration to begin a Storyline -- The Homeless in Winter -- at Sacramento Press.  Thus, I invite y'all to read my article [first in a series] at SacPress, titled (what else?) "You know you see me!"

Friends

Following, is the meat of an essay by Daniel Akst, titled "America: Land of Loners" in the Summer 2010 issue of Wilson Quarterly:

… today “friends” are everywhere in our culture—the average Facebook user has 130—and friendship, of a diluted kind, is our most characteristic relationship: voluntary, flexible, a “lite” alternative to the caloric meshugaas of family life.

But in restricting ourselves to the thin gruel of modern friendships, we miss out on the more nourishing fare that deeper ones have to offer. Aristotle, who saw friendship as essential to human flourishing, shrewdly observed that it comes in three distinct flavors: those based on usefulness (contacts), on pleasure (drinking buddies), and on a shared pursuit of virtue—the highest form of all. True friends, he contended, are simply drawn to the goodness in one another, goodness that today we might define in terms of common passions and sensibilities.

It’s possible that Aristotle took all this too seriously, but today the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, and in our culture we take friendship—a state of strong mutual affection in which sex or kinship isn’t primary—far too lightly. We’re good at currying contacts and we may have lots of pals, but by falling short on Aristotle’s third and most important category of friendship, we’ve left a hole in our lives. Now that family life is in turmoil, reinvigorating our notion of friendship—to mean something more than mere familiarity—could help fill some of the void left by disintegrating household arrangements and social connections frayed by the stubborn individualism of our times.

Friendship is uniquely suited to fill this void because, unlike matrimony or parenthood, it’s available to everyone, offering concord and even intimacy without aspiring to be all-consuming. Friends do things for us that hardly anybody else can, yet ask nothing more than friendship in return (though this can be a steep price if we take friendship as seriously as we should). The genius of friendship rests firmly on its limitations, which are better understood as boundaries.

As was San Francisco, AS IS SACRAMENTO

Below, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, quoted from his recent book Basic Brown in a San Francisco Chronicle piece, titled "Gamed by the System" [emphases, mine]:

Once I became mayor, it soon became painfully clear to me that three-fourths of the folk living out there on the streets were out there without any possibility of ever getting off the streets. Not because there was no opportunity. Not because there was no shelter or housing available. Not because there were not enough mental health programs. Not because there were no drug abuse programs. We were providing those and, of course, we could do more. The will to provide services and shelter was there.

I discovered factors - some bureaucratic, some political - working in a kind of evil synthesis with each other that really prevented the long-term homeless from entering the system. For one, the rules and regulations of the welfare system wouldn't let us require people to go into the treatment protocols or processes that could lead to their maybe breaking out of the cycle of poverty, hopelessness, homelessness. To me this was tantamount to condemning people to a prison of the streets.

Backing this up was a collection of so-called activists with heavy political clout who absolutely believed (and still believe) that homeless people should have a right to live on the street. They believed that homeless people had an absolute right to do everything they were doing, no matter how harmful to themselves or to the rest of the citizenry.

Opposing them was an army of businesspeople, small and large, who didn't want the homeless anywhere near them. Shop owners in the neighborhoods were furious, frustrated and fiery. Hotel owners and managers, of course, didn't want the homeless within sight of the tourists who come to San Francisco. These people wanted draconian action, they wanted law enforcement.

You had all sorts of deep division within the polity and no side capable of budging. It was a nightmare. Here was a more dire example of the situation I encountered on lesser problems: selfishness and self-righteousness preventing people from coming to serious dialogue. They wouldn't budge and you couldn't wedge them.

In the legislature and in general political conflicts, I usually had been able to nudge sides out of their selfishness by showing them how outrageous they were actually being. In this situation, especially with the so-called homeless advocates, they were feasting on their outrage. Their moral indignation was their very food. And self-righteousness is not on the menu at the bargaining table. The selfishness was astonishing to me.

The exploding rise in Social Security Disability benefits *or* The 100-Ton Elephant in the Room

The fastest rising cost for Social Security isn’t retiring baby boomers, but skyrocketing Disability Insurance benefits. Disability benefits now make up 18 percent of all Social Security costs, up from only 10 percent in 1990. This year, the federal government will spend $125 billion for disability benefits. Including the Medicare benefits that are paid to D.I. recipients, total expenditures approach $200 billion.

Above, the words of Andrew G. Biggs, writing for the New York Times in a piece titled "The Disability Insurance Monster."

The explosive rise in disability benefits is the 100-ton elephant in the room in any discussion about homelessness.  It is the "third rail of homelessness"; the topic that no one dare touch, though it poisons everything and is the one thing that must be dealt with if we are ever going to get serious.

As discussed elsewhere in this blog, between a third and half of homeless families or solo individuals in Sacramento get disability income.  Social security disability income is the prime source fueling addictions in Homeless World Sacramento with this income getting used to buy addictive substances and not being used for basic living expenses.

But make no mistake:  A high percentage get disability income for a real disability but it is also quite true that a high percentage get disability income fruadulently.  Often, in either case, the money gets used for alcohol and other, powerful mind-altering substances and "to play" while living out on the street and using charities to get food and shelter and whatnot to survive.

And let's get real:  The prime homeless-services agencies in Sacramento have a Faustian Compact with the addicted street people.  Let's all be quiet about the massive amounts of money out on the street because it lets you [the addict] remain obliviously happy and tilted or tweaked or blasted or dufflebummed, while it allows us [in the Homeless-Services Racket] to have a bodacious donor-snookering business.

Meantime, overlooked are 'responsible' homeless people with no income and the mentally ill, left to fend for themselves.  The 'legitimately' homeless, with their feet stuck in concrete, are those forgotten.

Further, writes Biggs,

Why have disability costs risen so fast? The main reason is looser eligibility standards passed by Congress in the 1980s that expanded the criteria for disability and put greater emphasis on evidence presented by applicants' own doctors rather than the Social Security Administration's experts. Likewise, increasing numbers of D.I. applicants are represented by lawyers, with the result that S.S.A. loses two-thirds of appeals against denied benefits. The economists David Autor of M.I.T. and Mark Duggan of the University of Maryland conclude, “The rapid growth of Disability Insurance does not appear to be explained by a true rise in the incidence of disabling illness, but rather by policies that increased the subjectivity and permeability of the disability screening process.”

Yeah.  No kidding.

And let us not overlook the result of the insane way things are in Homeless World Sacramento.  Addicted individuals are enabled [by the wacky Leftist agencies, mostly] and 'die young' from cirrhosis and other effects of wildly powerful intoxicants.  People are left without meaning in their lives; they get high to escape.  All the while these nonprofit charities rather obliviously 'grow' their bureaucracy and footprint in the community.

Like Major Clipton at the end of Bridge Over the River Kwai, all you can do is pace back and forth and bellow Madness! … Madness! … Madness! … Madness!

Yet more news on Mohanna's new women's shelter

Somewhere in the large rectangular building, on the southside of No. C Street is where the new women's shelter has been constructed. I 'believe' the shelter is in the area of the lower middle section. Loaves & Fishes new warehouse is nearing completion at the northwest corner of Ahern and N C St.

Quickly, bringing readers up-to-speed with what’s already been reported on in this blog [see here and here] re Mohanna's Shelter:

• Mohammed H. Mohanna — known as Moe Mohanna — is a prominent Sacramento real estate developer who has created a women’s shelter, next to the Women’s Empowerment organization, within the long building on the southside of North C Street in the Loaves & Fishes’ Mall of Services [see map].
• The shelter does not yet have approvals from the city for the construction that has been completed, nor for habitation, by solo woman, to begin.
• We learned of this new shelter from a column in the October 21 issue of the Sacramento News & Review.
• Loaves & Fishes is replacing warehouse space it has been renting from Mohanna in his building with a new warehouse, costing a munificent $1,700,000, that is near completion. [L&F’s new warehouse is at the northwest corner of North C Street and Ahern. (see map)]

I have now learned that Loaves & Fishes was paying Mohanna $5,000/month rental for warehouse space (and possibly other space in the building which L&F rents, which includes the area that is the Friendship Park Library).

According to public records from the Sacramento County Accessor’s Office, Mohanna’s property on North C is assessed as having a value of $400,000, with improvements valued at $850,000.

It is known that Loaves & Fishes’ CEO Libby Fernandez and Mohanna do not get along, personally, and that their dispute is “playing out” in moves each has made recently. Loaves & Fishes is ‘replacing’ the warehouse space in Mohanna’s building with a brand-new warehouse the nonprofit is building at the corner of North C and Ahern. The new warehouse is costing the soup-kitchen charity $1,700,000 dollars, a mighty sum that could otherwise be used to restore lives and save lives.

Mohanna has fashioned a women’s shelter within his long building on N. C Street, next to the offices therein of Women's Empowerment. Before women can move in, the city must sign off on construction that has been done without first getting proper permits. Because of the great need for shelter for the homeless this winter, approval of the construction, and an OK for habitation, is overwhelmingly likely to be forthcoming, despite rattled feelings by L&F bigwigs. I am told that Loaves & Fishes’ “stock is down” in city offices, including that of the mayor.

The new shelter space, while not yet functioning as space for the sheltered, is described as neat, well-laid out, and carpeted. Those who have seen it have been wholly impressed. I am told the area is now a beehive of activity with women happily using computers set up there.

As to matters on the other side of No. C Street, no one I talked to can figure out what the mighty in Loaves & Fishes' so-called Ivory Tower think they're doing. They're spending $1,700,000 for a warehouse to store … What!? Stale pastries?

An organization the size of Loaves & Fishes has storage needs, of course, but it seems ridiculous to spend so very much to store so much that is of so little value. L&F has quantities of food that it must keep, and donated items of wide variety, but the great majority of this stuff should be near-immediately used, either by the nonprofit, itself, or given away to help homeless and other poor people. While space is tight within the rooms, offices and meeting areas at the Loaves & Fishes complex, there is storage space.

If you do the math, it seems that Loaves and Fishes paid 340 times it’s monthly rental of warehouse space to have its own warehouse. That converts to a rental equivalent of what would be paid over the course of 28 years. And yet, homelessness is supposedly going to pretty much end in ten years. It certainly seems that a nonprofit that doesn’t understand its mission has built a wildly expensive warehouse that doesn’t have much of a function. The Gang that Doesn’t Feed Straight shoots itself in the foot. If agreement couldn’t be made with Mohanna for warehouse space, there are lots of empty warehouses in the area to rent space from. Again, donor money is not efficiently spent by L&F. But, heck, it’s nothing important; it’s just donors’ money. And they ask so few questions. The money practically falls out of trees.

More news on Mohanna's Women's Shelter

Somewhere in the large rectangular building, on the southside of No. C Street is where the new women's shelter has been constructed.  I 'believe' the shelter is in the area of the lower middle section.

The new women’s shelter, constructed by prominent downtown businessmen Mohammed "Mo" Mohanna is very very fine with nice counters, floors and proportions — way outdistancing merely adequate. I wrote about this a bit last month, site unseen, hopeful that it would quickly be approved for occupancy.

Now I learn, it’s not just close to the Loaves & Fishes mall, as reported in the October 21 issue of the Sacramento News & Review, it’s in the complex, unless the door to the shelter can be ‘out back,’ instead of in from the street on North C.

Loaves & Fishes claims control of North C Street on the stretch of pavement from Ahern west to a cul-de-sac abutting 12th Street. The new shelter is in the middle of that stretch of road, on the south side.

All of this has an ironic aspect. Right under L&F CEO Libby Fernandez’s nose a shelter has quietly been made ready, gratis, by a businessman with heart. Meantime, during a period of economic crisis and a with an especially cold-and-wet winter forthcoming, Loaves & Fishes has failed to add to shelter it could provide and is tasked to provide in its mission statement "feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless."

Instead, Loaves & Fishes is in the late stages of constructing a $1.7 million warehouse … for a soup kitchen — likely wasting lots of money while futilely attempting to add to its empire. More-efficient workplaces, with the added efficiencies of ever-improving technology, may make warehouses increasingly less necessary in America. Likely, the warehouse is the latest boondoggle by the Gang that Can’t Feed Straight.

Three nights and YER OUT!! And, bed-getting at UGM

'Tis very early in the month of November, but the Union Gospel Mission dorm is FULL, FULL, FULL. Competition for beds is especially keen when there’s reason to think it shouldn’t be. I can’t understand it. Because of the competition, I’ve been “out” the last three nights.

As regular readers of this blog are likely to know, at the beginning of a month, a great many homeless solo guys get their “happy checks,” which are usually SSI payments [but can come from other sources] and are used/misused to fund homeless addicted living, to a great extent.

Bed-getting is determined on the basis of (1) what tier, of three, you’re in [with newcomers (or those ‘out’ a year or longer) getting top priority; those out three or more nights getting second priority; and those out less than three nights in the bottom tier, last priority] and, then, within each tier, (2) how soon you get to the mission [or, on the list, anyway].

Typically, the population seeking beds¹ at the mission drops off a cliff on the first weekday of a month, with there being several empty beds each night for a week. Things remain slack, thought beds are filled, on the second week of a month. A guy who keenly wants a bed on a second week can expect to get one by coming early.

During the last half of a month, typically, bed-getting gets increasingly competitive. Most of the “happy check” guys have used up their funds and come back to the mission to live cheaply.

In the summer months, understandably, getting a bed is much easier than in the winter. Being outdoors is easier in good weather, a course. Winters are difficult, especially so for those off us who have little or no income and just don’t have a ‘stay at Motel 6’ option, or a ‘stay at your sister’s place’ option.  [I'm a no income whatever person.]

Being ‘out’ last night was tough. It was cold, and stupid Tom doesn’t have outdoor-sleeping gear. Also, stupid Tom is especially subject to the cold because his body isn’t protected by muscles and tattoos using ink made with polytetrafluoroethylene² (the chemical constituent of Teflon and Gore-Tex).

Monday, Monday

But tonight I’m likely to ‘get in’ — that is, get a bed — because I move up into the second tier [having been ‘out’ three nights; see the sidebar in blue] and I plan on showing up at the mission gate early.

That’ll make me happy, 'cause I'll be with my pals who put up with my snoring. Tonight’s the beginning of a favored week of sermon givers: Heart Talk; Brett; Jimmy; et al, and, then, tasty Korean Burritos will be served this Saturday. Mmm, Korean Burritos. AND, I’ll be happy because I’ll have a bed.

Three-Dog Night³

Being out three nights was rough.

My favored area, when I need to ‘sleep out,’ is a particular parking-lot downtown. Unfortunately, my favorite spot in that lot, where I’d’ve been somewhat protected from the elements, was taken, all three nights, by another guy who was ‘sleeping out,’ so I made do sleeping on a stretch of sidewalk next to the building.

Friday-Saturday night was fully OK. It was warm and I caught some good zzzzz's.

Saturday-Sunday night I expected to be OK since the storm wasn’t forecast to start until about 6am. Unfortunately, it was both very very cold and there was some rain at about 3:15am. I was awakened several times that night: By two young guys, dressed all-in-black, who, it appeared, had been booted out of a bar at 2am. They wandered into the parking lot, prob’ly to pee on a bush. Later, a car came into the lot; though it immediately left, its headlight beams blasting into my eyes for about five seconds. What!? I said, awakened and snarlly. Sorry to have waked you up, the young driver yelled out.

Raindrops falling in my ear woke me, again, at 3:15, so I found a spot with a overhang, up the street, to sit until the warm train station was open and had a few legit folks in it, at about 4:30am.

Sunday-Monday night was dry, but very cold for an unprotected person. 40 degrees was the low, I think. Whatever sleep I got was shallow and shivering. Shivering with big waves of shaking, like a poor palsied person having a grandmal seizure during an earthquake. At about 2:30am, a young woman woke me to ask for a rolling paper. Damn her!; where’d she come from? I said I didn’t (have one, that is); I don't smoke; and apologized. She walked away, grumpy. I was very miserable. Especially miserable; it was the night when you turn your clocks back, so on top of it all, I had to be miserable for an extra hour! Finally, train-station-opening time came, and I walked my weary self over to the station, bought coffee from the vending machine, twice, and was restored to general happiness, though with giant, jaw-cracking yawns thrown in.

UPDATE:  The next night, I qualified as second on the second-tier list for getting a bed and got one.  Mondays are thought to be the toughest night to get a mission bed, but, for mysterious reasons, beds were widely available; just about every guy who wanted a bed got one.

Later I would learn that a temporary employer 'grabbed' a bunch of homeless guys for a project that began early the next morning.  He gave them a place to sleep in order for them to start work before dawn on Tuesday.  This was a significant contributing factor to the availability of beds Monday night.

I slept really well Monday-Tuesday night. For a solid stretch of seven hours, I was lost to the run-around bang-your-head-against-the-wall world.  I was warm and comfortable and awoke refreshed, remembering none of any dreams I had.
-----
footnotes:
¹ Also, the count of homeless people waiting to get into Friendship Park drops by ~50%
² I’m kidding around about the tattoo-ink thing, though there is such a thing as polytetrafluoroethylene and its primary usages are Teflon and Gore-Tex.
³ Three Dog Night was the name of a rock band, popular in the early 70s.  The name is Australian slang for a very cold night (from the practice of bushmen sleeping with their dogs; the colder the night, the more dogs are needed to sleep with).

Strength, beauty and the perfect fruit

"Giving away our food we get more strength, giving away our clothes we get more beauty; founding religious rest-places, we reap the perfect fruit of the highest and the best degree of charity, without self-interest or thought of getting more; and so the heart comes back and rests."
– Buddha, in his preaching of the Dana Paramita, the Ideal of Charity, as translated in Jack Kerouac's book "Wake Up, a life of the Buddha."  Sutra translation is by Dwight Goddard, I think.
[Also, see quote from "Wake Up" at Google Books.]

But this all comes with a caveat [the "without self-interest" part].  To emphasize that, quoting Lao-Tzu (who is Taoist, of course.  Taoist/Buddhist - close enough):

"The truly virtuous are not conscious of their virtue. Those of inferior virtue, however, are ever consciously concerned with their virtue and therefore are without true virtue. True virtue is spontaneous and lays no claim to virtue."

Thus, as in Christianity, Good Works are necessary and must come from a clarified heart.

Has better food gotten its foot in the door at Loaves & Fishes?

Fruits and vegetables!

I’m told that Loaves & Fishes intends to change things such that its small dining room will be serving vegetarian and healthful meals, leaving just the much larger dining hall to serve the usual fare.

There are two adjacent dining spaces for homeless people at the Loaves & Fishes Mall of Services: with the ‘regular’ dining room being about three times bigger than the ‘small’ dining room. A third dining room is used for staff only. The staff and homeless don’t eat together, which is contrary to what Jesus taught, but, then, we’re talking about Loaves & Fishes.

Can it be that Libby Fernandez, L&F CEO, is knuckling under to outside pressure to stop serving quite so very much that is empty calories and quite so little that is nutritious? Hooray if it is past donors who are balking at supporting the nonprofit unless it starts to behave better toward those it is tasked to aid.

The heavy amounts of sugar and salt in what Loaves & Fishes serves, and the lack of sufficient servings of healthful vegetables, has been a complaint of homeless denizens at the L&F Mall of services and of this blog [See "Vegetables and fruit matter"; "Why homeless people don't have a healthy diet"; "A close look at Loaves & Fishes' recently released public-disclosure document" and "Staffing change in L&F kitchen"]. Sugar is the prime culprit of a rise in the number of those suffering from diabetes. Salt is greatly overmuch consumed in Americans, causing high blood pressure and dire health consequences that result. And, of course, substantive vegetables provide vital nutritional benefits.

According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, as many as one-third of adult Americans could develop diabetes in the next thirty years.

Already, diabetes is the leading cause in the rise of healthcare costs and the seventh leading cause of death. It is also the leading cause of blindness among adults under the age of 75. Even on top of the horror of all that, diabetes is the source of much other misery.

Eating too much sodium, a key component of salt, can contribute to high blood pressure, a major risk for most people as they age because it can lead to heart disease and other health problems.

Substantive vegetables — that is, not just lettuce which is often the only vegetable in an L&F meal — and 'vegetables in variety' provide a wealth of nutritional benefits. Many homeless people, and others who are poor, are dependent on Loaves & Fishes for sustenance. If their diet is out-of-whack, it can add greatly to their woes.

Another problem with meals at Loaves & Fishes is the large volume of food that gets heaped on a diner’s tray! While the diner, his or her-self, can refuse or limit helpings and consume less than what is given, the portions are prodigious and L&F is surely a prime cause as to why homeless Sacramentans are so hefty.

It is known that restaurants in many European countries have, generally, much smaller portions than what Americans are accustomed to in our restaurants. Eating fewer calories, while getting adequate vitamins, minerals and nutrients, is the best diet for most people. It’s called calorie restriction, or CR.

If it’s doable at Loaves & Fishes, and it should be, it would be benefitial for homeless Sacramentans to eat fewer empty calories, substituted in part by more of what is healthful. It would help homeless folk feel better, avoid some diseases, and live longer and happier lives.

[ Note that this blogger was 86ed from Loaves & Fishes 20 hours after a kindly letter I sent to Libby Fernandez and the L&F Board about the facility's meals and my hopes that maybe they could be better. ]

The gamblers

For homeless gamblers life is NOT like this, but it may be how they see themselves.

The one addiction that gets far less attention than what it merits out here in Homeless World Sacramento is gambling. It’s the “odd man out” because this destructive addiction doesn’t send wily brain-altering toxins up into your head, and because (to my knowledge and from my research, anyway) there aren’t group meetings set up that directly target homeless gamblers and there aren’t homeless-gambler Rehab programs, that might be beneficial. [One reason for no rehab is that you can’t do a pee test for gambling, not that I know for sure that the mission wouldn't accept a gambler into its program.]

Another reason gambling gets overlooked is that there is uncertainty in the psychiatric community about how to best understand being self-destructively attracted to gambling: Is it an impulse disorder? an obsessive-compulsive disorder? or a true addiction?

Yet, for now, at least, the DSM-IV [The most-current edition of the manual of mental disorders used in the United States] criteria for pathological gambling is characterized by continued gambling despite harmful consequences. [And for my money (not that I’m a betting man), using homeless services to enable one’s gambling is a plenty harmful consequence, all by itself.]

Whereas those other addictions -- to mind-altering substances, including alcohol, crack, pot and methamphetamine -- are expensive, “homeless gambling,” from my observation, can be more so, impoverishing even those who have incomes such that they could have a quality ‘normal’ life. And the gamblers, like other addicts, are apt to bilk others out of money — or borrow from others, and, often, only very slowly, if ever, pay back what is owed.

One thing that’s diabolically different about gambling, as compared to substance abuse, is that, occasionally, it pays off. A gambler can hope to win! And, of course, they all do have that hope. With just a little more skill or a little more luck, what had been a life marbled with pain, loss and drudgery can be transformed into The Good Life — or so a gambler can think.

From the website AddictionSearch, the social costs of Pathological Gambling are described: The costs of being a gambling addict are not only financial. The toll on the family and others around the individual can be psychologically agonizing. Social turbulence can result in marital breakdown, financial ruin and irreparable personal profile. The individual with a gambling problem may develop physical symptoms which may include depression, anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, headaches and hypertension. Alcoholism consumption and smoking are associated features. As the course of the disorder progresses, the individual may develop working difficulties. It is at this moment in time, that the individual may venture in criminal activities to obtain more funds for his addiction. It is not uncommon for the individual to have borrowed large sums of money from numerous colleagues at work- all the money usually is never repaid.

The gamblers out in Homeless World Sacramento expend as much of their income as they can on their gambling habit, and then use housing and food resources that are supposed to be there for “legitimately” poor and homeless people. In this, again, the modus opperandi for “homeless” addicted gamblers corresponds to that of substance abusers with their “happy checks”: Income gets diverted from being used “to live on” to “the bad habit,” and services that are supposed to be there for the “genuinely” poor are co-opted by the addict to sustain illicit uses of income.

There are seven homeless men that I know, or have known, who have been engrossed with gambling. I present the stories of five, below. The story for each is unique, but in some ways the pattern of gambling, for them as a group, is the same.

All are/were “autonomous men” who insisted on controlling their own lives, living independently, and in a way that was hidden from whatever estranged family they had. One, with a substantial income, hadn’t seen his loving spouse, who was far distant, in more than a year; it was a visit he kept putting off.

The high-income homeless gamblers

Two homeless gambling addicts had incomes of three or four thousand dollars a month, yet lived minimally such that they could indulge frequent and, for them, fabulous “vacations.”

Case #1: One man was in his late 80s, in a wheelchair, and stayed at a shelter. Some mornings, he would get on the bus to get to one of the local casinos he liked.

This old old man would sometimes tell me about when he was young and was a mobster who engaged in notorious activities in Las Vegas. He told me that when he was young, he was “a bad, bad boy” — and by that I took it to mean the whole of the period before he got old.

In recent months, his very advanced age was getting the best of him. He grew cantankerous and would sometimes forget his own name. Last I heard, he was diagnosed as being past the early stages of dementia and had left the VOA shelter for a nursing home.  It is believed that he was a favorite of the casinos, in part, because he would get confused and forget to pick up his winnings, sometimes.

Case #2: The other high-income homeless gambler would spend time living large at Cache Creek or Thunder Valley. He would get mailings and offers from those two casinos notifying him of events, entertainers and specials he could take advantage of. I don’t know firsthand from this fellow his gambling adventures (he was quiet about this aspect of his life), but a mutual friend told me that he and #2 often gambled together. Heavy gambling would explain the cashflow problems #2 had, which would otherwise be inexplicable for someone with so much income.

#2 was known for running out of gas money then not being able to pay people back quickly, as promised. Recently, he borrowed a large amount from a terrific homeless guy, and, after a month, #2 refused to so much as make contact with the guy. When last spoken to, #2 had abandoned his three email accounts and didn’t have a phone.

For someone who certainly wasn’t really poor, it was troubling to me that #2 was someone who would grab as much of the free bounty of things that is available in Homeless World than anyone. He would get the free meals, free clothes, free backpacks and whatever, and go to more than one Veterans’ Stand Down [for homeless vets] where, among all else, a veteran would get a couple-hundred dollars worth of ‘stuff.’

Also, he was keenly competitive for getting a bed or being one of the first in line for a meal at the mission. He would come at the last minute and dart past others, who’d been waiting hours, to get in the gate, and, thus, beat out these others at getting a bed for the night. He would also dart into the chapel when the doors opened to be seated such that he’d be one of the first to be fed.

Other gamblers

Case #3: Another gambler I know uses his SSI check for frequent trips to Reno. His keen interest is betting on sports events. He maintains encyclopedic knowledge of sports teams, analyses situations and makes well-informed decisions in placing his wagers.

I believe he thinks he comes out ahead, in the long run, in his gambling, though it all is more than offset by the costs of travel and hotel stays. He also has the expense of a usually-illegal substance he legally uses to alleviated back pain. He returns to Sacramento, frequently, to live at the expense of homeless-services providers and to get a cash infusion from his payee.

Case #4: Yet another gambler I know plays poker, and understands very well what he’s doing. In many ways this fellow is fully admirable. He has many friends that offer him an occasional odd job when he finds himself down on his luck. [Unlike the other gamblers in this blogpost, #4 does not have any disability (or retirement) income, though he had a serious injury in the past, that pains him, and possibly could qualify him for disability.]

Like the sports-team bettor, #4 is a skilled gambler who understands the game he plays such that he can maximize his chances of coming out ahead in the long run. Still, he is often in a circumstance of being completely out of cash and needing to be on the lookout for snipes (discarded cigarettes that still have a few puffs left). When he’s flat busted, he uses homeless services, including the mission as a place to stay, though more often he sleeps outside.

Case #5: A once-successful businessman, #5 lost everything, emanating from a crazy dispute with his wife. His road back to normalcy got off track when a truck he owned and operated was in an accident while he was uninsured, pushing him into despondency and a circumstance of homelessness.

He started gambling at the casinos, at first mostly to take advantage of free lunch buffets. but then got hooked on the whole of the experience, in particular the excitement of winning at the tables.

I remember once talking to #5 while seeing him sneakily move a pen of mine that was on a table into his lap. Another time I remember, I saw him happy, flashing a wallet full of twenties.

A tragic accident involving one of the casino buses and the failing economy put an end to the buffet promotion to pull in poor or middle-class gamblers. This dislodged #5 from his gambling habit. Shortly thereafter, he hooked up with another businessman from his Asian country of origin, found housing, and made a start at getting his life in order, again.

The last couple times I’ve spoken with him, #5 was well-dressed and gave me a few bucks. He wished me good fortune at discovering, how I, like him, could find whatever my unique pathway out of the homelessness trap is.