This is what the Class War looks like

From Daily Kos, via a WilliamHarryman Tweet.

A vivid story of the torment of homelessness told by Sacramentan Sonny Iverson in the Sacramento Press. Read it!

From Iverson's Google profile.

A longtime homeless man, Sonny Iverson, has posted a four-part narrative of his experience of being ‘on the street’ [and getting off of it] to SacPress:

• Experiences in Homelessness Part 1
• Experiences in Homelessness Part 2
• Experiences in Homelessness Part 3: Navigating Homeless Housing Services
• Experiences in Homelessness: Part 4: Transition to Independent Living

It’s a splendidly well-written story that I am hopeful a good many will read. While every homelessness story is unique, there are many things about Sonny’s story that reflect upon what is similar to all who fall into the muddy pit of homelessness — that writer and sociologist John Irvin codified as “Warehousing the Rabble” in his book The Jail: Managing the Underclass in American society.

Sonny was first homeless when he was 18, locked out of his father’s home for smoking marijuana. From there he began an extended period in unstable living circumstances as he tried to advance his education in junior colleges.

Moving to San Francisco, his interest in music bloomed, resulting in a musical odyssey to Tennessee where things took a particularly sour turn.

These stages in a fall – from bad to worse to dastardly – would get nods of comprehension from many homeless folk who tumbled down their own not-dissimilar slippity slope. “Yep,” we would say. “Mine was sumpthin like that.”

Writes Iverson:

That people prey on young homeless people to oppress and abuse them is still hard for me to believe. It does make sense though, because who would believe a homeless person, or even care for their welfare? Homeless are a perfect target for predators, because the homeless have no voice, and not many care what happens to them.

Anyway, y’all: Read. Sonny’s. Story. Got that? Read the whole of it, as Sonny relates repeated difficult circumstances as he pulls himself up and out of the mudpit.

Unhappily, and to be expected, the “homeless haters” weigh in in the comments sections of the serial. These folks offer up severe criticisms of the homeless whenever a story relating to homelessness appears in the Sac Bee or Sac Press.

The frustration that Sonny has, and I and other homeless people have, with these criticisms is that the comment writers are so starkly ignorant of the homeless circumstance. Things just are not like what the haters choose to believe and are determined to continue to believe.

Homelessness is a pit where true friends are too few and where the homeless-services charities and county and city services are riddled with ineptitude. There are exceptions, certainly. Thank God for the exceptions. But most of what homeless people find themselves having to do is run around in circles, striving mightily to accomplish what little can be done.

"Why, we are just where we were when we started!" says Alice. "Oh, yes," says the Red Queen; "you have to run twice as fast as that to get anywhere else."

From what I find on the Internet, Iverson was recently or is now an outreach worker for Wind Youth Services in Sacramento.  He also wrote a song, titled "My Dreams."

"Serna" beds at Sally's for Parkway campers extended through end of April

Logo of the nonprofit organization SafeGround Sacramento, Inc. -- from their website.

According to an article in today's Sacramento Bee, the 32 "Serna beds" that Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna raised funds for for Safe Ground¹, but were instead, with one exception, taken by other American River Parkway campers, have been extended an additional month, until the end of April.

Funds to extend availability of the beds comes from Kaiser Permanente [$5,000], "Serna's office," and others, the Bee article tells us.

Except for one member of Safe Ground, that organization's members refused the beds when originally made available in midFebruary. The reason given was that the SafeGrounders didn't want to jump the waiting list at Salvation Army, taking the beds from others who had a better claim of entitlement.

Many SafeGrounders were not reluctant to take beds at Union Gospel Mission once their riverside campground was rousted. To my mind, they certainly had every right to use mission beds, but I also think they had every justification to use the "Serna beds," even as I see it as laudable that most didn't.

Many, including myself, believe that Safe Ground's unflagging interest in having an issue to flog in order to raise funds and claim 'victimization' is at least in part reason why the "Serna beds" were refused. Safe Ground is a product of Loaves & Fishes' highly politicized effort of continual protest, and includes many of the same organization characters, including Libby Fernandez [an SGS board member and L&F CEO], David Moss, Mark Merin, and the lawyer without homeless-services portfolio, Cathleen "Cat" Willliams.

In an interview for SeeJaneDo, Fernandez said that "The ability to protest is written into the mission of Loaves and Fishes. Our philosophy is not to emphasize words, but non-violent action. It’s really about social justice. We walk the talk.”

But one woman's "social justice" is for others screwy politics. If Fernandez and her crowd had their way America would quite literally be transformed into a soviet-style nation, stripped of its freedoms.
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Footnotes:
1 The term "Safe Ground" or "SafeGround" is used for multiple, often-conflicting purposes by the organization of that name, which is also, more-formally known as "Safe Ground Sacramento." In this article Safe Ground means either the nonprofit organization or the tent encampment that was and often still is on the American Parkway or nearby.

The Weirdness of Union Gospel Mission’s Warming Center

I’m not saying that staying at the Mish¹’s Warming Center is bad; indeed, it’s the best – to my mind based on my few stays there and at Sally’s² Warming Center.

What’s weird about it has been the late-spring announcement that it would be open through to the end of winter and all that has transpired (and not transpired) subsequently.

Make no mistake: I am a big fan of the mission. It may not be making a conservative Christian out of me, but it is a purposeful, successful institution in the Homeless World Sacramento matrix. Its task – its mission, if you will – is to win souls for Christ, and it succeeds in its quest with a goodly number of the guys out here. The mission turns around the lives of some people who were, stubbornly, on the hard road to disaster.

My take on one prime reason why the mission has success: Union Gospel Mission’s objective is a great match to the target, homeless adult men in Sacramento. The mission teaches order and authority to a population, many of whom are in chaos. It gives meaning to people’s lives for those who find no meaning in their lives. It sets off, in sharpest contrast, the dysfunction of a life of addiction or of being acclimated to prison culture with striving for The Good.

Mission administrators might not approve of my ‘notion’ of one important element in why the Mission succeeds, but, no matter, it succeeds for them in their terms, and I respect that. [You can read why I think the mission succeeds in the sidebar in this blogpost.]

The Weirdness

On February 9, or thereabouts, it was announced that the mission would be opening its Warming Center every night for the duration of winter. This was greeted with great approval by those in the chapel that evening. But it was also learned that the guy managing the nightly Center would be a member of the Mission Board of Directors son-in-law, someone who had no connection to the mission previously.

Nowadays, because of the very bad economic situation in Sacramento, there are many Mission Rehab Program graduates hanging around who need employment. Four beds in the “guests³” dorm have been ‘given over’ to unemployed graduates. And it’s true that there are many unemployed graduates at the mission’s Eagle’s Nest Ranch. And, the mission lists as one of its goals the employment of Rehab grads. Too, there are graduates in good standing who work only sporadically who stay as guests, off and on.

At least a half dozen of the Rehab grads who are around are skilled, very capable individuals who would have been very appreciative if offered temporary work and would have been terrific Warming Center managers.

In short, there was frustration felt, by some, in that the mission seemed to have veered off what is most central: cultivating men in the Christian message, saving their souls, and restoring their lives.

A few days later it was learned that the “duration of winter” Warming Center would be open “just on weekdays.” Now, that seemed weird. The weather is not a respecter of days of the week. To paraphrase the Bible [Matthew 5:45], “God causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous," and is indifferent if it is a weekday or a weekend-day.

It occurred to people that the ‘five times a week’ thing was scheduled for the convenience of the manager and not as a function of combatting the misery of bad weather that homeless people endure.

About a week later, it was announced that the Warming Center would be open every day of the week, with the Warming Center manager being on hand on Wednesday-thru-Sunday nights with someone else being in charge on Mondays and Tuesdays. The Center would be open through the 19th of March [the last day of winter], and longer if the weather was bad. [In Homeless World Sacramento, March 31 was when formal “Winter Shelter” traditionally ends. “Winter Sanctuary,” Sacramento Steps Forward’s 2011 program that provides sleeping space on the floors at area churches, is funded to last through March 31.]

On Thursday March 3, we were told the Warming Center manager called in sick, complaining of a cold or the flu, and, with little notice, the Warming Center was not open that night. On the 4th, the Warming Center was again not open.

Last night, it was announced that the Warming Center would only be open if night temperatures are expected to drop into the low 30s, or below. [This was the ‘prompt’ in the past that the mission had used to open its Center.]

The Thing’s the Thing

In the past this blog has, rightly, been extremely critical of Loaves & Fishes for losing sight of its purpose. I am hopeful that the mission will keep its eyes on the great good worthy goal of helping the poor – and, especially, the most miserable subset of the poor, the homeless – and not be distracted by other, albeit worthy, aims.
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Footnotes:
¹My Natomas friend calls the mission “the Mish,” which has caught on with me. Sometimes, when out in public, I call the mission “the Ponderosa” when talking to my homeless pals. It’s not that I’m embarrassed by the mission or my connection with it, it is just that you get weary of being a “targeted homeless” person in public.
²“Sally’s” is the common ‘street’ name for Salvation Army’s shelter.
³“Guest” is what the mission calls non-Rehab guys who use UGM’s shelter, or men (and women) who use others of the mission’s many services.