Skip to main content

Rapid re-housing will help in shelter-in-winter effort


An article by Kathleen Heeley in the Sacramento Press sets the boost in the number of beds for area homeless this winter at 419, which is quite a significant increase from the 150 beds the county has paid for in winters past.

This coming late fall and winter the city, county, federal government, nonprofit organizations and private donors will all fund a robust effort to give homeless people in our community places to sleep at night. Details on the funding and how new and pre-existing shelters will be constituted will be learned, from the mayor's office, with an event on Nov. 5.

Reporter Heeley's count of beds is up 150 from the 269 that had been reported at a mayor's news conference on Oct. 23. Ms. Heeley tells us, in her new article "Agencies plan to set up 419 winter shelter beds" and first comment to the article, that the 150 beds are paid for via "stimulus money ... coming through the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP)." The "beds" through this program are in rental units for homeless people with jobs. The rental units [apartments, rented houses] will be heavily rent-subsudized for three months, freeing-up shelter beds for other homeless people.

Certainly this rapid re-housing program is a boon to relieve suffering in the homeless community, whether or not there is a direct correlation, in all cases, of working homeless moving into an apartment or house and thereby a shelter bed being made available elsewhere.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sex, Lies and Exegesis

Definition: exegesis [ek-si-jee-sis]: critical explanation or interpretation of a text or portion of a text, especially of the Bible. Painting by He Qi , a prominent artist from China who focuses on Christian themes. This piece is inspired by The Song of Solomon. In his May 21 column, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof stirred up a hornets’ nest. His column wasn’t really a column, it was a quiz, titled “ Religion and Sex Quiz .” The questions and what he provided as the answers were provocative, to say the least. We would later learn, in his follow-up, a post to the Times online in the afternoon of the same day, “ Reader Comments on my Religion Quiz ,” that the information that was used to create the quiz came with the help of Bible scholars, “including Jennifer Knust, whose book inspired [the quiz], and … Mark Jordan of Harvard Divinity School.” Kristof doesn’t name Knust’s book, but a quick googling reveals that it must certainly be Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s...

In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closes its park in the morning on New Year’s Day

Calvin [a "green hat" in Unfriendly Park] makes the argument for continued incompetent management. Hobbes represents me — only, in real life, I don't have that good a coat . In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closes its park in the morning on New Year’s Day In one respect — and only one — that I can think of, Loaves & Fishes is NOT hypocritical: The management hates the way America is run and wants to turn it into a backward communist country . Consistent with that, Loaves & Fishes’ management runs its facility like a backward communist country. The People’s Republic of Loaves & Fishes. A seemingly minor thing happened on New Year’s Day. A couple of people smoked a joint in Loaves & Fishes’ Friendship Park and one of the park directors, or both of them, determined, at about 10am, that, in retribution, they would punish all the homeless there by closing the park for the day. This is something the managers of the park do all the ...

Loaves & Fishes implicates Buddhism and Jack Kornfield in its June Donations Plea.

The Sukhothai Traimit Golden Buddha was found in a clay-and-plaster overlaid buddha statue in 1959, after laying in wait for 500 years. It's huge and heavy: just under 10 feet tall and weighs 5 1/2 tons. At the beginning of their June newsletter , Loaves and Fishes relates a story, taken from the beginning of renowned Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield's 2008 book The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology . The first part and first chapter in Kornfield's book is "Part I: Who are you really?" and chapter 1 is called "Nobility: Our Original Goodness," which ought to serve as a clue to what the beginning of the book is about, not that that sentiment isn't strewn through-out the chapter, section and book such that what Kornfield is telling us should be crystal clear. Somehow, the not-ready-for-primetime management at Loaves & Fishes have managed to use Kornfield's wise and kindly words in a way that mangles th...