SafeGround seeks land in plan to catch up with Reno Tent City

Reno's Tent City

Joan Burke, Advocacy Director at Loaves & Fishes (and maybe/probably an officer or board member of SafeGround), has sent out a mass-mailed email telling Fishes & Loaves supporters that SafeGround needs land.

In her email, Burke included a link to an online pdf file: "Request for Proposal for Land Development / SafeGround Sacramento, Inc / April 2, 2010." The document calls for a search to identify potential sites for a homeless encampment or community of cottages in Sacramento County.

SafeGround, Sac, wants from two to five acres to accommodate 60 to 100 adults in fifty to eighty cabins or sleeping cottages.

It is believed that the new push for a safe ground encampment or cottage site comes as a result of a recent event: The acceptance of a legal 100-person homeless campground by city officials in Reno, Nevada. The encampment, there, is downtown and in public view.

The second half of a March 27 article in the Reno Gazette-Journal, detailing the new sanctioning of the Reno camp, talks about Sacramento's homeless encampment problems and relative lack of success with politicos here. John Kraintz, identified as president of SafeGround Sacramento, says something to the effect of Reno being ahead of Sacramento in doing something about the homeless problem. [Kraintz is not quoted directly.]

It my understanding that L&F Board Director David Moss, L&F CEO Libby Fernandez and Kraintz, and possibly others, have taken or will be taking a trip to Reno seeking pointers on how SafeGround Sac might duplicate the success seen by the Reno homeless.

Majorities of elected representative on the city council and on the county Board of Supervisors in Sacramento continue in staunch opposition to authorization of a homeless encampment or village.

The Reno encampment will have (if it doesn't already) rules prohibiting drugs, alcohol, open flames, dogs off their leash and messy areas. Residents will be required to attend "community meetings" to create and maintain sanitation policy and security.

A major bar for getting a homeless encampment or other community in Sacramento is the determination by many officials here that a Sacramento homeless community would have to have outside security, which is a colossal expense, relative to the cost of running a community without paying outsiders for security.

Comments

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...

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 ...

Far-left visionaries at "Homeless Power Forum" hope to transform America [into Bulgaria?]

Poster from " Hobo Art Show " at Western Regional Advocacy Project website. Paul Boden, a keynote speaker at the Homeless Power Forum, is WRAP's Executive Director. Yesterday, "Homeless Power Forum: Vision & Survival" was held at the Delany Center at Loaves & Fishes. Thinking it was about to end (I should read my literature, dummy!), I stayed for only the first hour-and-a-half of a 5 1/2 hour program. But that was enough to hear the "keynote speakers," Ethel Long-Scott and Paul Boden, and to sound alarm bells about the direction of the Safe Ground effort. Today, I believe that the confusion that is implicit in the many meanings that have been given to safe ground , also spelled capitalized [Safe Ground], and as one word [SafeGround], is intentional: to lead people in the homeless community in Sacramento from the most positive and favorable meaning, a legal homeless campground, to a hopelessly-naive political far-far left Utopian vision o...

Sacramento Homeless blog

Search This Blog