About SacHo

[Most-recent update to this page was on 4/19/16.]

Sacramento Homeless blog is intended as an informational resource to help homeless people, those who love them, or want to know about them, or hope to aid them.

This writer and this blog have some positions on what needs to happen in Homeless World Sacramento:

• We are appreciative of the generosity of people and businesses in our metropolis who are eager to help ease the suffering of the community's homeless folk. We want homeless-help leaders to appreciate the greater community, rather than fighting with it, or fighting with the city and county officials the voters elect.
• We believe that the public needs to know much more about what homeless people are like and what their problems are. Much false information was put out there during the Oprah-fueled Tent City imbroglio of Feb/Mar/Apr, 2009. We are hopeful that the truth about the homeless will be printed in our area newspapers to overcome the stereotypes and falsity that is perpetuated.
• We believe that the path to jobs and better lives should be made wider for the homeless and that that begins with having shelters exist, not as day-prisons, but as places that readily accommodate the employment efforts of scrappy homeless people. We believe that 'Housing First' is doable and should be aggressively pursued by the area politicians.
• We believe that nutrition is important and that homeless-aid organizations can do better to help the homeless have a proper diet which should include many helpings of vegetables, fewer hotdogs, fewer carbs and less salt. We all live near the Central Valley, a vast cropland where abundant vegetables are grown.
• We believe that the homeless have "a right to be" and must no longer be arrested when they must sleep on the sidewalk or in tents on vacant property. Too, the anti-camping ordinance must be overturned.
• We believe that the "national agenda" that several homeless-help agencies have are repugnant. The central problem is the politics of Safe Ground.  It would probably be best if these agencies foreswore any effort at changing the US Constitution or national policies or polity.  But if they are not going to give up the idea of (1) ending capitalism as the base economic system in the US; (2) putting in place a government that guarantees jobs for all; and (3) stopping technological advancement, then we will oppose their nutty efforts.  A government that could achieve these goals would necessarily be totalitarian and oppressive, putting an end to democracy, freedom and liberty.  Screw that!
• We believe it is scandalous what has happened to the mentally ill in Sacramento.  A great many have been abandoned to the streets.  Many, lounging on the sidewalk, may look passive and content (due to the powerful anti-psychotic drugs they are given), but they suffer mightily, stripped of emotion and the drive to seek happiness for themselves.

I would welcome hearing from anyone in the Sacramento area who would want to help build this blog into a better resource. -- Tom Armstrong

ADDENDUM 4/19/16:  Let me add this, from Jim Henley's blog.  Below is an ethos I intend to adopt after considering further where this blog is going. [SacHo comments in blue]

[The] Blog-reporter ethos appears to consist of

• original reporting on first-hand sources [Necessarily for SacHo, there would need to be much use of newspaper accounts, buttressed with original research, reporting, and comment sought from others.] 
• a frankly stated point-of-view [Well, yes.  But reporting should be segregated between that which is objective and that which is analytical.]
• tempered by a scrupulous concern for fact [Yes]
• an effort to include a fair account of differing perspectives [Yes, but in Homeless World there's a lot of game playing that is the whole of what gets reported in established media.  It's enough work just to "get the truth out," and too too much to equivocate a lot and make the game players' positions seem legitimate.]
• ending in a willingness to plainly state conclusions about the subject [Hmm. I guess. Maybe.]

ADDENDUM:  And I should add this.  So much that goes on with the radical politics and "warehousing the rabble" gets altered in ways that would make Stalin and devilish characters in Orwell novels proud.  A part of this blog's purpose is becoming one of recording the horror of it all; retaining the history that becomes so quickly "misremembered" by the loonies that operate the so-called homeless-help industry in this metropolis.

ADDENDUM 2:  The logo for this blog is one of the two towers of Sacramento's Tower Bridge across the Sacramento River.  [Well, actually, you can glimpse a bit of the second tower behind and to the right of the first.]  The bridge is a common icon for the city and metropolis. In "real life" the bridge is gold or mustard yellow, dependent on the last paint job.  The sacHO pic has been altered to make the bridge look raggedy, like we homeless sometimes look.