Sacramento Homeless blog

Buckner as pictured online at SN&R 's webspace. There is an amazing first-person essay in this week’s Sac’to News & Review that ‘hits on’ central crimes of Loaves & Fishes and its disgraceful leader. The crimes are those of “ Warehousing the Rabble ” and “ Collective Punishment .” The essay, titled “ Sacramento's coldest season ” [online; in hardcopy it's titled, simply, "the coldest season"], by Christopher Lee Buckner, relates suffering he endured at Loaves & Fishes and at Sac Steps Forward’s Winter Sanctuary during this winter when he was homeless. Happily for Christopher, he is now back in an apartment and back in college – otherwise, for the outrage of saying something negative about the horrors of the Libby Fernandez administration at Loaves, he would be subject to denial of survival services. Some Overlords in Homeless World don’t tolerate essential American freedoms. For the record, I have never met the writer, and I don’t know...

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 ...

The cover article published in today's Sacramento News & Review , titled " You know you’re a Sacramentan when …: 100 miscellaneous things that define us and our region ," includes one "thing" ― lucky number 13 ― that relates to homelessness. Here it is: 13. … you have nicknames for the homeless people in your neighborhood. Sacramento gained international media attention in 2009 because of its Depression Era-like tent city. So, naturally, our ever-considerate city government shut it down, kicked homeless campers out of the vacant property and didn’t establish a new place for them to go. Many were forced to sneakily find a new home every night in front of closed buildings on J Street, along the river or in the alley behind my apartment. Although I enjoy seeing Gandalf the Grey merrily ride his bicycle through my neighborhood nearly every morning, I wish he had a comfortable, warm place to call home. Unfortunately, he may have to migrate to a new city for ...

In its current edition, the Sacramento News & Review [SN&R] has a cover story, called " Living Homeless: Faces and Stories from the Streets of Sacramento " that pictures 17* Sacramento homeless citizens and tells us a little, in their words, about how they became homeless and what their lives are like. I know three or four of the people that are profiled. I appreciate that it is a good idea to have the public come to better know homeless people as individuals, rather than as an amorphous crowd. I think that SN&R did an earnest job and was appreciative of the people interviewed. Still, knowing several of the people, I'm disappointed about how they "came off." The people I know, animated by their spirits, as opposed to caught in hard-focused photographs, are fully splendid. The brief bios of each person seemed incomplete, to me. But that is likely to be because I want the public to know more and feel closer to each person. SN&R was probably wise ...

Cover of the 02.05.09 issue of the Sacramento News & Review. The Sacramento News and Review joined the chorus, adding words of support for a sanctioned tent encampment for the homeless in Sacramento. In an "SN&R Editorial" [Written by an editorial board? by the paper's owner? We don't know.], " A legal tent town ," published in today's issue, hope is expressed that the city [of Sacramento] and county [of Sacramento] "give the legal tent town concept their blessing." Hooray, that. And, maybe a designated place to be, funds, an outline of what they expect, and directives restraining police exuberance. The piece first mentions the mounting homeless population in the region and that we are at the frontline of economic decline, here, as well. Says the editorial, [C]ity and county officials are studying whether or not to create a legal “tent town,” where people without a roof over their heads can camp out without fear of being harassed or re...