Sacramento Homeless blog

It is crucial that Sacramento County and the city of Sacramento not abandon their responsibility to look out for homeless people in our metropolis. A Bee board editorial, " New partnership needed for homeless ," published on Sept 15, has everything backwards. It is written in support of an effort, by the county and city, to create a “new countywide or regional joint powers authority/public-private partnership” to handle and coordinate the critical task of aiding homeless people and saving them from suffering and harm. Such a concocted powerful agency will directly deny homeless people government oversight to protect their interests. Such an agency, composed in significant part by executives from Christian nonprofits to beg for money and aid from Christian church groups, is an affront to what is a cornerstone of our republic: the separation of church and state. Homeless people are citizens and have a right to secular government oversight. An effort to create an autho...

Many homeless people and executives with homeless-services nonprofits came to the city council meeting, yesterday, to express their opinions regarding the Sacramento City Council’s determination, last week, to move the period when citizens make two-minute comments to the council from the beginning of the weekly sessions to the end of the sessions. Sentiment by most yesterday in the public-speaking period, were intolerant of the decision to move ‘public comments’ and expressed no understanding of the logic in doing so. Tamie Dramer, Executive Director of SafeGround Sacramento, called the action of moving the comment period one of “disenfranchisement” and accused the council of punishing the whole of the public in an act endeavoring “to sideline a group of already marginalized people.” Joan Burke, homeless-services nonprofit Loaves & Fishes executive, said that the message of moving the speaking period is the “same, exact message when you told people you have to go to the back ...

The city has, with me having only 30 minutes computer time, announced its proposed budget for next year [July 1, 2010 - June 30, 2011], in a 108 page document. I don't really know what to look for, but the news is sort of that there's no news.  It's like the Sherlock Holmes story of the dog that didn't bark, where something that isn't there is the clue. I did a search for "steps forward" and "homeless" and "homelessness" and nothing like that is there.  But a very quick perusal suggests that the budget just isn't that low level, giving the degree of detail -- even as long as it is -- to tell me if there are funds targetting the homeless. Of course, it is THE COUNTY, and not THE CITY that has prime responsiblity for homeless issues. So, sorry.  False alarm.  No news, here.

The New York Times [ here ] and Sacramento Business Journal [ here ] tell us in reports over the extended weekend that Sacramento won a Cities of Service grant from the Rockefeller Foundation that will fund a "chief service officer" who will report directly to the mayor. SBJ  tells us, "In its application, Sacramento listed education, public safety, homelessness and the environment as its high-priority issues that it will target with increased volunteerism." A report on the grants at the Cities of Service website tells us the grant to Sac is in the total amount of $200,000, to be paid over a period of two years. Our city's Chief Service Officer must be hired before June 1, and will be tasked with forming "a citywide planning process that culminates in the creation of a comprehensive service plan. ... By December 1, 2010, [he will] have submitted a progress report and put into operation a website or other appropriate technological tool to faci...

According to today's news, 16 or 17 of the homeless folk camping at the so-called Safe Ground* campsite on C Street near 13th were arrested and their tents and belongings seized. It's an unhappy situation. Had the campers been arrested for doing their best to live in a city/county that allows no space for them, I would be outraged. But, truly, the event is not that: It is orchestrated political theatre, motivated in big part by the vanity of a far-left-wing lawyer and homeless-aid-industry narcissism where homeless people are manipulated and used to spur donations, and to give homeless-aid nonprofit executives liberal cache on the progressive cocktail-party circuit. [That's my informed guess, at least.] As incredible as it sounds, the "Safe Ground movement" is involved with communist politics. It's 1917 all over again at Loaves & Fishes . Cathleen Williams , an attorney herself, wife of "Safe Ground movement" lead attorney Mark Merin, has c...

Campers setting up on the Merin property. Mark Merin, the leading Sacramento attorney for the homeless-help industry, is allowing homeless people to put up their tents on property of his on C Street, between 12th and 14th. According to the article in the Bee which is the source of this news, Merin is leasing the property to "three advocacy organizations [that] are leading the 'safe ground' effort." The organizations are unnamed in the article, but would be Loaves & Fishes, Francis House and SHOC. The "lease" is clearly a means to shield Merin from responsibility for the effort. Merin, and the "advocacy organizations" are set to profit considerably from terms of agreement that will conclude litigation relating to Lehr v Sac'to, a suit that ostensibly exists to compensate homeless people for property that was destroyed by city and county police. In truth, Merin and Loaves & Fishes will be the great beneficiaries from the suit, when ...

I met with an aid with the mayor's office yesterday, whom has recently been assigned responsibilities to understand and try, mightily, to address many of the needs of us homeless people in the city and county. She is a member of the Mayor's Task Force on Homelessness, and if I understood correctly, is now the leader/co-ordinator of the committee since Andrew Rosskamm, who had had that role, has returned to Harvard, following the terminus of his fellowship. As regular readers of this blog are aware, I have great concern about what will happen this winter to provide shelter for those who, due to the cold season's many frosty nights, must come indoors to sleep to be safe and well. We need to boost the number of shelter beds in the winter by approximately 200, now that the county is dirt poor and will not be funding VOA's terrible Winter Shelter , also known as Overflow . I am happy to say that the aid I met with was attentive and interested in the concerns I expressed and ...

The Winter of Our Discount Tent : Not meaning to make light of the situation, this shirt/joke was found that suits the Sacramento situation fittingly, to a T. From zazzle . Though the August sun shines bright and brilliant, NOW is the time to address an emergency headed our way: Sleep space for the county's homeless during the winter of 2009-2010 needs to be found. Somehow we must find space for about 200 souls from the middle of November, 2009, to the end of March, 2010. The county of Sacramento is beyond flat busted, and is now set to further raid safety-net services to fund ongoing politically-protected functions of government. The city doesn't have as direct a responsibility for the homeless, yet can step it – but in today's economy, little can be expected from the mayor and city council. Still, something has to happen or hundreds of people for a period of a hundred cold dark dank wintry nights will suffer mightily with some getting deathly ill. It is simply a responsi...

[Psst. This article was written twenty years ago by then Bee staff writer Dale Maharidge (who won a Pulizer Prize in 1990 for a book that was an indictment of the tenant-farming system ). Except for the name of the mayor and others, the article reads like something that could have been written today.] This is starkly so because the police rousted the homeless who were sleeping on the sidewalk in front of Union Gospel Mission last night. -- Tom Jose Chaparro scratched his toe in the dust of the vacant lot and talked bitterly of the city work crew that came last week and leveled his crude shelter – and, he says, destroyed his work tools. "I'm a roofer. I can't work without my tools," said Chaparro, 38, a working homeless man who came to Sacramento from Phoenix, Ariz., two months ago. "I figured I'd work, make some money and get a house." On Tuesday, Legal Services of Northern California met with Mayor Anne Rudin, who apologized to Chaparro. And then Lega...

"[T]hose who argued for or against the tent city relied on the sort of simplistic explanations and quick-fix remedies that trivialize the causes and minimize the consequences of homelessness." wrote Robert V. Tobin, the president and CEO of the transitional-housing organization Cottage Housing , in a opinion piece published two days ago in Inside Politics Daily . The title given the piece is " Sacramento's Homeless Camp: More Fiction Than Fact ." Fiction v. Fact counterpoints within his piece read thus: FICTION: Sacramento's tent city emerged in recent months as the economy declined. FACT: People have lived along the American River since the Gold Rush; homeless people have camped there for decades. FICTION: Parents and kids were driven from their homes and into shanties. FACT: There were no children living in the encampment. FICTION: Tent residents were recession refugees new to the homeless scene. FACT: The local homeless policy director said 90 perc...

Photo from the Chronicle story. Despite all the attention that has come to homelessness, both nationally and here in Sacramento, it remains mysterious how many homeless there are. Whatever happened to the "Street Count, 2009" data that was supposed to have been made available "five or six weeks" following the count, that was taken on January 27? The lead story today in the San Francisco Chronicle is about the growing number of homeless: " Ranks of homeless swell as middle class teeters ." The story tells us, Homelessness across the entire nation is soaring, and experts say most of that growth is among ... middle- to lower-middle-income workers – or families. But here's the tricky thing: They aren't all showing up in shelters yet. There's a long ladder of resources they first have to tumble down before they hit bottom . ... Right now, experts say, the newly homeless are mostly invisible – living with relatives and tapping friends and unemploym...

Photo kiped from the Loaves & Fishes webspace. For the second week in a row, Marcos Breton has demonstrated his profound ignorance of the homeless situation in Sacramento. It must be that Breton never leaves the office. this week's column is entitled " Too much hypocrisy on homeless ," and concludes with this sentiment, "Sacramento is compassionate toward the homeless – maybe too compassionate." In the middle of his article he spends a lot of time talking about nearby cities and communities who, he says, wouldn't stand to have homeless people in their midst. He cites the communities of the Fabulous 40s , Curtis Park , Land Park , the McKinley Park area, East Sacramento and the Pocket . And the 'burbs, near and far, El Dorado Hills , Granite Bay , Carmichael , Fair Oaks , Rocklin and Roseville . [btw, Breton DOESN'T get so far-afield to mention Fairfield, where, it was reported, yesterday, in the The Vacaville Reporter , the go-ahead has been g...

Recent polical events may manifest as successful at kicking the can down the road until midyear. By then, the media buzz will have buzzed off somewhere else. If the mayor succeeds at increasing the bed count and extending the duration of Overflow shelter [and, likely, this is as good as achieved] and getting temporary camping ground at Cal Expo [this seems difficult, but perhaps it's been done behind the scenes], then Tent City, east of Loaves & Fishes on property belonging to SMUD and Union Pacific, can be rousted, fences can be put in place, and all the media hoopla may be but a blip in the history of Sacramento, a rather-strange web of events and tangle of stories that came and went and signified nothing. But in the middle of this year, long after Big Media have completely forgotten us, homeless people will still be living in Sacramento and will be needing services, including "places to be," and means to repair their damaged lives. Let's look at how, recently, ...

A Bee article by Cynthia Hubert, today, tells us, Homeless campers who live inside Sacramento's tent city will be asked to move to shelters and other indoor structures, officials said Thursday. Responding to growing concern and criticism about the burgeoning homeless encampment north of downtown, Mayor Kevin Johnson announced a plan to move as many as 150 campers to "safer, more sanitary" grounds. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which owns the bulk of the tent city property, plans to fence off the area within the next month ... [Mayor Johnson's] plan, to be brought before the City Council on Tuesday, calls for relocating the campers to various types of temporary and permanent indoor housing, including existing shelters and modular buildings at Cal Expo. Funding for the project will include local redevelopment money, Johnson said. He said the exact costs and funding mechanisms will be laid out Tuesday, and that he is confident the money will be available. ...

Photo kiped from the Loaves & Fishes webspace. In a piece published Sunday, demonstrating foolishness and ignorance, Bee columnist Marcos Breton writes , "Other cities would have rousted the tent people long ago. Sacramento got a black eye [from the "Oprah" exposure]. Do Roseville, Granite Bay or Fair Oaks carry a burden like [Sacramento does with homelessness in its midst]? No way." Breton doesn't explain how he'd deal with the homelessness problem in our area and nation, he seems just to figure that nobody wants them and that they are by definition undesirable, so they must disappear by being rousted from everywhere. Laughably, Breton cites Loaves & Fishes' Executive Director Libby Fernandez and Advocacy Director Joan Burke, mucky-mucks of a "charity that caters to the homeless," as the responsible parties for the quandary politicos have here with tent city. Breton believes that Fernandez and Burke are righteous modern-day Sister Te...

Gregory Rodriguez "What's really wrong with the anti-scavenging picture? It's that as times get tougher, the middle-class mores that inform such ordinances don't fit the reality of the growing number of people in our towns and cities who will be obliged to find innovative and, shall we say, quasi-respectable ways to survive," writes Gregory Rodriguez in his column in the Los Angeles Times , today, titled " Punishing scavengers? It's un-American : Ordinances meant to discourage the practice fly in the face of our values of self-reliance and resourcefulness ," which was specifically about the Sacramento council and its approval of an ordinance that harms area homeless. [See item #14 (pg 5) on summary of March 3 Sacramento Council meeting .] Rodriguez tells us, "Not long ago, British historian Simon Schama wrote that 'American resourcefulness is one well that won't run dry,' and for the most part I think he's right. But these days w...

Picture that appeared with today's Bee story, showing an Australian TV crew conducting an interview in Tent City. Great interest and attention and benefits and detriments and wild factual errors have come in conjunction with the international media frenzy that has descended on Sacramento's Tent City. Sacramento Bee homelessness reporter Cynthia Hubert writes about it all in a frontpage story, today, titled "Spotlight shines -- and stings" [in hardcopy] and " Some feel burned as media spotlight falls on capital's homeless camp " [in the online edition of the Bee ] Reporter Hubert does an excellent job at targetting the weirdness and inaccuracies in reports that are going out around the country and around the world. What's most troubling are great inaccuracies in the reporting of local TV stations, which couldn't be more out-of-touch if they were headquartered in Zanzibar and their News Directors were seriously psychotic. One local TV station repo...

Kudos to SHOC for this item in the new [2/26] SN&R ... An article in SN&R, titled " Trash or treasure?: Sacramento City Council considers ban on Dumpster diving " nicely gets into the back-and-forth on an ordiance revision that will be voted on on March 3 that would further outlaw dumpster diving. The case FOR the revision is pretty much this: According to a staff report prepared by the solid-waste division, the revision was proposed in response to increased scavenging, a practice the report says causes littering, attracts animals and pests, leads to the theft of recyclable material and identity theft. Criminalizing the act benefits public health and safety while preventing crime, states the report. The case AGAINST the revision is pretty well stated here: Local community activist Davida Douglas questioned the wisdom of the ordinance, considering that the vast majority of people rifling through garbage reclaim reusable or recyclable items that would otherwise end up ...

Logo/emblem of the city of Sacramento. A Sacramento City Council meeting on February 10 is going to be an important one for the city and for that important subset of folks, us homeless living in it. Here is the agenda for the meeting which covers many important topics , including Item 11, a proposed anti-scavenging ordinance; Item 16, a midyear city-budget review; and Item 18, a staff report on inclusionary housing Firstly, there is a scavenging ordinance [Item 11 on the agenda], that has been forwarded by the Law and Legislature committee, that would make scavenging in dumpsters and general-waste bins unlawful due to a supposed threat of ID theft. Stealing others' ID is already illegal, as is scavenging in recycling bins. SacHo supports Muriel Strand's objections to this legislation because (1) the community at-large should support scavenging that promotes 'green' recycling of usable items and (2) the Les Misérables argument [Sacramento should support Jean Valjean ...