Sacramento Homeless blog

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...

[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...

Loaves & Fishes is distributing flyers to spur attendance at a hearing at U.S. 9th District Court at 501 "I" Street in downtown Sacramento, that will rule on a summary judgment motion with respect to the long-standing case of Anthony Lehr, et al v. City of Sacramento, et al . The flyer tells us that the hearing will be in Dept. 7 at 2PM on April 30 before Judge Morrison C. England, Jr. Information on the lawsuit , that was filed August 2, 2007, can be found at the Loaves & Fishes website. L&F, in addition to the homeless-aid organizations SHOC and Francis House, have joined the suit as as plaintiffs. Other information on the beginnings of the lawsuit can be found at the Homeward Street Journal wikispace. Per the L&F webspace, The lawsuit challenges the confiscation of personal property belonging to homeless people by the City and County and the practice of law enforcement agencies writing citations for illegal camping to homeless persons sleeping on public p...