Sacramento Homeless blog

According to an article yesterday in the Sacramento Press , " Homelessness: County aims to lessen blow of proposed cuts ," officials for the County of Sacramento are hopeful they can successfully work around proposed cuts of funding support for three Sacramento shelters. They believe that stimulus money, which can be used to provide housing for the homeless, will lessen the overall pain of losing shelter services the county can no longer affort to provide. Also, they hope the stimulus money might "free up" other funds that can be used to provide shelter beds. Bruce Wagstaff, director of Sacramento County’s Department of Human Assistance, told Press staff reporter Kathleen Haley the department is working with the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency (SHRA) on plans to alleviate the damage that would be caused if the county Supervisors approve Wagstaff's proposed cuts. “We don’t want to take a big step backwards,” Wagstaff told the Sacramento city Council...

"[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...

" The newspaper lies, the radio lies, the TV lies, the streets howl with truth." - Henry Miller A new breakdown of Street Count, 2009, figures by the County of Sacramento Department of Human Assistance shows that fewer families with an aggregate fewer family members were on the street or in homeless shelters in 2009 than was the case in the 2008 count. This defies the basis of the newsstorm that developed the past three month where it was believed that a huge outbreak of homeless families in Sacramento was a bellwether of the beginning of a new Great Depression in America. The following tables show the breakdown of the new data: 2008 Households with Dependent Children Unshel tered Emer gency Shel tered Subtotal Sheltered and Unsheltered in Transitional Housing Grand Totals Number of Households 12 47 59 102 161 Number of Persons (adults and children) 33 131 164 278 442 2009 Households with Dependent Children Unshel tered Emer gency Shel tered Subtotal S...

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 ...