Sacramento Homeless blog

Somewhere in the large rectangular building, on the southside of No. C Street is where the new women's shelter has been constructed. I 'believe' the shelter is in the area of the lower middle section. Loaves & Fishes new warehouse is nearing completion at the northwest corner of Ahern and N C St. Quickly, bringing readers up-to-speed with what’s already been reported on in this blog [see here and here ] re Mohanna's Shelter: Mohammed H. Mohanna — known as Moe Mohanna — is a prominent Sacramento real estate developer who has created a women’s shelter, next to the Women’s Empowerment organization, within the long building on the southside of North C Street in the Loaves & Fishes’ Mall of Services [see map]. The shelter does not yet have approvals from the city for the construction that has been completed, nor for habitation, by solo woman, to begin. We learned of this new shelter from a column in the October 21 issue of the Sacramento News & Review . L...

Somewhere in the large rectangular building, on the southside of No. C Street is where the new women's shelter has been constructed.  I 'believe' the shelter is in the area of the lower middle section. The new women’s shelter, constructed by prominent downtown businessmen Mohammed "Mo" Mohanna is very very fine with nice counters, floors and proportions — way outdistancing merely adequate. I wrote about this a bit last month , site unseen, hopeful that it would quickly be approved for occupancy. Now I learn, it’s not just close to the Loaves & Fishes mall, as reported in the October 21 issue of the Sacramento News & Review , it’s in the complex , unless the door to the shelter can be ‘out back,’ instead of in from the street on North C. Loaves & Fishes claims control of North C Street on the stretch of pavement from Ahern west to a cul-de-sac abutting 12th Street. The new shelter is in the middle of that stretch of road, on the south side. All...

There is some good news in regard to the adequate-shelter-this-winter problem that will soon take command of our full attention here in Homeless World Sacramento:  a new shelter for solo women is very very likely to go "on line" soon, hopefully before the first blast of extreme coldness and wetness. Jeff vonKaenel, the all-things power behind Sacramento News & Review writes in his column this week … Earlier that week, Moe Mohanna had taken me on a tour of his new homeless shelter for single women near the Loaves & Fishes complex. This new and controversial shelter has not yet been approved by the city, but it could certainly help provide much-needed housing this winter. Please, please approve the shelter — dammit — city. This is NOT a year to be choosy. I don't know what the issues are with respect to this new shelter, but any bed is a good bed, pretty much, in these economically-troubled times.  And since Moe Mohanna has sawbucks aplenty, I wo...

A letter that seems clearly legitimate, published in the Roseville Press-Tribune yesterday , tells us that psychiatrists at the Sutter facility in Roseville have been sending homeless patients to Sacramento during the past twenty years, by bus.  The practice is referred to as "Greyhound Therapy," and is clearly a means of "dumping" the patients here to relieve the Sutter facility and Placer County the expense of properly caring for and providing for the people. The letter was written by Roseville-resident Susan Lawson who tells us she used to work for Sutter in Roseville, but now works for Mercy in Sacramento.  The letter ends with this sentiment which demonstrates Ms. Lawson's frustration, observance of hypocrisy, and keen compassion: This is unethical, not to mention illegal. We are responsible for taking care of the homeless in our town. In probably the wealthiest area in greater Sacramento with more shopping centers and strip malls and of course, the al...

A News10 report earlier today tells us that, between them, the city and county have now contributed aproximately $360,000 for a winter homeless shelter, with the mayor's policy board hoping to, somehow, raise another $80,000 for the effort. That would bring $440,000 total to the effort to shelter 150 or 200 people for four months. Michelle Steeb, leader of an ad hoc committee for the city/county to figure out how to provide chilly-season shelter, and director of St. John's Homeless Shelter, is quoted, saying, "Cal Expo is an option, but it's much more expensive than some of the other options that we're looking at." "Because we're not going to have as much money as we had last year or in years past, we need to be more economical," Steeb said. "We need to look at more economical solutions. Cal Expo is not off the table, but it's just very expensive to run winter shelters out of Cal Expo." Last year, Overflow at Cal Expo, run c...

This morning, the Mayor held a press conference to update the public on the status of pressing homelessness issues and to reiterate his commitment to make Sacramento "a city that works for everyone," including the least fortunate, us homeless. The briefing also served to show that the mayor and parties involved in the Safe Ground movement are reconciled and expect to be working together to meet the shelter and sleeping needs of homeless Sacramentans in the face of the continuing difficult economic conditions and a coming winter that may be severe. Mayor Kevin Johnson, now in office for ten months, said that homeless people must be treated with respect and their dignity recognized and that the city must pursue a goal of ending homelessness, altogether, over time. Aside the mayor as he stood at a podium in a small room in the new building at the City Hall complex were about eight leaders involved in efforts to aid the homeless, including Sister Libby and Joan Burke of Loaves...

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...

A resourceful band of homeless people have identified a plot of ground in Sacramento for the establishment of a campground – a place to live and be in the absence of adequate shelter space or other ways and means to spend the night. There is nothing unusual about this (there are many illicit homeless tent communities in the county), except that these campers have a written compact, regulations and self-governance. And they have named their encampment "Safe Ground," even though it is not sanctioned, as that name implies. I am told that last evening two Sacramento Bee reporters came to the site and spoke with many of the inhabitants. A story in the paper is likely to appear tomorrow morning. [Update: As of the 8/7 issue, there has been no story re the camp in The Bee.] The plot of ground was described to me as being as big as the cul-de-sac area at Loaves & Fishes, from Mercy Clinic to the end of the street, which is, perhaps, 25 yards by 70 yards. I was told the encampmen...

Hoy-day! What a sweep of vanity comes this way! They dance! they are mad women Like madness is the glory of this life. As this pomp shows to a little oil and root. * ~Wm Shakespeare: homeless Apemantus in The Tragedy of Timon of Athens A World Shelter U-Dome, dubbed a LibbyPod. Loaves and Fishes owns two which were recently donated. Without extras, the pod retails for $2495. The future will show what actually happens, but the rumormill is rife with information on what Loaves is planning for its rally & march on July 1. Some of the scuttlebutt tells us Loaves' brainpower continues at ebb. One rumor, the likeliest to be true, is that Sister Libby is in hope of getting arrested. Last April, when the Oprah-fuelled media blitz was in full-frontal Jerry Springer mode, the Chief-Exhibitionist-Officer of Loaves & Fishes was touting her hopes of getting into a local jail via the backdoor. Here, from an April 6 Bee article , just before Tent City came tumbling down, written by th...

A clock on the homepage of Loaves & Fishes' website counts down the seconds until 10AM on July 1 when a "March for Safe Ground," featuring Papa Roach, will begin at the intersection of 12th & Ahern. "12th & Ahern" is really the parking lot of L&F's Delany Center, according to where a pin is placed in L&F's map of the spot . In the back of the Center, several of us have seen the construction and temporary instalation of pod-like geodesic tent structures made from corrugated polypropylene, dubbed LibbyPods, which are clearly going to play a part in the First of the Month event. [The pods are actually World Shelter U-Domes which retail for $2,495 .] There have previously been Safe Ground events on December 23, 2008 , and on April 21, 2009 . The December event was a march from the Loaves & Fishes facility to Ceasar Chavez Park, downtown, where a rally was held. The April 21 event was a rally at the state capitol. One distinctiv...

Helplessness is the enemy of happiness and the ally of fear. A vital element of feeling happy is having a sense of control, of being free to shift your attention to the things that are important to you and mold your behavior accordingly. ~Dozier Traumatic events in people's lives usually have this in common: they create a sense of helplessness. Loss of a spouse, a child, a limb, or having to face death, oneself, are surely some of the most emotionally affecting challenges people face. But few challenges impose a sense of helplessness more than the cascading events where a person suffers loss of job and watches as belongings are lost, and then one's apartment or house. And then, being in a state of homelessness fully scrambles ones relationships with family and friends. It is a disorganizaing and disorienting experience. Then you get screwed up further. In his highly regarded book Fear Itself , Rush Dozier writes about people put in traumatic life circumstances, ... you tend to...

Beds and rumours of beds. From what I understand, both the A Street shelter and the Bannon Street shelter that are currently being administered by Volunteers of America are going to be funded beyond June 30. At least one of the facilities, according to what I've heard unofficially, will be operated by Salvation Army beginning on July 1. Winter shelter , which is also currently being administered by Volunteers of America is not set to continue beyond June 30. This is not surprising; the shelter has always been seasonal, and as it is it will be in operation nine days into summer. Never before, so far as I can tell from a search of Sacramento Bee articles in years past, has the facility ever been in operation past March 31 ... until this year. A problem remaining is what additional shelter will there be in the winter of 2009-2010. Winter shelter is not only not getting its current operation extended, it's not yet funded for next winter. As many know, Winter shelter [also known ...

There will be a meeting of the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors at 9:30, tomorrow, Thursday, to discuss matters relating to Human Assistance and Health And Human Services, in context of the 2009-2010 county budget gap of $180 million. The meeting will be at 700 H Street Suite 1450; Sacramento, CA 95814 [ map ] [ agenda ]. Funding for General Assistance, Mather Community Campus, Homeless Shelters, and Primary Care are important topics of the meeting, which will allow members of the public to address the board for several minutes, each. It is expected that many homeless-aid and -advocacy people will be at the meeting to give their points of view, pressing for restoration of funding (or to find funding in forthcoming stimulus monies) for programs that are scheduled to end or be significantly cut on July 1. It is expected that many homeless people will be at the meeting and that many will address the board, as well. Of prime interest is the shelter situation beginning on July 1. Wint...

The county released its "July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010" budget proposal and it is bad, bad news all around for homeless citizens. Here, as best I can understand it, is what I've found: Access to the pdf documents can be found here . The information is in two big volumes. Of most interest -- I think -- is the funding information in Section G in the second volume. On page 198 (of 245) in Section G "HUMAN ASSISTANCE - AID PAYMENTS 8700000" we are told that the county is funding only $8,710,289 of $16,473,571 that was requested. The Additional Information section reads as follows [emphases, mine]: DHA has made the following reductions to its funded appropriations: Eliminate Bannon St. Aid-In-Kind (AIK) Shelter - 62 beds at a cost of $548,813; Eliminate North A Street AIK Shelter - 60 beds at a cost of $551,070 ; implement self-declaration of employability - estimated savings of $1,957,379; Require disabled clients to apply for Supplemental Security Income within tw...

In its June 22, 2009, issue, one of our country's major political magazines, The Nation , deftly looks back at Sacramento's Tent City in a lengthy piece " Tales of Tent City ," while tangentially musing about tent encampments and homelessness, generally, and assessing the near future of homelessness in California. With reflective time since the tarps were rolled up like scrolls, The Nation has done one thing almost every other media source has failed at: getting the facts mostly right. Here, one paragraph that says the most: In the end, Sacramento dealt with its Tent City with more compassion than can usually be expected. "If they had a great big rug they could sweep us under somewhere, they would," predicted Karen Hersh, and she was right. The broom, fortunately, came in the form of temporary fixes, not arrests. The city scrambled to raise money for forty additional units of subsidized housing (few of which were ready before Tent City was cleared) and fifty...

An article I wrote for Sacramento Press, " Why shouldn't Loaves & Fishes pay to shelter homeless rather than the cash-strapped county? " is now up. The story is a very straightforward one. Loaves & Fishes recently released their 2008 Form 990 – a glorified financial statement most nonprofits are required to complete and make available to the public – which shows they've amassed a $1.5 million addition to their general fund in the last two years and had, at the end of last year, $2.2 million in liquid assets [cash, savings and temporary investments]. Thus, I question why Loaves & Fishes doesn't, itself, pay for homeless shelter that is needed rather than try to shame the cash-strapped county to do so. Providing homeless shelter is a part of Loaves & Fishes mandated mission. And not sitting on funds is a tenet of the Better Business Bureau's Standard for Nonprofit Accountability. Karen Banker, the chairperson of L&F's Board of Directors w...

Sister Libby Fernandez began the formal part of her press conference this morning saying, "Shame on us. Shame on our government." Whatever shame there was on "us" was unnamed and forgotten while the local government bore the whole of accusations that were deemed shameful. At issue are three shelter closures at the end of June, all run by the local chapter of the organization Volunteers of America . The three shelters that are scheduled to close, due to lack of funding, are Winter shelter [aka, Overflow] (204 beds, plus 18 couch sleeping spaces) and the Aid-in-Kind shelters on A Street and on Bannon Street (an aggregate of 142 beds). The pronouncement that 346 beds are being cut [204+142=346], [or 328 beds; though I don't know how that total was derived] as several speakers claimed today, is a dubious statistic. Winter shelter, as its name suggests, has not in the past been a shelter for all seasons. In years past, the shelter has closed at the end of March. It i...

Tomorrow at 10AM Sister Libby of Loaves & Fishes and officials from the local chapter of Volunteers of America will be holding a "press conference" at L&F's Delany Center parking lot to rev-up demand that the city and, particularly, the county provide funding for shelter space for our metropolis's homeless. Loaves & Fishes, today, ballyhooed the "press conference" for the benefit of denizens of its facility to stir up attendance tomorrow. [There's a substantial threat of loss of beds, as of July 1.] Since SacHo ardently wants what's best for us homeless – practical shelter and aid to uplift us all into position to again be thriving and productive citizens – we, mostly, want L&F and VOA to succeed with their effort tommorrow. But we mustn't be fooled: the county has a staggeringly large deficit and the homeless aren't a political force. [There is some hope, though, that via an end-around, stimulus money for mostly-new programs...

The clock is ticking. Unless something changes, 346 people will be dumped out onto the street on the morning of July 1. Things may, already, not be as bad as that sounds. Many are likely to get placement in temporary housing. That was the promise of the city for the Tent City evacuees which number, perhaps, fifty. Plus there is stimulus money out there. It's not targetted for the established-homeless, but some funds may come our way, if only as a result of other funds being "released" as a result of usages the stimulus money is directed toward. In more-normal times, Overflow [aka, Winter] shelter would already have closed. This year it's set to close after the last day in June. Since the weather is already warm and many have tents and sleeping bags, we can expect that closure of Overflow will result in what happens every year: people find a place for themselves on the streets or along the river. What's unusual this year is that people now in VOA's A Street and...

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...