Friday, February 10, 2012

STORYLINE Sacramento City Hall / Politics

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Mayor Kevin Johnson said Tuesday that he plans to deliver a proposal to the City Council in October that would lay out ideas for a “safe ground” site for homeless people.

Johnson told reporters at his weekly press conference on Tuesday that he wants to suggest to the City Council three to five sites as possible locations for a future campground. The campground would be exempt from the city’s rules against outdoor camping. In recent weeks, advocates for the homeless have called for city officials to create a safe ground site.

Johnson noted that possible locations for the campground would be controversial. “Everyone’s going to say: ‘We don’t want it in our neighborhood,’ ” Johnson said. The mayor’s office is also examining the costs of a safe ground site.

Johnson said that the safe ground issue is one element of a larger problem of homelessness in Sacramento. He said the safe ground campground will serve a few people, but the city needs to find permanent housing for its 3,000 homeless people. “Safe ground has to be embedded in a much more comprehensive strategy,” he said.

Photo by Anthony Bento.

Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.

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Conversation Express your views, debate, and be heard with those in your area closest to the issue.

trapper

September 16, 2009 | 2:00 PM

Just watch, if a location is approved by our Mayor and Council the homeless population will double in Sacramento within a year. All council members who do vote for this will be voted out in the next election.

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Top Cat 2808

September 16, 2009 | 5:00 PM

Poppycock! The homeless aren't that mobile, like you suppose, trapper. The days of train-hopping hoboes is gone. Today's homeless are in great majority home-city bound.

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William Burg

September 16, 2009 | 5:06 PM

Expect the homeless population to increase as affordable housing options are lost: last night the City Council approved the removal of the Wendell Hotel from the city's list of SRO rooms. They claim they will replace them within three years, but where the money for that will come from, nobody knows. As affordable rooms become fewer, more people will be forced outdoors.

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trapper

September 17, 2009 | 12:25 AM

Tom Armstrong: Do you have any data to back up your assumption that the homeless aren’t mobile? Seriously, they can get around just via train or hoofing if they want to, what's preventing them from not doing what has been done for over a hundred years Tom?

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becks

September 17, 2009 | 9:46 AM

What a ridiculous statement, trapper. What will happen is that homeless people in Sacramento will have to sleep on your doorstep because with the current fiscal crisis, there are fewer and fewer beds for them. It is crucial that we offer a SAFE place for our homeless community to sleep - a place free of drugs, alcohol, and violence...and where they can get access to the help they need to find a more permanent solution. The other night, I heard a woman that is staying at Safe Ground say that she's afraid to have a home, that she feels safer living on the streets than as our neighbour. What does this say about us as a society? We failed these people. We didn't protect them from violence, we didn't support them when they needed us, we didn't ensure they got the care they needed, and we certainly didn't offer them the same compassion and respect that we would demand others give to us. So now, we need to make it as right as we can. Now, we need to offer them SAFE GROUND. Now, we need to remember that we're all part of one big human family and protect our own.

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trapper

September 17, 2009 | 11:16 AM

Your ridiculous beck, you did not even address my concerns or statement. I'm tolerant of people who want to support themselves but not those who continue to be a leach on society. I've had enough run-ins with homeless in my 12 years of living downtown to know what I'm talking about.

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Top Cat 2808

September 23, 2009 | 10:02 AM

trapper, the incentive to move around are much less than they were, and are disappearing. Also, homeless people are more plugged in to their community and family that days-gone-by.

Truty, train hopping was easy twenty years ago, if you look at books about homelessness from that time period and before. That doesn't happen now. People used to go from state to state to collect benefits; computerization precludes that, today. Cellphones [that many job-seeking homeless people have] keep homeless folk plugged into family and friends, and ankle monitors keep parolees in restricted areas.

When homeless people DO move, it is to chase a better life, NOT to settle in to sponge off a different locality. This fear-mongering that homeless aliens from outerspace will settle in Sacramento and feed off the blood of infants is exaggerated.

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iadam

edited on September 16, 2009 | 3:01 PM

exactly trapper! cause everyone wants to be homeless. We are just waiting for that campground so we can make our move from our suburban homes, to a tent under a bridge.

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trapper

September 16, 2009 | 4:00 PM

No smartass! Just like when SF was giving away cash in the 90's to the homeless, the population swelled. The word will get out and before long it will be a camp the city had wished it had thought a little harder about approving.

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William Burg

September 16, 2009 | 5:08 PM

Most cities have some sort of "general assistance" program, San Francisco simply stopped doing so as part of the "care not cash" initiative--which did not drop the rate of homelessness in SF, it just let them take money from existing social programs and vaguely promise to spend it on more services at some point in the indeterminate future. In the meantime, San Francisco has plenty of homeless, enough to make Sacramento's numbers look not so bad.

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dahogre

September 16, 2009 | 3:31 PM

No but the news of a 'homeless safe ground' shall spread as far as the rail lines go and they shall search out this new promise land. Armed with Mad-Dogg 20/20 and a nap sack.

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TotalDerelict

September 16, 2009 | 6:21 PM

Im invitin all my frends!

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iadam

edited on September 17, 2009 | 1:44 AM

trapper, why are you so intolerant of the homeless ? If you’re not, and sincerely feel that sleeping in safety is a basic human right, you’re not showing it.

PS. thanks for calling me smart. Ill pretend you didn’t use potty language though.

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thsas

September 18, 2009 | 8:53 AM

you do understand that many of the homeless prefer the lifestyle.

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lynn

December 22, 2009 | 3:55 PM

No one is entitled to anything in life. Everyone is responsible for him/herself. I work for what I have...why should it be any different for anyone else? Why should the money I earn be taken by the government and then used to pay for other people's lives who don't work and can't take care of themselves? Our society is spinning around in a toilet bowl because of so many people who think they "deserve" or "feel entitled" to things that they can't provide for themselves. So, they expect the people who are actually successful and work hard in life to provide for them because it's not "fair"

Tough shit (so the saying goes). I guess they should have made better choices in life.

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