Mike Morris wore a headlamp late Thursday night as he searched for homeless people in McKinley Park and areas around the freeway at 29th Street. Morris, with two other volunteers and a law enforcement officer, interviewed two homeless individuals Thursday night as part of the Homeless Street Count event organized by the Sacramento Steps Forward group. A third homeless person declined to be interviewed. The Sacramento Press shadowed the group. About 400 volunteers turned out on a cold and foggy Thursday night to count the homeless living in Sacramento County. The count is done every other year to comply with the federal Housing and Urban Development Agency. “I’ve never done anything like

A local group that combats homelessness is asking the public for $50,000 to shelter the poor during the winter season. Sacramento Steps Forward needs the funding to continue its new Winter Sanctuary program, which allows homeless people to sleep overnight at certain churches, according to the group’s director, Tim Brown. Volunteers of America is partnering with Sacramento Steps Forward on the program, which started Dec. 1, Brown said. The two groups have raised about $40,000, which will allow the program to run until the end of January, he said. Another $50,000 is needed to continue the program through the end of March, which is the goal. “The churches have really stepped up to open thei

A group he formed to address homelessness surpassed its target to work with agencies and provide housing for 800 families this year, Mayor Kevin Johnson told the media Tuesday morning. The group, Sacramento Steps Forward, formed last November and worked with other agencies to set up housing for 1,168 families this year. “We’re making a difference in people’s lives,” Johnson said. By 2012, Sacramento Steps Forward hopes to work with its partnering agencies to house 2,400 families. Sacramento Steps Forward works with Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing of Sacramento County (HPRP). The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency administers HPRP, which is a federal stimulus progr

The homeless will find easy access to all the services they need in one location Saturday, as the third annual Sacramento Homeless Connect returns. The event, held at Sacramento City College, will run from 10 a.m. - 3 p.m., offering a variety of resources including free haircuts, bicycle and wheelchair repair, California identification cards, job preparedness and even a barbecue lunch. "Last year we saw 700 people and had 400 volunteers," said Tim Brown, executive director of Sacramento Steps Forward. This year, Brown said he expects to see 800 homeless and about 500 volunteers, due mostly to the increased percentage of homeless. Sacramento Steps Forward is an initiative started to comba

The number of beds available for the homeless in the Sacramento region during the cold-weather season is lower this Thanksgiving week than it was last year, according to Tim Brown, director of the Ending Homelessness Initiative. In addition, a Rancho Cordova city official expressed skepticism Monday about a plan to provide beds for 105 homeless people in that city. However, a multiagency task force still plans to achieve its goal of providing 269 winter shelter beds, Brown said in an interview.  As of Friday, 52 winter shelter beds were available for the homeless. This week, the task force expects to offer 82 beds because 30 motel vouchers are available, Brown said.    Still, at this tim

Thursday morning, journalist Lisa Ling, members of the City Council and the homeless and formerly-homeless community joined Mayor Kevin Johnson in launching the "Sacramento Steps Forward" initiative. A crowd of several hundred waved blue initiative flags and cheered as Johnson announced his goal "to end homelessness and focus on permanent housing." He applauded permanent housing shelters such as Mercy Housing, Turning Point and Martin Luther King Jr. Village, 3900 47th Avenue, where the launch was held. Johnson said the goal of Sacramento Steps Forward is to provide 2,400 "decent and affordable" permanent housing units over the next three years. That would nearly quadruple the amount of

Tuesday morning, Mayor Kevin Johnson was joined by a handful of Safe Ground supporters for a weekly press conference inside City Hall. After reiterating his goal to end homelessness in Sacramento, he invited Sister Libby Fernandez and Greg Bunker, the respective executive directors of Loaves and Fishes and Francis house, as well as a homeless man named Thomas Jackson Ashmore III, to speak. Johnson spoke about his meeting over the weekend with campers at the recently vacated 1220 C St. campground owned by Mark Merin. At the camp site, Merin had also been involved in a property dispute over the land with the neighboring Pedro and Gracilla Hernandez residence. Johnson mentioned that a compr

Religious congregations are assisting homeless families through a new housing program backed by Sacramento City Councilman Robert Fong. In the program, known as the Faith & Homeless Families Initiative, local religious groups find housing for homeless families with children. The program is emerging as local homeless shelters say they’re turning away families because of limited shelter space, according to Tim Brown, director of the Ending Chronic Homelessness Initiative, a local public/private partnership. “There’s a lot of newer homeless families,” he said. The program began in February and has linked six families to congregations. The congregations then found housing for the families,