My heart still aches when I see an old, gnarled man in rags stumbling down the road, or a decrepit, old woman bent over a shopping cart full of trash; but I usually don't stop and talk to them and I rarely give them anything. And that's really not the face of homelessness anymore.
The reason I started this blog was to assess for myself the homeless situation in Chico and for anyone else interested in following along. The issue of homelessness has been in the news a lot lately and within the last year the community has become more and more aggressive and divided over the subject.
So please join me as I enter this quest to see what's really going on regarding homelessness in Chico; and at the same time, to see if I can get my heart back as well?
I recently spoke with Brad Montgomery, executive director of the Torres Community Shelter, which is the largest homeless shelter in CA, north of Sacramento. I asked Brad how he believed the Clean & Safe Chico campaign was going and what he thought the draw was that attracts so many homeless to the area.
According to the Clean & Safe website, the Clean & Safe Chico campaign is a public outreach program organized by local businesses, service providers and concerned individuals, with the aim of addressing "growing concerns about cleanliness and safety issues in Chico through collaborative problem-solving, resource-sharing, research, and advocacy."
When I asked Brad how he thought the campaign was going, he said, "Overall, it's going well. Usually, things that sound like 'Clean & Safe' only represent businesses in other communities. It's important that service providers and businesses work together, otherwise it's one dimensional."
He then said, "Some people are worried that the words clean and safe can be taken as an insult towards the homeless, somehow suggesting that they are not clean and safe, but I can't control people's perceptions of things."
I then asked him if he thought the homeless situation has really gotten worse over the last few years?
"Yes." Said Brad, "Looking at the 2013 census, the overall number of homeless in Butte County has gone down, and I hope those numbers are true. But when I got here four and a half years ago, most of the faces I saw on the street became recognizable. Now, there are so many faces I don't recognize and I don't know the back stories of those I'm encountering. The group that has increased the most is the number of people living on the street, and even though the overall number has gone down, it still makes it a worse problem. The impact in the community is getting larger because of the street community."
I then asked Brad what he thought the draw was that attracts so many homeless to the area?
"Honestly," he said, "and people will disagree with me, but for hundreds of years, when times get bad, people look at this area as a beacon. If I'm 22, 23, living in Minneapolis, reading Jack Kerouac. . . I honestly don't believe that somebody living in Kansas wants to come to CA, to eat at the Jesus Center. They don't come here to stay at the Torres Shelter. They don't come here for the services. The shelter's never been full in 14 years."
"They come here for the weather, through word of mouth, because the people are decent and kind and they're able to panhandle. They come here because they heard it was a good place, not for the services. They come here for the same reasons anyone else might want to come and stay in Chico."
