What's with the tent city north of Sac?

[bhikkhu]

Coming in on the Amtrack Starlight express the other day (from OR where I live), just North of town along the tracks and along the river banks I could see probably a hundred tents scattered about in groups. Many were pretty tattered and rudimentary, many had clothes hanging to dry indicating whole families were living there.

Is this a recent thing? I haven't been that way in a couple of years, but I don't remember seeing or hearing about that level of homelessness before in Sacramento.

[mackerel]

1. I have been up to Sac for about a year but I see a tent city

starting up off of Hwy 4 between Concord and Martinez.

[proud patriot]

2. I just saw that one on 4 for the first time last week

What can we do to help them .

[mackerel]

3. The California Report had an interesting segment on a guy

who started up a NGO for the EDAR (Everyone Deserves a Roof). They tents that can collapse down into mobile carts.


http://www.edar.org/

[LeftyMom]

4. It's been there forever, but lately it's a lot bigger than normal.

Typically you'll see maybe a dozen or two tents out there in a few little clusters.

Homelessness is an ongoing problem here, especially since the outlying cities and suburbs for some ways away tend to herd their indigent into the city itself either passively through an intentional absence of services or actively via police action. It's not at all uncommon for somebody who finds themselves homeless in say, Placer County, to get picked up by the cops and dumped out in front of Loaves and Fishes in Sacramento, or for what passes for "social services" in an outlying area to suggest a person move into town in hopes of getting a shelter bed or regular meals rather than actually paying to provide for their own.

Combine that funneling effect with the housing bust and the complete lack of jobs to be had in most industries and you get a scene straight out of Steinbeck.

[mackerel]

5. It's more than a dozen now. I think it's about 2 dozen now.

At least Sacto hasn't bulldozed it yet. Some towns it's basically illegal to be homeless.