Free Republic

Sacramento police arrested 17 homeless residents at their "safe ground" campsite this morning, including one advocate for the homeless. Rev. David Moss, a Methodist Minister, was taken into custody along with other campers, charged with illegal camping, Sacramento police Sgt. Norm Leong said. A press release by Loaves & Fishes early morning claimed Sister Libby Fernandez, executive director of the Loaves & Fishes homeless services group, was arrested together with other campers. But later Sacramento police clarified that she was only detained for a short period when police arrived to search the camp. Only those who had been previously cited...

Within hours after being rousted from their "safe ground" campsite in downtown Sacramento on Wednesday morning, homeless men and women were putting up new tents and preparing for another potential confrontation with police. Fifteen police officers cut a lock and entered the property on C Street between 12th and 14th streets where about 30 homeless people have slept for the past 10 days, cited them for illegal camping and seized their tents, sleeping bags and other possessions as evidence. The show of force drew TV satellite trucks, homeless advocates, attorneys and others to the property, which a local civil rights...

Pedro Hernandez said he's lived in the well-maintained pink Victorian at 13th and C streets for more than half of his 71 years. This weekend, Sacramento's latest version of tent city bloomed just beyond his backyard fence. About 35 homeless people are now living in a vacant lot owned by Mark Merin, a prominent attorney who has championed their cause. Hernandez said Sunday that his new neighbors have made him "stressed sick" and kept him up at night with noise, prompting him to file a complaint with police. "I am an old man," he said. He and his wife have...

A Sacramento attorney who has championed the rights of homeless people is opening his private property to campers who need a place to sleep at night. Mark Merin, who for years has challenged the city's and county's treatment of the homeless, is leasing a parcel of land in downtown Sacramento to an association of people seeking to establish a legal "safe ground" campsite. Three advocacy organizations are leading the "safe ground" effort. Merin would not disclose terms of the lease but said the vacant lot is on C Street between 12th and 14th streets and should accommodate 20 to 30...

Fresno apparently has money to burn. They have hired a guard to watch-over an empty tent city. The city is afraid to "disturb" the tents because of a previous lawsuit that cost the city over two million dollars. So, instead a guard watches the empty tents 24/7. And...guess how much that costs..?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Time is running out for residents of a large tent city at the north end of downtown Sacramento to find a new place to live. On Thursday, the city of Sacramento plans to give campers a timeline of when they need to move out or face arrest. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson said he expects the homeless camp to be gone my the end of the month. The camp, which was featured recently on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," has been making headlines around the nation. The camp, located on land between the American River and the Blue Diamond...

Tent City residents gather as the city of Ontario starts the process of sorting out who may stay and who must leave. The city issued wristbands – blue for Ontario residents, who may stay, orange for people who need to provide more documentation, and white for those who must leave. The aim is to reduce the number of people living there from over 400 to 170. Email Picture Officials begin thinning out the encampment, saying the city can provide space only for those who once lived there and can prove it.

RENO, Nev. - A few tents cropped up hard by the railroad tracks, pitched by men left with nowhere to go once the emergency winter shelter closed for the summer. Then others appeared — people who had lost their jobs to the ailing economy, or newcomers who had moved to Reno for work and discovered no one was hiring. Within weeks, more than 150 people were living in tents big and small, barely a foot apart in a patch of dirt slated to be a parking lot for a campus of shelters Reno is building for its homeless population. Like...

OLMITO — The Cameron County Sheriff’s Department received approval on Monday to move nonviolent offenders into an army-style tent at the Carrizalez-Rucker Detention Center. Adan Muñoz, director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, said he faxed over a letter to the sheriff’s department and county judge on Monday giving approval to open the facility after he received photographs indicating the problems had been corrected. “It got approved by the city of Brownsville, so if the city of Brownsville is good with it, that’s what I have to rely on,’” Muñoz said in a phone interview from Austin. The approval...

A large tent will house up to 32 inmates outside the Cameron County Jail. A tent city jail built at the Carrizalez-Rucker Detention Center in Olmito failed an inspection Thursday morning. City of Brownsville building inspectors in conjunction with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards did not allow the outdoor jail to open. Evaristo Gamez, director of the city’s Building Inspection Department, and Adan Muñoz, Texas Commission on Jail Standards’ executive director, told Sheriff Omar Lucio that before the tent city can open a flexible conduit must cover an exposed electrical wire that runs along the top of the tent...

RAYMONDVILLE — Immigrant rights groups Sunday stood in front of a 2,000-bed federal detention center here, calling on the government to “Shut down tent city.” With cries like “No human is illegal,” about 75 demonstrators came from as far as San Antonio and Del Rio to protest the largest detention center in the United States. When it opened last year, federal officials touted the futuristic compound as a centerpiece in the government’s crackdown on illegal immigration. “Our main objective is to raise awareness of this tent city and to the separation of families,” said Elizabeth Garcia, a Brownsville activist who...

Church expecting fine for its tent cityBy Amy Roe  Redmond city officials warned St. Jude Catholic Church: Put up Tent City 4, and you'll pay for it.On Friday, the city was set to levy the first $350 fine against St. Jude Catholic Church for hosting the camp without a valid permit, said Redmond's senior planner, Steven Fischer. The camp moved on to St. Jude's grounds last Saturday.A hearing examiner's decision rendered the permit Redmond issued invalid, but the church decided to go ahead with its plan to host the camp for 90 to 110 days. After 30 days, the...

Lucio wants facility for 96 prisoners serving time for non-violent offenses OLMITO - Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio is asking county and state leaders for approval to build a "tent city" to temporarily house inmates and alleviate overcrowding at local jails. Lucio said county officials recently approved converting a Sheriff's Department warehouse into a 400-bed detention facility for non-violent offenders, but added that existing facilities are strained. If approved, it would be the only such facility for Texas prisoners. Department figures show that the four county jails have a combined capacity to house 1,390 inmates. Lucio said the facilities are...

One of Seattle's biggest emergency-shelter providers is planning to close its facilities in March and open three new tent cities because of a funding dispute involving the privacy rights of the homeless. SHARE/WHEEL, a cooperative of homeless people that runs 13 indoor shelters and two tent cities in King County, has been notified that it won't get funding from the city of Seattle this year after refusing to feed client data into a city-run database. That database, called Safe Harbors, is required by the federal government to give unduplicated counts of homeless people nationwide. But to SHARE/WHEEL, which is losing...

A well-publicized student anti-war protest at NJ's Rutgers University got a bit of competition today.

`Visionary' plan would put `a roof over every bed in King County' by 2014 2005-03-12 by Jeff Switzer Journal Reporter  A first-ever plan to end homelessness in King County -- not just manage it -- was issued Friday with a target date of 2014.But the pricetag to meet the vision of ``a roof over every bed in King County'' could be from $680 million to $1 billion.``If we set our sights high, that everybody in King County would have a house, it sets for us a standard we'll be always chasing,'' said Jeff Natter, newly named program director of...

The family sleeps in a single room, its walls bare and windowless, its cracked concrete floor crowded with plastic storage bins and three mattresses: one for dad, one for mom and daughter, one for the three young sons. Fluorescent lights will flicker on at 6 a.m., to start their new day. This room in an old red-brick factory-turned-shelter in Chicago is home for the Torres family. They consider themselves lucky to be here. They have a warm place to stay. They have three meals a day. And they have each other. The family is among an estimated 500,000 to 700,000...

The high-resolution QuickBird satellite images of the tsunami impact on Sri Lanka are just a few of the images on the Digital Globe web site that made me stop and say "Wow!" For example, check out the images on the links below:

http://www.tentcitysolutions.com/Portals/7/tc5lflyer.pdf

I really need your help. All it will take is one email. Last night there was a public meeting of CACHE, the Citizens' Advisory Commission on Homeless Encampments; it's the committee King County set up to hear public concerns and develop suggestions for the handling of tent cities on both public and private property in the county. Though the commission is heavily sympathetic to SHARE/WHEEL and Tent City (appointed by Ron Sims), we still have a chance. Neighbors of Tent City and concerned homeowners were hopelessly outnumbered at the meeting. SHARE/WHEEL brings its people (advocates and Tent City residents) to...