Sacramento Homeless March for “Safe Ground”

On July 1st in Sacramento, CA over 300 people demonstrated for “Safe Ground”. They marched to a city-owned vacant lot next to a police station, asking the city to provide Safe Ground for homeless people to sleep.

70 of the marchers slept in the lot overnight. The event was covered by local media and attracted national media coverage by National Public Radio. To hear or read this NPR report click here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106226222

Prior to the march, World Shelters assisted the Safe Ground campaign, by providing shelters and equipment, and also information about SB2 zoning in Sacramento for emergency shelter.   CA Senate Bill 2 requires all CA cities and counties, in their Housing Element Updates after Jan 1, 2008, to provide at least one zoning category in which emergency shelters can be located by right, i.e. without discretionary approval from the local government. (For more information on SB2 please click here).

Under the “Safe Ground” proposal an achievable solution is framed for at least providing a place to be for a homeless population that now stands at over 1500 and is made more urgent by the County’s closure of the Cal Expo Overflow Shelter on July 1st. This closure forced 258 homeless people out of their shelter beds.  Many of these are refugees from the April 2009 Tent City closure, which has left hundreds more still unable to find even temporary housing.

The Safe Ground Coalition includes well established agencies in Sacramento that have provided extraordinary service, some for over 25 years, including Loaves & Fishes, Francis House, the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee, other entities, business leaders and community members.  World Shelters is honored to be actively engaged in this campaign.  We have every hope that our work can contribute towards provision of shelter as needed, along with security, showers and sanitary facilities, clean water, and centralized access to the kinds of services that enable each individual to progressively improve their situation.

For more media coverage on the July 1 march see these links:

http://www.kcra.com/news/19917413/detail.html

http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/1994529.html