A Roof Over All Of Our Heads

This is a follow on of an essay I wrote last year, entitled A Pair of Clean Socks, A Warm Meal, and No Solution, a screenshot of the homeless situation in Sacramento. The situation continues to worsen across the state, and there are still no real solutions in sight.

There is a gentleman who is always on the corner of 15th and J, sitting on a black garbage bag of belongings. He is constantly talking to himself, sometimes when I go past I hear him muttering that “it’s them again”, so I know that he notices us just like I notice him. He has been there for years, sometimes moving up to 16th and K, just sitting on his belongings and talking quietly to himself. His face is thin, his age difficult to determine, and I have no idea where he is from or who he is. He is just there, and has been there longer than some of the establishments that open and close in this city. He moves from corner to corner, always with his garbage bag of belongings, always talking to himself quietly.

I recently wrote a book review that the author and publisher thought was unfair. The thing is I am not paid to write reviews, and my reviews are always honest and based on how I feel. It was considered “unfair” because I mentioned the author’s privilege several times. It’s interesting how so many white men balk at the word “privilege”, like it is an insult. As the memoir talked about addiction, homelessness (kind of), and life on the streets in Venice Beach (kind of), the element of privilege was very important: the author wouldn’t be where he is now without it (and his own personal hard work of course, but his privilege gave him a higher jumping board). As I walk miles through the city of Sacramento every day I see so much homelessness, and can only just imagine what even a small jumping board could mean to so many people here. So I kept the rating and review as they were, not to be gaslit into changing it to something less “unfair”.

Homelessness, addiction, mental illness, PTSD, are all huge issues in this country right now, and with no real solutions in place to curb and eliminate them, they will continue to grow. City, state, and federal solutions are mere band-aids, not addressing the core issues. 

Can we not create places for people to sleep, seek help, find work? I’m not talking about a homeless shelter with X amount of beds, but communities where people feel safe, with different professionals to guide them through the process of seeking help for mental illness, rehab and/or safe injection sites, guidance for those who have been living on the streets for years, full support for families seeking to find stability? An establishment with safe rooms to sleep in, common areas, gardens to grow fruit and vegetables? I know for a fact that there would be so many people willing to volunteer their time to help, so what is stopping local governments from creating real solutions? Somewhere where people are treated as human beings, where people can seek help, safety, and understanding, and somewhere where people are not locked in, can come and go as they please.

There is so much construction in this city right now: hotels, luxury complexes where a studio of less than 500 square feet starts at $1800 a month, government buildings, and storefronts. But none of these building sites will contain apartments that people like us can afford. If I personally can’t dream of ever affording even a studio here, what about those who make less than we do?! We are currently on a two to three year waiting list for a unit in one of the only affordable housing places in the downtown and midtown area in Sacramento. We are usually lucky enough to be able to scramble a living together and pay our already not very affordable rent until we get a better unit - what about all of the other families who can’t? According to a report by the Sacramento Bee, Sacramento currently has the most homeless families sleeping outside on any given night in the country. How can a society not be bothered by the fact that children are sleeping outside in tents and cars? How can a child feel comfortable at school, be able to concentrate, and also do their homework properly when they are worrying about where they will be sleeping next? The solution is not to take the children away and dump them in an already overwhelmed foster care system, but to help the whole family as a unit (unless of course there is evidence of deliberate neglect or abuse). This means guidance to find work, free and safe childcare options, an address, a real safety net. I don’t personally have the solutions to these issues, but I know that there are many people who have these types of ideas, and who communicate them to officials… But we don’t see any real change. We do see the same type of buildings sprout up all over the city though: apartments and townhouses with rental prices that are close to the type of prices I was used to in NYC. But there are also so many abandoned buildings, void of dwellings or businesses, ample enough room to house the thousands that reside on the streets. There ARE solutions, and there IS money, so why is the situation getting worse instead of better?

The last time I saw the gentleman on 16th and G was when we picked up an extra pain au chocolat and coffee for him after we dropped the girls off at school. He was always on the same corner, rain or shine, and would tip his hat every time he saw us, wishing us a good day with a big smile. His bed was often in the awning of the building across the street, but sometimes I saw him pushing his cart along 16th from somewhere else, always towards 16th and G, facing the traffic with his message against credit card fraud. The last time I saw him was towards the end of last school year, and I often think of him when I walk past his spot, hoping that he just moved to another dwelling, somewhere inside, warm and safe.

A few months ago I was walking around the Capitol Gardens with my two year old when I saw a police officer on a bicycle approach a man who was sleeping on a stretch of grass near the Vietnam War memorial. The police officer lifted his foot and used it to roll the man over, waking him up in the process. The way I just described that sounds like it was done gently, but it wasn’t: he basically kicked a homeless man who was fast asleep on the ground without even bothering to get off his bike. Once the man was shocked awake, he said something to him and rode off. While I’m sure his excuse would be that he needed to check whether the man was alive, common decency would have been to treat him as a human being by getting off of his bike and using his voice to rouse him, not his foot. The whole scene made me sick to my stomach, I could practically smell the officer’s disdain from where I stood, and I wish I had been closer so that I could have heard what he said, and intervened, or at least said something. Being homeless doesn’t make us less human, on the contrary, it should make those of us who are more fortunate use empathy and compassion, and reach out a hand. Not a foot! It goes to show that Sacramento PD still refuses to train their officers correctly when it comes to homeless outreach.

Last year’s count brought the number of homeless people residing on the streets of the city up to 5,570 people (this doesn’t count those who are couch surfing, sleeping in hotels and/or often in cars. For a little bit of perspective, this is about the same number of people who are sleeping rough on any given night in the whole of the UK. (Once you add the number of people who are in temporary housing and/or hotel rooms, couchsurfing or sleeping in their cars in remote areas the number rises to 320,000 in the UK, but the difference, in my opinion, goes to show that the safety nets in the UK are apparently much more effective than they are here). To put another perspective on the issue, California (the state with the highest number of homeless people in the US), currently has about 151,278 people who are homeless, and 108,432 of these people are unsheltered, meaning that they live on the streets in tents or cars, or in abandoned buildings. These numbers, taken from The 2019 Annual Homeless Assessment Report To Congress, state that on any given night 71.7% of the Californian homeless population sleep on the streets (literally). Over 100,000 people sleep on the streets in California every single night!! That’s NOT normal. The thing is, as we keep on hearing these numbers, and even though we realize they keep on growing, they end up becoming abstract, and easy to dismiss. Most especially for those people who spend most of their time in a car, driving from home to work and back again, not actually really seeing the people surviving on the streets on a day to day basis. We need to hear people’s stories, to notice people when we walk by, to listen to people, hear what people are saying, and to treat each and every person like a human being. Everyone deserves to have a safe place to sleep. No one is safe from poverty, homelessness, mental illness, addiction. The only way we can make this world a better place is to make it better for everyone. 

Some people may kid themselves that all homeless people are addicts and/or mentally ill and/or criminals in order to make the issue more palatable (and yes, a certain percentage of the homeless population is on drugs/alcoholic/criminal/mentally ill, but I’m sure no more than the percentage of people on drugs/alcoholic/criminal/mentally ill who are not currently homeless). But really these people are only kidding themselves, blaming every issue they encounter on the homeless/drugs/liberals/immigration/all of the above. (No need to search further than the local Nextdoor app to see this). The main issue that we must collectively fight for is the fact that housing is too expensive for the average person. And because Sacramento did away with the policy obliging developers to consistently incorporate 15% of each development to affordable housing in 2015 (see Sacramento News & Review’s excellent article on the subject), there is no incentive to actually create these units. So while “market rate” apartments are on the rise, affordable rentals have stagnated. And what is “market rate” exactly? Because I sure don’t know anyone who could easily afford a 400 square foot studio at $1800 (located on a busy street right next to two budget hotels and a bunch of abandoned storefronts where people often bed down for the night, may I add). Why are we relying on developers to develop affordable housing? Why is the city not setting aside enough budget to build units that we can all afford, you know, those of us who work 2 or 3 minimum wage jobs downtown to barely make ends meet? I think I know the answer to that question… 

The lady is still there, every morning, her hairstyle immaculate, her clothing perfect, she looks as put together as my Nana used to before heading out on a shopping trip. She grabs her coffee at the cafe on the corner of 13th and N, and heads back to her bench where her suitcase and bags are standing together. The first time I saw her she was doing her hair and make up in the Capitol Gardens restrooms, and I have seen her most weeks, days even, on the same bench. She could be my kids’ grandmother, she could be my mother, and she is most likely someone’s mother or aunt, grandmother or sister. She does not fit your stereotypical image of a homeless person, but she is, and she is in no shape or form alone in her predicament. I walked through Cesar Chavez Plaza the other Saturday with my kids and several women asked me to spare some change… And each one was well over 60 and disabled. Then we walked along K Street, the once vibrant shopping area that is now half glamorous/half in disrepair, and yet another elderly lady asked us for some change. These women belong in warm homes! They don’t belong on the streets, sleeping in tents and/or their wheelchairs! This country should be ashamed of how it allows people to fall through the cracks, people who have paid taxes and into state and federal coffers for years, people who have served this country in some shape or form, and now left to crumble in their own hunger. And then the other day I walked past a woman who was changing her clothes by the Memorial Auditorium, and she cackled and told me I looked like a r word. I reacted, and got mad, not for the insult, more for the use of that word because I literally hate it, and then felt bad for reacting. It’s OK to be angry at the situation in general, and it’s OK to get angry about the woman who tried to insult me. She, and every one else still deserve to be treated as humans, and have a roof over their heads.

As an immigrant I don’t have the right to vote in this country, but I have been following politics and candidates quite closely, especially for the local elections. While the presidentials are obviously important, who we have running our city and state is also very important. These are the people who are going to be using federal and state money to address the issues of homelessness, of poverty, of affordable housing (lack of it). These are the people who are going to make the change - and it is up to us to force them to make real changes. Don’t be the person who just wants the problem to be swept away, hidden. Be the person who wants to treat all humans as humans no matter where they come from, where they are now, how much money they may or may not have. We are all in this world together, and should therefore be working together to make the world a better place for us all. Opening a few beds here and there is not a long term solution, so we need to elect the people who are willing to actually create real programs that will HELP people get off the streets for good. The Sacramento Bee has a really helpful tool where you can enter your address and zip and it provides you with an overview of all candidates in your area as well as all of the ballots that are up in the March 3rd primaries, I think it is super informative. There is no one size fits all solution, but maybe, if we all work together, we can actually collectively all make our lives better together.

I care deeply about people, and I hope to raise my children to also care deeply about people. I can’t turn a blind eye to what happens on the streets I walk through every day, especially when I know that there are real solutions that we can put in place. I will continue to do what I do, write, care, contact officials, and hope that at some point real change will happen. 

Local newspapers such as the Sacramento Bee, and Sacramento News & Review, have some great coverage on the homeless and affordable housing situations, as well as other local, national, and international stories. I personally think it’s important to support these news outlets and reporters, and I really appreciate how in-depth their coverage is.

A Pair of Clean Socks, A Warm Meal, and No Solution

It’s no secret that the homeless crisis in California is steadily rising and that no long-term solutions are in place to put a dent in the growing numbers. The ongoing opioid epidemic, natural disasters such as floods and wildfires, rising rents and lack of affordable housing, and inaccessible mental health care conflagrate the issue, but homelessness is not new to the US in any shape or form. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and the numbers that appear in city-mandated reports don’t even begin to scratch the surface. Right-wing activists use the homeless as a poster child for their anti-immigration stances (I don’t see them actually proposing actual solutions to get people off the streets though), and others pretend the issue isn’t as bad as it appears. But those of us who walk miles of city sidewalks every day know the score.

I walk eight miles a day to and from my kids’ preschool, rain or shine. During the last autumn and winter I would jot down little stories, anecdotes, and thoughts from these walks, wondering where these people were from, what brought them to the streets of Sacramento. It’s easy to turn our faces away and complain about the (multiple) discarded needles, the human feces and vomit on the sidewalks and the grass, to worry about the mental illnesses that plague so many of the people on the streets, but we have to remember that these people are still people.

Here are some of the stories, fragments of moments in time that caught my eyes.

I suddenly realized the other day that my children are growing up thinking that homelessness is normal. Every morning we walk through the streets of downtown and midtown and they see people sleeping on the sidewalks, under shop awnings, and in tents. My eldest, a four year old, wants to grow up fast so that she can build houses for everyone so “they can have beds and clean toilets and a bath”. She says that it should be easy. It should really, shouldn’t it? I don’t want them to grow up desensitized to what they see. This is not normal. This should never be normal.

As I walk to and from preschool with the kids every day I see the same scenes, different people, but the same poverty, despondency, the rock bottom I hope none of my loved ones ever meet. My father may or may not have been homeless for a while before he died, and while it was a different country, a different time, it was the same sort of drug, and the same issues that none of us lucky enough to have a roof over our heads seem to be able to solve. Sometimes I see a boot, black hair, and I look for him in a stranger’s eyes, but that is a story for another day.

As the sun rises behind the Capitol we walk past figures curled around underground steam outlets, wrapped in blankets with their shoes and bags tied together, some empty cans or food wrappers in a corner. People rise from makeshift beds in the Capitol Gardens, rolling up sleeping bags and putting on shoes, washing their faces in the public bathrooms, walking over to wait for the Central Library to open as no one stops anyone from using the restrooms there. Everyone deserves to have access to basic commodities, to the privacy of a restroom, to a mirror, and warm water. But based on the amount of human feces we have to step around in some areas, that doesn’t seem to be a priority for the officials of Sacramento.

There is the beautiful lady with the elaborate hairdo who is probably much younger than she looks. She applies her make up in the public toilet in the Capitol Gardens, and walks away with her neatly packed cart, her face serene, her age unknown, but definitely in the over 50 range. How long has she been on the streets? Who knows…

What about all of the people who are homeless and breathing the Camp wildfire smoke into their lungs? The micro particles embedding themselves into their internal organs, the air quality deemed hazardous. We are told to go inside, to stay inside, but those people have no indoors to enter.  There is nowhere near enough space for everyone in the shelters, so they have to stay outside and breathe through the toxic smoke. My kids had coughs for months afterwards, so I can only imagine how it would have affected those who couldn’t stay indoors.

The first time I saw the arm flexer I was walking alone near the girls’ school. I saw him from afar, flexing his arm muscles as he walked, as if he were readying himself for the ring. He may have looked threatening and possibly creepy from afar, but I took my chances anyway and walked past him: harmless. And then I thought about how life on the streets is so dangerous for him, more dangerous, because those who would call the police are really just calling death. Don’t call the cops on homeless black men in Sacramento, they will arrive 5 at a time and aggressively pin your arms to your back and let your pants fall to the ground while they muscle your yielding body into the patrol car*. Sacramento PD have a notoriously terrible reputation when it comes to gunning down mentally ill and/or homeless black men. I see their actions frequently while walking, four to five to one person, manning their bikes like riot gear, ordering people from their sleeping bags, telling them to move on. This is not a solution. This is not even a Band-Aid. Move on? From the streets to the riverside that is currently flooded, bloated with water from another wet winter?

I see the arm flexer regularly now, in different locations, always flexing his muscles, hyping himself up for the powerful walk into the ring, a boxing ring that only exists in his imagination. Or maybe just every day on the streets of Sacramento is the big fight to survive. I can believe that.

The man who always stands on the corner of 10th and L by the traffic lights selling the Homestead newspaper never forgets to smile, to acknowledge you, and to ask you how you are. He deserves the same consideration, a smile, a hello. I don’t know how he arrived here, and I don’t know where he will go, but our paths cross frequently and he always remembers me. I feel so guilty that I rarely have a dollar on me for his newspaper.

I don’t know whether the drugs came first or they are the way to bear life on the street, but K Street and Cesar Chavez Plaza are where deals happen so frequently that people walk through them without even realizing what is going on around them. I see bags of meth passed between hands in front of my kids’ stroller, and want to clap my hands and tell dealers to stop profiting from the homeless, but then again if they don’t get it from one they will get it from another, right? But still, it makes me angry when I find used syringes in the grass my children are running around in, and I have to teach my daughter to never ever touch those orange plastic things we find littered around street corners all over the place.

How do we actually help people survive the streets long-term, how do we effectively treat mental illness, drug abuse, and years of surviving day to day in a world that runs parallel to ours, visible but invisible, but only invisible because we make them so?

A lady carries a basket of food items out of the dollar store without paying and no one says anything, hopefully she will eat a proper meal tonight. I have spent so many weeks when I wonder how to make $20 stretch unbelievably far, but I have never had to wonder where I will sleep tonight or tomorrow, which I know is a privilege now. There are so many of us who are one small upset away from losing our home, one less paycheck away from the worry of where we are going to go if we can no longer afford the rent. The man who used to sit outside the same dollar store with the sad eyes and the little brown puppy has gone. I sometimes wonder if he just moved on, but my spirit hopes that he got clean and made it out alive.

I used to think K Street was bad, but after our walking commute started taking us along the other side of 16th St I realized that it could be a lot worse than K. 16th St is skid row. I can hear the sound of shoes being scraped along the pavement behind me while I’m walking with the stroller, shoes that don’t fit properly, I assume, but I don’t want to turn around and look. I walk past the Governor’s House, on the floor in front of me are flyers warning of government takeovers, and across the street a homeless man is sleeping in a shuttered shop doorway. The new governor decided to move into a house in a place that is “more kid-friendly”, and while I actually like his policies, I think by doing that he just played into the same old system: building walls around his family so that they don’t have to see what we do every day. It’s just wrong, you walk around and it just gets worse, poverty on the one side, and the rich on the other, construction everywhere, but only for new condos and expensive accommodation, no affordable housing anywhere. (Although you always hear the local government talking about “more affordable housing” there hasn’t been any proof of it).

Coming up to J Street I hear the slouching foot sound behind me again, and then the sound of plastic wheels hitting concrete: someone pulling a bag on wheels. Not the sound of someone going to the airport or the train station, not the sounds of early morning commuters I could hear when I lived in my little apartment in Grenoble, France. This is the sound of people pulling their only belongings behind them, their lives in a bag. Going from one spot to another in the city hoping to find a warm place to sleep, a hot cup of coffee, a friendly face, a dealer.

It was 32 degrees last night, freezing this morning, nothing compared to winter in my previous home of NYC, but for Sacramento this is cold. There are over 4,000 people on the streets every night in Sacramento, but those numbers are from 2017 and I know for a fact that there are many more today, just from walking everywhere. There is never enough room at the shelters, the largest holds about 600 beds but is far from downtown, and in comparison with the actual numbers on the streets is nothing. People are cold, walking around with blanket cloaks, it feels like zombie land sometimes: freezing people slouching along, vacant stares, not here anymore. Nowhere to go, no one to help them, no clue if or when they will taste their next hot meal. I walk faster, away from the footsteps behind me, never turning back to see their face.

This is the “land of the free”, the country where supposedly everyone has opportunities, but these opportunities seem to be only available to those who have the privilege of having those opportunities in the first place.

Walking down P St towards home, I realize that for what could be such a beautiful place in the world, this city houses so much gloom, sadness, and darkness. The sky is so blue, and the sun shines so much; there are so many oranges falling from the trees to rot on the ground, and people are going hungry in the streets. Nothing makes sense. All of the new buildings going up, all of the abandoned structures waiting for new life, all places only available to the richer. Sacramento is no longer the affordable city it once was. In January the townhouses in Capitol Towers were emptied, getting ready to be demolished and replaced by a luxury hotel and newer apartment blocks. They are still empty, all of those homes that could be a shelter to many. But instead they pay a security guard to patrol the area 24/7 to make sure no one sleeps there. I understand why, but it seems like such a waste all the same.

To the man standing barefoot on the freezing concrete: I’m so sorry. To the lady standing and sleeping with her head against a windowsill: I’m so sorry. To the person who left all of their belongings on the slope up to DOCO and disappeared: I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that I don’t know what to do. I walk through DOCO, this new area that feels so posh and shiny, bang in the middle of disrepair, poverty, loneliness, and addiction staring at me from each side. I just feel so sorry, and so guilty, and then angry because everybody is failing these people, myself included.

Every morning I see a new tent popping up amongst the others on a sidewalk, in front of City Hall, in a grassy space that has yet to be claimed by condo-builders. Not everyone has a tent, there are so many who just lie down on the street and cover themselves with a blanket. Residential streets, shopping streets, downtown government building streets: people set up makeshift homes for a night or two, a bed for now. This morning I walked past someone asleep in front of the house that is for sale for $900 grand.

A woman pulls a shopping cart behind her wearing shoes that are at least 4 times too big while the gentleman who spends his nights drinking cheap 40’s in the awning on S and 5th shuffles his government-issued wheelchair across the main road. And people, like me, walk by, parallel worlds in the same world.

Just after the Christmas break it felt like there was suddenly an influx of visibly mentally ill people in the downtown-midtown area. Around the school mainly. It felt like somebody had just emptied a psychiatric hospital out on the streets, a slightly Gothamesque vision every time I pushed the stroller along F St. One morning a dense fog covered all buildings and swirled through the streets, a similar effect seen during the first real snowfall of winter in NYC. Suddenly a woman’s face popped out of nowhere, cackling about Santy and candy, even though we were well into January by then, her fingers pointing at us as I sped past. I don’t know if the drugs came first, or the streets, or both, but she was not a safe person, not to herself or to others. These are the days when I question our determination to bring our kids up downtown rather than in some random suburban setting.

One day I had a sudden weird desire to cross J St earlier than I usually do, I don’t know why. I pondered my impulsive decision to cross where it was a lot less safe when I saw that a man was having a very angry and violent mental breakdown on the other side of the street. He was throwing his suitcase into the air, shouting, and throwing punches around, and there was no way to settle him down. My gut is never wrong, it usually leads me away from danger.

I walk several different routes to and from the school, depending on the weather, my mood, and my anxiety level (being spat on by a neo Nazi back in the autumn always an event in the back of mind). We always end up crossing the same streets and seeing the same people though. I realized while pushing the stroller through another rain storm on 10th St that we would run into the same man at the same time in the morning, in the same place. And then again in the afternoon. And then I saw him again, walking in the same direction at a random time on a Saturday too. Does he live nearby? He is striking, handsome, piercing light eyes, dressed in what appear to be clean clothes. One day I noticed that he was always carrying a neatly folded blanket under his arm. And that he passed by us for the second time when we were waiting on the corner of the street. That’s when it clicked: he wasn’t on his way somewhere at the same time we were on our way somewhere else every day. Passing him by on the same street at different times wasn’t chance. He was walking round the block, again and again, in a determined fashion, a sense of purpose but no real destination. Is he ex-military? Possibly. Homeless? Definitely, as it has since been confirmed that he sleeps is a doorway on that block every night.

On that same block I saw a man light his crack pipe in the middle of the sidewalk a few weeks ago, a few feet ahead of me. Broad daylight, a well-frequented street, children in a stroller close by, and a crack pipe. The streets are hard, unforgiving, it’s freezing at night most of the time, and when it rains the streams of water pound relentlessly onto the concrete, finding their way into gutters, running into doorways, soaking blankets and cardboard and tarp, pooling around tents. But the drug use is so out in the open, desperate, and unforgiving too. There has to be a better solution that ignoring it and hoping it goes away.

There was a woman dressed in a garbage bag yesterday. One of those heavy duty large black ones, a garbage bag dress. The wind was brutal, freezing cold, more NYC than Sacramento. More and more tents are appearing around City Hall, people gathering together for safety and comfort, so many women. I can’t begin to imagine the traumas experienced by women living on the streets. (But the data is readily available online, although it would be good to see more up to date studies as this is a pretty important subject). 

I am still haunted by what happened to us last year in the Capitol Gardens… I was helping one of my daughters use the public toilets when suddenly the woman who had been washing her face in the sink started shouting, cursing, screaming (in a British accent). I held my daughter close and told her not to worry and we stood silently in the stall wondering what we should do. My mother, visiting from the UK, was standing outside with the other kids asked if we were OK but I didn’t respond, afraid I would antagonize the lady even more. And then as suddenly as it started it stopped, and she walked out of the bathroom and away. Another day we saw her wrapped in a blanket not far from the toilets, sleeping.

16th Street Donuts is hands down the best donut shop in the city, with the kindest owner. It’s the kind of place where you tack on an extra dollar or two to your bill and ask them to give the next homeless person to walk through the door free breakfast. The kind of place where you can go and receive a warm cup of coffee when you have no money and no home. That strip mall on the corner of F and 16th is home to many people, their faces the same, their faces changing overnight, new ones replacing old. The parking lot is adjacent to the elementary school, a fenced wall separating the two. I’ve seen people shooting up, relieving themselves, buying drugs, sleeping, reading, eating, fighting, and just living in that small 20 or less car parking lot right against the school grounds. I’ve seen people set up camp in front of the school, and in the school playground. I hear the words “but its downtown, you have to expect it” as I walk by. I’m sure apathy never helped anyone though… I think the donut shop has the right attitude though: treat everyone as human. Most days my empathy overwhelms me, but some days I get angry because I don’t want to have to yet again tell my kids to never ever touch a needle like the one we just stepped over.

Those days when I am angry I go into the donut shop and remember that we are all human.

There are so many more stories, so many more people. I just continue to jot them down in my journal, remember their faces, and hopefully remind those around me that we can choose to look away, or we can choose to be present.

*I’ve seen this happen several times. Sacramento PD has a very bad reputation for shooting first, asking questions next, especially when it comes to homeless and/or possibly mentally ill black men.

The Darker Side of the City

Last week when I went down to our building’s laundry room I (gently) kicked the door open with my foot as my hands were full. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw a man as startled as I was in the room. He rapidly picked up his belongings as soon as he got over his shock, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. Not that many people use our laundry room at 8am on a Tuesday morning, so I’m sure the guy thought it would be a safe shelter. This wasn’t my first time finding a homeless person in our laundry room, and it probably won’t be my last seeing as our property managers can’t seem to do anything we ask them to do (another story for another day). I’m not going to report the gentleman for sleeping in our laundry room, just like I won’t report the couple who were charging their phones in there the other time. If you have nowhere to call home and all the shelters are full you are going to look for somewhere safe to rest your head, aren’t you? That said I have obviously requested that the lock be fixed in the building.

We live in downtown Sacramento and we know how hard it is to find a place to live in this city. The rental market is tiny, the supply is way lower than the demand, and rents have risen by 7.2% in the last year alone. We spent over a year looking for a place on and off, and we were rejected from every single place we applied to. It didn’t matter if we had excellent references and rental history, if we made X times more than the required rental fee. Our credit was never high enough, and there were always about 50 other people interested in the place anyway, so we never stood a chance. We got rejected the first time we applied for the place we live in now, thankfully they accepted my mother as guarantor. How embarrassing is that though? Neither myself nor my partner had ever required a guarantor in our adult lives before!! But we have a home, and right now that is better than many others who live in this city.

There are currently just under 4,000 homeless people in Sacramento, a city of just under half a million people (1,723,634 million if you count the entire Sacramento urban area). This doesn’t include all of the people who are couch surfing or staying in extended stay hotels. 56%* of these people sleep on the streets every night. In larger cities such as San Francisco (7,499 homeless out of a population of 865,000), LA (55,188 homeless out of a population of 3.976 million), and NYC (62,974 homeless out of a population of 8.538 million), for example, the issue is even more visible: and rather than getting better it’s just getting worse. Just last year San Diego was plagued by an outbreak of Hepatitis A due to the virus that transferred rapidly through the growing homeless population. Shelters are not being built fast enough to keep up with the demand, and physical and mental health outreach and access is appalling.

I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve seen poverty, I’ve been to places where the dead are picked up in the streets in the morning before the tourists see them. I’ve also been and lived in some of the richest countries in the world, some of which have amazing social safety nets to ensure that those in need receive a helping hand. I always wonder where the safety net is in the US for all of these homeless people sleeping on the streets. Why do I see all of these new luxury condos get thrown up all around where we live whereas the waiting lists on the affordable housing complexes run into years rather than months. Why has the city built a new shelter to house 200 people instead of focusing on building more affordable housing? There is no way we can afford to move when our lease is up in June, so we will be forced to pay whatever higher rent rate that they offer us to renew – so I can’t even begin to imagine how hopeless it must seem to someone who is actually on the street already.

I often walk around the downtown area but I’m always surprised at just how strange it is. My experience of US city life is mainly relegated to NYC where I experienced living in more rundown areas (Bushwick a decade ago for example), as well as more affluent areas (West Village). But downtown Sacramento is quite shocking in its stark black and whiteness: part brand new sparkling luxury, part boarded up, falling to pieces, abandoned locations stanching of piss. Take K Street for example: at one end there is the new arena, faced by the Convention Center a few blocks down, and in between there are bright restaurants flanked by old, abandoned buildings, a retro movie theater followed by an IMAX with missing lights, a dusty corner store followed by sparkling jewelry shop. And all along the road people standing, waiting for a new direction, or for the drug dealers, staking their spot to lay their heads. It’s terribly sad, and very confusing. It’s not just K Street though... Every single street in downtown Sacramento, and all along the riverbank there are makeshift tents, bikes laden with someone’s belongings, probably all that they have in the world, cardboard boxes flattened against steam outlets, people sleeping on the grass in the parks... Human shit mixed with dog shit, people who have been on the streets for years, those who haven’t, the loners and those who travel in groups, the addicts, the mentally ill, the ones you don’t know if they are addicts because they are homeless or mentally ill, or homeless because they are addicts. I walk through the Capitol garden early in the morning and men and women pick up their belongings, roll their blankets and sleeping bags up, and walk away. Sometimes if you walk home at night along Capitol Mall figures rise up in front of you, only visible when you hit a rare street light, and you feel like you may actually have landed in zombie land. But these are PEOPLE, human beings like you and me, and the country seems to have forgotten them.

The country also seems to have forgotten about their veterans. With the military budget being as enormous as it is ($700 billion for 2018) one would have thought that this country would look after veterans better than they do. PTSD can hit anyone, and it doesn’t always manifest immediately on return from a war zone (or proximity to a war zone).  Mental illness can affect anyone, whether they have served in a war or not. There are currently approximately 40,000 veterans living on the streets in the US, and another 1.4 million at risk of becoming homeless. We are failing these people by leaving them to suffer, after serving this country in the way they felt was the best. How can you push a gun into a young person’s hands and tell them to shoot, and then dump them out on the streets when you are done without any kind of psychological follow up? While services ARE slowly getting better, so many have fallen through the cracks. It breaks my heart to see these men and women sleeping rough in the parks, and on the sidewalks. The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans website has lots of important statistics, as well as information on how individuals can make a difference if they are so inclined.

I was walking past the Capitol this morning and saw the same homeless man I had found in our laundry room. He was sitting on a bench, staring into space. I don’t know what I can personally do about the situation apart from provide kindness, and food/necessities when we can afford it ourselves. Every so often we buy large Ziploc bags and fill them with socks, protein bars, toothpaste, sanitary pads etc, and keep them in the stroller basket to hand out as and when. I hope they help a little. But in the grander scheme of things we need to collectively keep pushing our representatives to take care of those who need it the most, and that includes families who struggle to make rent every month, families who have to juggle bills and are constantly paying late fees. If the number of homeless people in this country isn’t scary enough (just over 500,000), those living below the poverty line (40 million in 2016) is even scarier. How many of these people are one bill away from eviction or foreclosure?

We need better and more accessible mental health help, we need rent controlled and accessible housing instead of brand new luxury apartments that remain empty. We need to raise the poverty thresholds to ensure that people don’t fall through the cracks, and that parents don’t find themselves living in their car with their kids because they couldn’t keep up with rent and daycare costs. We need proper shelters that are open to everyone with real access to rehabilitation help, whether it’s for guidance on how to find a place to live, a job, an address, food, medical help etc. Because turning a blind eye to those who are sleeping on the street, in shelters, in their cars, or on a friend or family member’s couch is not going to make the problem go away.

*Figures taken from Homelessness in Sacramento County: Results from the 2017 Point-in-Time Count

I usually pop a camera into my bag every time I go out and last year my partner and I decided to work on a juxtaposition of photos of Sacramento, showcasing the many people sleeping rough on the sidewalks with a backdrop of luxury buildings, government offices, and hip bars and restaurants. I found it very difficult to randomly take pictures of people, and felt super self-conscious about it, so I tried to avoid capturing their faces directly. You can see the collection here.