Look hard, just a little to the right of the dark SUV – see the little orange tent pitched there behind the hotel?
Again, I’m noticing an uptick in the number of “street people” around Chico – including these pictured, camped illegally there behind the Oxford Suites. I often see signs of illegal camping on that lot – an old mattress sat against the back of a dumpster for a couple of weeks, the usual trash accumulating on the ground nearby.
As my husband and I drove out to do errands the other morning, we came across Chico PD rousting a camp at the Intersection of Pine and Mulberry, at the tiny green triangle bounded by Little Chico Creek. There always seem to be camps there, the trash piles grow, until some local feel-good group goes in to clean it out. Then the bums just move back in.
Hey, Brad Montgomery – look at the agenda for the June 28, 2016, Board of Supervisors meeting:
| 3.03 | * Agreement with Chico Community Shelter Partnership – The Chico Community Shelter Partnership is a non-profit organization dedicated to assisting individuals in their efforts to achieve self-sufficiency and a more stable lifestyle. The Chico Community Shelter Partnership has operated the Torres Community Shelter, providing shelter and related social services to those experiencing homelessness in the community for over 13 years. Approval is requested for an agreement with Chico Community Shelter Partnership to provide peer-based services to homeless individuals through client support and mental health outreach services, and to shelter guests experiencing mental illness. The term of this agreement will be July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2017. The maximum financial obligation under this agreement shall not exceed $108,000 – action requested – APPROVE AGREEMENT AND AUTHORIZE THE CHAIR TO SIGN. |
Care to comment on that Brad? Where’d that money come from?
Read the rest of the consent agenda here:
http://buttecounty.granicus.com/GeneratedAgendaViewer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=330
One handout for the indigent, mentally ill, badly parented, and filthy after another. Maybe that’s what this lady was talking about in this letter to the Enterprise Record:
POSTED: 07/17/16 Chico Enterprise Record
HUD’s 20 percent of redevelopment’s entitlements for low-income housing and services has introduced a criminal and dysfunctional population that is overtaxing police resources and skewing crime statistics for Chico. The city, having used redevelopment funds for acquiring “blighted” properties for years, is now in the process of using Community Development Block Grants for distributing their debt-imbued booty, including that low-income gift card to the nearest hedge fund.
And this brings us to the greenfield developments in southeast Chico. HUD, preferring to partner with intact redevelopment agencies and planners, is the wild card in this cold deck, with the added risk factor of direct foreign investment as a possible player in this backroom game.
The future of Chico is bleak and dangerous, because the mordant legacy of redevelopment and its partnerships has been a secreted and cynical, as well as delusional, belief in economic devices to promote land use policies for a “clean and safe” Chico that have failed spectacularly.
A trip downtown to coffee shops or walking city streets exposes one to a gauntlet of miscreants and mentally ill individuals, with no apparent boundaries, dumped daily into public domain by their agencies’ betters. Why would anyone believe the City Council, planners, or economic partners of finance schemes care about anything but their spreadsheets and pocket books? I don’t.
— Carolyn Hana, Chico
Chico Taxpayers Association 
One Response to “Chico a homeless Mecca? Butte County funds the programs that bring them flocking”