Board of Supervisors offering more support for the homeless? Again?

“The county is committed to providing supportive services through the departments of Behavioral Health, DESS, and Public Health to multi-agency partnerships providing emergency, transitional, or permanent housing solutions for the homeless population in the incorporated and unincorporated areas of the county,” the staff report reads.

The board will accept for information only that the Public Health Department was awarded accreditation, after an over three-year process.

“Some of the benefits of achieving accreditation include strengthening of internal and external partnerships, encouraging health departments to prioritize and address long-standing concerns, increasing competitiveness for funding opportunities, and making departments accountable to external stakeholders,” staff wrote in their report, noting that fewer than 5 percent of those who apply for accreditation receive it.

Well, there you have it – the county board of supervisors continues to approve measures, or “resolutions”, that bring transients to our county. As a man said in a recent letter to the Enterprise Record, our town suffers a disproportionate transient population because these services continue to expand.

In fact, the supervisors have approved a funding system by which we take in transients from other counties and cities in California – transients that come with $550 per day in funding. The city of Tahoe, for example, has no services for transients, they are routinely transferred to counties like Butte, who are desperately in need of the revenues to pay down their burgeoning deficit, and stave off bankruptcy for a few more years.

“The county plans to coordinate with public, private and nonprofit agencies like the Chico Housing Action Team…”

http://www.chicohousingactionteam.org/

I don’t want Simplicity Village in my town – I don’t think it’s humanitarian in any way – Tuff Sheds?

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article89968682.html

And all over the state, we hear reports of increased crime around transient camps.  I know the neighborhoods along Bidwell Park, including mine, have suffered increased crime. There have been car break-ins within doors of my home and rentals, including my son’s car.

All along Bidwell Park f- as well as the Lindo Channel corridor – we have a big problem with car break-ins, look at Next Door some time. The thieves seem to operate with impunity, right out in the open.  Just the other day my husband and I found a pile of  plastic buckets taken from people’s cars laying on the ground along the bike trail through Annie’s Glen – you know, the little removable bins that sit in the console between the car seats, where a lot of people keep parking meter or snack change, even cell phones and other valuables.  I believe they were stolen from cars parked along Vallombrosa – a popular parking spot for both CSUC students and employees of nearby businesses.

I believe erecting these “villages” at taxpayers’ expense is just insulting. Here’s a report from nearby Sutter County:

http://eterritorial.com/47-guest-writers/lou-binninger/11984-govt-in-spite-of-the-people

Binninger doesn’t offer police numbers to back up the crimes he mentions, but I bet you could find them if you looked at the police and sheriff logs. Look at the Chico and Butte County logs sometime.

We have a transient problem here, and the Board of Supervisors is just making it worse.