I think the biggest problem I have with the “Homeless Industrial Complex” in Chico is they are not interested in getting people off the street, I think it’s just a way for them to feel good about themselves without really putting themselves into harm’s way. They won’t admit that the drugs are the problem, because getting people off drugs is really too much work and commitment.
At this time my husband and I have two friends who are on the street, living off handouts from the HIC, doing drugs and alcohol on a daily basis, and scraping along to find shelter and avoid contact with the cops. They have contacted me at times when they couldn’t take it anymore, begged for help – “I’ll do anything you want!” – only to lapse back onto the street. My husband and I have contacted various local and state agencies, hospitals, counseling clinics, begging for help, but they’ve told us they are full, too expensive, or would not accept California Covered as insurance. We haven’t heard from either of our street survivors for over a year, only seen snatches of them as we’ve driven around town, heard from friends who’ve run into them, or seen their names in the police reports.
From what we’ve seen, the cops just ticket people for drugs now, take their drugs away, and leave the person on the street with a summons to come to court. We’ve taken friends to court, repeatedly – they just have a check-in system, telling the person to come back at another date, over and over. Neither of our friends have a phone, so how are they supposed to keep track of these summons? How does a person without a car get from Chico to Oroville?
We had to give one friend five rides to Oroville over a three month period, just to have the charges dropped. Not that we want our friends to go to jail – we’ve actually posted bail for people because the jail is a dangerous shithole, the overdoses, beatings and deaths don’t usually make the news. But our friend was in trouble, and he needed a referral to drug treatment. It had been that threat of going to jail that made him cooperate with us, he got off the stuff for a while, got cleaned up, ate regular meals. But, sadly, as soon as that threat was gone, he was gone. Everything we thought we had accomplished was kaput.
If you follow Butte County Accidents and Crimes, you see that there is an overdose almost every day in Chico. Sometimes you read that the “patient” was administered Narcan, and walked away refusing medical help. But too many times – right here in a town I’ve known since I was a child – the announcement that the “patient has passed…” We need intervention, not Narcan.
Last year, a boy we’d known eversince he was born died of an overdose in the porta-potty at the “Safe Space” shelter. So I tried to attend Safe Space’s “memorial for people who have died on the street” that was held Downtown on Sunday December 21. I was 20 minutes late, and they were packing it up. I saw members of CHAT and Safe Space, one woman walked over to pet our dog. We asked why the service was ending so soon – she blamed the rain.
Fuck you Safe Space – ENABLERS! You let my friend bring heroine into your “radically low barrier shelter,” and you let him go into the bathroom unsupervised with drugs, and you LET HIM KILL HIMSELF.
And then I saw a member of CHAT that I recognized, packing up his stuff, I guy who has regularly commented on this blog, championing drug addicts’ rights to live and die in their own filth on the street. Despite our numerous differences in opinion, he had always seemed friendly. I walked over to introduce myself, and I got the limpest handshake I’ve ever had. I suddenly realized he didn’t really like me. I had actually thought this person was truly interested in “helping” – no, Charles, you are just another member of the HIC, who loves to pat himself on the back and believe he is really doing something good. You are not. You are an enabler.
Patrick Newman, I read you latest missive in the Sunday paper – you are an enabler. As long as you continue to tell the youth of our town that they have the right to live on alcohol and drugs and sleep in their own vomit in the park, you are guilty of manslaughter.
These people are as bad for the “unsheltered” and our town as are the drug dealers. And they are fakes and phonies, period. Let me ask – how many times have they taken anybody into their own home, let them sleep in their own bed, fed them off their own income instead of bullying and berating those of us who are just trying to make it ourselves?
Next month will be a year since our friend died, and we expect another of our “unsheltered” friends to be very depressed about it. We routinely check the police reports – he just got a ticket for “controlled substance“. We’ve been searching town for him and we’re about at our wit’s end. Other of our friends are looking for him too, with no luck. When I emailed “Safe Space,” asking them if they had some sort of message board, I got a mailer daemon stating that the address was invalid. We’ve tried to call – the person who answered the phone was uncooperative. The are very secretive about their activities – they don’t want people to know where their clients are being housed, moving them around. I don’t know how they expect anybody who needs help to get ahold of them.
“Safe Space”, you are a very cruel and expensive joke.
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