I spent the weekend trying to catch up on agendas for various city meetings and general gossip. By “gossip” I mean, I try to remember to check on Rob Berry every now and then. Mr. Berry is good to go to the meetings, and he rolls out a pretty colorful and, I think, accurate account of these meetings. He also thinks I disagree with him alot but he would be surprised how often we are thinking exactly the same thing.
I read his recent post about attending a city council meeting yesterday, in which he described the scene Downtown as the usual open air insane asylum and drug den. And then my husband and I went out for a quick grocery trip. Here’s the thing Mr. Berry – it’s not just Downtown.
Council has an item on tomorrow night’s agenda, another discussion of how to “move forward” with the Warren Settlement, which ends in January. That’s not soon enough for some local business owners, who want enforcement NOW. Of course they plan to start in the “city center,” meaning Downtown.
It’s already begun – we’ve seen the camps moving from city owned property into the outer limits, along the waterways again, on commercial properties, sidewalks, in areas that have been routed a thousand times over the past 10 years. Mr. Berry talked about a tent we’ve seen, snuggled right up on the city parking lot, under a large old cedar, for weeks. He remarked on the full size propane BBQ the person had set up right next to the tent about a week ago. Yeah, I get it.
But my concern is where will they go? I already know they’re under bridges all over town. These are people with serious drug and mental health problems, they can’t just check into a hotel. They are the “service resistant,” and that will be the main topic of tomorrow night’s discussion. I’m sorry, I both resent and feel deeply sorry for these people, and it’s given me plenty of mental health issues of my own. I really resent the people who have turned these troubled individuals into a commodity.
Another problem that has been festering for years, and the city acts as though it just happened yesterday. The city has been taking millions of dollars from the state for years – Chico is a bonified shareholder in the Homeless Industrial Complex.
A lot of that money has gone to fancy new buildings at the Jesus Center, very comfortable air conditioned offices for very well compensated staffers. They completed 59 apartments onsite – I don’t know who lives in them or what the qualifications are for residency, but they are hardly spartan. They’re building a treatment center on Fair Street, we’ll see how that turns out. I worry that they spend too much money on salaries and sundries, and that limits the number of people they can actually serve.
The problem also remains, that as we take people off the street, more arrive in the various camps around town, and you see more on the streets in a state that could hardly be considered “human”. Is it because we provide these services at all? Should we have some system for sorting out those who “came from somewhere else” so we can serve more of our local community?
We need to answer those questions, because it seems every trip my husband and I make out into Chico we see more and more scarier transients. Yesterday, sitting in the truck to protect our tools while my husband picked up groceries at a local store, I was startled by a man who suddenly appeared in the sideview mirror. You might laugh if you saw me sitting in our truck, all eyeballs in the rearview and sideview mirrors, surveilling the parking lot like Barney Fife, but yesterday, and many times in past, I’ve noticed other people, usually men, standing watch on the pick-up truck.
This man’s head and face were so red, peeling from the sun, as he jerked along like a string puppet, a crazy look on his face, that my dog immediately stood up on the console. A man sitting nearby in his big black work truck was perched against his steering wheel, with the same look on his face as my dog.
Our walker was a big guy, and he was ranting about life in general, when he suddenly grabbed something out of his baggy jacket and threw it at the ground – a liter size plastic bottle of pink lemonade, a big bottle, it exploded all over the place. Crank makes people violent and strong, despite their emaciated appearance. Then he looked right at me and I got ready to roll up the windows and honk the horn, but he walked forward and angrily kicked the bottle. Then he headed for the busy street and I thought we were rid of him.
At that point my husband appeared at the driver’s window. He’d seen the guy from the store, so he was in a hurry to get out of the parking lot. The man had loaded three bottles of pink lemonade into his jacket and left the store without a peep from the checker. Just when I thought he was gone the fellow turned on his heel and started back toward the store. My husband got in the truck and we drove. I couldn’t help but think, a lot of retirees shop in the center, there’s a coffee shop and one of those hobby stores.
We’d been mowing lawns all morning so we headed for our favorite taco wagon. We saw a man standing at the window as my husband headed over to order our usual – a big-ass burrito to share. When he approached the window he stopped short. The man in front of him was jabbering at the gal in the wagon, and I noticed, the owner from the nearby store was approaching the rear door of her vehicle.
The other man said something to my husband and motioned him forward, while he approached the back window. He seemed to be trying to convince the woman of something, she was standing back from the window, and the man from the store was behind her. My husband turned on his heel and came back to our truck – no burrito today – the other guy had been covered with runny sores, he was babbling nonsense at the lady in the truck, and she had called the store owner to help her get rid of him. My husband said the guy was all over the order window, and it grossed him out so bad we went home for a bowl of ramen instead.
I was reminded of the Hepatitis A outbreak in several big west coast towns, including San Diego. In that case, a group of men who had come to town to see a concert contracted the disease from an sidewalk table at a restaurant.
Chico followed Grants Pass, Oregon, onto this path. When my husband and I visited Grants Path a few months ago, our hotel in Medford having raised their rates, we found the entire town to be somewhat DEAD. Like a bomb had gone off. The camps were gone, everything had been cleaned up, but life had not returned. Is that what’s ahead for Chico?
I believe there is a human solution to this problem, but so far, it’s been all about the money, and you know money makes people weird. And I have to ask myself – where did all those people go after they were kicked out of Grant’s Pass?
Chico Taxpayers Association 
25-30 years ago worked well. You have LAWS – you lock em up and they have two choices, Rehab or Jail. Its better than just DEAD.
Most of the city officials are I am sure UNAWARE of the reality of what is REALLY going on with the mental health and drug abuse.
One side works for the people that are contributing to the demise of human life. Ever wonder why most of them are American military aged men.
I am not getting into the “thing” but let’s just say the CITY is retarded. You don’t need to be an accountant – they are now in a 4 million dollar deficit yet spent 24 million on a bike bridge for the homeless to sleep under.
What is the point of the revitalization of the Downtown when they have no $ apparently and Ya that is exactly what this town needs is drinking on the streets.
We have enough piss on the streets already. Retards get elected for office because you need $ to run period.
25-30 years ago, Chico was a college town and the students and their out-of-town friends were the biggest problem we had. The city didn’t handle that very well either. Now the laws have changed, Prop 36 is a failure because the governor refused to fund the jails. In Butte County the jail expansion funding went largely to pay down the pension deficit.
We can’t send people to inadequate jails, keep them like animals, they just get turned out again, WORSE. And where’s the rehab? What do you propose we do about the jail? I’d say, fire that fat pig of a sheriff and AUDIT THE COUNTY SHERIFF DEPT AND JAIL.
These folks need rehab, and we don’t have that. The last time I checked, it was over $35,000 for three weeks at the Skyway House in Chico, and the two people I knew that went there both relapsed. One is dead of an overdose. When we tried to help a friend, we couldn’t get any of these facilities to call us back after we told them he didn’t have insurance. Skyway House suggest that if you don’t have insurance you could borrow the money from friends. There is a faith-based rehab in Chico but I am not able to find any record of their success. There are very few people out there who want to help these people out of the kindness of their hearts, most want MONEY.
I agree, I think most council members are in denial. They are divided on philosophy, and no, they don’t seem to realize that people are dying “out there”. They are fiddling while Chico burns, or in our case, sinking into shit.
Yes, again, there are people who are making money off this mess, they pretend they are working on behalf of the mentally ill and drug addicts that live on the streets, but it’s really the money, we all know that.
I hate to tell you this, but the city has more than $4 million in deficit, the pension deficit is over $180 million. Read further on my blog, I’ve been discussing this for about 15 years, and you can see that the pension deficit has gone up astronomically since then, every year. The bridge is a distraction, you should look at the books for both the city and county. Look at the salaries and benefits and the layers of management.
I think we agree – the only revitalization Downtown needs is FIX THE DAMN SEWER LINES. You know that’s what happened to Oakland Colosseum, shit started coming up in the dugouts. Wouldn’t it funny, if it started coming up in Chico city hall, right under the dais?
I am not sure that I even want to see the books! I already feel like I know too much. If they do “fix the sewer” they better not try to charge us that 80% increase! I manifested that would not pass. 🙂
I hate to be a debbie downer but the person really needs to want a better life to get clean. The homeless are extremely intelligent people, they are probably smarter than at least half of the mental health professionals and politicians.
They had not been guided properly to see there Abilities within the other broken system. School. Plus they are “taught” that they are POWERLESS when in fact the POWER is right there within them!
The mental health system is broken too, most of them have zero clue about true psychology! If whoever you know really wants to get clean Butte County behavioral health is not the worst they have a good outpatient program that is paid by Medical.
I am not sure about medical detox though. There is always a work around you just have to know how to navigate it. Imagine this – Butte County Substance Abuse Unit and the Mental Health division is literally next door to each other and they do not communicate or work together.
The root cause of Addiction is Mental Health! I have come to the conclusion that EVERY system is broken but with each person that Awakens to the Reality Good will Prevail. 🙂
thanks for that information about Butte County Behavioral Health outpatient program, I found their website. In past I have found BCBH to be management top-heavy with overly generous salaries and benefits for people who don’t provide actual services. These services were not available when we were trying to help friends in past. I think outpatient centers are the answer, but we have to be careful where they are located, and how they are managed, so that they don’t become a magnet for bad behavior and a liability for the neighborhood.
But what you’re saying about being right next door without communicating remains a problem – these agencies are vying for the same pot of money, and I don’t know how much cooperation we can expect out of them.
You might want to read more from a consultant the city hired but did not heed years ago – Lloyd Pendleton.
Will do.
Great site that you have. The websites are the way to go if you ask me! I am off all Social Media so I was excited to find your site.
I will try to catch up on the information that you have provided and suggest.
If you need any help in any way don’t hesitate.
Thanks!