Click Banner For More Info See All Sponsors

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!

This site is now closed permanently to new posts.
We recommend you use the new Townsy Cafe!

Click anywhere but the link to dismiss overlay!

Results 1 to 9 of 9

  • Share this thread on:
  • Follow: No Email   
  • Thread Tools
  1. TopTop #1
    galephil's Avatar
    galephil
     

    Help end homelessness

    The Task Force for the Homeless is working hard to assist people who are working their way out of homelessness. We do that by helping to improve the delivery of services and by addressing the barriers people have in obtaining their own housing. We were just awarded a collaborative grant which will provide more healthcare in the River Area, Santa Rosa, and Petaluma; we were instrumental in a collaboration which expanded the Free Clinic at Family Support Center so it is open a day and a half every week, and another collaboration which is diverting homeless people (and others at risk) from the jails. We provide a voicemail service for folks without their own phones. We administer the Federal Emergency Food and Shelter Program which brings $155 thousand to local organizations and we provide community education and advocacy for affordable housing and homeless services.

    We participate in the Continuum of Care which brings $2 million annually into Sonoma County for homeless services, and we are working to help implement the 10 Year Homeless Action Plan. We hope to see more permanent supportive housing for disabled folks who made up a majority of the homeless households identified in the homeless counts. Permanent Supportive Housing is successful in stabilizing disabled households 80% of the time. We could really reduce the number of homeless in Sonoma County if we could place all of those folks in this kind of housing!

    I am walking in the Human Race on May 10th to help the Sonoma County Task Force for the Homeless. Can you contribute to help out? If so, please let me know the amount of your pledge and send a check made
    out to The Human Race to me at 955 McFarlane Avenue Sebastopol, 95472, no later than May 20th. I will accept any amount from $1 to $5,000...and I’ll talk to the Fundraising Committee to get permission if you want to contribute more!


    Gale Brownell
    Sonoma County Task Force for the Homeless
    www.sonomacountyhomeless.org
    phone: 707 953-8988
    fax: 707 823-8943
    Last edited by Barry; 05-07-2008 at 09:18 AM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  2. TopTop #2
    Sunshinehartfulofluv's Avatar
    Sunshinehartfulofluv
     

    Re: Help end homelessness

    I personally feel the need to interject my opinion on the matter of "ending homelessness" in Sonoma County. First off, we have to look at the definition of what mkes a person "homeless", less than having a "home", right? I can agree to that. What I can't agree to is the idea that just beause a person chooses to live in a different type of "home" the re considered "infidels by the majority of the society. yes a home is integral, but what makes a home? that is the question....
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  3. TopTop #3
    LenInSebastopol
     

    Re: Help end homelessness

    You certainly raise complicated questions. For example most of the population of America was "homeless" until the 20th century. FDR made "owning a home" a major deal and raised it to a virtue in part to get money rolling through the economy. Owning property, as in a home, was considered a chore and well it is! However we have a story line and script going that those that have a home are 'special' while those that don't are 'victims'.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  4. TopTop #4
    Thad's Avatar
    Thad
     

    Re: Help end homelessness

    When you no longer believe in your government you are homeless

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by LenInSebastopol: View Post
    You certainly raise complicated questions. For example most of the population of America was "homeless" until the 20th century. FDR made "owning a home" a major deal and raised it to a virtue in part to get money rolling through the economy. Owning property, as in a home, was considered a chore and well it is! However we have a story line and script going that those that have a home are 'special' while those that don't are 'victims'.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  5. TopTop #5
    LenInSebastopol
     

    Re: Help end homelessness

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Thad: View Post
    When you no longer believe in your government you are homeless
    Huh?
    Does that mean 51% of Massachusetts is homeless? or that most Americans are homeless? One can NEVER believe gov't is a 'believable' entity nor there to help; when that happens one becomes a slave. No?
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  6. TopTop #6
    babaruss
    Guest

    Re: Help end homelessness

    How about we believe in the potential of a government to do what is best for society, and then do all we know how to insure they do just that ?
    Babaruss

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by LenInSebastopol: View Post
    Huh?
    Does that mean 51% of Massachusetts is homeless? or that most Americans are homeless? One can NEVER believe gov't is a 'believable' entity nor there to help; when that happens one becomes a slave. No?
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  7. TopTop #7
    Thad's Avatar
    Thad
     

    Re: Help end homelessness

    Having a Home is more than having a shelter.

    Home means you have established a perimeter that is protected by the extensions of your home which are your neighbors, and those neighbors are integral to you keeping your home.

    Its been a long time since neighbors were all that important.

    When you count the dishes and blankets and pots and pans and tally your space you will see you can provide for more people than what you do.

    In knowing this you throw vast moneys blindly at solutions that have more benefit to those promoting them than those needing them instead of changing your style of life for a better life that can more justly be called community.

    Where is it written in stone that a home is to be designed for 4 1/2 people?

    That formula which took off at the end of WW ll was designed to build the most amount of " homes" for the least amount of cost for the highest profit.


    And so today from that we live in isolation where so much of the effort of daily life once shared by many now fall squarely on the backs of each in our private cells

    But the social skills to enjoy people on an ongoing basis up close are no longer there.

    Its not that we are addicted to our privacy, we have now the need to retreat from the unavoidable recognition that our talent to care at the point of impact where care is needed has been crippled by this lifestyle and the abundance of need has become overwhelming.

    A human does not grow in isolation it needs the provocation of familiarity, becoming surprised.

    As to what to do in light of recent news from the "supreme court" saying its legal now to buy an election. Which has been the case anyway, is to fight fire with fire.

    Vote with your dollars and vote local, put your stocks close to home and behind things that have real material value so that no matter what happens in the market you own something that is part of the production of Value.

    So then what the most immediately effective action to begin making sense of a frightening future is to start turning the strangers you live in the midst of into members of a community worth that name.

    Its an odd bit of timing that the very thing needed to be done for others is what will be a strength to you as things move on into the inevitable outcome of what happens when you build on a flawed foundation.

    Just for fun imagine a potential marauder destined to squander more of your tax moneys being run through the "Justice system"

    Instead they begin schooling in how to provide for the needs of ten people in the event of a catastrophe, keeping in mind, catastrophe is a relative term and is an ongoing phenomena for those of you who have become numb.

    So then instead of eleven people who are a drain on resources they begin to become assets.

    So along this line of formula Sonoma County begins its version of Emergency Preparedness training with those who are living in Emergency conditions.

    And out of that you model what a community would look like, let that be your vote





    Quote Posted in reply to the post by babaruss: View Post
    How about we believe in the potential of a government to do what is best for society, and then do all we know how to insure they do just that ?
    Babaruss
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  8. TopTop #8
    LenInSebastopol
     

    Re: Help end homelessness

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by babaruss: View Post
    How about we believe in the potential of a government to do what is best for society, and then do all we know how to insure they do just that ?
    Babaruss
    I like that!
    I've not found it to be true in practice. Govn't is made up and run by folks and I've found folks not to be so as well, in the main.
    Furthermore I fear that those that seek power over others to be even more suspect than most regular folks that simply want to be left alone to do their thing in as much freedom as can be handled. We do have a document to regulate those in power but none give it mind any more. Also, if what you wish to be is so, then how did we get into the current mess we're in?
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  9. TopTop #9
    babaruss
    Guest

    Re: Help end homelessness

    The biggest problem I have seen over the years is lack of public awareness of it's very real power to change things.
    Everything related to changing a deeply entrenched system takes tact, finesse, patience, and lots of applied, unrelenting, pressure on our representatives.
    If we put non stop pressure on our representatives to get a piece of what we want, some movement towards the kind of changes we want will occur.
    The singular exception to this is a blazing revolution, and even there once the battle is 'won'..the new 'powers that be' invariably will start dictating what their idea of right is, and do so completely to the disregard of the rest of the public's wants and needs.
    Compromise and more compromise is the only way to go. Many people of a radical bent, be it to the right, or the left, absolutely refuse to compromise.
    If people are not inclined to get involved in their own lives at a public level then there is nothing anyone can do but forge ahead with out them.

    People got insanely involved reactionary wise when the twin towers were destroyed. Pity that the general public could not get as up in arms about rip off banks, corrupt politicians, as readily as they bought into the pack of lies....which incidently was brought about partially by those self same powers.
    Complacent, willfully ignorant people get exactly what they deserve.
    Hard working people/activists get anywhere from a tiny piece of what they want up until they hit that wall which won't budge no matter what.
    Even there it's o.k. because while we are enjoying our forward motion we can still be planning strategy to overcome that hurdle next go around.
    No question about your comment that those who seek power are suspect.
    Very few altruistic people are in politics...and if they perchance came in that way... a few years in office trying to buck a locked in system will change that.

    And wouldn't it just be lovely if we could but do our own thing without interference.
    I'm still learning ways to dance around (and within) the system... trying to keep my life as simple and as free as conditions, and circumstances allow. The important thing for me to remember is to keep my perspective, and to do the best I know how (whether or not the rest of the world does so).
    Probably answered nothing here...but hey at least I've had my say too...sometimes that's a lot.
    Baba



    Quote Posted in reply to the post by LenInSebastopol: View Post
    I like that!
    I've not found it to be true in practice. Govn't is made up and run by folks and I've found folks not to be so as well, in the main.
    Furthermore I fear that those that seek power over others to be even more suspect than most regular folks that simply want to be left alone to do their thing in as much freedom as can be handled. We do have a document to regulate those in power but none give it mind any more. Also, if what you wish to be is so, then how did we get into the current mess we're in?
    Last edited by babaruss; 01-25-2010 at 12:48 PM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email