I thought they were just people waiting for the Bass Pro Shop to open...
sorry.
Actually the City just ordered them to leave. Here's the article...
City orders homeless to abandon tent city
By Jocelyn Wiener -
jwiener@sacbee.com
Last Updated 11:47 pm PST Saturday, November 3, 2007
Story appeared in METRO section, Page B1
Irunmole Ibabatunde, 80, holds up a letter ordering homeless people to vacate Union Pacific railroad property near 7th and B streets in Sacramento. Advocates for the homeless say the ban on illegal camping is unfair, since affordable housing and homeless shelter space are in short supply. Paul Kitagaki Jr. /
pkitagaki@sacbee.com
Residents of an informal tent city that has cropped up on a vacant field along North B Street in recent months are packing up their campsites this weekend, saying city and railroad police have threatened them with citation and loss of their belongings if they do not leave by early Monday morning. About 60 tents remained in the dusty Union Pacific lot Saturday morning; homeless campers said some of their neighbors already had moved on in search of new sites.
Advocates for the homeless – and the homeless themselves – say enforcement of the city's illegal-camping ordinance is unfair in the face of an affordable housing shortage and inadequate shelters.
"All the shelters have wait lists," said 30-year-old Terri Jennings, who had come to the field with her husband a few days earlier after being run off another spot. "They're hurting more homeless than they're helping out here."
Mark Merin, an attorney who filed a lawsuit in August challenging the city's and county's illegal-camping laws, said Sacramento should consider the example of the city of Los Angeles. In April 2006, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that citing people for illegal camping when the city was so short on shelter beds amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment." Los Angeles currently has a moratorium on such citations. Merin said he asked Union Pacific to allow the homeless to stay – and to provide portable toilets.
"If there's no other place for our homeless guests to go, a tent city seems to be a temporary solution," said Sister Libby Fernandez, director of Loaves & Fishes, one of three organizational plaintiffs named in the lawsuit.
Matt Young, a Sacramento police spokesman, said he was unaware of the encampment – which is about a mile from the downtown courthouse. "The city Police Department is dedicated to working with the homeless to the best of our abilities," he said, adding that private property owners are well within their rights in asking people to leave. Several homeless people said Saturday that city police officers, in an effort to help, had moved them to the field after they were forced to vacate another spot along the railroad tracks.
Originally, they said, there were just a dozen or so campers, but over the months the numbers in the field have swelled. For the most part, said 41-year-old Will Williams, the site is self-regulating. If people want to vent anger by yelling or getting into fistfights, they may be allowed to do so. But if things get out of hand, others will intervene to calm things down.
"Everybody respects everybody else," he said.
While relatively quiet, the site has no toilets and little trash pickup. Most people say there has been at least one fire – some say it was intentionally set, others say it resulted from a poorly tended barbecue. Certain tents do a steady business in crack and methamphetamine sales. Many people complained that a few troubled people have ruined the situation for the rest of them.
"If somebody around here screws up, we all pay," Williams said.
The residents of the field are a motley crew – disabled veterans, addicts, parolees, people with mental health problems and those – like 30-year-old Andrena Gonzales – who are simply down on their luck. Gonzales said she lost her job at an AM-PM two years ago after missing a mandatory safety meeting. She's been on the streets for a year and seven months. Her belly is swollen – she and her boyfriend, Jeff Bachelor, are expecting a baby early next year. The couple still didn't know Saturday where they were going to camp next. Bachelor had already stashed two sleeping bags in a locker at Loaves & Fishes in case they lose the rest of their belongings.
Irunmole Ibabatunde, who said he was 80 years old, unfolded a wrinkled copy of a flier handed out by police last Wednesday, telling people to move on. He'd crumpled it in frustration. Five months ago, Ibabatunde had set up his tent alongside those of a few friends, mostly veterans from Vietnam and the first Iraqi war, waiting for pensions to come through. He said they'd been camping in the field with no real problems. Residents of each cluster of dusty tents kept to themselves. Then somebody came and cut down the trees along North B Street, exposing the encampment.
"Only thing I can do is what they tell me – find a spot," he said. "I don't want to get in no friction with the law."
Around him, his traveling companions were dusting off their sleeping bags, folding up comforters and preparing to move on to another field.
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