As more and more studies reveal that homelessness is a result of material factors unrelated to cultural issues like family values, it’s become increasingly evident that the majority of homeless people are victims of forces beyond their control. If this is truly the case, state and local management policies for homelessness need to be reevaluated. Few of us would support punishing victims of a natural disaster. Imagine prohibiting survivors of […]
How Homelessness has Enabled Cruelty
We’re no longer stunned or dismayed. We’ve become so habituated to California’s vast sprawl of homelessness that encampments along the freeways, bodies on the sidewalks. and human debris everywhere arouse no more concern than a speed bump or fire hydrant. The objectification of human beings in distress has become a norm for almost all of us. Homeless people have become inanimate parts of the daily landscape. Ronald Reagan began what […]
Trinitas Bankruptcy: We should have Listened
Trinitas Partners recent declaration of bankruptcy is likely just the beginning of widespread economic devastation throughout the San Joaquin Valley. No one saw it coming more clearly than the pseudonymous author of On the Public Record (OtPR), who wrote nine years ago, “This economic model, in which powerful outsiders come in, displace the natives and destroy local natural resources (the aquifers) to provide cheap unprocessed goods to a foreign country is pure colonial […]
Trinitas Partners Farming Declares Bankruptcy
Trinitas Partners, the Bay Area investment firm that bought cattle land in Stanislaus County’s eastern foothills over a decade ago and then converted it to almond orchards, has declared bankruptcy. Trinitas made headlines when it was annexed into Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) and jumped ahead of local farmers who protested that its out-of-town owners were not serious farmers, but speculators who had their eyes on OID’s abundance of surface water. […]
State Rejects Groundwater Plan for Modesto Subbasin
The late Vance Kennedy was appalled when he learned tens of thousands of groundwater-dependent acres had been planted with almond orchards in the foothills on Stanislaus County’s east side. “That groundwater is our savings bank,” said Kennedy, then a resident of the City of Modesto. “That’s our reserve in case of an extended drought.” Kennedy, an award-winning hydrologist and geologist during his career at the U.S. Geological Survey, thought the […]
What the Armchair Experts get Wrong about Homelessness
Rachel Sheffield’s widely published OP/ED piece on homelessness earlier this month offers a prime example of misunderstanding the problem. A research fellow for Heritage Foundation, Sheffield recycles the old “treatment first” tactic that has impeded efforts to manage homelessness for decades. Sheffield is correct when she argues that current versions of “housing first” tactics have failed to reduce homelessness in California; however, her explanation of why it has failed is […]
On Politics — The Valley Citizen’s Endorsements
This election year marks a crucial moment in world history. America’s attempt to create a nation based on our original motto — e pluribus unum — is under siege. While it’s easy to understand nationwide dissatisfaction with both political parties, we shouldn’t ignore that one of those parties has endorsed totalitarianism and is engaged in a slow motion coup that could upend our long effort toward equal opportunity and justice […]
Homeless: Cave Dwellers in Modesto
Based on widespread news reports, the entire nation seems enthralled by the recent news of homeless people living in caves along the Tuolumne River near Modesto. In fact, insiders have known about the caves for years. One nearby resident said of the homeless people living in caves near his own home that, “he sees them as neighbors who are ‘going home at the end of the day.’” The statement is […]
Frank Ploof: Practicing Humanity among the Homeless
Four people, two wheelchairs — back-to-back atmospheric rivers on the way — those were just some of Frank Ploof’s concerns Saturday, January 20, as he piloted his 2001 Chevy truck through and around the potholes dotting the road that took him to people he sometimes refers to as the “deep homeless” — individuals and couples who’d been on the streets for years and most everyone had given up on. Overhead, […]
Inside the Global Hospital: With Thanks
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Martin Luther King Other than a major airport, there are few places more cosmopolitan than a Valley hospital. At every level of care, Valley hospitals represent a living reminder of America’s original motto, “E Pluribus Unum.”* I was reminded of our first national motto by the doctors and nurses whose competence, compassion, and good […]