Every year, the community Continuum of Care (COC) does a Point-in-Time (PIT) count of homeless people throughout California. Thus far this year, 9 of the 13 most populous regions have reported. Of those 9, 8 regions counted more homeless people than last year. Conducted last January, the Stanislaus County count set a record of 1,923 people; the previous high of 1,800 people was in 2009, during the Great Recession. Still, […]
History
Acts of Human Kindness: A Rescue at MOES
Ordinarily, Modesto Police Sergeant Mike Hammond has more pressing things to do than rescue cats. But Friday, May 2, Hammond was the only uniformed person in sight when a persistent cat lover kept urging him to do something about a treed cat near the entrance gate to the Modesto Outdoor Emergency Shelter (MOES), near Modesto’s Beard Brook Park. Hammond looked at the cat, some thirty feet up a sturdy oak […]
Yadegar Shooting Comes into Focus: It Doesn’t Get any Prettier
A report from Steve Ringhoff at modestoexplained.com The .45 caliber bullet did exactly what it was designed to do. It killed. Entering the body of Evin Olsen Yadegar at the left rear shoulder, expanding, mushrooming, fracturing bone and lacerating vessels, organs and muscles, slowing from about 600 miles per hour—the speed at which it left the gun fired by Deputy Justin Wall—until, its energy spent, coming to rest in her […]
Shoplifting Out of Control in the Valley
Retail stores in California have been plagued by an epidemic of shoplifting ever since the passage of Proposition 47, in 2014. The problem is especially acute the San Joaquin Valley, where police responses can be slow unless lives are in danger. Below, Bruce Frohman describes the problem and some of its effects. Ed. Given the federal government’s proclamation that the U.S. economy is great, the number of recent retail bankruptcies […]
Homeless: 20+ years on the streets
Kenneth “Pops” Yarber became homeless in 1995, not long after a brain aneurysm put him in a wheelchair. Suddenly, he was forty years old and on disability. Not long afterward, the bank foreclosed on his house on 4th Street in Modesto, and he began bouncing from the streets to short stays with friends and relatives. A few years later, Pops was convicted of passing bad checks and using stolen credit […]
Homeless: Are Shelters Obsolete?
The rise in numbers of homeless shelters in the United States coincided with deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill in the late 1970s. During the same decade, runaway inflation—especially rising costs of living—left some members of the economy unable to keep up. The result was more homelessness. Over the years, socio-economic factors have continued to contribute to a rise in homelessness and consequent demand for more homeless shelters. Today, it’s clear […]
Homeless: Frank Ploof Reflects on Beard Brook Village
Frank Ploof’s last job before retirement was at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He was a Computer Scientist by classification but spent most of his career defining and building information systems. Working with scientists got him accustomed to information systems, critical thinking, testing theories, and working with data. For well over the last five years, Ploof has been a key member of Modesto’s Homeless Documentary project. He’s also been a volunteer […]
“Why do we wait for occasions like this?”
An overflow crowd packed Modesto’s Islamic Center Monday night, as speaker after speaker emphasized the need for unity and love in the aftermath of the slaughter of fifty worshippers at a mosque in New Zealand last Friday. Muslim leaders apologized several times for not having a facility big enough to accommodate everyone, and earlier on had placed a plastic covering over the rug inside the mosque so that visitors wouldn’t […]
Steve Ringhoff: “Will the Bee Survive”?
Former journalist and retired attorney Steve Ringhoff has never lost his thirst for the truth nor his dedication to research. Read more of Steve’s work here. Not that long ago, The Modesto Bee arrived with an audible “thump.” Now, the paper, unwrapped, would simply flutter on down like a large leaf. Monday last it was 12 pages, Friday it was 18, not counting “Scene.” We were spoiled. For many years, The […]
Beard Brook Village: The End Game
The last days of Beard Brook Village were like the aftermath of a natural disaster— people pawing through the rubble of discarded clothing, bicycle parts and cooking utensils, a stream of humanity pushing shopping carts, baby strollers, and wheel chairs to and fro, and loose dogs everywhere. The debris-strewn chaos of Beard Brook was in stark contrast to the city’s new encampment, tentatively called Gateway Village, where uniform rows of […]