Imagine some of the most vulnerable residents in your town being chased from place to place during a pandemic. Imagine that their only access to hygiene is public restrooms, back alleys, and the great outdoors. Fanciful as it may sound, that’s exactly the case with members of Modesto’s homeless population who didn’t make it into the county’s new 182 bed shelter on 9th and D Streets in Modesto. When the […]
Homelessness in the San Joaquin Valley
Homeless: Time to Focus on Accountability
The sign on J Street reads, “Cruising Prohibited.” Below that, “Loitering Prohibited, 6pm to 6am.” Another warns, “This area is under video surveillance.” It’s very doubtful Alan Davis, the amputee across the street, ever reads the signs, even though he’d haunted downtown Modesto for months before being taken by volunteers to the Modesto Outdoor Emergency Shelter (MOES) last fall, where he had a tent, a bed, and routine checkups of […]
Frank Ploof: Martin Luther King Legacy Award
Last Saturday, at the conclusion of his remarks after receiving the Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award, Frank Ploof offered a quotation from Congressman John Lewis that urged people to, “speak up, speak out, and get in good trouble.” Ploof’s own version of “good trouble” includes consorting with derelicts, drug addicts, drifters and ne’er do wells, people who are alternately scorned, shunned, and demonized by the general public. Naturally, Ploof […]
Homeless: “Ready or not, here we come”
When local authorities shut down the Modesto Outdoor Emergency Shelter (MOES) early last December, no one pretended the numbers were going to work. With 450 or so people at MOES and the new low-barrier shelter in the Salvation Army’s Berberian building serving only 182, the math was simple. Even after the Salvation Army added 50 beds, the spillover was about half—over two-hundred people were left with no place to go. […]
Homeless in Modesto: The Tide Rises
Two days before last Christmas, Mary was sitting on the curb at the intersection of Morris and Sycamore, scratching lottery tickets. Alan Davis, the wheel-chair bound amputee, had once again bolted from the new county shelter in the Berberian Building on Modesto’s south 9th Street. He was downtown on J Street, between 11th and 12th Streets, eating a sandwich from the nearby Subway Shop. A block or so away, across […]
Homeless? The future for many is a tent
Despite concerted efforts to get people into shelters and affordable housing, homeless numbers in the west have been increasing rapidly. In Stanislaus County, the numbers haven’t worked since experiments with tent encampments ended a few weeks ago, when the Modesto Outdoor Emergency Shelter (MOES) closed down. City and county authorities decided MOES wasn’t needed after expansion of the city’s Salvation Army Berberian Shelter. The expansion added 182 beds to the […]
Visions of the Homeless: through the artist’s eye
Raven Partida doesn’t have any special camera equipment or training, but she’s been taking pictures for years. Many of her more recent photos are of homeless people, their dogs, and their environment. Prior to this new interest, she photographed a variety of inanimate things, especially abandoned buildings and homes. Partida says that she was one of those kids whose, “head was stuck in the National Geographic Magazine.” “The last 15 […]
Good Samaritan Locates Alan Davis, Gets Help
Back in May and June, when he was working near the county courthouse in downtown Modesto, Tony Montalbo used to keep tabs on Alan Davis, the disabled homeless man who just recently wandered away from the new shelter in the Salvation Army’s Berberian building on 9th and D Streets. “We’re buds, really,” said Montalbo Saturday. “I used to check on him and bring him some food just to make sure […]
Wheelchair-bound Amputee Back on the Streets of Modesto
Alan Davis, the homeless man who was taken to the Modesto Outdoor Emergency Shelter (MOES) in late September is back on the streets. Davis had spent a little over two months at MOES and seemed to be doing well when he was moved to the new shelter in the Salvation Army’s Berberian building on 9th and D Streets. Prior to arriving at MOES, Davis had spent many months haunting the […]
Homeless: “Don’t rip our community apart.”
Last Wednesday’s meeting of the Stanislaus Homeless Alliance in Modesto’s City Council Chambers made one thing perfectly clear: There is a huge disconnect between residents of Modesto’s Outdoor Emergency Shelter (MOES) and working members of the Alliance. While board members were chiefly interested in touting the features of what they have designated as a new low-barrier homeless shelter in the Salvation Army Berberian Building on Modesto’s 9th Street, representatives and […]