Little Sherry Lopez can’t go to the park. Everyone calls her “Little Sherry” because she’s the smallest Sherry they know. Little Sherry is well short of five feet tall. She’s closer to four feet tall. She’s a few years past forty years old. Little Sherry is developmentally and physically disabled. She walks haltingly and often has difficulty with simple concepts. Other than “little,” the most common word people use to […]
Stanislaus County homelessness
Overflow Crowd for Laura’s Law
“It’s the dollars that get them,” said Douglas Dunn to an overflow crowd at Modesto’s Jana Lynn Room on North Ninth Street Wednesday night. Dunn was explaining how he and other citizen activists convinced Contra Costa County Supervisors to enact Laura’s Law, a policy that enables families to require assistance for mentally ill relatives through a court order. Nearly one-hundred people had come to hear Dunn and Randall Hagar, Director […]
Faces of the Homeless: Rosario
“I like being out in the open where everybody can see I’m not doing anything wrong,” says Rosario Quintana. “I don’t do drugs or alcohol and I don’t leave a mess. I keep all my stuff packed up.” Despite her good intentions, Rosario’s presence on public streets in Modesto and Turlock has gotten her arrested at least two or three times a year during the four years she’s been homeless. […]
Homeless: Who is Mary Baca?
After over a month on the streets, Mary Baca still has her nice watch and amethyst ring. That’s probably because she was lucky enough to wander into a park where Phil Ham and his long-time homeless friends often spend their days. At sixty-two years old, Ham likes to joke that Mary, fifty-four, is too old for him. “I don’t go out with women over thirty,” he says. Nonetheless, when Mary […]
Faces of the Homeless: Carl, Part IV
With its high poverty and unemployment rates, the San Joaquin Valley has a larger homeless population than the nation as a whole. Even so, most homeless people aren’t outside longer than a few months. The exceptions can include those who routinely use shelters, work at least part time, and have small incomes. The canners are atypical. In her study of homeless recyclers in San Francisco, Teresa Gowan found them independent, […]
Faces of the Homeless: Carl, Part III
When Carl Wolden hit the streets of Modesto late in 2004, he was embittered and angry. He had never gotten over the injustice of paying child support to a woman who used much of the money for hard drugs. After making $31 an hour in his job at a major auto parts firm in San Francisco and making decent money in the Alameda shipyards, he found it increasingly difficult to […]
How to Integrate Resources for Homelessness
In order to end homelessness in Stanislaus County, all available resources need to be integrated. A homeless person has the right to refuse service, but does not have the right to receive service if he refuses to cooperate. Someone needs to be appointed coordinator for resources to serve the homeless. The coordinator will need to inventory all available services within Stanislaus County. The coordinator can be in the public or […]
How to End Homelessness in Stanislaus County
Enough resources are available to eliminate homelessness in Stanislaus County. The barriers to elimination include lack of coordination of resources, failure of the homeless to cooperate, and an ongoing influx of homeless people attracted by the very resources that are being misallocated. County Resources Consider all of the available resources to aid the homeless: Social programs like Welfare, Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability, Medicaid, Section 8 Housing, job training, […]