Host Churches, Where the homeless stayed overnight:  Cold Springs Community Church (2 nights per week), Green Valley Community Church (2 nights per week), Foothills United Methodist Church (one night per week),  Solid Rock Faith Center (one night per week), Federated Church (one or two nights per month), New Hope Fellowship Church (one night per month), Christlike Services (two nights per month).

Participating Churches who provide volunteers at host churchs; Cold Springs Community Church:  Cameron Park Christian Center (one night per week), Rolling Hills Community Church (one night per week)

Major Transportation Support:  Mercy Way Rescue Church, Hangtown Haven, Inc., Christlike Services

Supporting groups who have provided or will provide financial support: St. Stephan’s Lutheran Church, First Lutheran Church, El Dorado Community Foundation, City of Placerville.

Bless all of you. And keep the faith to repeat your love for those who have the least in our community

A special thanks for the time, sweat, tears, frustrations that Pastor Frank Gates endured.

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She said. ” The effort to go to the store and select the ingredients for a cake, take it home, measure the ingredients, wait for it to cook, all before I can take a bite. Why? When someone else will just give me a piece of cake?” ……

“(Why make the effort?) Someone will come up with the food and a place to sleep?”

The enabled and the enabler both get satisfaction out of what they do. One feels safe in that someone else will provide for them, and the other feels good that they get recognition.

“I’ll just call —- or —– if you don’t  ……”    and     ”Give me my free tent!!”

How can we teach, by example, accountability? Where does that entitlement attitude come from?   ………     Do we bunch in the mentally challenged homeless with our concerns??

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Hangtown Haven showed that, responsible, accountable, homeless persons can be an asset. Yes, they had some bad days, a few, misdirected policies, but overall it helped lift persons who were in need and wanted to make an effort towards getting themselves out of homelessness and begin a new start, that start and incentive to move “up.”.

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Pattie’s Thoughts

Facts need to be brought out: Regarding a statement from Placerville city

1. The daytime shelter is closing down because the city has pulled its Special Use Permit, eliminating the only place left in town where the homeless can spend the days off the streets. Now you will see more homeless wondering the streets and begging for food. The statement by the city thanking Christ Like Services for “Providing shelter from the weather” is disingenuous because it is the city that is preventing them from continuing to operate.
2. Last year when the rotating shelters closed, many of the homeless went to Hangtown Haven on Upper Broadway to stay in a legal camp. Now that the camp has been closed by the city, the homeless have no place to spend the night except in parking lots, store entrances and parks. But, not to worry, our police force will roust them out.
3. Our police department will “clean up those impacted by illegal camping.” What they don’t say is that there is no “legal” camping in the city limits, so it is obvious that the city intends to use the police to run all of the poor people and homeless out of town or throw them in jail. The article does not mention that.
4. Encouraging people to “volunteer and contribute to churches that have programs to assist the homeless,” is disingenuous at best. The article itself says that all church rotating shelters end in March 31, so what services are churches now providing? The only services now available are the Saturday morning food and clothing distribution at Green Valley Community Church and food provided by the Upper Room and the FAITH lunch program. Sleeping bags and tents are given out by Job’s Shelters, along with clothing, but there is no place in the city or county for anyone without a home to sleep.

There are a few important points that the city did not bring out in their report;

1. Test conducted around the country confirm what we all know, but apparently the city does not, that no program will be effective with homeless people until they have a safe, secure, warm and dry place to sleep. A shelter comes first.
2. The city ordinance that prohibits “panhandling” is blatantly unconstitutional and impinges on everyone’s freedom of speech. How can a city morally or legally keep a person from asking for money when it closes down all the shelters in town?
3. What the article did not say is that of the forty or so homeless residents that were living in the now closed rotating shelters, four families with small children were in that group. One woman with a four-month-old baby to care for is now on the streets. Can you imagine trying to raise a four months old baby while living on the street?
4. Yes there are many homeless who need help from a mental institution. We all know that. And the county is doing its best to help. But let’s all remember why so many people are wandering the streets who should be institutionalized. During the Reagan governorship, he suddenly closed the mental hospitals in the state without warning and every county was then required to fend for itself. We are still paying the price for that.

Until our community can get together and provide minimum services to our homeless neighbors, they will continue to camp out and panhandle illegally crowding our jails and taking up the time of our law enforcement officers who should be spending their efforts enforcing our laws against real crimes.

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This newsletter has praised the Mayor and City Council members of Placerville city very highly over the past year. But when the bowels of the city exploded, and the flush ensued, the Mayor and the city tried to keep their heads above the swelling water. Way….. tooo bad!

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Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.          Plato

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This year’s nomadic shelter was filled with new adventures in caring. We encountered many new faces and some we have seen for years. The number of young people that used our services this year had gone up, along with the increase in drug use. Alongside the drug use came the loss of life which we all felt and grieved. More than ever though, I think it put a resolve in our spirits to not give up and to work as a team to help facilitate lasting help and positive change within our homeless community. With God leading the way all things are possible.

Paula Lee

Solid Rock Faith Center

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Please send this to others whom care about those in our community who have the very least. See below!