I had a mission to deliver some used durable medical equipment to someone who should know someone who can use walkers, toilet seat boosters and some adult sanitary disposable things.
I headed down to the Loaves and Fishes Complex, which takes up several blocks in a struggling Sacramento post-industrial jumble of shacks and abandoned wharehouses just northeast of downtown. Although you can say it is widely known that Sacramento is plagued with serious homelessness issues (and blessed with an unbelievable ability to ignore what can plainly be seen), I was disturbed by what I saw.
What I saw(and felt from my surroundings) , to put it bluntly, can only be described a calm but unraveling permanent state of near anarchy. Loaves and Fishes does a lot of good things for the homeless population. They have become so large their facilities cluster dominates an entire neighborhood. Two city blocks of small overcrowded social service and clinic providers, huddles of people waiting in clusters outside each door, the street and spaces between the buildings peppered with more huddled groups.
This is the stuff of dystopic near-future science fiction. Although everything always looks great in Loaves and Fishes' plubicity photos ,the look and feel of the place on a Wednesday midmorning is more like the sanctuary district from Deep Space Nine.
It seems unavoidable. We write off 10% or 20% of people as surplus,and this is what you get.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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