Tent City Perspective

The following information is from the spring newsletter of the American River Parkway Preservation Society.

The Tent City & Parkway Advocacy
The entire incident of the tent city that has been allowed to form on open private land
adjacent to the American River Parkway.which in terms of preserving the Parkway.s
natural resources is .in. the Parkway.the international publicity arising from it, the
reaction and non-reaction of homeless advocates, public leadership, and Parkway
advocates, has provided important lessons for us all.
We saw, in the sudden outpouring of help that made its way to the tent city, the great
compassion Sacramento residents feel for those who are without the basics any decent life
requires food and shelter.and that says something very good about our community.

What we didn.t see is much of a call to protect the Parkway from the obvious stress being
placed on it by unrestricted camping, even though technically on private land, but so close
to it that the environmental damage impact of a large campground without any facilities
normally available, can only be imagined, but one can assume it will be significant.
From our perspective, the event is a pointed reminder.with the emergence of the tent city
as a public policy tool, and the Parkway as the de facto location (as it has been for many
years in the North Sacramento area of the Parkway) for camping by the homeless.that we
need a governing entity whose sole dedication and public advocacy is focused on protecting
the Parkway.

Looking at the development of this media/public policy event shows how misinformed all
of us were by the tsunami effect of its sudden bursting into prominence through exposure
on the major daytime television program, the Oprah show.

That initial exposure led to media reports from around the world.many of the reporters
traveling to Sacramento for first-hand stories.which then continued to feed the media
coverage with information, some of which was inaccurate.

The initial story on the Oprah show was primarily presented as being symbolic of the
housing crisis, with the focus being that the tent city was a direct result of people being
evicted from homes and having nowhere to go but Sacramento.s tent city and the other tent
cities around the nation.

As it turned out, local homelessness experts later noted that fully 90% of the residents of
Sacramento.s tent city were the chronic homeless, those folks who have been homeless for
years and are resistant to any offers of help.

It was also initially reported, and picked up by the media, that the population of the tent
city was over 1,200, which later turned out to be the total of the homeless population
currently in all local shelters, including the tent city. (Sacramento Bee excerpts on p. 3)
It is our contention that had a governing entity been in existence whose sole priority was
the American River Parkway, the results may have been quite different.

We have called for a Joint Power Authority (JPA) to be created to govern the Parkway and,
had a JPA been in place, the permanent management staff would have surely been on top
of this situation from the beginning, considering the direct and destructive environmental
impact it was.and is.having on the Parkway.

It is crucial that we give the Parkway a voice that has more public resonance than that of
the relatively small and inadequately staffed resources that the Parkway advocate groups
are able to bring to bear, when events of this magnitude arise that have the potential to
cause great harm to the Parkway.
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(From the Sacramento Bee 3/14/09)
Across the country and around the world, newspaper readers and television viewers are
being introduced to the sprawling campground where 100 to 200 homeless men and
women sleep each night.
.The huge wave of media attention that followed a recent Oprah Winfrey program
featuring the tent city has spurred donations, ideas and volunteers. But it also has
complicated things for officials who suddenly have found themselves in the spotlight for all
the wrong reasons.
.But even advocates acknowledge that some of the reporting has been misleading or
downright inaccurate. Various media outlets have reported that 1,200 people live at the
camp, four to five times higher than the actual population of the tent city on any given
night, they said. The larger number represents the total number of homeless people living
in shelters, camps and other places in the Sacramento area.
.Some news organizations are erroneously portraying the tent city "as a refugee camp" for
formerly middle-class people who have been hit by the recession, said Tim Brown of the
Sacramento Ending Chronic Homeless Initiative.
"While it’s very true that we are seeing increasing numbers of middle-class families hitting
the streets, it’s still a very small percentage," Brown said. "At tent city, 90 percent of the
people are chronically homeless." (Some feel burned as media spotlight falls on
capital.s homeless camp, Cynthia Hubert, Sacramento Bee, March 14, 2009, p. 1A)
(Retrieved March 14, 2009 from http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1698796.html
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