The Sonoma County town that embraced its tent city

Glad to see this early in the article. I get really tired of the "It's got nothing to do with housing supply. They're all just junkies and crazies!" meme.

The city contracted with Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa to manage the camp

When I was homeless, Catholic Charities was one of the best things I dealt with. They had some of the best programs that actually treated homeless people humanely and were genuinely helpful and not looking for some BS excuse to kick you in the teeth and actively make life harder.

About a quarter of the nation’s homeless reside in California... The pandemic has exacerbated the crisis for a host of reasons, including covid-related job loss and prison releases and new capacity limits at homeless shelters.

California has a lot of homeless in part because of so much of the state enjoys a temperate climate with little rain. (I've written about this and can post a link about climate and homelessness if anyone cares, but I get tired of people accusing me of "self promoting" for trying to provide original research and subject matter expert opinions like I'm somehow committing a crime for rolling up my sleeves and trying to do a thing in an area with too few good answers.)

Rosa Newman was among those who turned their lives around. Newman, 56, said she had sunk into homelessness and addiction after leaving an abusive partner years before. She moved into her designated tent in September and in a matter of days was enrolled in California’s version of Medicaid, connected to a doctor and receiving treatment for a painful bladder infection. After two months in the camp, she was able to get into subsidized housing and landed a job at a Catholic Charities homeless drop-in center.

“Before, I was so sick I didn’t have any hope. I didn’t have to show up for anything,” she said. “But now I have a real job, and it’s just the beginning.”

This is a really good way to handle things. It's why the informational resources I work on focus on helping homeless people in the here and now with a need for things like earned income.

So many programs put homeless people in an impossible position where you need housing to get other answers (like an earned income) and you need other answers to get housing and people end up trapped on the street with no way forward.

This was a good read and I am glad to see people trying to focus on solutions for a change. This makes me feel teary-eyed and I'm pretty callous at this point and not easily moved.