🚀 go-pugleaf

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is generally for the dissemination of news and for the benefit of
discussion, and should not imply my endorsement or lack of endorsement of
an author's opinions.  As co-founder of the unmoderated internet newsgroup
alt.society.homeless, I wish to provide increased bandwidth there and to
encourage postings.

Please send your replies via e-mail to interested parties listed in the
forwarded postings in addition to posting your reply to the newsgroups.

dhm

------Begin Forwarded Posting-------

Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom of Santa Cruz supports your
attempt to restore funding to the Ethnic Studies program.  We also ask you
to look at the way homeless people are treated in Berkeley (which has its
own Sleeping Bans and institutionalized police harassment).  Lou Rice
enters Day 20 of his fast (which he says will be to the death) to reform
local treatment of the homeless.  Good luck with your struggle.


Robert Norse

P.S.  I include several attached letters, flyers, describing the
situation.



Needed Reforms at the Homeless Services Center

Lou Rice, a 51-year-old client of the Homeless Services Center at 115
Coral St. began a hunger strike on April 15th for better conditions for
the Santa Cruz homeless population from the HSC. Needed changes are as
follows:

    a.. Better Nutrition at the Free Meal, the twice daily feeding of
homeless people. Currently the food is of poor nutritional quality and
insufficient supply. The Free Meal should adopt the same high standards of
St Francis Soup Kitchen’s noon meal where food is plentiful, tasty, and
nutritious.
    b.. Cleanliness and hygiene in the food production at the Free Meal.
Powdered milk is mixed with water in the mop bucket sink in the morning
and other unacceptable "shortcuts" are used in preparing food.
    c.. A drinking fountain for clients. Currently, if a client is thirsty
they must drink out of the sink in the bathroom or the mop bucket sink.
    d.. 28 spaces are insufficient in the ISSP program each night. The
ISSP summer program needs to be increased. Santa Cruz’s homeless
population being 500-1500 in the City alone—no one has a legal place to
sleep at night except those in the ISSP program.
    e.. Staff members regularly treat clients with disrespect, make
frivolous charges, and put out clients for insufficient reasons. A fair
grievance process, involving client representation, needs to be
instituted. Staff members need to be identified by a badge or some other
designation.
    f.. Donations of food and clothing are not adequately reaching the
intended recipients due to inadequate control by the HSC administration.
Better oversight is necessary to amend this problem.
    g.. The HSC has no homeless representation on the Board of Directors.
Clients from different populations need to have a voice in the operation
of the HSC (disabled, minority, Spanish-speaking, female, etc.)


Mr. Rice says he will discontinue his fast when the first four issues have
been addressed, though he urges that all of these concerns be reviewed and
redressed.

For more information contact

Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom (831) 423-HUFF

Fax: (831) 429-8529 or e-mail at Wmnofstl@cruzio.com 5/3/99

                                                                    
309 Cedar St. #14B

Santa Cruz, CA 95060


May 3, 1999

City on a Hill Press (UC Santa Cruz student newspaper)


Dear Editor:

On May 9, homeless activist Lou Rice will have spent 24 days without solid
food, fasting on the steps of the downtown Santa Cruz post office. He has
been there round-the-clock each day, without sign or literature, talking
quietly to those who will listen about changes that are needed in the
Homeless Services Center. These include good food in adequate amounts,
cleanliness and hygiene in food preparation, a drinking fountain, and an
expansion of the 28 space Interfaith Satellite Shelter Program.

We know there are 500-1500 homeless people in Santa Cruz who must sleep
outside or in a vehicle (illegally) each night because of the city’s 11
p.m.-8:30 a.m. Sleeping Ban—which City Council reaffirmed March 23rd.
Rice’s concerns seem rather elementary. City on a Hill has chronicled the
refusal of the Santa Cruz City Council to expand emergency shelter, or
even to decriminalize sleeping for homeless people at night. I hope UCSC
students look in on Rice and share a little time with him as he grows
thinner.

The American people, even our Santa Cruz community, seems hardened to the
plight of 8 million people under sustained U.S./NATO bombing. Many
students raised their voices to City Council against mistreatment of our
own homeless refugee population—to little avail. Lou Rice is quietly
asking the question again—and suggesting that he is putting his life on
the line to produce a satisfactory answer.

I hope Rice’s fast prompts Mayor Beiers—who also sits on the Board of
Directors of the Homeless Services Center—to take swift action before his
health is permanently damaged. Why should it take this kind of ordeal for
a Progressive City Council to respond to basic human rights concerns?

Robert Norse

(831-423-4833)