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Adrienne Lauby participates in a "flash nap" on the lawn at Santa Rosa City Hall to protest the city's ordinance against sleeping in public places on Tuesday. (Christopher Chung / PD)
By JULIE JOHNSON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Nobody got any shut-eye at a “Flash Nap Protest” held Tuesday on the lawn outside Santa Rosa City Hall.
For the third time in four months, Occupy Santa Rosa members staged a flash-mob of nappers to protest a city ordinance prohibiting sleeping outdoors, which they say unfairly penalizes the homeless.
But pillows and blankets went unused Tuesday, with the grumbling buses at the temporary First Street transit stop, the blazing sun and 20 singing protesters.
And that may — unintentionally — have been the point.
“Every day is a struggle to live,” said Katherine Zagainoff, 49, who said she’s been homeless for the last year. “People beat you up … you have to buddy up with people. It’s not the most relaxed sleep, not the best sleep.”
Santa Rosa adopted an ordinance in 1994 that prohibits camping on city property, aside from public campgrounds, without a permit.
In 2004, Sonoma County banned camping without a permit or sleeping in vehicles after residents and business owners in Guerneville complained about squatter encampments.
The laws have left people who can’t get into shelters, or don’t care to, without an alternative, said Attila Nagy, 65, of Santa Rosa.
“Imagine this: you just lost your home, your relatives are far away … so what do you do at night? Where do you sleep?” Nagy said.
Kenneth Spangle, 61, said he received a citation from Santa Rosa police earlier this month for sleeping in his car near Santa Rosa’s Rural Cemetery.
“I told police to cite me,” said Spangle. “I want to challenge the law, I want to go to court.”
Spangle said he’s been homeless since March, when he was no longer required by his probation terms to have housing and wanted to stop spending his money on a hotel room.
“As long as you’re not in front of someone’s house … it’s the freedom of living,” Spangle said.
The “flash naps” were conceived by members of Occupy’s Dorothy Day Working Group and have been held in April, May and again Tuesday. The group plans to convene informally at the Aug. 7 City Council meeting.
City staff agreed to hear the group’s case for putting their demand before the City Council to rescind the ordinance, said Occupy member Carolyn Epple, 54, of Forestville.
“We are demanding they listen,” Epple said.
One person managed to get a few moments of shut-eye.
Joan Linney, 57, of Santa Rosa, stretched out with a green pillow and plaid blanket.
“There are just so many people who don’t have housing,” Linney said. “If they can’t at least sleep in their cars … it’s just wrong.”
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They sure do a lot of napping in the occupy movement:
http://urbaninfidel.blogspot.ca/2012/09/occupy-wall-street-one-year-anniversary.html?m=1
Skippy-I’ve lived in Santa Rosa since 1969. I live downtown. I can tell you for a FACT that you didn’t see street people in Santa Rosa then. Everyone had somewhere to go. Street people started showing up AFTER Reagan shut down the state hospitals with the idea that they could be cared for better in their communities. True-but FUNDING WAS NEEDED AND REAGAN FAILED TO FUND THOSE GROUP HOMES. Reagan and the Vietnam war are when the homeless people started filling our streets. And it wasn’t even during a depression like now. Now we have FAMILIES living on the streets and that it just plain shameful in a supposedly civilized society.
Attila,
Reagan rightly vetoed a flawed Carter-era law that would have done little and cost tons.
He properly saw another Big Govt bureaucracy as the wrong route to treating those who needed the help that an earlier version of Big Govt had taken from them.
“From the mid-70s to mid-80s there was a strong ‘patients rights’ movement generated by the mental health advocate community. Although there were many facets to this movement, one of the primary elements was a re-examination of the criteria for institutionalizing patients.
The point of contention revolved around interpretations of what it meant for a patient to be able to ‘take care of himself.’ Prior to this the interpretation was rather strict; if a patient could not earn an income and provide shelter and food for himself (and if there were no family members able to care for him), then he would normally be institutionalized.
Begining in the late 70s, the advocacy groups began to demand a lower standard. As long as a patient could merely wash and dress himself, and could perform the mechanical tasks of shovelling food into his mouth, then every effort was made to force the institutions to release them.
Predictably, most of the newly discharged patients were unable to take care of themselves in any meaningful sense of the word, and became the homeless people on the street. It’s no coincidence that the decline in California’s mental health insitution population closely matched the sharp increase of homeless (in California, at least) during the same period.
Reagan was not involved in this movement, nor was he a symptom or symbolic of it. Quite the contrary. The people who ‘liberated’ the inmates tended to be on the opposite end of the political spectum. In fact, it was the ACLU who provided legal representation to force the VA to release these patients.”
Thanks for playing, Hun.
Skippy,
What ACLU contested was forced institutionalization and forced medication. There was a proposal to have county and community based mental health care available. Reagan, as President, vetoed the Community Mental Health Systems Act which would have provided funding for such a service. Don’t skip the facts.
Do you recall when there was funding for institutions that helped people with mental health issues and drug/alcohol addiction? That was before THE ACLU AND THEIR SUCCESSFUL LAWSUIT BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT shut them down and put people out on the streets IN THE NAME OF COMPASSION.
There: I fixed your hysterical historical myth for ya!
Being wrong is one thing.
Being a willful liar is quite another.
Attila-you are absolutely right. A few years ago, at one of my bus stops, there was a very pregnant woman who was waiting with her 3 year old son. She was there everyday but never got on the bus. I was curious and asked her why she didn’t get on the bus. She said that she was homeless, but her husband was fortunately finally working and met her there after work everyday before going to the shelter. Everyday she’d get kicked out and would spend the day in the library or walking around until it was time to meet her husband and go back to the shelter. Later she was there with a newborn. Both children were clean and well cared for, her husband just got home from Iraq and they were new in town, but they didn’t have enough money accumulated to pay rent. I was so angry that they were homeless. Lots of families in this community are homeless.
People can’t judge a person’s circumstances.
I was at the bus depot and wondering what they were doing. A very hot day and I was thinking I’d like to join them and take a nap too. I didn’t know they were protestors but I didn’t have my glasses on to read the sign.
So what’s the difference from a worker downtown who goes to the green and takes a quick nap on the lawn and a homeless person doing the same. If I decide to lay under the shade in a tree and accidently doze and I going to get rousted?
Mr./Ms. Check,
Tough love? Do you recall when there was funding for institutions that helped people with mental health issues and drug/alcohol addiction? That was before Reagan shut them down and put people out on the streets.
What about soldiers who return home with PTS from the blood and gore of war and turn to drugs and alcohol to numb themselves to erase that horror? You call them vagrants. They are human beings in need of care and gentle love, not name calling.
And what of those who are laid off because their jobs are outsourced and possibly lost their homes to robber banks. And college graduates with huge loan debt and no prospect of employment. For every open position there are hundreds of applicants. It’s easier to judge than to do a real reality check.
An even greater problem than homelessness in the US is lack of compassion and skewed priorities. The haves want more and have no concern about ones less fortunate. Is that a sign of a sane and healthy society?
@Attila,
Yes, shelters often refuse people who refuse to stay sober. And, sadly, alcohol and drug addicts often refuse treatment programs. What should society do? Open up do-as-you-please shelters? Anything goes, let’s party, that sort of shelter?
This is not that complicated. In past times, absent a supporting family people who behaved in a self-destructive manner went hungry. In our more enlightened times, we assist them just enough to allow them to continue their downward spiral, and feel guilty about not giving them more.
The solution to the homeless problem starts with tough love. If SR let’s vagrants camp at city hall, then it shouldn’t wonder why, despite spending millions of dollars, downtown is not a place many people will venture when the sun goes down.
Ms. Johnson did a good job of reporting in some ways. However, I can vouch for the fact that she misquoted Attila. I was standing right next to them during the interview.
Dear Mr. or Ms. Reality Check, You may notice that there are no quotes around what I allegedly said. This is what happens when a reporter jots down a few lines from an extended conversation and tries to paraphrase what was said.
You have been misinformed. What I did say was that some shelters refuse to accept people who are drug or alcohol dependent – that those people have no options, not that they don’t care to stay in the shelter. You don’t know what they’ve lived through to get to where they are now. Please take a little time and engage with someone who has the misfortune of being without a home and listen to his/her story before you make a judgement about a person.
It also helps to know the facts. According to the 2011 Sonoma County Homeless Count and Survey Comprehensive Report, there are approximately 4500 homeless people but only 1100 shelter beds. Do the math. Where do 3400 sleep every night? There but for fortune go you and I.
Doug, It appears that you may not have a clear understanding what the Occupy movement is about. If you pay attention you may notice that people are losing their jobs and homes, students are in deep loan debt, while banks are bailed out and corporate CEOs are getting wealthier by outsourcing labor.
Do you count yourself among the one percent that cares more about profits than the well being of the society they gain their wealth from?
Everything has gotten considerably worse in the last 3 years and the stats below are 2009 ones from Wikipedia:
According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, there were 643,067 sheltered and unsheltered homeless persons nationwide as of January 2009. Additionally, about 1.56 million people used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program during the 12-month period between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009. This number suggests that roughly 1 in every 200 persons in the US used the shelter system at some point in that period.
According to the United States Conference of Mayors, in 2008 the three most commonly cited causes of homelessness for persons in families were lack of affordable housing, cited by 72 percent of cities, poverty (52 percent), and unemployment (44 percent), and top ideas to stop homelessness were more housing for persons with disabilities (72%), more or better paying employment opportunities (68%), and more mainstream assisted housing (64%).
Zzzzzzzz, the occupy “movement” makes me want to take a nap
“‘The laws have left people who can’t get into shelters, or don’t care to, without an alternative,’ said Attila Nagy, 65, of Santa Rosa.”
Oops! This pretty much lets all the air out of argument. It’s not that shelter and assistance isn’t available. It’s that it is inconvenient, restrictive, or just doesn’t suit me tonight. So, I get to sleep, crap, pee, and do drugs wherever and whenever I want.
No rules for me; I have rights. But society has obligations: to feed, clothe, and shelter me . . . when I want. And and skip the moralizing lectures and, argh!, talk about job training classes.