“I wish we could put a rush on whatever needs to be done,” said resident Angie Moreno.

“These people have waited too, too long already. We go to meeting after meeting and hear ‘We’re waiting for this and we’re waiting for that.’ We need someone to get out there and run and get all the documents together and let’s make this work.

Problems for Many Years

Residents have suffered sewage overflows, improper billing and other problems for years.

Moreno spoke to a small crowd of residents who gathered on the patio of a church with representatives of the state Water Resources Control Board April 17.

State officials were in East Orosi to explain that the Tulare County Resource Management Agency will be appointed as the administrator of the wastewater system, which serves about 1,000 people.

And, they said, they want quick action as well.

“We are communicating to our executive team how important it is to get these documents reviewed and approved as quickly as possible,” said Stephanie Torres of the Division of Water Quality.

Torres and representatives of the Water Board’s Department of Financial Assistance spoke with residents of the tiny eastern Tulare County community amidst a cacophony of barking dogs and crowing roosters.

Community Input Sought

They also asked for feedback from the community through May 7. They hope to incorporate that feedback in future operations of the sewer system, which was deemed to have “demonstrated failure to maintain technical, managerial, or financial capacity to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse” in a letter sent to the former board president of the East Orosi Community Services District (CSD) in February.

Residents of East Orosi have relied for decades on the East Orosi for drinking water and sewer services.

But nitrate contamination in the community’s two wells, along with a lack of funding and infighting on the CSD board led to state intervention in 2020 when the Water Board began providing residents bottled water.

The board also mandated the larger nearby city of Orosi to consolidate with East Orosi and appointed the Tulare County RMA to service and oversee East Orosi’s drinking system until that consolidation is complete.

The state lacked authority to intervene in the town’s wastewater problems, however, until last summer when AB 805 was passed allowing the Water Board to take the system away from the CSD and put it under authority of the Tulare County RMA.

Implementing AB 805

This is all new territory for the Water Board as it establishes processes and procedures under AB 805, which is why the state is still seeking community feedback.

“Thank you for your patience,” Torres said to those gathered in person and online at the April 17 meeting. “This is a government process. If you have a heart, or time to write a quick positive line, even that is helpful. This is our first time too and maybe there is a way in the future to make it faster.”

Tulare County grants and resources manager Denise England said she believes the path is pretty clear thanks to the agreement already in place governing the drinking water side of things.

She told the crowd that while the county awaits funding for the wastewater system, it has stepped in to keep it afloat by paying off the district’s more than $91,000 debt to the Cutler-Orosi Wastewater Treatment Facility. The county has also set money aside to replace lift station pumps, clean the sewer collection system and to pump holding tanks.

“But we can’t do any physical work until we have authority to do so,” she said. “The goal is the sewer system would run as designed until a longer term solution is identified.”

Torres added that she appreciates the advocacy of groups such as Community Water Center and Self-Help Enterprises, members of which were on hand at the meeting.

“Everyone is coming together to help,” she said. “It’s difficult when it is an impact to your daily life, especially with water.”

The post Work on East Orosi’s Decrepit Sewer System Can’t Start Soon Enough, Say Fed Up Residents appeared first on GV Wire.

A supportive mom kept her eye on the clock while the Makos Swim Team athletes tucked their natural curls, braids, and locs into yellow swimming caps. In the bleachers, spectators whispered about the team’s presence at the pool in Centralia, Illinois — as they do at almost every competition.

“They don’t know that we’re listening,” Randella Randell, a swimmer’s mom, later said. “But we’re here to stay. We’re here to represent. We’re going to show you that Black kids know how to swim. We swim, too.”

Randell’s son, Elijah Gilliam, 14, is a member of the Makos’ competitive YMCA and USA Swimming program based in North St. Louis. Almost 40 athletes, ages 4 to 19, swim on the squad, which encourages Black and multiracial kids to participate in the sport. Coached by Terea Goodwin and Torrie Preciado, the team also spreads the word about water safety in their community.

“If we can get everybody to learn how to swim, just that little bit, it would save so many lives,” said Goodwin, a kitchen and bathroom designer by day who is known as Coach T at the pool. “Swimming is life.”

But just like mako sharks, such teams of Black swimmers are rare. Detroit has the Razor Aquatics, Howard University in Washington, D.C., has a team that’s made headlines for winning championships, and some alums from North Carolina A&T’s former swim team created a group to offer water safety classes.

Historical Barriers and Lingering Impact

In the past, Black Americans were barred from many public swimming pools. When racial segregation was officially banned, white Americans established private swim clubs that required members to pay a fee that wasn’t always affordable. As a result, swimming remained effectively segregated, and many Black Americans stayed away from pools.

The impact is still felt. More than a third of Black adults report they do not know how to swim, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, more than twice the rate for adults overall.

Seeing a need in their community, the parents of the Makos swimmers formed the Black Swimmers Alliance at the end of 2023 with a goal of “bridging the gap in aquatic skills,” according to its website. But the group, which offers swim lessons to families of color, is concerned about the flow of grant money dwindling because of the recent federal backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Even so, they are fundraising directly on their own, because lives are being lost.

In late January, a 6-year-old died at a hotel pool in St. Louis. A boy the same age drowned while taking swim lessons at a St. Louis County pool in 2022. And across the river in Hamel, Illinois, a 3-year-old boy drowned in a backyard pool last summer.

Drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 through 4, according to the CDC. Black children and Black adults drown far more often than their white peers.

Addressing Fear and History

Members of the Black Swimmers Alliance discussed those statistics before their advocacy work began. They also had to address another issue — many of the adult volunteers and parents with children on the Makos team didn’t know how to swim. Even though their children were swimming competitively, the fear of drowning and the repercussions of history had kept the parents out of the pool.

The Makos athletes also noticed that their parents were timid around water. That’s when their roles reversed. The children started to look out for the grown-ups.

Joseph Johnson, now 14, called out his mom, Connie Johnson, when she tried to give him a few tips about how to improve his performance.

“He was like, ‘Mom, you have no idea,’” the now-55-year-old recalled. “At first, I was offended, but he was absolutely right. I didn’t know how to swim.”

She signed up for lessons with Coach T.

Najma Nasiruddin-Crump and her husband, Joshua Crump, signed up, too. His daughter Kaia Collins-Crump, now 14, had told them she wanted to join the Makos team the first time she saw it. But among the three of them, no one knew how to swim.

Joshua Crump, 38, said he initially felt silly at the lessons, then started to get the hang of it.

“I don’t swim well enough to beat any of the children in a race,” he said with a chuckle.

Nasiruddin-Crump, 33, said she was terrified the first time she jumped in the deep end. “It is the only moment in my life outside of birthing my children that I’ve been afraid of something,” she said. “But once you do it, it’s freedom. It’s pure freedom.”

Mahoganny Richardson, whose daughter Ava is on the team, volunteered to teach more Makos parents how to swim.

She said the work starts outside the pool with a conversation about a person’s experiences with water. She has heard stories about adults who were pushed into pools, then told to sink or swim. Black women were often told to stay out of the water to maintain hairstyles that would swell if their hair got wet.

Bradlin Jacob-Simms, 47, decided to learn how to swim almost 20 years after her family survived Hurricane Katrina. She evacuated the day before the storm hit but said one of her friends survived only because that woman’s brother was able to swim to find help.

“If it wasn’t for him, they would have died,” she said, noting that hundreds did drown.

“That’s the reason why swimming is important to me,” she said. “A lot of times, us as African Americans, we shy away from it. It’s not really in our schools. It’s not really pushed.”

Makos swimmer Rocket McDonald, 13, encouraged his mom, Jamie McDonald, to get back into the water and stick with it. When she was a child, her parents had signed her up for swim lessons, but she never got the hang of it. Her dad was always leery of the water. McDonald didn’t understand why until she read about a race riot at a pool not far from where her dad grew up that happened after St. Louis desegregated public pools in 1949.

“It was a full-circle moment,” McDonald said. “It all makes sense now.”

Now, at 42, McDonald is learning to swim again.

Overcoming Challenges and Funding Concerns

Safety is always a priority for the Makos team. Coach T makes the athletes practice swimming in full clothing as a survival skill.

Years ago, as a lifeguard in Kansas City, Missouri, Coach T pulled dozens of children out of recreational swimming pools who were drowning. Most of them, she said, were Black children who came to cool off but didn’t know how to swim.

“I was literally jumping in daily, probably hourly, getting kids out of every section,” Goodwin said. After repeated rescues, too many to count, she decided to offer lessons.

Swim lessons can be costly. The Black Swimmers Alliance aimed to fund 1,000 free swim lessons by the end of 2025. It had already funded 150 lessons in St. Louis. But when the group looked for grants, the alliance scaled back its goal to 500 lessons, out of caution about what funding would be available.

It’s still committed to helping Black athletes swim competitively throughout their school years and in college.

Most of the time, the Makos swimmers practice in a YMCA pool that doesn’t have starting blocks. Backstroke flags are held in place with fishing wire, and the assistant coach’s husband, José Preciado, used his 3-D printer to make red, regulation 15-meter markers for the team. Once a week, parents drive the team to a different YMCA pool that has starting blocks. That pool is about 5 degrees warmer for its senior patrons’ comfort. Sometimes the young swimmers fuss about the heat, but practicing there helps them prepare for meets.

Parents said white officials have frequently disqualified Makos swimmers. So some of the team parents studied the rules of the sport, and eventually four became officials to diversify the ranks and ensure all swimmers are treated fairly. Still, parents said, that hasn’t stopped occasional racist comments from bystanders and other swimmers at meets.

“Some didn’t think we’d make it this far, not because of who we are but where we’re from,” Goodwin has taught the Makos swimmers to recite. “So we have to show them.”

And this spring, Richardson is offering lessons for Makos parents while their children practice.

“It’s not just about swimming,” Richardson said. “It’s about overcoming something that once felt impossible.”

About the Author

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The post Magic Happens When Kids and Adults Learn to Swim. Tragedy Can Strike if They Don’t. appeared first on GV Wire.

Wickey Two Hands sat at the defense table on a recent Thursday morning, holding in his lap the red baseball cap he’d doffed out of respect for the judge.

The 77-year-old homeless man was supposed to be the first person tried in court under an ordinance Fresno passed last year making it a crime to camp in all public places. Over the past six months, he’d spent hours in a courtroom, arriving early for each hearing. He’d packed up and moved his campsite multiple times, trying to find out-of-the-way spots where he could avoid getting arrested again.

But instead of sending Two Hands’ case before a jury, the judge — on the day trial was supposed to begin — dismissed all charges. The reason? The city waited too long to prosecute.

Two Hands’ case shines a spotlight on a contradiction seen around the state in recent months. California cities are passing ordinances left and right that allow police to arrest or cite unhoused people for camping on their streets and sidewalks, or in their parks. Police are making arrests. But when it comes to prosecuting, trying or sentencing people for violating these ordinances, some cities haven’t been able to follow through. In many cases, prosecutors aren’t filing charges. If people are charged, their cases often are dismissed quickly. Two Hands’ case was a rarity for how close it came to trial. But in the end, it too was thrown out.

That has some wondering: what’s the point of arresting people at all?

Related Story: Fresno’s Anti-Camping Ordinance Goes into Effect. City Says It Will ...

A Bellwether Case Dismissed

Two Hands’ case was set to be a bellwether to see if Fresno’s camping ban — under which police have made several hundred arrests already — would hold up before a jury. The city and county — as well as Two Hands’ lawyer, activists and even local journalists — invested a considerable amount of resources in the case before it was ultimately dismissed last week without a trial or any public hearings on its merits.

“They wasted a lot of time and money pursuing this case,” said Ron Hochbaum, a law professor at the University of the Pacific who specializes in homelessness and poverty law. “When you think about all the people who were involved, from police to the city attorney’s office to judges and court clerks and so on. That’s probably hundreds of hours of work and thousands of dollars wasted. And that money would be better spent by simply offering Mr. Two Hands housing without arresting him.”

Resources Expended

CalMatters analyzed the resources that went into prosecuting Two Hands’ case:

At 8:40 a.m. on Oct. 14, 2024, two Fresno police officers came across Two Hands and his belongings on the side of the road and arrested him for camping in a public place and illegally possessing a shopping cart.

Over the next six months, Two Hands attended four hearings in three different courtrooms. Before each hearing, he dropped off his belongings at a friend’s house and then caught the bus to the downtown Fresno courthouse, sometimes arriving as much as an hour early so he didn’t miss anything. After court, an advocate sometimes drove him back to his campsite. On April 10, the day his trial was supposed to begin, he missed work to attend court, skipping his scheduled shift at a wrecking yard and with it, his chance to earn money for food and other necessities for the day.

City and county resources also went into each hearing. Public funds paid for the presence of a judge, a bailiff and staff from the city attorney’s office. The city brought on outside law firm Manning Kass to help prosecute the case.

Kevin Little, a private attorney who specializes in civil rights litigation, signed on to defend Two Hands pro bono. Little estimates he spent between 100 and 150 hours on Two Hands’ case. He had two additional staff members helping him, and they put in another 50 to 100 hours. The week the case was supposed to go to trial, Little said he spent a couple nights working in his office until 3 a.m.

“They wasted a lot of time and money pursuing this case.”

Ron Hochbaum, law professor, University of the Pacific

Another attorney, Patience Milrod, was also in court on April 10. She was there to represent Pablo Orihuela, a Fresnoland journalist who had been covering Two Hands’ case and received a subpoena to testify on behalf of the prosecution. Attorney Karl Olson was standing by to contest a subpoena issued to Fresno Bee reporter Thaddeus Miller, according to the Bee.

In addition to Orihuela and Miller, journalists from CalMatters and ABC30 were there to cover the trial.

About two-dozen activists and local community members also showed up at the courthouse — some arriving as early as 7 a.m. despite work and childcare obligations — to support Two Hands on the day his trial was set to start. Activist Wes White drove two-and-a-half hours from Salinas to be there.

After all that, Judge Brian Alvarez dismissed the case. He found that the trial should have started by March 6, and going past that date would violate Two Hands’ right to a speedy trial. Two Hands’ supporters filed out of the courtroom and filled the hallway, cheering, until a bailiff asked them to keep it down.

“I’m really shocked by how much money and resources they put into this,” said advocate Dez Martinez, who recently helped Two Hands get into a shelter. “There was so much money used in this so they can make a point because they don’t want to lose a case. It just bothers me that they used that (many resources) and finances into punishing Wickey instead of doing what I did: sit down and talk to him, figure out why does he not want to go inside.”

The trial originally was set to start Feb. 20, but the city asked for a delay, which was granted by Judge Carlos Cabrera. Judge Alvarez appeared to disagree with that ruling.

The city blamed Two Hands’ team for the case getting thrown out. The defense’s subpoena request forced the city to review an extensive amount of documents, which took extra time, Deputy City Attorney Daniel Cisneros told the court. The city also had tried to prevent the case from going to trial by offering Two Hands a plea deal, which it said would come with a shelter bed. Two Hands declined, instead opting to try to clear his name through a trial.

“The City’s position is to continue to offer plea deals to defendants who accept housing and services offered by the City,” the city attorney’s office said in an emailed statement from Noemi Schwartz. “It is unfortunate that this defendant declined the services and housing offered by City at a congregate shelter at Travel Inn and will likely end up back on the streets without shelter and assistance.”

A Pattern Across California

Fresno’s new camping ordinance went into effect in September, making it a misdemeanor to sit, lie, sleep or camp in a public place. But most people arrested aren’t prosecuted, and even fewer come close to a trial. Fresno police made 322 arrests under that ordinance from October 2024 through January 2025. During that time, the city attorney’s office filed charges in just 132 camping cases. The defendant failed to show up in court in more than half of the cases in which charges were filed. Only one other case, in addition to Two Hands’, was listed as headed toward trial.

It’s a similar situation in other cities, from the Bay Area to Southern California. Police in Los Angeles made 238 camping arrests last year, and the city attorney’s office declined to file charges in two-thirds of those cases. In San Francisco, nearly four in five illegal lodging arrests made since August 2024 have not resulted in charges, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Cities and district attorneys aren’t interested in prosecuting the cases because they know they don’t have enough room in jail and prisons to incarcerate everyone who is experiencing homelessness,” Hochbaum said. And they know slapping someone with a fine won’t stop them from sleeping outside, he said.

Instead, he said, many cities are using the threat of arrest to force unhoused people to move when they want to clear an encampment.

For the time being, Two Hands is sleeping inside after five years on the street. Martinez said she got him a 90-day stay at a city-run shelter — with no help from the city attorney’s office.

“(It’s) a pretty good day in my life,” Two Hands said outside the courthouse, after his case was dismissed. “77 seasons I’ve been here, you know, I think I deserve it.”

While Two Hands was hesitant to accept a shelter bed at first, Martinez said after spending months talking to him, getting to know him and showing up at his side to his court dates, she won his trust. She promised to keep fighting to get Two Hands into permanent housing, sign him up for Social Security, help him access health care, and get him whatever else he needs.

“It’s not that he wants to stay outside,” Martinez said. “He’s tired. He doesn’t want to die on the sidewalk. He didn’t want to be given something and have it be taken away.”

Fresno still has yet to try anyone for sleeping outside, but that could change. Little is representing another unhoused man who was arrested for camping — and plans on bringing that case to trial.

“I hope the message the city gets,” Little said, “is leave the unhoused alone. Help them and don’t prosecute them. But if you are going to choose unfortunately to prosecute these cases, then you better come ready, because we’re not backing down.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The post What Happens After a Homeless Person Is Arrested for Camping? Often, Not Much appeared first on GV Wire.

The potential changes primarily concern federal housing vouchers, including those more commonly known as Section 8. The aid generally helps the poorest tenants cover the monthly costs of apartments, town homes and single-family residences.

Focus on Housing Vouchers

Administration officials recently discussed cutting or canceling out the vouchers and other rental assistance programs and potentially replacing them with a more limited system of housing grants, perhaps sent to states, according to three people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the confidential discussions. The overhaul would be included in President Donald Trump’s new budget, which is expected to be sent to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.

The exact design and cost of the retooled program is unclear, and any such change is likely to require approval from Congress, as White House budgets on their own do not carry the force of law.

But people familiar with the administration’s thinking said the expected overhaul would most likely amount to more than just a technical change, resulting in fewer federal dollars for low-income families on top of additional cuts planned for the rest of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. On Thursday, the Trump administration took the first steps toward potentially selling the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

Related Story: Other States Do Housing Better Than California; a New Study Shows How They Do It

Budget Cuts and Agency Impact

Federal voucher programs currently provide assistance to about 2.3 million low-income families, according to the government’s estimates, who enroll through their local public-housing authorities. The aid is part of a broader universe of rental assistance programs that are set to exceed $54 billion this fiscal year. But the annual demand for these subsidies is far greater than the available funds, creating a sizable waitlist as rents are rising nationally.

“If there were a cut to the voucher program, essentially, you would see a decrease to the number of families that are served by the program,” said Eric Oberdorfer, director of policy and legislative affairs at the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, an advocacy group.

At the moment, he added, only 1 in 4 families eligible for vouchers are able to obtain them because of funding constraints. A federal cut would put public-housing agencies in a position in which “they would need to make difficult decisions” and in some cases stop providing benefits, Oberdorfer said.

Rachel Cauley, a spokesperson for the White House budget office, said in a statement that “no final funding decisions have been made.”

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, previously endorsed an end to the federal voucher program. He wrote in 2022 that the Section 8 program in particular “brings with it crime, decreased property values, and results in dependency and subsidized irresponsibility.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Housing and Urban Development declined to comment on the budget. Appearing on Capitol Hill earlier this year, Scott Turner, the housing secretary, told senators that he believed the goal of the voucher program was to “get people into self sustainability,” not “a lifetime on subsidies.”

The expected cuts to rental assistance reflect Trump’s broader desire to shrink the footprint of government and its reach into Americans’ lives, a project that includes sharp reductions to federal antipoverty programs viewed as too generous or wasteful.

The aggressive campaign has already resulted in the president and his top aides — including tech billionaire Elon Musk — shuttering entire agencies, freezing billions of dollars and dismissing thousands of civil employees, moves that have enraged Democrats and led to a series of court challenges.

The full scope of Trump’s vision stands to become clearer once he submits his budget to Congress this spring, reflecting his priorities for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The proposal is expected to guide Republican lawmakers as they look for ways to pay for the party’s costly ambitions to reduce taxes on people and corporations.

Many agencies, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, could lose funds ranging into the billions of dollars, according to those familiar with the White House blueprint, who cautioned that it remained unfinished.

The cuts to housing programs come in addition to an exodus of the agency’s workforce. As of last week, about 2,300 employees opted to accept an offer for “deferred resignation” and leave their jobs, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Related Story: Signs of a More Buyer-Friendly Housing Market Emerge for Spring

Broader Housing Agency Changes

The White House also plans to dismantle a key office in the housing agency that helps communities recover from deadly natural disasters, a move that could slow much-needed emergency aid. Separately, Trump issued an executive order last month eliminating a decades-old, governmentwide commission meant to coordinate the federal response to homelessness.

A potential overhaul of the housing agency comes on the heels of a congressional deal to fund the government through September that increased some housing spending yet did not keep pace with rising rents and the growing demand for federal aid. The funding gap could result in about 32,000 voucher recipients soon losing access to federal housing aid, according to Democrats’ estimates, on top of additional cuts once funding runs out in a pandemic-era program that expanded voucher availability.

Many of the foundational changes the White House contemplates for the housing department are consistent with cuts that the president and Vought, his returning budget chief, previously endorsed. In the final budget of Trump’s first term, the two men proposed a roughly $8.6 billion reduction at the housing agency, though they did not propose to eliminate vouchers entirely.

Years after leaving government, though, Vought specifically proposed a full end to the Section 8 voucher program. At his conservative nonprofit, the Center for Renewing America, Vought in 2022 called vouchers supplied to low-income tenants a “hook for implementing the left’s fair housing agenda,” faulting the government for focusing on racial equity.

Vought previously served as a key author of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for the Trump presidency, which similarly endorsed a sweeping overhaul to federal housing spending. Ben Carson, who led the Department of Housing and Urban Development during Trump’s first term, wrote in a chapter about the agency that it needed to explore significant reforms to the voucher program, such as work requirements on recipients and limits to how long they could collect housing aid.

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Tony Romm/Eric Lee
c. 2025 The New York Times Company

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Efforts to implement some legislation fell short during last year’s legislative session amid a bitter split within the Legislative Black Caucus over slow progress. This year, Gov. Gavin Newsom is widely seen as shifting politically to the right following a string of nationwide victories for President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans.

Still, the Black Caucus says it isn’t backing down from its push for equity and reparative justice legislation in 2025. But the group is not using the word “reparations” to describe its collection of 16 bills, partly because the legislation does not require cash payments as restitution for slavery. That’s a change from last year, when the group’s incremental approach led to a clash with advocates.

The slate includes second tries at measures that failed last year, such as establishing a new state agency to help implement and fund equity legislation and removing language from the state constitution that allows prison administrators to force people to work under threat of disciplinary consequences.

While a majority of Californians have said they support an official apology for the state’s role in supporting slavery, the idea of direct cash reparations is unpopular — a 2023 poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies showed Californians opposing payments by a 2-to-1 margin.
CalMatters’ reparations calculator, based on economic modeling in the task force’s report, estimates that an eligible Black resident who has lived seven decades in California could be owed up to $1.2 million.

Denise Amos of CalMatters contributed reporting to this explainer.

The post What To Know About California Reparations: Is State’s Apology the Beginning or the End? appeared first on GV Wire.

Victor Perez, 17, who also had cerebral palsy, had been in a coma since the April 5 shooting, and tests Friday showed that he had no brain activity, his aunt, Ana Vazquez, told The Associated Press. He had undergone several surgeries, with doctors removing nine bullets and amputating his leg.

Police in the southeast Idaho city of Pocatello responded to a 911 call reporting that an apparently intoxicated man with a knife was chasing someone in a yard. It turned out to be Perez, who was not intoxicated but walked with a staggered gait due to his disabilities, Vazquez said. His family members had been trying to get the large kitchen knife away from him.

Details of the Shooting Emerge

Video taken by a neighbor showed that Perez was lying in the yard after falling over when four officers arrived and rushed to the fence at the edge of the yard. They immediately ordered Perez to drop the knife, but instead he stood and began stumbling toward them.

Officers opened fire within about 12 seconds of getting out of their patrol cars and made no apparent effort to de-escalate the situation.

“Everybody was trying to tell the police, no, no,” Vazquez said. “Those four officers didn’t care. They didn’t ask what was happening, what was the situation.”

“How’s he going to jump the fence when he can barely walk?” she said.

Community Outrage and Protests

The shooting outraged Perez’s family and Pocatello residents, and about 200 people attended a vigil Saturday morning outside the Pocatello hospital where he was treated. Another crowd of protesters gathered outside the Pocatello City Hall building, which also houses the police department, on Saturday afternoon. Police snipers were stationed on a nearby rooftop during the protest, though no violence was reported. Many of the protesters held signs with phrases like, “Do better, PPD” and “Justice for Victor,” and passing cars honked in acknowledgment.

A police spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

“Those police broke our family,” Vasquez said on Saturday, shortly after Perez’ death. “There is no way to explain the pain that we are feeling right now. It’s like our hearts are kind of empty — it’s not full anymore.”

Investigation and Official Response

The officers, whose names have not been released, were placed on administrative leave.

Decisions about whether charges should be filed against them will be made after an independent investigation by the Eastern Idaho Critical Incident Team, Bannock County Prosecutor Ian Johnson told the AP via email.

“When that investigation is complete a report will be submitted for review,” he said. “In a continued effort to ensure independent and objective consideration, said report will be reviewed by an agency outside of Bannock County.”

Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad said in a statement Friday, after the family announced that Perez had no brain activity, that officials’ thoughts and prayers were with them.

“We recognize the pain and grief this incident has caused in our community,” Blad said.

Blad said Thursday that the city was “addressing this matter with the seriousness and thoroughness it deserves and with the appropriate respect for the gravity of the situation.”

“The criminal, external, and internal investigations regarding the officer-involved shooting are underway, which is why we cannot answer questions out of concern of interfering with or compromising the investigation,” he said.

Perez loved watching professional wrestling, eating fries and taking walks while holding his mother’s hand, Vasquez said. He would always notice when Vasquez painted her nails his favorite color blue, or when she wore a new weave, showing his admiration by touching her hair, she said.

“I’m going to miss him when he used to get in his weird moods, and I used to put him to bed,” she said. “He wouldn’t want to sleep and would wake up again, and I would have to walk him back to the bed. I would promise him, ‘Hey, I’ll be back tomorrow but you need to lay down and sleep.'”

Vasquez said she didn’t know what was next for the family, other than that an autopsy will be performed on Monday. Right now, she said, they need a moment to rest.

Bellisle reported from Seattle
___
This story has been corrected to say Pocatello is in southeast Idaho.

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Re: “7 takeaways from our investigation into California homeless shelters”

For those who take a dim view of homeless shelters, I can only suggest they spend a night or two sleeping in alleys, under bridges or on freezing beaches, shivering and starving, with no bathroom facilities and predators of all kinds circling.

In the desperate journey of a homeless person, these shelters provide safety and the basic necessities of life. Since attaining housing is rightfully regarded by most as a pipedream, these shelters can also provide a sliver of hope to the hopeless.

In any decent shelter, a person is treated like a human being, often for the first time in many years. They suddenly have the dignity of running water, toilets, showers, food, mail, etc. If ever they might dare to hope again, that’s the time.

Depending on an individual’s personal history of trauma, sleeping near — very near — 100 suffering strangers can be a terrifying experience, but it’s better for some than freezing and starving and trying to sleep with one eye open. On the outside, some folks turn to drugs so that they can stay awake and vigilant throughout the entire night.

Sadly, some people cannot be convinced to try to sleep in a room full of strangers. They’ve been assaulted and lied to so many times that they have no belief in safety, even as a concept. Others simply can’t sleep through the night without screaming out, which disqualifies them from shelter living.

Are these folks “service resistant” or are they just suffering?

In order to grade the quality of a shelter, we have to throw out stats like rate-of-housing, because shelters have no part in creating housing opportunities. Their housing estimates rely on the projections provided by housing authorities, developers and contractors. When new housing units fail to become available, no one can move out of a shelter. That is a system failure, not a shelter failure.

I was provided with a pipeline to housing, and eventually attained it. If I hadn’t had a place to sleep safely, send and receive mail, and eat and shower and advocate for myself, and get help from case managers, I might not be housed even today, a couple years later. That’s how shelters are supposed to work.

About the Author

P. W. Robinson is an advocate and is formerly homeless. He lives in Ventura.

Make Your Voice Heard

GV Wire encourages vigorous debate from people and organizations on local, state, and national issues. Submit your op-ed to bmcewen@gvwire.com for consideration.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The post CA’s Homeless Shelters Aren’t for Everyone. That Doesn’t Mean They Don’t Work appeared first on GV Wire.

The agenda for Wednesday’s board meeting includes a $156,370 contract with Crossroads Village to rent 10 two-bedroom rental units over a two-year period. The district’s funding would cover rent and security deposits.

Crossroads Village, at the corner of Blackstone and Dakota avenues, is a 143-unit supportive housing project for the chronically homeless that is funded through the Project Homekey program, Housing for a Healthy California, No Place Like Home, and the California Housing Accelerator Program.

To qualify for district assistance, families must already have children enrolled in a Fresno Unified school. They will be evaluated on factors in addition to their homelessness, including whether they are living in a motel or shelter or are transient, are fleeing domestic violence, are earning 30% or less of the area median income, or whether adults or children in the family have severe mental or emotional disorders.

The district would finance the apartments’ rent through its Community Schools program, which provides health clinic and social service outreach to families at select schools in the district.

More Than Housing

According to the district, families selected for the district-subsidized Crossroads Village housing will also be provided “a range of wraparound services designed to reduce chronic absenteeism, improve academic performance, and promote social-emotional well-being.”

The project would provide housing for only a tiny portion of the district’s unhoused students. The district reported that more than 800 students in the 2023-24 school year lacked housing, and 707 were still actively enrolled.

Students who lack stable housing are more likely to be chronically absent or be suspended, and less likely to graduate from high school than peers whose families have homes.

The Project Homekey partnership will work with Fresno Unified to share data about the tenant students’ education, wellness, and the family’s financial outcome to evaluate the program’s success.

The public portion of Wednesday’s board meeting is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. The meeting will be in the second-floor board room of the Education Center at M and Tulare streets in downtown Fresno.

Related Story: Fresno Homeless Housing Conversion a Model for the State, Mayor Says

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Let’s assume that there’s a theoretical problem that needs to be addressed with a plan of action. Logically, such a plan would define the problem, declare what goals must be reached, list actions to reach the goals and, most importantly, identify the necessary logistical and financial tools required.

By Dan Walters

CalMatters

Opinion

Humankind’s many armed conflicts have proven that plans lacking all of those elements often fail.

The allied invasion to end Nazi domination of Europe on D-Day, June 6, 1944, is a spectacular example of a meticulously detailed action plan that worked brilliantly. Conversely, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union ultimately failed because its planners underestimated the opposition and failed to account for how the German army could be supplied, particularly during the harsh Russian winter.

California’s most stubborn crisis, one that looms large in the minds of taxpayers and voters, is the state’s worst-in-the-nation level of homelessness. Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators have spent many billions of dollars on homelessness, but the number of unhoused Californians has continued to rise, approaching 200,000 in the latest count.

Newsom’s Homelessness Action Plan

His administration’s latest effort, unveiled this month, is the “Action Plan for Preventing and Ending Homelessness in California 2025–2027.” It was drafted by his Interagency Council on Homelessness, which a year ago was excoriated by the state auditor’s office for failing to consistently track and evaluate the state’s homelessness spending and “ensure accountability and results.”

The auditor’s report undercut Newsom’s strenuous efforts to defend his record on homelessness and shift blame for failure to local governments which, he said, hadn’t spent state appropriations wisely.

In an introduction, Newsom hails the new action plan as “not just a report of our investments, but a directive for continued accountability and action towards specific quantifiable goals.”

Is it?

While the plan’s 100-plus pages lay out — with great repetition — lofty goals for housing the unhoused and expanding social and medical services to prevent more people from slipping into homelessness, it fails to credibly specify how they will be achieved.

One of its stated goals is to “permit more than 1.5 million homes, with no less than 710,000 of those meeting the needs of low- and very low-income households.” To achieve that in three years, the rate of housing construction would have to increase five-fold, which is not only physically impossible but would require something like $1 trillion in investments from public or private sources.

The housing and social and medical services the plan says are needed to effectively end homelessness would cost countless billions of dollars, but the plan doesn’t put price tags on its goals or actions to achieve them. Nor does it lay out how any of the money would be raised when the state faces chronic multibillion-dollar budget deficits.

A day after the plan was released on March 12, the California State Association of Counties issued a lengthy white paper that didn’t mention it specifically but nevertheless cited “critical flaws in our current broken system” and called for “smart policy solutions to address them.”

The paper lamented that “no single entity is explicitly responsible for ensuring individuals experiencing homelessness receive shelter, mental health care, or transitional housing.” It also appeared to criticize Newsom, although not by name, for refusing to provide a dedicated stream of state aid to finance long-term homelessness efforts. Providing only annual grants, it said, “creates uncertainty, making it difficult for local governments to plan and sustain effective programs.”

Unfortunately, homelessness is not an isolated case of launching big projects without fully developed plans. The haphazard and sometimes failed attempts to incorporate digital information into state government services is one, and the much troubled bullet train project is another.

About the Author

Dan Walters is one of the most decorated and widely syndicated columnists in California history, authoring a column four times a week that offers his view and analysis of the state’s political, economic, social, and demographic trends.

CalMatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. For more columns by Dan Walters, go to calmatters.org/commentary.

Make Your Voice Heard

GV Wire encourages vigorous debate from people and organizations on local, state, and national issues. Submit your op-ed to bmcewen@gvwire.com for consideration.

The post Newsom’s New CA Homelessness Plan Leaves Out Some Important Details appeared first on GV Wire.

The forensic audit will examine the spending in 2023 and 2024 of the transportation, food services, and administration programs because they had the biggest deficits, along with Head Start. Wipfli, the firm awarded the $123,250 contract, was one of three bidders. The timeline for completion of the audit is 10 weeks.

Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, who replaced his mother, Amy Arambula, on the Fresno EOC board last fall, highlighted the agency’s deficit spending when he called for a forensic audit. He said the agency had been “hemorrhaging” money, depleting its reserves in recent years, and potentially jeopardizing its future.

But at Monday night’s board meeting Interim CEO Brian Angus, who was named in December to head the anti-poverty organization after the board decided not to renew CEO Emilia Reyes’ contract, reassured the board that the agency’s finances include a healthy real estate portfolio.

Angus, who has been engaging in cost-cutting that includes staff layoffs, said that the agency’s real estate is valued at $83 million. It includes the downtown headquarters on Mariposa Street.

“I put it in front of you to alleviate any idea that this agency was ever in any danger of going out of business,” he said. “We may have been in danger of selling off some properties, but we were never in danger of not being around in 10 years.”

Net Deficit Kept Growing

Fresno EOC, which oversees programs such as Head Start, the Local Conservation Corps, and WIC, began depleting its budget reserves several years ago when expenditures started outpacing revenues. Commissioners were notified as early as 2022 of net deficit spending. Angus was hired by the board to stem the red ink and rebalance revenues and expenditures.

Related Story: When Did Fresno EOC Finances Start Their Downhill Plunge?

Head Start is one area where the agency has seen shrinking revenues due to decreased enrollments. Last month, Angus told the board of the need to close several centers due to smaller enrollments.

“Those decisions weren’t made because of a reduction in budget. Those decisions were made because we couldn’t keep the site fully enrolled,” Angus said Monday. “And Head Start tells us if you don’t keep it at 95% enrolled, we’re going to take the money away from you.”

The agency’s Head Start program, which provides early education to underserved children, is competing with school districts that are getting state funds and encouragement to develop transitional kindergarten classes.

“It’s California telling Golden Plains (school district) that you need to serve 4-year-olds and Golden Plains going out and bringing kids into their school system, and those are the same kids we were serving before,” Angus said. “And so there’s only so many kids and there’s now two school systems and Head Start all competing for the same kid.”

Related Story: Will Fresno EOC Board Order Forensic Audit of Troubled Finances?

Erasing DEI Language

Head Start also is telling Fresno EOC and other agencies that provide childhood education services that they need to stop DEI training immediately in light of the recent presidential order, Angus said.

He had proposed revising the agency’s job descriptions to remove any language that refers to diversity, equality and inclusion in the expectation that President Donald Trump’s executive order to discontinue DEI could extend to that as well.

Board members continued to question whether the commission needed to take such draconian steps at this time, but after more discussion they approved a motion by board member Debra McKenzie to strike DEI language from job descriptions and also to work with staff to replace it with language that will reflect the agency’s values.

Several board members expressed their dissatisfaction and even anger in having to make the change but recognized that Fresno EOC could not run the risk of losing federal funding over the issue.

“I don’t question us rewording anything. I question us changing our fundamental practices because of a weaponized word, that’s what I question,” commissioner Alysia Bonner said. “Although, once again, I understand we get federal funds but it’s almost like we’re taking part (in) the lunacy that’s kind of going on in the world when we do this. We are silently saying we are agreeing with it.”

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