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Sunday, May 19, 2013
American River Parkway advocate: Park is 'no jewel'
by SacramentoPress Staff, published on January 20, 2011 at 6:19 PM
Storyline: American River Parkway
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american river parkway
bob slobe
business
camping
culture
homeless
north sacramento
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Trash, hypodermic needles and pornographic magazines litter a two-mile stretch of the American River Parkway in North Sacramento, and longtime advocate for the area Bob Slobe has seen enough.
“If you saw the devastation in the park, you’d go, ‘I can’t believe someone would let this happen,’ ” Slobe said.
He said the problem is due to illegal homeless camping in the area.
Slobe’s family owned the portion of the park, which stretches from Del Paso Boulevard and Northgate to Cal Expo, through its company, the North Sacramento Land Company, from 1910 - 1989.
As a park, he said it should be a place where families can go for recreation, but it’s no place he would envision taking kids.
“It’s just a cesspool,” he said. “You’re not going to go out walking with your kids and your dog here. This is the poorest part of the city. This should be where they come to recreate – to fish and walk. It’s just not fair. It’s not right.”
Slobe has been irked by the situation for decades, saying it was a trash pit by mid-1989, shortly after Sacramento County and The California Department of Fish and Game took over the property’s management.
Walking through the area on Monday, Slobe said he noticed that the camping has become more formalized, as wood chips have been laid down over bare ground.
“There’s roughly 200 tents out there, which means there are more than 200 people, and they have everything but toilets,” he said. “They’ve cleared the ground and put down wood chips.”
He added that the nightly campfires are fueled by trees that should be protected habitat spaces.
“Whatever I say, it doesn’t matter much,” Slobe said, “but the pictures say it all. The county has been calling this a jewel since the 1970s, but this is no jewel.”
To solve the problem, Slobe advocates that the existing laws that prevent camping be enforced.
“If you enforce the law, it forces municipalities to go back and find a real solution,” Slobe said. “This hiding our troubled world in the bushes is not a solution. It is not a temporary solution, and it is not a long-term solution. It’s no solution.”
All photos by Bob Slobe.
To see the full photo stream, click here.
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Thank you Bob Slobe and Sacramento Press!
The area around the Route 160 bridge and the railroad bridges is in effect a Containment Area.
We might as well just fence / wall off the section of the Park, from east of the gravel quarry to west of Business 80, and make it a "Safe Ground".
We would need to have a bike and hiking trail easement separated from the Safe Ground for passing through. It would need to be razor-wire fenced off, and probably elevated along the Levee, both to protect the bikers, hikers and joggers and to make the Safe Ground campsites more secure.
Bums caught for other illegal acts could periodically be sentenced to pick up the trash in and around their Safe Ground. Burning barrels could be provided, and the garbage would be fuel for the homeless fires.
Due to the generosity of our citizenry, our mild climate, and availability of services Sacrmento has taken on an outsize portion of the regions homeless.
I think the simple answer is that Sacramentans need to agree that providing partial support for an outsized homeless population (such as food and showers, but not shelter) is not an acceptable way to operate.
Sadly, the other conclusion I can draw from this is that the days of a taxpayer funded parkway may be over. It would seem the only logical funding mechanism would be direct user fees, with the proceeds used towards fee collection and maintenance. I don't like this answer, because this is an area that local governments should be able to support.
But since they are clearly unable to maintain the commitment they made to the Slobe family and the rest of us, user fees seem like the only option.
The photographs are troubling. Like any thrown-together group of people, the individuals vary, and there is no doubt that there are slobs and people with addictions of all sorts in the Sacramento homeless community. I wish the whole of us were in all ways better people, but the homeless ARE the undercaste. A lot of people have a multitude of personal problems and suffer a loss of meaning in their lives.
I would ask that Sacramento Press do a follow-up article, looking in on what's up with the much-vaulted Safe Ground effort in regard to illegal camping. If what is photographed are Safe Ground encampments [or, if it is determined they are not] then it might help with 'the way forward.'
Should there be a legal Safe Ground camp? Would proper behaviour be enforced, or would things fall into disarray, as things appear in the photographs.
I would be interested to see if answers could be found.
I would also want to know if Sacramento Press would be interested in hosting a mini-Forum, inviting a variety of homeless people [and NOT JUST SafeGrounders and the wacky radicals], and American River Parkway advocates to discuss what's going on.
As for the people speaking of "containment" . . . did you maybe live in Germany in the 1940's? I try in my life to be a bit more religious and caring in my attitude toward fellow human beings.
The Sacramento metro area is unique in having the American River Parkway and its' recreational opportunities right in its' backyard. Where else do you have a natural resource like the ARP walking distance from the city center and surrounding neighborhoods.
It is very sad and disappointing to see it degrade to this point.