Protecting Possessions For City's Homeless Strains Resources

[The Straight Story]

Protecting Possessions For City’s Homeless Strains Resources
By MATTHEW ARTZ (11-12-04)

Davida Coady welcomes just about anybody into her drug and alcohol rehabilitation program at the Berkeley Veterans’ Building, but she isn’t rolling out the red carpet for the building’s newest arrival.

The city is spending $50,000 to move its storage locker program for homeless people into the veterans’ building by the beginning of next year and will spend an extra $45,000 a year to keep it operating.

“The lockers are such an incredible waste of money,” said Coady, whose program, Options Recovery Services, receives $54,000 a year from the city. She fears that the lockers, slated for the building’s courtyard will expose her clients to drug dealers, physical violence and vermin.

“I’ve only known one client who ever had a use for a locker,” she said. “When we’ve helped other people clean them out it’s been just garbage, drugs, needles and syringes.”

In a city that by the most recent estimates is home to more than 800 homeless people, dealing with their possessions can be a divisive and expensive proposition.

This year, for instance, the City of Berkeley initiated a new program to store shopping carts and other items which appeared to belong to the homeless in a refrigerated shipping container stored underneath I-80 on University Avenue.

City policy calls for keeping such property for 90 days so the owners have a chance to claim it. The city spent about $8,000 to buy the container and will spend an extra $3,000 a year to refrigerate it so that perishable goods left inside the carts don’t spoil, said Deputy Public Works Director Patrick Keilch. Additionally, he said, the two city workers who pick up an estimated 1.5 tons of abandoned property each day—two-thirds of which is estimated to be left behind by homeless people—cost the city a combined $150,000 a year.

rest here:
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=11-12-04&storyID=20073

[Systematic Chaos]

1. Only 800? Sounds like frickin' paradise!

Here in Vegas the most conservative estimates that I've seen put the figure at around 14,000 to 17,000. Granted, this is a gambling town that exists to ruin people, but still.... :(