Don’t just manage homelessness — end it!
CRESCENT CITY, CA, AUGUST 8 — Seeking sustainable solutions to address homelessness, a concerned group of Del Norte County residents, supported by the True North Organizing Network, is launching a comprehensive campaign to end it — not just manage it — by rallying the community and critical stakeholders to the cause. Our group will meet with the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors at 10:00 AM on August 14, and with the Crescent City City Council at 6:00 PM on August 20.
For the past year, human beings without shelter have sought assistance in one form or another from Pastor Dana Gill Port of the United Methodist Church in Crescent City. “There are at least 156 homeless students in the Del Norte School District and it’s trending up,” Gill Port said. “We have as many as 500 homeless adults as well. It’s a crisis, and not just a crisis for the people closest to the pain. This is a moral crisis for our community as well.”
Equipped with sobering and hopeful information gained from 10 months of research on local homelessness and what other communities are doing to solve it, our group will encourage the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors and Crescent City City Council to pass resolutions making ending homelessness in our community a top priority. Our group will also invite officials to join in a community-wide collaborative effort to develop innovative and sustainable solutions to homelessness.
“People are suffering, and it’s impacting our entire community,” said group member and Crescent City resident Jill Lapple. “We don’t pretend to have all the answers, but we can’t keep pointing fingers at each other or demanding that the people who are homeless somehow solve the problem. The communities that are being successful are doing so by working together in a collaborative manner. That’s what we’re hoping to achieve with our effort here.”
True North supports local grassroots leadership and action to address important community issues. “People have more power than they realize”, says True North, Lead Organizer Mike Thornton. “We encourage people who care about making our community better by solving homelessness to come to the County Board of Supervisors meeting on August 14 at 10:00 AM, and the Crescent City City Council Meeting on August 20 at 6:00 PM, and show them that this is a priority for their constituents.”