Freedom Sleepers # 93 - Sleep-Out to End the Sleeping Ban

The Freedom Sleepers will be sleeping at City Hall again tonight. Please join us!

Many people are being driven out in to the rain and their belongings taken by Rangers and Police. This must stop. Freedom Sleeper Abbi Samuels was arrested last week filming the police forcing those sleeping under the City Hall awning to move out into the rain. As you can imagine trying to stay warm and finding a way to dry one's blankets after spending the night standing in the rain.

There is also a All-In: A Community Seeks Solutions to Homelessness meeting at tonight at 6:00 at the Santa Cruz Public Libraries - Downtown Branch, 224 Church St, Santa Cruz

Other Freedom Sleepers events this week
Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - 6:00 PM
Freedom Sleepers Movie at UCSC
Kresge Seminar Room #159, UCSC, Porter-Kresge Rd, Santa Cruz

Monday, April 24, 2017 - 6:00 PM
Freedom Sleepers Movie
American Tin Cannery #209, 150 Ocean View Blvd, Pacific Grove

There are solutions to ending homelessness in Santa Cruz but city and county leaders do not have the political will to take the steps needed. Today's Santa Cruz Sentinel reports on the Bob Lee Partnership for Accountability Connection and Treatment program or PACT.

"PACT participants represent “a small subset of the local homeless population that tends to have a high proportion of arrests, citations and use of emergency medical services,” according to the evaluators."

"In the year before they joined the program, the 153 people reached by PACT accumulated 1,531 citations, 458 ambulance runs, 545 emergency room visits at Dominican Hospital, 1,054 jail bookings and 7,165 nights in jail. These services cost $1.99 million."

"Some 25 percent of the citations were for sleeping outdoors, 16 percent for open containers of alcohol, and 8 percent for smoking in no-smoking zone. Other citations were for remaining on bus or park property after being asked to leave and sitting or lying on a sidewalk."