Is Carmichael a nice place to live?

[d_mond]

Originally Posted by wburg

Homeless people spare changing you in East Sac? Since when? Especially in the eastern part of East Sac, it is very rare to see street folks at all. Considering the number of thrift stores I see opening up in Carmichael, I'd suspect more spare-changing going on there, only they work in the middle of the street because nobody in Carmichael actually walks on the sidewalks (where there are sidewalks--many streets don't have sidewalks there.)

I own a restaurant in East Sac on J Street. As much as I wish there were no homeless people in East Sac. There are homeless people throughout East Sac. I deal with them on a fairly regular basis. My restaurant in in the eastern part of East Sac. The problem isn't just confined to Mc Kinley Park as some here may wish to believe.

The homeless people are in East Sac for a number of reasons. To get by homeless people need somewhere to sleep and they need some place to eat.

For sleeping, there are several places for them to sleep. They will sleep along the rail road tracks, along the overpass near Elvas and in the space behind CSUS. They may even sleep behind the shops or offices in East Sac.

People blame the various food banks for the homeless problem, but even if there were no food banks, there probably still would be homeless people in East Sac.

If you are hungry enough, you will dumpster dive. I see evidence of homeless people even more often than I see homeless people. Its fairly common to see a mess out by the trash cans where someone has been dumpster diving. When begging isn't working, they are going to dumpster dive. Its also not uncommon to find some urine or poop back near the trash cans. Its also not unheard of to find someone sleeping near the trash bins.

You can try to lock the trash bins, but its pretty easy for homeless guys to break the locks on the trash bins and they will if they are hungry enough.

The big reason that homeless people are so much more common in East Sac than in areas than in areas comparably wealthy as them in Carmichael or Fair Oaks is that Carmichael and Fair Oaks have lots of mini malls and East Sac doesn't.

In a mini-mall, the cost of hiring a security guard can be shared by all of the tenants of the mini-mall. Where I am at in East Sac, I would have to pay this expense on my own and its just too expensive.

The other thing is that in place like Fair Oaks or Carmichael, the security guard is actually going to be more effective.

From the prospective of homeless guy, the ideal place to beg is on the sidewalk right next to the store entrance. That is where all of the customers have to pass to go to the shop. Second best is when people are getting out of there cars (there is an implicit threat that if you don't give them cash they might key your car after you leave)

In a mini-mall, there are really two sidewalks. There is a public sidewalk next to the street and a private sidewalk, next to all of the stores in the mini-mall.

In East Sac if I call the cops about the homeless guy spare changing my customers on J Street, there really isn't that much they can do. Panhandling is considered free speech on public property. So he can pretty much linger in front of my restaurant as long as he wants to.

In a mini-mall if a homeless guy is panhandling on the private sidewalk in front of the shops, its trespassing, same thing if he is panhandling on the parking lot, it is also trespassing. He can legally panhandle on the public sidewalk adjacent to the street, but he will be dealing with people in their cars often with the windows rolled up, not a really good place to panhandle.

Thus in Carmichael and Fair Oaks, if your mini-mall hires private security, they are much more useful to the shop owner at protecting the stores customers from the adverse effects of homeless people. Security can tell the homeless guy to leave and if he doesn't they can have him arrested for trespassing. In East Sac on public streets and sidewalks there really isn't much legally that private security can do, so again that makes that hiring private security less cost effective.

In a mini-mall, once you have a security guard if you spot a homeless guy near your shop, you call him and tell him to tail the homeless guy until he leaves.

So while the homeless guys just need to wait me out to get to my garbage cans to dumpster dive, the homeless guys have more problems waiting out the mini-mall security.

The other issue is proximity. Mini-malls have much larger trading radii. If a homeless guy gets chased out of one mini-mall in Fair Oaks or Carmichael, he may need to walk several miles to find the next one. In East Sac, the homeless guy doesn't need to walk as far for his next meal. If one shopkeeper is very vigilant, he just needs to walk to the next one who is less vigilant.

For those types of reasons homelessness is always going to be a bigger issue in East Sac than in areas of similiar income levels in more suburban neighborhoods like Carmichael or Fair Oaks.

Homeless advocates like to portray the problems of homelessness as a regional problem. In some respects they are probably right, but in other respects that really isn't the case. The reason shop keepers in Oak Park, East Sac, Land Park and Midtown are more responsive to issues of homelessness than shopkeepers in places like Roseville, Rocklin, Carmichael and Fair Oaks is that the negative consequences of homelessness are felt much less in those suburban communities.

[wburg]

Interesting to hear that perspective, d_mond...I am in East Sac quite a bit and don't see many street folks compared to midtown or downtown, but when I go farther out into the suburbs I see them in the middle of intersections with signs quite often. But then, I'm not there full-time so I'm sure there are sides of East Sac I don't see. Thanks for your insight.

Personally, having grown up in the suburbs, I'd rather be spare changed than live in a neighborhood dominated by mini-malls, but that's a personal choice. Maybe it comes from being hassled by mall cops growing up.

[NorCal Dude]

A lot of people fail to realize just how planned most autocentric suburbs are. They are designed by their very nature to keep various elements out.

[wburg]

Indeed...they are effective at keeping me out!

[d_mond]

One of the big reasons I suspect the homeless population is so high in midtown and downtown is the fairly high density of restaurants.

From my experience, I am pretty sure that almost all of the calories that an average homeless guy is getting is coming from dumpster diving. Its probably an urban myth that spare changing is this fairly lucrative endeavor, especially in this region. There isn't enough foot traffic on a consistent enough basis, almost anywhere in the region to support the number of people in this community without adequate food or housing.

They pretty much have to resort to the dumpsters.

I suspect the reason the problem is more acute in midtown and downtown is just the concentration in the number of restaurants in those locations.

People tend to assume that trash is trash, but I think homeless people see different trash sources differently and I think they value restaurant trash much more highly.

Restaurant trash is pretty high quality stuff. Every night we empty out all of the trash cans in the building. If a bag gets full before the end of the day,we will change it then too. In short our trash is fairly fresh. That means the food on the top layer of trash dumpster is pretty fresh. Probably no more than 24 hours old and possibly much more fresh than that. At home, people generally don't take out the trash until the bag is full. The trash in your kitchen might be sitting there for a couple of days before it goes out in the bin (meaning its more likely to have mold etc).

Additionally the food in our dumpsters is of a different character to the food in residential trash. At home you throw stuff away largely because its out of date or spoiled. At a restaurant most of the trash is because someone elected to not take a doggie bag home with them. The food at a restaurant is comparatively wholesome. There is also less issues of cross contamination. At home to fill the kitchen trash can, you might empty the contents of the bathroom and office trash containers. You might also dump the kitty litter box into the trash before you put in the bin outside.

At a restaurant, the contamination is mostly paper napkins and possibly wrappers from straws. Its not ideal, but its less disgusting than what you would find in residential trash. The contents of the trash bags in the restaurant bathrooms aren't commingled with contents of the trash bags from the dining room or the trash from the dining room. Since everything is already in plastic bags at the restaurant, the staff sees no reason to consolidate the contents of these different bags into one bag.

As long as the homeless guy is sticking to the top layer of trash in my trash bins, he is getting comparatively fresh prepared food. As long as he sticks with the trash bags from the dining room and not the bags from the bathroom or the kitchen, all of the food he eats is fairly fresh and surprisingly well prepared (no raw meat).

If he hits a residential trash bin, the trash in the bags might already be several days old, it might have mold, so its more disgusting.

The spare changing stuff I think is mostly to get everything they can't easily find in a trash bin from a restaurant. Booze, drugs, and matches stuff like that.

You may find homeless guys in the street holding up signs at intersections, but that activity is treated differently than pan handling on public sidewalks. On the public sidewalk, pan handling is free speech because everyone has the right to stand around on the public sidewalk and if they are holding a sign up asking for money, that doesn't somehow criminalize there status. But if they are in the middle of the intersection, the police can arrest them for interfering with traffic. The argument being that the police aren't arresting them for holding up a sign asking for money, but because its a threat to the public safety for people to be loitering on the traffic island (drivers can't see stoplights changing, etc).

Thus begging in the burbs is again a less ideal option for the homeless guy.

[wburg]

Unfortunately there are a couple of problems with that restaurant theory...most restaurants in the central city lock their dumpsters precisely to avoid having street folks dumpstering for their dinner. Plus, many KFC restaurants and a few other fast-food joints (mostly found in the suburbs) have an unofficial policy of setting out leftover food at closing time for street folks. There are a few exceptions, like the Co-Op setting out its day-old baked goods, but for the most part diving at restaurants can be tough. Other places regularly pour bleach on their trash to discourage pickers. Guys diving for chow typically go for open trash cans where people dump the remains of their half-eaten lunch.

The central city has a lot of street folks precisely because it is walkable. Really, the only way to make a place uninviting to street people is to make it uninviting to people, and that's the suburbs all over. A car-centric environment is like pedestrian repellent--easy to get around with cars, no fun to walk around. People like shade, places to sit, things to do and see, the company of other people. Since homeless people are people, they like those things too.

Hassle is another factor--people in the central city tend to freak out less in the presence of street folks, and people generally end up going where they are less uncomfortable and hassled less often. While having pink hair or facial piercings is, I suppose, more common nowadays than when I was young, you'd be hassled in the suburbs but downtown it was just accepted. Looking funny is less unacceptable than it used to be, but looking poor is still enough to make you a target in the suburbs. Suburban cops get bored easy, so things like rousting street folks is higher up on their list of priorities than an urban cop.

And, of course, street folks come downtown during the day because their customers are there. They spare-change because people give them money, primarily office workers who want to feel better about themselves. If nobody gave them change, they wouldn't be there--but they do, so there they are. It's simple economics--they are following the market and avoiding hassle, same as anyone else. And I regularly see guys spanging in the street in the suburbs, because that's where the market is--they may get told to move along eventually, but often there are enough guilty motorists to make it worth their while.

[d_mond]

I have locks on the trash bins in my restaurant. But they are an incomplete solution. The locks on the trash bins are fairly easy to break.

The trash hauling company wants you to use there locks so that there drivers have access to the trash bins with a common key/standard combinations. So you are limited both in the quality of the locks on the trash bins and also dependent on the trash company to supply you with a new lock when the old one is broken. Some restaurant owners will put there own key on the trash bin locks while waiting to get a new lock from the trash company others don't bother.

The problem with pouring bleach or rat bait in the trash is liability. If someone dies you will get sued for intentionally killing someone and you might face criminal prosecution as well. You also personally have to deal with the fact that you killed someone. As a restaurant owner, I am not thrilled about homeless people hanging around my business. But as I human being, I am not really willing to kill someone because they are so desperate that they are eating out of my trash cans either.

I am not saying that the other factors you mentioned are helpful for the homeless guy, but I think the restaurants are the big driving factor.

Downtown, you have a lot of people out and about during rush hour at lunch and in some neighborhoods for special events like Second Saturdays, but the rest of the time, the streets can be fairly quiet. To spare change, you need people to get money from and for a large part of the day, there aren't that many people out and of the people out, a lot of the people outside aren't going to give out cash. So for most of the day spare changing isn't really a good money maker.

Lastly, a lot of restaurants won't serve homeless guys, (We don't. I want to keep from destroying the bathrooms, the smell offends, lingers and drives out other paying regular customers. I want the people in the dining room to not be spare changed) so again even if they had cash, it still wouldn't allow them to buy food.

But if they hit my trash can's at night, that will supply food for two possibly three meals. Eat what is immediately available and use the napkins to wrap food for later. If the lock at the restaurant stays off for several days, then breaking that lock on the restaurant trash bin may have fed them for several days.