Border-crossing journalism from the Sacramento Valley
Sidebar to part II in ChicoSol series on homelessness in 2023.
On a Friday morning in September, North State Shelter Team (NSST) volunteers keep the mobile shower unit running during their weekly visit to the alternate site campground. Hope Commons Church has brought coffee and rolls for unhoused campers. Suddenly, a ping ping ping interrupts quiet conversations.
by Peter Schurmann, Ethnic Media Services
posted Feb. 7
The Eaton-Cohasset homeless encampment sits on Chico’s northern edge, a motley assortment of weathered tents, a couple of dumpsters and a port-o-potty that juts up from the muddy gravel.
With hate crimes targeting racial, religious, and sexual minorities on the rise nationwide, residents here say they’re being targeted for another reason: because they’re homeless.
by Lindajoy Fenley and Leslie Layton
Alexandra Wynter is feeling optimistic – even in the middle of a global pandemic that has made a difficult life even more difficult for many women.
As a volunteer coordinator for an outreach program run by Chico’s DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), the pandemic has given her an opportunity to build relationships with unhoused women — she prefers “unhoused” to the stigma attached to “homeless” — throughout the community whose lives have been made even more precarious by the COVID-19 crisis.
