The city of Chico winds around one of the largest municipal parks in the country — Bidwell Park. Step off the sidewalk and enter the park, and the city seems to disappear. You’re under a tree canopy, on a street or trail lined with oaks, ferns and sycamores.read more
A mailer from the City of Chico with a survey to be returned by April 22 is a piece in a three-phase campaign to win support for a city-wide 1 percent sales tax. The survey asks city residents to rank their spending priorities in order of importance.
Chico is one of about eight “full-service” cities in the state that don’t have a local sales tax; it receives a small portion of state sales tax revenue only. Full-service cities provide public safety and other services.read more
Chico’s Patrick Newman and a small cadre of volunteers continue to serve unhoused community members coffee and donuts every Sunday — seven years after the project began — gathering quietly on the southeast corner of the fenced-off City Plaza in downtown Chico.read more
A settlement agreement in the lawsuit related to the city’s treatment of unhoused people, signed Friday by a federal judge, could end the spectacle of chaotic mass evictions that stranded campers who had nowhere to go.
Early last year, a newly-installed City Council began a series of sweeps in parks, near waterways and on patches of grass on public land.read more
A Chico nonprofit shut down an emergency hotel-based shelter program today, and this reporter was told to leave the property at Town House Motel where residents had been staying.
The program, funded by the CARES Act, placed unhoused people at high risk for COVID or COVID-related complications in motels and hotels. The shelter program was expected to stay in place until the end of January 2022, but was ended Nov. 30 after participants were given two weeks notice.read more
The winter sheltering organization Safe Space jumped into high gear today as a ferocious early storm flooded homeless encampments. But Safe Space said it was only able to shelter 35 of the hundreds of unhoused people living in encampments.
Siana Sonoquie, a Safe Space board member, said she was contacted early today by an unhoused resident of the Comanche Creek encampment who reported that the area was flooding, tree limbs were falling down and one person was missing. “We started looking for a church,” Sonoquie said. “We’re used to doing this now and have a pretty quick system, with protocols in place and a lot of practice.”read more