The Fresno Ministry of Truth

The Fresno Ministry of Truth
By Jeremy Weir Alderson

I’m not cut out for this, or at least, maybe I should say, my fantasies are mutually exclusive, you know, kind of like a guy who wants to have his wife and his mistress in bed together but who missed the step of telling either one about the other. In my case, well, not only do my fantasies not get along with each other, but they aren’t that much fun to begin with.

Me, I want to change the world and, yes, while it would be nice to implement my ideas on why there ought to be cheap vegetarian entrees at every roadside restaurant and golf pros should be forbidden to wear shorts, I’ll settle for just getting all the homeless people into houses. Unfortunately, my idea of a person who ought to be engaged in this pursuit is a combination of Will Rogers and Gandhi, someone who radiates love, good will, and compassion for the foibles of mankind. But that’s not me. There are some people who just plain piss me off, and it seems like a bunch of them are running the City of Fresno.

Let me back up a bit. In 1998, I was the host of a weekly radio show in central New York, where I wasn’t important enough to explain to anybody why I wasn’t important. But by that time, I had already been writing about and talking about homelessness on the radio for ten years. So when I got the chance to do a long broadcast about homelessness, I grabbed it. I put a desk outside on the Commons of Ithaca, New York (to dramatize the fact that people are outside in the cold) and raved and ranted all night about why we ought to care about homelessness. I think right in that first "Homelessness Marathon" I used a phrase that I’ve used ever since, "When that canary dies in the coal mine, it’s not a veterinary problem."

That first broadcast really stank, but people loved it. Go figure. So I’ve been going around the country ever since, originating Homelessness Marathons in Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Atlanta, among other places, and the broadcast has grown and grown. Last year we were on over 110 stations coast-to-coast with another 30 or so stations in Canada airing a parallel Canadian Homelessness Marathon. This next one, originating from Fresno starting at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, February 20^th, will be our tenth broadcast, but don’t worry, I long ago stopped haranguing people about why they should care, because I realized most people already do. If we have a problem in this country, it’s not with our people but with our leaders, and that, naturally enough, brings me to Mayor Autry, one of those leaders who makes me feel like something less than a saint.

I think any honest assessment would have to conclude that, when it comes to homelessness, Mayor Autry does the wrong thing, lies about it, gives obscene rationales for his conduct and presides over an administration well stocked with people eager to do his conscienceless bidding. It’s a disgraceful record, but what would anybody expect? We wouldn’t have hundreds of thousands of people sleeping on our streets if something hadn’t gone deeply wrong with our nation.

Now don’t get me wrong, as a visitor from the east, I really like Fresno, and I didn’t come here to pick on the city. No city can solve the problem of homelessness by itself, and we consider other factors in selecting a site besides local homeless policy. Here in Fresno, we’re fortunate to have KFCF (88.1 FM) for an affiliate and Mike Rhodes, a terrific reporter and the editor of the Community Alliance newspaper, as a guide and liaison. But, sure, knowing that Autry was waging a war of aggression against his own most vulnerable citizens made me want to rip off my secret-identity shirt and expose the initials "MOHA" on my chest (that stands for "Marginalized Old Hippy Agitator" in case it isn’t obvious).

On our broadcast, we’re going to be giving experts, callers, and the homeless, themselves, a chance to speak, so this may be my best personal soapbox, and what I really want to tell the good people of Fresno is that a policy like Autry’s cannot be implemented without an accompanying campaign of manipulation and misrepresentation. I’d like to concentrate here on some of the dishonest games that have been played with this community in general and with me in particular as I’ve tried to organize this broadcast. I’ll start with some items readers of the Alliance mostly know about and then move on to some things you haven’t heard.

The Game With The Sweeps

You probably all know this sorry history. First the city attacks homeless and destroys their possessions, then the city’s lawyers justify this conduct so unconvincingly that a Federal judge calls the city’s arguments "disingenuous:" and "dishonest," then the mayor insults the judge, calling his ruling "cavalier" and "veracity challenged" and suggests that the judge should "enter the real world." After the ruling, Autry insisted he had to order sweeps because kids were "watching [homeless] people have sex." But how could the judge have given weight to this scandalous behavior when no testimony to this effect was presented at trial?

And I remember standing with Rev. Noe Lopez, the anti-poverty pastor of the Mexican-American Baptist Church, who pointed at a lot and said there had been homeless people there and that it had been fine with him, but that they had been swept out anyway. The lot he pointed to was bounded by the church, a fence beyond which was the freeway, and an abandoned industrial building. In other words, according to Rev. Lopez, the city swept homeless people out of at least one area where there were no neighborhood kids at all.

Autry also claimed that a swept encampment was "a disease factory," though there was no testimony at trial about disease either. In fact, the mayor claimed in an interview that he had gone there the day before the sweep and "hugged people," so how worried could he have been?

Autry also derided the judge because, "This mattress that the judge says we should have gave back was riddled with everything from e. coli to hepatitis... something that it would take a hazmat suit to give back to that person." But, again, there was no testimony to this effect at trial, and one might be just the teensy tinsiest bit curious as to how come hazmat suits would be necessary to return belongings when they weren’t needed to confiscate them in the first place.

In other words, the evidence is that Mayor Autry is either a pathological liar or a political special Olympian, incapable of distinguishing truth from his own fictions. But that’s not the worst of his verbal sins. The worst is his claim that, "This action had to be taken on behalf of the homeless as well as anybody." Yes, he’s just siccing the police on poor people for their own good. In other words, in addition to tearing up the Constitution, as already determined in court, he wants to eviscerate the social contract which is the bedrock of our society.

In America, you’re supposed to have rights, and those rights are supposed to protect you from the predations of both the ill-intentioned and the well-intentioned. You’re not supposed to live in fear of some municipal monarch just because he thinks he’s got a better idea about how you should lead your life.

One reason Autry shouldn’t do to poor people what his wealthy campaign contributors don’t want done to them, is because what goes around does, indeed, come around. Mayor Autry had his armed minions rob the homeless for their own good, so why shouldn’t armed poor people rob the rich for their own good? Didn’t Jesus say it would be harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle? So what nicer thing could a poor person do for a rich one than take their money and bring them closer to God?

No, I’m not cut out for this work, but you don’t have to be a curmudgeon with MOHA on your chest to take exception to Autry’s policies. City Council President Jerry Duncan – a hero of this story for reasons I’ll come to later – told me he doesn’t think the mayor’s policies are working, and then he added that he views them as an "embarrassment" to the city. I couldn’t agree more.

The Numbers Game – Part One

Personally, I’m not a farmer, but I do live on a farm, and I know how it is in the country. Yup, when we’re not saying "aw shucks," we country folk can count up to ten, and if we’ve got all our toes, we can make it up to twenty. So golly gee, how come all these here city slickers working for the City of Fresno can’t count to two?

The "two" I’m referring to is the two contained in a particularly important section of the Fresno Madera Continuum of Care (FMCoC) Ten Year Plan To End Homelessness 2006-2016. Here’s what it says:

"The national Housing and Urban Development (HUD) office has, based upon research and nationally accepted generalizations, provided a formula for identifying regional estimated homeless populations (described above). Based upon National actual numbers that have been received, a generalization formula consists of 1-2% of an areas (sic) general population. To ensure a conservative and appropriate estimation for the Fresno and Madera areas, a 1% application was utilized…"

Unlike the mayor’s allegations about e.coli, hepatitis and public sex, this 1-2% figure really did play a part in the hearing about the city’s attacks on homeless encampments. There was some question raised about whether or not Fresno’s homeless actually had some better option that they were just choosing not to exercise, you know, like besides the tents that the city threw away they maybe all had second homes in the Bahamas. The evidence is indisputable that there isn’t enough shelter space, much less low-cost housing, for Fresno’s homeless, but the City has repeatedly tried to say otherwise.

Knowing just how many homeless people there actually are in Fresno is crucial to deciding this issue. So I wondered about that 1-2% figure, and in particular, I wondered how just invoking the words "conservative" and "appropriate" would permit the city to lop off the higher 2% figure altogether and arbitrarily drop the estimate of Fresno/Madera homeless down to just 1%. So I asked HUD if their study had provided any methodological basis for throwing away the 2% figure, and guess what, HUD disavowed this formula completely. The HUD public affairs office wrote, "HUD is most certainly not the source of this 1-2 percent homeless estimate." Hmm, what was that phrase of Autry’s? Oh yeah, it was "veracity challenged."

Needless to say, I tried to track down the source of the HUD citation in the FMCoC Plan. I wrote to Fresno’s Public Affairs Officer, Rhonda Jorn and she referred me to Karri Gordon who, I gather, was integral to the FMCoC work group, and Karri Gordon said she was passing my request along to an unnamed person who had actually written the plan document. That unnamed person never wrote me back, though, so after a month, I asked Karri Gordon again, and she said she’d see what she could do, and I finally got a response, but unfortunately, the answer I got left out the part about explaining where the HUD citation came from.

So I wrote again asking if we could now just say the HUD reference was in error. I got an email back from an applications specialist with the Fresno Housing Authority named Jenifer Fisher, who said, "the e-mail that you wrote has passed through my hands" (don’t ask me how), and that she thought it seemed "a bit confrontational." I said no, I was just trying to get a straight answer, could she help me, and by the way, what do the housing professionals working with the city think of the attacks on the homeless? Funnily enough, I never heard back from her either, so as of now, there simply is no explanation for how that HUD reference got into the FMCoC plan, much less how come they conservatively and appropriately chopped their estimate in half.

The Numbers Game Part Two

One thing I can say for both Rhonda Jorn and Karri Gordon is that they did forthrightly answer another question of mine, but unfortunately, it’s amazing how much their clear answers actually obfuscated.

The FMCoC Plan described another method that had been used to determine the number of homeless people in Fresno, and that involved "locally funded homeless-facility use statistics." The directors of two of the locally funded homeless facilities had testified on the city’s side at the court hearing, so I asked Rhonda Jorn, "does the City of Fresno make payments to Poverello House and/or the Rescue Mission for services rendered and, if so, for what?"

In a telephone conversation, Jorn told me that the answer was no. Other than contracting for the training of nine formerly-homeless "Ambassadors," there was no financial connection. And Karri Gordon wrote, "we do not pay the Fresno Rescue Mission or the Poverello House for anything."

Then somebody sent me a link to a 35-page document with the catchy title, "PROGRAMS/SERVICES DELIVERED TO PREVENT HOMELESSNESS IN FRESNO COUNTY – FY 2006-07." On the 16^th page there is an entry for the Craycroft Shelter, operated by the Fresno Rescue Mission. The program is described as a "DCFS contract for emergency shelter for children unable to return to their parent’s home," for which there are "24 beds contracted" for stays described as "Short-term (up to 30 days)." Most surprising, this record also reads, "Contracted amount: $983,000."

I queried Rev. Larry Arce, the CEO of the Rescue Mission, if he could confirm this, and unlike Gordon and Jorn, he didn’t have any problem. He wrote back, "Yes. It is run out of a separate 501c3 nonprofit." Now, since it is run out of a separate corporation, I suppose one could argue that, technically, Fresno doesn’t pay money to the Rescue Mission. Then again, arguments like that put Enron’s executives in the slammer. And apparently, this is a County not a City program (I had asked about the City, but in response to a County document). Either way, in my book$983,000 is a pretty hefty chunk of change to just fail to mention.

The City Hall Game

I’m putting on a show, and it’s axiomatic that, before you can put it on, you’ve got to have a place to put it. So I requested the use of the City Hall plaza. It seemed perfectly appropriate to bring homeless people to the front of City Hall and have them speak to the nation from there. After all, homelessness is a political issue, and it should be addressed through the political organs of our society.

City Council president Jerry Duncan turned out to be a surprising ally. I’ve concluded that he’s either the last holdover of a Communist sleeper cell who doesn’t know the cold war is over or an honest politician trying to prove that the term "Honorable Conservative" isn’t an oxymoron. I’m not sure which of those is more likely, but however it is, Duncan clearly wants the Homelessness Marathon to be treated fairly. He told me that he had even told assistant City Manager Bruce Rudd that he wanted us treated the same as an "I Love Autry Marathon," and for a while there it looked like we were in.

In a disputed conversation, I say that Rhonda Jorn told me, by whatever words, that our use of City Hall would be no problem so long as we complied with the same rules as everybody else, which was fine with me, and she advised me that I should meet with Doug Dow, the City Hall facilities manager, to go over logistics. I met with Dow and he said there would be some mandatory charges for security and what not, and that he would make up an estimate. But when I called Dow for the estimate he told me that he had received a call from the Mayor’s office and been told that he had "better things to do," and that now this matter would be between the mayor’s office and Jerry Duncan. I asked Duncan what was up, and he said this was the first he’d heard of it.

What followed was more than three weeks of Duncan writing e-mails to City Manager Andy Souza and a whole cast of characters in the municipal administration, trying to get a straight answer about the availability of the City Hall site for our broadcast. He’s written to me, "I can’t tell you how frustrated I am," and "this is getting very confusing and more and more frustrating." At one point he wrote to Rudd about us, saying, "Last week you told me you would connect them up with someone with the information and the authority to get them the answers they seek. Have you done that yet?" The answer was no.

For her part, though, Rhonda Jorn said, "I don’ t believe I ever said you were ‘cleared’ to use the building. As with any other organization wanting to stage an event using City Hall Facilities, the ‘clearance’ would come from your end once you’ve obtained the proper permits, insurance and security you require for your event." That was the first time, after nearly four weeks, that anyone said anything to me about permits. Dan Waterhouse, who has worked with the Fresno Rainbow Pride Parade, filled me in on what this means. Apparently, we’re supposed to get a Special Event Permit, which takes 30 days to obtain, because the Fresno police have to a background check. We have to allow 30 days for the installation of our phone and data transmission lines, and we can’t order the installation for a site we’re not sure we’re going to get. So if Waterhouse is right, we’re probably already out of luck as far as City Hall is concerned, because we don’t have 60 days before the broadcast. But it’s not like anybody from the City has said one word to us so far about what we’re supposed to do. Were we treated just the same as an "I Love Autry Marathon?"

As I write these words, I don’t know where we’ll be. I do, however, know when we’ll be, so let me repeat, the Homelessness Marathon will begin at 4 p.m. on Tueday, February 20^th and end at 6 a.m. on Wednesday, February 21^st. And you’ll be able to hear it on KFCF, 88.1 FM. I hope you’ll be listening, no, I mean, I hope you’ll be listening.

I’m telling you, sometimes I wonder how come I’m so grumpy; and how come Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohandas Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln all got shot. But far be it from me to close on a note of such depressing speculation.

No, I want to make a positive contribution to the civic life of Fresno, and toward that end, I’d like to suggest that many of the City Departments I’ve encountered in planning the Homelessness Marathon could be consolidated. Surely the Fresno Office For Slandering the Poor, The Fresno Office of Fabricated Statistics, The Fresno Office of Plausible Deniability and the Fresno Office for the Unequal Use of Public Facilities could all be combined into a single Ministry of Truth. That might save the City a lot of money, and who knows, maybe it could be put toward places where Fresno’s homeless won’t have to live in fear.

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