The Invisible Homeless

With the holidays just around the corner and big box stores bombarding us with sale advertisements, it seems that we are losing sight of what the season is supposed to be about. We need to get back to basics and be thankful for what we already have because there are many people out there who do not even have a place to stay for the holiday season.

Today, there is close to 10,000 homeless people living within Sonoma County with much of that population concentrated in and around the Santa Rosa area. While it seems that resources and donations have increased for the homeless over the past few years through Catholic Charities of Santa Rosa and other local organizations, many of those services are concentrated within that specific area. There is still a large portion of the homeless population that remains invisible because they are dispersed into rural parts of the county where they tend to go unnoticed. The issue here is not so much the lack of services but the way they are being distributed. With the surge of donations and volunteers due to the holidays, there should be some way to distribute help beyond Santa Rosa to the invisible homeless.

Rebecca Vazquez

Rohnert Park