1) Along with the building up of the soil that these acres along the Delta planted in tules and cattails accomplish, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, they are really beautiful.
An excerpt.
“On one side of the gravel road are hundreds of acres of corn. On the other is a much different crop that scientists hope will enable farmers to rebuild sinking islands in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, combat global warming and make a profit at the same time.
“The alternate field is full of tules and cattails that are being grown by the U.S. Geological Survey on about 15 acres on Twitchell Island, about 5.7 square miles of rich but fragile peat soil 30 miles south of Sacramento…
“The plants can grow high enough to dwarf the average adult. As they die and decay, they slowly build up the peat. The soil under the 15-acre site has risen 1 to 2 feet since the project was moved there in 1996.”
2) The Housing First approach (which we supported and Sacramento later adopted) to helping the chronic homeless—who are the majority of homeless who have camped in the Parkway in the North Sacramento, Cal Expo , Midtown area for years—has helped, reducing national chronic homelessness by 30% , according to a new report noted in this news article.
An excerpt.
“WASHINGTON -- The number of chronically homeless people living in the nation's streets and shelters has dropped by about 30 percent -- to 123,833 from 175,914 -- between 2005 and 2007, Bush administration officials said Tuesday.
“Housing officials say the statistics, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development collects each year from more than 3,800 cities and counties, may reflect better data collection and reporting and some variation in the number of communities reporting on an annual basis. But the officials attribute much of the decline to the "housing first" strategy that has been promoted by the Bush administration and Congress and increasingly adopted across the country.
“In that approach, local officials place chronically homeless people into permanent shelter -- apartments, halfway houses or rooms -- and then focus on treating addiction and mental and health problems. HUD defines chronically homeless people as disabled individuals who have been continuously homeless for more than a year or have experienced at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.”
