Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Bee reports on Homeless-People Whisperer

http://sacramentohomeless.blogspot.com/2009/03/bee-reports-on-homeless-people.html

Monday, March 16, 2009

Bee reports on Homeless-People Whisperer


Jvance Stewart, a Navigator of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, whom the Bee identifies as a people whisperer.
Jvance Stewart and his fellow Navigators are cited as homeless-people whisperers in a story titled "Workers quietly help street people, guide them toward housing" in today's Sacramento Bee.

Reporter Bill Lindelof tells us in his article that "Navigators are employed by the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, a nonprofit organization of property owners dedicated to improving the central business district."

A recent issue of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership newsletter, called insideDowntown, gives us this definition of Navigators:
The Navigator program's primary goal is to effectively reduce the homelessness downtown by connecting the underserved homeless population with social and health care services. By developing personal relationships with cooperative individuals, Navigators connect street homeless with local community service programs to increase their access to care and identify solutions to their homelessness.
Writes Lindelof in his Bee piece,
Navigators walk the streets daily and chat up the homeless. While Oprah Winfrey and the media recently focused on a tent city outside the city's core,the Downtown Partnership has worked for years to get street people in the city center into housing. [Jvance] Stewart, [55,] one of four Navigators, is admired for his sympathetic methods. Rita Spillane, the district attorney's community prosecutor for downtown, said Stewart seems to gently nudge the troubled into accepting help.

"He does a world of good for the downtown homeless population," Spillane said. "Affable, happy, helpful, humble, he's got it all. You've heard of horse whisperers; he's probably a people whisperer."

Navigators take homeless clients to Social Security offices, make telephone calls for them, contact family members, arrange transportation to doctors' offices - and work to find them temporary or permanent housing.
The Bee story goes on to tell several stories of Stewart helping, or attempting to help, homeless people downtown, within "the city's core, from Front Street to 29th Street."

 

Education for Liberation! Join Up!
Peter S. Lopez aka: Peta
Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THIRD-WORLD-NEWS/

http://www.NetworkAztlan.com




No comments: