JoB
DBP..
the tent cities are not overseen by their hosts..
they are hosted.. church’s provide the space
although the host church generally does make an effort to interact with the tent city while they are camped at their church
they are not overseen by the host church
in fact, tent city residents are required to attend services at churches other than the hosting church
to build relationships that will provide future tent city hosts
the benefit to the residents of being hosted by a church is that while a camp is hosted at a church it is more likely that church members will interact with the camp and with individuals.. which means there is informal oversight that would not otherwise exist…
in addition, i believe both tent cities have outside volunteer organizations that interact with the tent cities on a regular basis, regardless of where they are hosted.
I believe that the core of one of those organizations has been instrumental in backing Camp Unity when it broke off from The tent city on the eastside…
i get the numbers on the two tent cities mixed up..
I believe this is the largest moderating factor that Nickelsville lacks. Even though some of the church organizations who currently volunteer at Nickelsville do communicate with one another, there is no central basis for communication and coordination..
and more important, no central basis for sharing the information seen by the informal eyes who visit Nickeslville.
I did try to form a charitable organization to do just that..
but my health deteriorated and in spite of a couple of volunteers who were putting together a killer website, i was unable to get it off the ground.
The same church that put Nickelsville’s meal calendar on the web is trying to do something similar for the camp volunteers.
It just now occurred to me that i ought to get the web developers and that church together since i believe i am still paying for hosting that partially constructed site…
anyway.. you asked for clarification of the difference between the tent cities and encampments..
as i understand it…
tent cities are pretty much regulated by existing state law which i believe requires a church related host…
encampments on the other hand .. if the mayor’s proposal had been adapted… could have been hosted by any organization that had a two year continuous track record of successfully hosting homeless people…
The bad news is that given the time limitations for the existing statutes for legal encampments, the proposed legislation drastically narrowed the field of allowable hosts..
pretty much limiting it to SHARE in the non-church related category.
The encampment proposal would have further limited where encampments could have been placed…
I understand that most of the existing host sites for the existing tent cities would not qualify under the proposed encampment rules…
and i believe that the encampment rules would have ruled out the tent cities whose legal charters expired last year anyway…
I haven’t heard if/how those contracts were renewed.
that is just my understanding.