Palms Inn
a Success
Yes, there are more sheriff calls to this property than your usual apartment complex (“Calls for Help,” July 31), but have you considered that the Palms Inn is actually saving the taxpayers money by getting people off the streets and thus cutting down on utilization of ambulance, emergency room, overnight hospitalization, and sheriff responses?
A main purpose of the “housing first” model is to put a roof over the head of the most vulnerable homeless who are costing the city hundreds of thousands in emergency service utilization in order to cut back on these costs. Not to mention all of the moral reasons, which should be reason enough to intervene.
The Palms ultimately benefits law enforcement by cutting down on utilization. I would be interested in the statistics about sheriff responses in Santa Rosa since the Palms inception, and utilization of services among Palms residents previous to moving in versus six months or a year in.
And yes, on-site mental health services would be fantastic and I fully support that, but there are on-site case managers through Catholic Charities and the VA, it is not a free-for-all. These residents have a level of support and access to services.
Sorry if this seems defensive I just feel like this is textbook cherry-picking of the data, and contains some language that is commonly used to disparage the efforts of combating homelessness, at least in the first half. This site is portrayed as some huge inconvenience to law enforcement.
I believe in this project and am willing to put my money where my mouth is.
Santa Rosa
Poignant Punks
I really appreciate the amount of research that went into this article “Mosh Split,” July 31). I felt like I was in Santa Rosa and feeling the crisis. Nice piece glad I read it! I really hope they continue to push music and arts into the community. It’s not easy rebuild people’s spirits after a fire.
Via Bohemian.com
CDs for Me
I’ve been an audiophile for 43 years. I have over 700 CDs that I’m ripping for my favorite songs only, and am looking to expand my collection. So imagine my horror when I found out that about the only music store left with a decent collection of CDs for sale is The Last Record Store (“A Positive Spin,” Aug. 1). I have driven all over Sonoma and Marin counties, and am finding that everyone else is going the LP route and dropping CDs. I say horror not because I have anything against the resurgence of LPs, but having been a major collector of LPs up until 33 years ago, there a lot of downsides to them that perhaps many have not thought through. On the short list, they are bulky and take up a lot of room, they melt, they scratch and they can’t be played on your car system. The new sales pitch is that they sound better then CDs, but that depends on the recording. But what finally turned me off of LPs in the mid-80s was problems getting even newly pressed LPs that were not defective. I remember in 1985 I returned Boz Scaggs’s first album nine times for scratches or skips. It was at that point that I said “never more.” I went CD, and I’m not going back. Good luck to the rest of you with your LPs.
Via Bohemian.com
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