A July 8, 2007 Redding, California news article related the death of a 51-year-old woman on a day when temperatures in Redding rose to a deadly 114 degrees. This article also quoted attorney Terry Francke of the Sacramento-based public records advocacy group, Californians Aware, as saying that "there is no rule justifying" Shasta County's refusal to provide the public with information about this woman's death, which includes their concealment of her name, where she lived, and the circumstances surrounding her death. Could this be part of Shasta County's herculean effort to deny the public access to information about the number of homeless people who die on our streets - which is even taken to the point of deliberately falsifying information on their death certificates? At least 25 people died in Shasta County in 2005 as a result of being homeless. However, representatives of both the Shasta County Coroner's Office and the Shasta County Department of Public Health informed me that this information "is no longer available" to the public because Shasta County is now assigning deceased homeless people an address deceptively listed as a "residence" on their death certificates. The public has an absolute right to know how many human beings are allowed to die on the streets of Shasta County for lack of adequate emergency shelter space and housing they can afford, even if that knowledge forces local officials to delay their next multi-million-dollar "beautification"project in the interest of saving lives.
Welcome to Redding CA Loaves and Fishes Ministry - Homeless Alliance
Welcome to Redding CA Loaves and Fishes Ministry - Homeless Alliance
