Fox40 News recently had a story about a transitional home for parolees. A non-profit organization from South Sac called Inside Circle has been helping prison inmates learn how to restructure their lives once their sentences are over. Inside Circle has purchased property in Arden Arcade - on Norris near Clairidge - that will soon be used as a transitional living facility for parolees who have gone through the Inside Circle process while incarcerated.

We get it. You can't just release a prisoner and have them instantly become a functioning member of society. The concept of transitional living is to provide a process of adjustment into the real world, thereby minimizing the chances of recidivism and optimizing for prisoners re-entering society as upstanding, law-abiding citizens. The Inside Circle "Healing Home" will involve managing the recovery of recent parolees. It's serious stuff. They won't be planning keggers and beer pong parties. Here's what Inside Circle says:

OK, but let's first understand that the project is NOT in Sacramento, it is in unincorporated Sacramento County, famous for potholes, lack of transit service, run amok homelessness and inadequate law enforcement. The concept of transitional living might make sense, but WHERE the transitional living facility is located matters. Transitioning parolees can be expected to do the same things everyone else does out in the real world: look for employment; get a job and keep it; shop for food, clothing and other necessary supplies; go to the doctor/dentist; interact with other people and so on. In other words, they will become part of the community. Or maybe they won't, given the location of the "Healing Home" Their transitional residence isn't really near anything they will need to go to. It's a long hike to a grocery store, a longish bike ride to ARC, and - if they take the bus - an almost multi-day excursion to the county's medical facility or a job, if they can find one. The immediate neighborhood has numerous sidewalk gaps. There are three public schools within a 1/2 mile and a large church just down the street that also has a school. You have to ask why the location was chosen for Inside Circle's first experiment with this kind of facility. Why here in the unincorporated area, which Sheriff Cooper has declared "unsafe", where he says the response time for the highest priority 911 calls is more than 14 minutes? We're pretty sure the site wasn't selected so the parolees could play pickleball at the nearby Eastern Oak Park, where there is a Memorial for Danny Oliver, a fallen North Area Sheriff's Deputy.

The problem is not that parolees need a place to live - they do. Nor is it that an NGO is carrying the water to provide the transitional living facility. It is instead that the facility is off the beaten track in a quite neighborhood where you can't assume the parolees will achieve a successful re-entry to society by sitting in an Adirondack Chair reading a book. Beyond that, there is the additional problem that no one told the community about it. Legislator's offices were given a tour of the facility - including staff from the offices of two L.A. County legislators, from Senator Ashby (who doesn't represent the area but who played along with former Sac City Mayor Darrell Steinberg's successful attempt to push Sac City's problem homeless people into our community), and from our very own Assemblywoman Maggie Krell (who consistently avoids showing up in our unincorporated part of her District). We are grateful the news media was invited to do a story about the facility, or we would not have known about it. Apparently, it did not occur to anyone promoting the facility that a) the location isn't really functional and b) stealth isn't the best way to endear yourself to the neighborhood.

Bottom line: the project is in the wrong place and is being poorly implemented. What can you do about it?  Contact Supervisor Desmond (richdesmond@saccounty.gov (916) 874-5471), Sheriff Cooper (sheriff@sacsheriff.com  (916) 874-7146), Senator Roger Niello (Senator.Niello@senate.ca.gov (916) 651-4006) and your neighbors and friends. As they say, the more voices the better.