I visited Sacramento's newest tent city Thursday morning. It stretches about a half mile on the dry side of the American River levee where the river meets North 10th Street. There are about 100 tents there, spread out along the fence line in clusters behind a series of warehouses and parking lots.

When I visited, the place was surprisingly neat. Campers had erected a makeshift toilet. Their excrement, collected in big plastic garbage bags, is deposited in the restrooms at the Loaves & Fishes complex. They carry their trash out, too, to a Dumpster there.

The homeless people I met there were what I expected. Half the men I interviewed had spent time in prison, some of them more than half their lives.

Others appeared to be mentally ill. Andrew Hankins told me he was 21 years old. He could not look at me but stared at the ground, confused, almost catatonic. I met a 24-year old woman who told me she had been a special-ed student at Elk Grove High School. Child Protective Services had taken her 4-year-old daughter from her recently. She lived in a tent with her dogs and was on a waiting list for housing.

A woman who called herself Butterfly insisted she was not homeless, that she was a "pioneer." She ranted loudly at reporters visiting that day, flitting from one subject to another. Her fellow campers told me she was a gifted cook who prepared communal meals for them.

I met an out-of-work truck driver who said he couldn't afford to pay his traffic tickets and lost his job and his commercial driver's license. I met an out-of-work carpenter and another unemployed man who said he used to work in a mattress factory in Oakland that closed recently. Before that job, he'd worked as a roofer. I met a mechanic who said his tools were stolen.

The campers I met told me they have no place else to go, no families to take them in and the shelters are full. They have come together at this spot for self protection, for warmth and for companionship.

The debate rages about what local governments should do to help the homeless. The people I met were not seeking government handouts. They just want what they call "safe ground" – a legal place to camp, permission from authorities to lay their heads down at night, somewhere, anywhere they won't be arrested and their possessions confiscated.

It's a cliché, I know, but as a Christian it's hard for me at this season not to think of the Biblical Mary and Joseph looking for shelter.

If they had not found that stable and had slept on a riverbank instead, would the cops at Bethlehem have rousted them?

Homeless advocates who oppose safe ground complain that a legal tent city creates a two-tiered housing standard, one for the destitute and another for everybody else. But it's a false argument. For the people camping illegally, it's tent city or nothing.

Other opponents believe safe ground will only enable the homeless lifestyle, which – like no-questions-asked shelters and soup kitchens – perpetuates addiction and sloth. To them I say, think of safe ground as self protection. If Sacramento creates a legally sanctioned campground, with toilet facilities and a Dumpster, the homeless don't have to trash the American River Parkway or sleep in alleys behind homes.

Finally, I too believe that tent cities are inadequate solutions. Ultimately, California and its communities need to support a strong mental health system and build permanent housing for the very, very poor who will always be among us. It can be one-room cottages, efficiency apartments, single rooms with communal baths and kitchens, but it must be safe ground, a place where the poorest of the poor can just be.

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