Meet two residents of Camp Resolution, as key moments loom for Sacramento encampment

Residents Betty Edwards and Shonn Adams feel a sense of dread as the fate of Camp Resolution, a self-governing homeless encampment in North Sacramento, awaits a court hearing on Friday.

In Sacramento Superior Court, Judge Jill H. Talley will hear an application for a temporary restraining and preliminary injunction over the homeless nonprofit Safe Ground Sacramento’s request to terminate its lease on the North Sacramento property where the camp is located.

Safe Ground Sacramento informed the city of Sacramento in July that it would terminate the lease on Saturday, Aug. 10, in part because it was unable to obtain liability insurance for the camp.

The end of the lease could result in the clearing of the camp, which is also due for a safety inspection Friday morning, which could displace about 50 mostly middle-aged and older women who live there.

“A lot of people would lose their homes,” said Betty Edwards, a resident whose monthly social security check of nearly $1,000 hasn’t enabled her to find housing. “I don’t know why they don’t help us — give us electricity, water, bathrooms,” she said.

Edwards lives at the camp with her two dogs and goes to dialysis three times a week. The stability provided by the camp’s location helps her get rides to the appointments.

“That’s my life, my survival. I don’t know where I would go,” she said. “I’m so thankful to be here.“

Camp resident Shonn Adams, 55, suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and depends on oxygen to survive.

“Now it’s a fire hazard because we have generators out here running electricity,” she said. “I have to have it for my oxygen because I have to be on it all the time or I die.”

She says she depends on the homeless community to help her and doesn’t know where she will go if the encampment is shut down.

“People don’t care anymore,” she said. “The Supreme Court what makes it illegal to sleep in public. What are we supposed to do? Where are we supposed to go? There isn’t enough places or shelters or anything else either. They are going to throw us back in the streets and punish us more for being homeless.”

Adams lives on the unpaved side of the encampment and wonders why they don’t pave it and allow the residents to stay. She says she went to college, but became homeless 14 years ago after being laid off from her job.