‘Mother hen’ seeks out solution
Local woman wants better for those without homes
Editor’s note: This is the first in a weekly series on the diverse mix of unsheltered individuals living on the streets of Chico.
CHICO >> Marlee Piver has become an important part of a self-made community of campers at the notorious Humboldt Park in just several months.
She and at least 10 others live in the park in tents and vehicles each day, waiting to find out if city staff and police will soon remove them, amid ongoing encampment sweeps.
Friendly yet commanding, Piver cuts a determined figure despite her small stature — she stands outside her tent surveying the park on a quiet afternoon, checking for debris and other tents left askew. She said she can’t stand living around trash, and doesn’t intend for others to be OK with it.
“I’m Mother Hen here,” she laughed. “Basically everybody comes to me for things, if they need to be doctored up because they got something wrong with them or whatever. Because a lot of them don’t want to go to the hospital.”
Piver has fallen into this role after about eight years living unhoused with her husband, getting to know many others like them who have different stories of loss, mistakes and choices. If they have nowhere else to go, she said she wants their camp to not bother the neighbors if possible.
“Everyone’s afraid they’re just against us ‘cause we’re homeless,” she said.
“I don’t like it — I’m sick and I got health problems and I don’t wanna (sic) be out here.”
Piver’s story of how she ended up in the park in a tent with her husband, John Piver, both aged 54, is fairly simple. She grew up in Fort Bragg, and eventually settled with John in Red Bluff. Then about eight years ago, John lost his work in construction site jobs.
Piver, who lives on disability, said they then lost their home and had to rely on people they knew in Chico for support, as it is her husband’s hometown. They lived in their car and paying rent in friends’ backyards for years, and have most recently spent several months at Humboldt Park.
While Piver has three grown children who live in Palmdale, Los Angeles and Missouri respectively, she said “They got their own lives,” and keeps in touch with them most days.
“They worry about me, but I tell them I’ll be all right.”
Piver’s illnesses make living in a shelter environment untenable, dealing with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure — which means she also cannot sleep on the ground. Her husband was able to finally purchase a mattress for her.
“For myself, I can’t stay in a place (homeless shelter) like that,” she said. “I never was the type of person to stay in a shelter, I mean I have, don’t get me wrong … but I can find somewhere else to go. I can stay in my car and I’ll be fine — (though) I’d rather have a home.”
Piver said she has met numerous people without homes who continue to struggle to get employment despite applying everywhere, because they have no personal address, or can only use the Jesus Center as a residence, and say they never hear back about an interview.
“What would a construction site do if a homeless person and a college student walked up and said, ‘hey I need a job’ ? Who do you think they’re going to hire? The college kid, because this (other) person’s homeless.” Piver added she and her husband rarely recycle cans for money anymore, getting by on her Social Security and disability payments, and the unemployment her husband now collects.
On her own accord, Piver said she gets along with “just about everyone.” She takes pride in maintaining her appearance as part of getting by.
“I dress well, I wear my makeup, you know — I don’t look dirty, I don’t look homeless,” Piver said. “A lot of people don’t think I’m homeless. My appearance means a lot.”
‘Clean and maintained’
It frustrates her and her husband when trash accumulates around them and other campers in parks, which she fears will contribute to stereotypes other residents have of them. She speaks highly of the “buddy system” held by current campers at Humboldt Park who will watch each other’s belongings and prevent stealing.
“We try to keep everything clean and maintained,” she said. “We keep down the riffraff, keep it clean … Who wants to live in trash? I don’t want to live in trash. It’s bad enough I have to be out here. It’s embarrassing, you know what I mean?”
Anytime something suspicious happens, she said she goes to other tents in the area to see what happened and keep an eye on things. She and her husband steer clear of other areas with more garbage and suspicious activity, which she said in the past has been the ‘triangle’ (at Pine and Cypress streets) and Comanche Creek Greenway.
“We got good seeds, we got bad seeds, you know what I mean?” Piver said. “A lot of them need mental help. They don’t have that. There’s a lot of addicts, a lot of drunks. They’re out here trying to survive.
“Just because we live like this doesn’t mean we’re all bad. The homeless gets blamed for a lot of things that happen.”
She said young people she calls “gangsters” who openly use drugs and tag parks and buildings give others a bad name.
Ongoing harassment
“We get blamed for that because we’re homeless,” Piver claimed, adding the harassment by passersby has grown much worse in the last year than in the entire time she has been unhoused.
“There’s more people coming by staring and taunting. … There’s some mean people that come out here, and they honk and they say things. It’s wrong.”
While she personally think there’s some truth to rumors that people from out of town — she claimed from Red Bluff and Redding — came to Chico in the past for help while homeless, things have changed with so few resources available. And Piver said she prefers to only rely on her husband for help, and not use services unless she absolutely has to.
“If somebody needs it more than I do, let them have it,” she said.
Like others at the park, Piver said she suspects they will be moved by police soon, and has no idea where she and her husband will have to go next.
“I’m going to put my stuff in storage and … I don’t know. You really can’t give a future. I’m hoping I can have a place that I can move in (to).”
‘Outrageous’ housing
Securing housing has not been possible for years without enough on hand to pay down on rent, she said — “The prices are outrageous.” And credit checks are also a hurdle.
“They need more housing, low income housing — I mean they have it but it’s a five-year waiting list.” She claimed she qualifies for Section 8 housing, but the wait list is too long.
‘’I don’t know if I’m going to be around that long, to be honest with you.”
Piver’s face only falls when she starts talking about the desperation she sees and how badly she wants to help others in her situation. Hearing of property proposals for sanctioned campgrounds from local landowners being shot down angers her.
“There’s no campsites … there’s so much empty property and homes around,” she said, adding she’d like to help run a campground, after having a role at Humboldt Park demanding people clean up after themselves.
“If I had a property, I’d put people on it, I’d build little tiny homes for ’em. And there’d be rules. There’d be showers, there’d be bathrooms, dumpsters — it’d be like living in a home.
“Of course there need to be rules and regulations of moving people in and having places to go. And there’s a lot of people who would be willing to do that. And then if you don’t like the rules, don’t like the way it goes, you can pack up and go.”
‘Not all of us are scary’
What’s the main thing she wishes would happen in the community? For people to “Work with us,” she said.
“Get mental health in here. Get housing. Put some of them to work. Get them back into society and the community to make them feel good about themselves, you know?”
It’s the ongoing harassment and wish for understanding that causes Piver’s warm but steadfast countenance to falter, and she wipes newly moistened eyes.
“It’s not going to happen overnight. There’s so many hateful people out there.”
She said she wishes people would stop driving by shouting at the campers, and instead walk up and start a conversation.
“You don’t have to be afraid, because not all of us are scary. Come up and introduce yourself, and you’ll find that I’m not a bad person.”
SACRAMENTO >> A man being restrained by Fresno police officers and sheriff’s deputies cried out “I can’t breathe!” in the moments before he died, body camera footage released Friday shows.
The video in the May 2017 death of 41-year-old Joseph
Perez was made public under a federal court order as attorneys for his family pursue a lawsuit against members of the two police agencies and paramedics from American Ambulance.
“The Perez family is deeply troubled by the circumstances leading to Joseph’s death, especially in light of the police violence epidemic plaguing the country,” attorney Neil Gehlawat said in a statement.
The release comes as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is set to go on trial Monday in the death last year of George Floyd. Floyd, a Black man, died May 25 after Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck while Floyd was held face-down on the ground handcuffed and saying he couldn’t breathe.
Tony Botti, a spokesman for the Fresno County Sheriff-Coroner, said he couldn’t comment on the video, “due to it being an ongoing litigation matter.”
Recently retired Fresno Police Chief Andy Hall said in a separate video synopsis released by the department that he had wanted to release the video earlier but the family had objected.
“Despite Mr. Perez’s personal struggles, it saddens all of us when a life is lost,” Hall says in the video, expressing condolences to the family. Hall said the death was investigated by multiple agencies, all of which found no use of excessive force and that officers followed policies as they tried to help Perez.
The department said at the time that officers from both agencies responded to a call “saying there was a man acting strange, running and yelling on Palm Ave.” They called for an ambulance “due to his mental state” and out of concern that he might be under the influence.
He died on the way to the hospital. Hall said Perez had a toxic level of methamphetamine, though Gehlawat said that did not contribute to his death.
Perez is initially responsive but agitated and whimpering in the video from a Fresno police officer’s body camera, which lasts 16 minutes and 33 seconds. There are seven law enforcement officers at the scene, according to the Perez family attorneys, and they can be heard repeatedly telling him to calm down and breathe, that they are there to help him.
It’s not until paramedics arrive and help officers restrain him with a blue plastic backboard that he becomes unresponsive.