Chico Friends on the Street founder Patrick Newman was named a Chico News and Review “Local Hero” of 2018. The paper notes that “Newman and his allies…do a lot for the city’s down and out,” highlighting the fact that “over the course of the past nearly three years, they’ve collectively handed out somewhere in the range of 7,000 bagged lunches, hundreds of blankets and sleeping bags, and hundreds of boxes of clothing and toiletries.” By his own admission, Newman does not claim to be offering permanent solutions to Chico’s homeless problem. Rather, “[h]is efforts are to offer a counter-narrative to the criminalization route the city has adopted. The main goal—even with the food distribution—is to make it clear that homeless folks have a right to exist.” Read the full story here. Bravo Patrick!
