Apr 28, 2022
Lynn and Virgil Nelson have had 17 different people live in their home over the past several years. They don’t run a boarding house. They are home sharers, people who offer unused space to those who need a place to stay.
“It’s not a weird idea, it’s a proven model,” Lynn says, citing 47 home-share organizations across the U.S. “We’ve had the personal experience of how enriching it can be.”
The Nelsons have always been ready to help others. Virgil is a retired American Baptist pastor and the couple traveled the world as missionaries. When they settled in Roseville seven years ago to be closer to grandchildren, they saw the need for affordable housing and realized they could make a difference.
Apr 28, 2022
Over the last seven years, the city has spent millions of dollars and embarked upon many projects to address homelessness.
After housing hundreds of people, it looked as though we were meeting needs and lowering the homeless census. Then the pandemic hit.
Under county health orders, we were forced to let people “shelter in place.” Jails were emptied for the same reason. Bail schedules were reduced to zero. The homeless population grew and addiction rates skyrocketed.
Apr 28, 2022
Gardening is fertilizer for the soul. Admire a flower. Inhale a patch of lavender. A few minutes with nature bring obvious benefits. Less obvious and underappreciated are creatures that live in our soil, on our plants or drop by Sacramento gardens for a visit.
Gardens teem with both pests and, hopefully, beneficial creatures. Beneficial, in a gardening sense, means critters that help in pollination and control pests. They also can improve soil.
As a lad, I learned to appreciate honeybees. Dad was a honeybee hobbyist who tended hives and extracted honey. Guess who was conscripted to help.
Apr 28, 2022
Ann Huntsman made a bold, life-changing decision in 2017. Turning 80, she decided to uproot from Cupertino and move to Sacramento to be near her only grandchild.
“I had lived for decades in a two-story, six-bedroom Spanish-style home where we raised our family,” Huntsman says. “It was very traditional, a job to maintain, and I had accumulated years of possessions. But it was time for me to start again in a whole new style of living.”
Huntsman is a retired nurse and investor in health care technology. Her daughter and family live a mile away. She could not be happier.
Apr 28, 2022
Over the last year and a half, I have become intimately involved with how farmers and ranchers work to rejuvenate land burned by fire.
My partner, Jarrod McBride, bought a 10-acre ranch bounded by Mountain Ranch, Railroad Flat and Mokelumne Hill in Calaveras County that had been devastated by the Butte Fire in 2015. He calls the land Pasture Works.
While many are scared off by these charred areas, we were attracted to Pasture Works because we saw enormous potential in the less expensive mountainous terrain and felt that once land burns, it will not catch fire for quite some time.
