Stories from the Ranch

categories: Criminalization, Housing, Human Rights, Stories From The Streets

Published December 01, 2009 @ 09:10AM PT

Last week, I covered the story of Daniel de Vaul. For eight years, he has operated a residential sobriety program on his 72-acre ranch in San Luis Obispo. While many formerly homeless addicts credit de Vaul with their sobriety, he was arrested last week for building code violations that violated the terms of his probation.

Since this story broke, many people have been divided on this issue. Should the rancher be lauded for providing housing to the homeless? Or punished because of the awful conditions of his property?

Mark Horvath of Invisible People traveled out to Sunny Acres Ranch this weekend to get the real stories behind the headlines. His goal? To move past the media spin and hear the voice that matters most: the formerly homeless people living the ranch. Here are there stories. -Shannon

Read Mark's perspective on this story, including his visit to the ranch, right here.

Interview with Dan De Vaul. Jennifer, a mental health case worker for Santa Barbara Count, joined us for the interview.

Photos from the ranch. (If the pictures look dark, it's because the flash would not work inside the barns.)

Randy has lived in a 10x12 ‘garden shed' for four months now. He credits Sunny Acres for his sobriety.

Jimmy is a Vietnam veteran who has lived on the ranch off-and-on for seven years. He has been clean and sober for two years.

Image: invisiblepeople.tv

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Comments (1)

Mark, If you are not mainstream media then you are certainly arterial support. Imagine that we were still depending on the 7 o'clock news and we may have heard of "Sunny Acres" eventually amongst the noise .

But you didnt ask for their 3 wishes. What are your 3 wishes?

Keep up the good things you are doing. A directional microphone could help?

Posted by Keith Bender on 12/03/2009 @ 08:21AM PT
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Author

Sixteen years ago, Mark Horvath was homeless on the streets of Hollywood. Today, he works in marketing/communications and is an activist for the homeless. He vlogs at invisiblepeople.tv and blogs at hardlynormal.com.