A Fight for the Homeless and Against Authority

Burly, bearded and gleefully obscene, Dan de Vaul does not look the part of the bleeding-heart homeless advocate, sporting as he does a feather-topped cowboy hat, a large collection of guns and a bushel of hoary wisecracks.

But for nearly a decade, Mr. de Vaul has been housing dozens of homeless men and women in a farmhouse and a collection of tents, trailers and sheds spread around his 72-acre ranch here on the outskirts of this city in central California.

Mr. de Vaul says he is simply doing the work his county cannot or will not do. But officials say that the housing at Mr. de Vaul’s ranch, known as Sunny Acres, is substandard, often illegal, and rife with dangerous code violations, including missing fire detectors and faulty wiring.

Now Mr. de Vaul faces possible jail time, and his activities are sharply dividing residents of San Luis Obispo and the surrounding county, even as the county’s surging homeless population — estimated to be 3,800 people — outstrips the capacity of its shelters, which have about 125 beds.

The feud reached a boiling point in recent weeks after Mr. de Vaul’s conviction in November on two misdemeanors related to code violations, a judgment that the authorities had hoped might cajole Sunny Acres into compliance. But Mr. de Vaul refused a deal for probation and has since been sentenced to 90 days in jail and fined $1,000 by a judge, who called Mr. de Vaul’s behavior “irresponsible and arrogant.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/us/12homeless.html