KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
After nearly three months of research, meetings and interviews, a draft of the homelessness report has been completed by city staff, who are now looking for feedback from Santa Clarita residents.
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“Reading through the draft of the plan, it is very evident that this is not something the city can take on alone,” said Santa Clarita City Councilmember Cameron Smyth. “This plan requires buy in and support from dozens of nonprofits, faith based organizations, school districts and more. By coming together and committing to these action items, we will be able to make significant progress toward helping those experiencing homelessness in Santa Clarita.”
The report, known as the Community Plan to Address Homelessness, is a planning grant in which a research group developed strategies to prevent and combat homelessness.
A homeless count conducted by Los Angeles County officials found around 331 residents experience homelessness on any given night in Santa Clarita, and increase of five percent from the 2016 homeless count. City officials believe this figure vastly underrepresents the number of homeless people living in the city.
In addition to residents counted in the homeless count, one public school district in the City of Santa Clarita reported that they have over 300 homeless students, according to officials.
This group of “hidden” homeless include homeless college students or families sleeping in their cars, homeless family members couch surfing, or families “doubling up” in residences, according to city documents.
Related: Santa Clarita City Council To Discuss Fighting Homelessness With Public Sleeping Ban
The city is developing their new plan in order to address the challenges of a growing homeless population, according to city officials. Until Aug. 22, the public also has an opportunity to weigh in on the plan and be part of the solution.
Some of the areas of greatest need within the draft include: a year-round emergency shelter, affordable housing options, addiction and mental health services, and a more accurate homeless count.
Santa Clarita residents can email [email protected] with questions and comments about the drafted report.
The report can be found here.
Currently, there are nearly 30 nonprofit organizations in Santa Clarita that offer services and resources daily.
“I am thrilled to see the great strides our city, and community, have made toward helping our most vulnerable neighbors,” said Mayor Pro Tem Marsha McLean. “We recently purchased and transferred $1 million worth of land to Bridge to Home. This land is adjacent to the property where the temporary shelter currently is, and provides enough space for a new, permanent, year-round shelter with resources, services and the help and support our homeless so desperately need.”
Another project supported by the city includes the first affordable housing project in Santa Clarita, Three Oaks, an approximately $5 million city investment that is now home to 30 families.
For more information on the city’s homeless plan, click here.
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Personally, I am VERY happy with the new stance the city has taken prohibiting homeless from sleeping in vehicles on city streets and pretty much banning homelessness in general here! ???? Don’t want to sound cold, but I don’t want SCV becoming SFV, which it has in recent years! Who wants derelicts all over the place begging you for money, public defication, committing crimes and openly shooting up and such? It’s quickly become unsafe and unsavory! We don’t want them here! That’s why we moved here in the first place, to have a clean environment to raise out children in and get AWAY from all the riff-raff that is the Valley and the City!
This is a typical Santa Clarita response. No wonder why the law against homelessness in this valley passed 5-0. Where is your compassion? Where are those Judeo-Christian values we supposedly espouse up here? Not In My Back Yard, indeed! This a typical example of it. Shame on you and the City Council. You do sound “cold”, and you ARE cold, cold as ice.
No, not cold. I have the right to live in a clean, healthy, environment with which to rear my children and family! Maybe you should move to Van Nuys or to the city itself if you feel this way and you don’t mind being surrounded by crime, drugs, homeless people and all the crap that goes with that! I suppose you’re FOR graffiti too! ???? Thankfully, lots of others feel the way I do as well as the City Council here! I’m so glad they took the stance they did! I say keep up the good work and enforce the law to its fullest! ????
I agree with Lisa ????! A large portion of the homeless are homeless because of decisions they have made. Many have addictions or mental health issues that they refuse to be treated for. Coddling these people do not work! I have first hand experience with this.
With that being said, there are people and families who should get temporary help to get back on their feet but most of those people can get help through preexisting state programs and private organizations. As for the vagrants, strict enforcement of our laws!!
While I understand Lisa’s concerns regarding a certain portion of the homeless population in the SCV. I believe that we need to seek solutions for families or individuals who do not fall under this segment. There are sincere people who for whatever reason have fallen onto hard times with no safety net to assist them and end up without a roof overhead. We do need to have compassion for each other and come up with solutions to help those who desire to improve their situations. Driving them out of our city and forcing their children to leave the schools and support systems might not be in the best interest of our society.
Address to the City Council 7/10/18
Asking For an Exception this Summer to Lift The Restriction Not Allowing the Homeless to Sleep
in The Library
My name is Jeff and I recently started driving the van for non-profit Bridge to Home, transporting the clients to the shelter.
In the short time I’ve been driving, I’ve witnessed a completely unexpected outpouring of support from the community: The sheriff’s dept. treating the homeless with respect and dignity,
The churches providing donations, even volunteers and donations from the local high school students.
Even restaurants, providing meals. And especially the act of compassion the city council has shown approving the $1,000,000 dollars for improvements to the shelter.
—
I would like to share with you a few interactions I have had with a few of the homeless clients.
I first noticed early on that they take care of one another.
They give each other nick names.
I’ve told Rocky, which is his nickname. “Rocky I’m going to call you Rocky Balboa, because you’re a survivor.”
There’s Tommy a young, tall, good looking kid that seems to get into minor trouble with the law sometimes. Shifty Manny, the drug addict, occasionally trying to manipulate someone for a buck to feed his habit.
Lyle, I call him the resource man, he finds new useable items from discarded retail trash bins. And then donates his discovered treasures to the shelter. Water bottles last week. Lyle sleeps in the Santa Clara river bed.
—
But I must tell you the one soul that’s touched my heart, his name is Patrick, or as I like to call him St Patrick, a middle aged African American man who has a heart of gold.
It was Patrick with only the cloths on his back, somehow, was able to get a couple of balloons and a candle to set up both memorials for the two women that died this past month on the MetroLink train tracks.
Those memorials are still there, if you know where to look.
And finally, it was Patrick again, last Saturday, who asked, in a mumbled soft whispered voice, if I could, if it wasn’t to much trouble to drop him off at the library because “they don’t close for another hour and its cool inside”.
Has he left the van that early evening, I happened to glance at the temperature display in the van , it read 115 degrees outside.
In closing, I come here tonight asking if for only during this summer to allow a Patrick, a Kyle or a Tommy, even a Manny to spend a little time in the library. Even if they should happen to fall asleep.
I do agree that we should not allow them to sleep on the city benches and in their cars but that is why the city needs to have a safe all-year round shelter, with showers, lockers for their belongs, and training to get them back into society, working and caring for themselves and returning to their own dignity. They are humans, many of which have gone through hard times with no where to go…one day we can be in the same position so let’s think how we can help before we criticize…it can even be one of your children later in life, they could become part of the Santa Clarita riff-raff.
Be part of the solution rather than stand back and criticize..I do believe in Karma. Have a Blessed day!
They don’t want help, they like living on State benefits. They steal from the local stores and are an active part of our DRUG problem in SCV. The Sheriffs and City ( Sh@#Ty ) Council wont tell you that part of the story. These Vagrants don’t want our help so let’s cut them off their Money supply and kick them out of our city. At the end of the day we still have to pick up there trash and used needles out of our rivers and parks. Such BS !! – Give them a tick out of SCV, it will cost less on tax payers.
Get rid of them. They are dirty, scuzzy people who have dropped out of society because they want to. There is plenty of opportunity for them to get their act together.
Robert
I agree with Lisa too!..if you are concerned with the homeless population, then you should go visit with them and find out why they are in the position that they are. Besides mental illness, most if not all homeless are convicts, alcoholics or drug users. Those are choices, unlike mental illness, and now they are suffering for their choices. If you provide services for them, they will come here and live in homelessness. You will never be able to give them what they want, I don’t recall any homeless person dying because of our weather, so year around shelters is a waste of money. Go drive down Roscoe Blvd and see if you want Lyons Ave to look the same.
You’re wrong Jerry. We do loose homeless to the elements here in Santa Clarita. It does get cold in the winter and they do freeze to death. Then we close it and they are on the street. A year round shelter will keep many from sleeping in their cars and on your street. I have talked with them and yes….they did grow up here. Not all of course but more than you think. And Chris when you say coddling these people does not work? It depends on what your trying to do. Helping them out today, helps them out today. Often not for a lifetime but it helps them right now. If you see someone with a flat tire and you call the auto club for them…you didn’t solve their problems for life either. Just be smart about how you help. Be smart about where you help. You don’t want them pan-handling. Dont support that. You want them off the street. Support the Shelter.
I would love to show compassion for those are on the street that want to follow the rules and make their way back into society. Unfortunately the majority of the homeless vagrants do not fall into that category. Have we not learned anything from our LA neighbors? Build it and they will come. Building more homeless shelters only invites more to arrive into our valley. Pushing them off the city sidewalks, forces them into the riverbed and bike paths. The threat of them stating fires is real. There was a fire near Masters College over the summer that probably started from a large homeless encampment on the other side of the hill. I would love to see them off of the bike path too. My daughters are not allowed on the bike path alone. Jeffery, I am going to guess that Patrick may fall into the category of wanting to get off the street, remember gang members also taken care of each other and give each other nicknames. There must be away to help those that want to better their lives and kick out the ones that are living here on our dime. Even our kids need to cut the parental umbilical cord at some point, so why not the vagrants that are trashing our neighborhood.