Posted on 03/20/2018 1:23:54 PM PDT by jeannineinsd
Supervisors voted Monday for Orange County to spend $70.5 million on permanent housing for the homeless, and to create temporary homeless camps in Irvine, and possibly in Huntington Beach and Laguna Niguel.
The vote comes a week after supervisors committed $20 million toward permanent housing for the homeless. The combined $90 million is likely the single largest appropriation ever committed by the county to fight homelessness, and signals a shift in the countys strategy to solve the growing issue.
The decision came as supervisors admitted that theyve failed to spend money thats been available for homeless housing tens of millions of dollars technically earmarked for mental health funding. Supervisors said theyd been misled by county staff as to what resources were available, though news reports for at least two years have pointed to the availability of up to $186 million.
Staff will advise supervisors in the coming weeks about how the county can acquire land or renovate buildings. Its unclear when actual construction, or acquisition of housing, might begin.
For homeless advocates, the vote was a welcome surprise.
Its really great to see the county finally take steps to ending the housing crisis in Orange County, said Brooke Weitzman, an attorney who this year sued the county on behalf of the homeless.
Mondays vote emerged from negotiations in that ongoing lawsuit, which targeted the countys efforts to dismantle the homeless encampments along the Santa Ana River Trail. As part of an agreement in that case, the county in February moved nearly 700 people to local motels for 30-day stays.
But as motel vouchers began to expire on Friday, and the county prepared to move people to other temporary shelters, attorneys for the homeless alleged there isnt enough capacity to shelter all of those who were being moved.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
If it’s to relieve the ‘problem’ along the Santa Anna River trail.......not much will be spent on American citizens let alone taxpayers. A goodly % of those river trail homeless are illegals. I used to cycle that trail and would on occasion run into one of my ‘former clients’ from my work days at CA’s Department of Corrections. They confirmed that a large number of those homeless were indeed illegals. As for spending that sum of money to built new facilities, why didn’t the county ask the state for use of one of the 3 EMPTY SoCal facilities that were formerly Youth Authority Correctional Centers? Heman G Stark in Chino, Fred Nelles in Whittier, and Southern Reception Center in Norwalk. They could house thousands of individuals. All were and could be so equipped again, with medical/dental/education rooms/gyms/cafeterias/so on and so forth. The individuals living there could actually WORK to keep the facilities viable. Maintenance, food prep, just to name a few tasks.
What happened to the bums and the hobos?
What happened to the bums and the hobos?
This reminds me of “The Projects” in Buffalo NY.
My aunt lived in a beautiful old Polish neighborhood and we often went there to play with my cousin when we were small.
They had flowers on everyone’s house, and decorations for Easter and polish music playing out the windows and it was so pleasant.
Then they built “the projects”. Right across the street. Within one year you could not walk around outside, because of all the criminal activity. The people moved out. Property values dropped to 10% of their original values.
The “projects” were filthy and the tenants trashed the place. Within 20 years they were abandoned derelict shells, with urine and feces everywhere, all the copper plumbing gone and not one unbroken window.
All for a cost of $400,000 per person that lived there. They could have bought each person a house for 10% of that.
For their ‘free’ housing, the homeless should be required to do ‘the jobs Americans won’t do’.
My solution: gather up the homeless, and dump them over the border into Mexico (and don’t let them come back). Fair is fair. Mexico will demand a border wall.
Si se puede, comrades!
“No doubt it will be a toxic waste dump within 5 years. And crime will triple within a 1 mile radius.”
More like a few weeks. They’re tackling homeless toxic waste dumps in Colo Springs now on a regular basis. The bums just go start another one nearby, far as I can tell.
We didn’t have a good buttfreeze winter to drive some of them elsewhere so they’re here to stay, and they are everywhere, starting fires and being a total PITA.
LOL...This will do wonders for housing prices in those cities.
I hate to be blunt as those will confuse it with cruelty, but in most cases homeless is a choice of wrong personal decisions in life. I know personally.
Gotta get rid of the illegal alien
invaders first. That will open a lot
of entry level and construction jobs.
Has anyone seen a study as to what
most of the homeless used to do
before they were homeless? Even vets
had an MOS in the military, a job
that could be carried over to civilian
job markets.
A lot of people are homeless because
the incentive or ambition is no longer
there.
This is, of course, my humble opinion.
Build it and they will come. And they will pee. And they will poop. In the halls and everywhere else after the apartments are filled with 3 times the numbers they are designed to hold.
“”My stepmother lives in Laguna Woods, near that bike trail””
I don’t think Laguna Woods is anywhere near the Santa Ana River trail...Isn’t that the senior community by Aliso Viejo/Laguna Hills/Lake Forest? The Santa Ana River trail stretches from Riverside to Huntington Beach.
As a former resident of Irvine, I say it deserves to house the homeless as it went for Hillary in the 2016 election...
The same goes for the rest of the county voters who turned the county blue!
“”Ah, but, two hours of pushin broom...””
“”Buys an 8x4 two bed room””.....Loved and miss Roger Miller..
Saw him at the OC Fairgrounds years and years ago and I wanted to stay for all his shows.
My stepmother lives at Leisure World, in Laguna Woods, but she passes that Santa Ana area on her way to work. She said it's pretty awful.
As far as deserving -- you're absolutely right. LOL!
My stepmother is a rabid liberal (hates Trump, pro-Bernie). Maybe was.
My dad -- who were he alive today would have out-Bernied Bernie -- had advocated bringing in lots & lots of foreigners. "The more there are, the less hate there will be," he declared. Racism would magically disappear.
Fast forward a few years. He complained about all the foreign drivers in OC, who ignored stop signs & street lights.
"But Dad," I said, "that's what you wanted."
Why should a street corner beggar give up his $50,000 income?
we have a gov’t of idiots here in OC
The people who trashed the projects wouldn’t maintain homes if you gave them to them; while many try to tie these problems to race, they are about socio-economics instead.
Newark NJ destroyed an Italian neighborhood in north Newark with public housing projects, despite warnings from the people about the destruction it would cause. Within a few decades, the projects were demolished and replaced with “low-rises” (because it was impossible to police the high-rises); many of those same Italians were still alive a few miles to the north to see vindication.
go for it Yaelle...
According to those who have been vetting the urban campers of the Santa Ana River Trail:
1/3 are drug or alcohol abusers
1/3 are crazy
1/3 are criminals
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