LOCAL: March 20, 2012 7pm SLO City Council Meeting

Subject: Pilot Safe Park Program in conjunction with CAPSLO

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Tribune Article 3/21/2012 (text and link)
The San Luis Obispo City Council unanimously approved a pilot program Tuesday night to provide safe overnight parking for a handful of the city’s homeless people who live in their vehicles. The goal of the test program is to provide homeless people with a safe place to sleep while connecting them with case management and eventual housing. Five parking spaces at the Prado Day Center were approved. City staff will report back to the council on the program in six months. The council delayed a discussion that would have directed staff to study ways to create stricter laws regulating overnight camping in vehicles, making enforcement easier for police officers. “This program is moving in the right direction,” Councilman Dan Carpenter said. “It is a good start. It’s not going to solve all the problems, we know that. Maybe the program’s success will spill over to churches, other property owners and businesses. I see this as a potential for opportunity to expand it.” Only those people who commit to case management, and remain drug- and alcohol-free will be candidates for the program. The number of people living in their cars has increased in recent years for a variety of reasons including the economy, a lack of transitional and affordable housing and limited shelter beds, according to city officials. The issue came to the public’s attention when officers began enforcing a city ordinance that prohibits over-night camping on city streets. That move was prompted by complaints from business owners and citizens about what they claimed were increasing assaults, theft and public urination and defecation. Twenty people spoke in favor of the pilot program Tuesday; many of them also asked the city to consider suspending enforcement of a local law that prohibits people from sleeping in their vehicles on city streets. “It is inhumane to harass and impoverish them further,” said San Luis Obispo attorney Stew Jenkins. “Suspend the ordinance altogether on the public streets. ... It is an unconstitutional vagrancy ordinance.” Motor homes, trailers and cars can be seen parked daily along streets including Prado Road, Long Street and Empresa Drive. Those living in the vehicles say police have unfairly targeted them. A recent survey done by city and Prado Day Center staff determined that more than 60 people are living in their vehicles on city streets. Of those, 24 were identified as potential candidates for the overnight parking program — individuals willing to follow the guidelines necessary to participate. City staff says the safe-parking program is consistent with the countywide attempt to address homeless issues in a 10-year plan now being created. That plan calls for a homeless-services campus on South Higuera Street in San Luis Obispo adjacent to the San Luis Obispo County Department of Social Services. A similar, but larger, overnight parking program has been offered in Santa Barbara for eight years. That program has 22 overnight parking areas that can accommodate up to 105 vehicles. A similar pilot program for three spaces at St. Barnabas Episcopal in Arroyo Grande is up for a vote before the City Council on Tuesday. The San Luis Obispo parking program will begin as soon as the Community Action Partnership of San Luis Obispo County, which is overseeing it, can raise the estimated $20,000 needed to launch it. “This was a great hurdle but it is just a piece in the puzzle,” said Dee Torres, homeless services coordinator.

Read more here:
San Luis Obispo OKs pilot effort for homeless parking

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My 2 cents worth at the meeting last night (3/20/2012)

My name is Tim Waag and I live in San Luis Obispo. For more than 10 years, I have put in thousands of hours volunteering at the Homeless Shelter Overflow, Prado Day Center, and assisting homeless people that I have met in SLO that are not in the CAPSLO case management system. I reviewed the “SAFE PARKING PILOT PROGRAM AT PRADO DAY CENTER & DIRECTION REGARDING PUBLIC STREET PARKING RESTRICTIONS” document in detail, and spoke with Police Chief Gesell and CAPSLO Director Dee Torres at length about it. I am STRONGLY in favor of giving the go-ahead to the Pilot Safe Parking program, and I urge the SLO City Council to move this high priority program forward. I favor parking for 6 vehicles at Prado instead of 5, as 6 is the maximum number supported by the staff report. I consider a video surveillance system that is viewable by CAPSLO and / or SLO Police Department Staff as mandatory, and provide as much supervision of the Prado lot during Safe Parking Program hours as possible. However, I found the proposed additional parking restrictions, imposed on 3/4 ton pickup trucks, unattached trailers, RVs and large vehicles, to be onerous, expensive and unnecessary, and I STRONGLY object to them. Enumerating the proposed restrictions listed in the Safe Parking Program document would take me beyond my 3 minute speaking alotment, but I urge those in the audience who have NOT read them to do so - it’ll make your head spin. [At this point, I went off text and discussed just one aspect of the parking restrictions: your Aunt and Uncle pull up in their RV to spend the weekend parked in front of our house in SLO - but they need to go downtown to city hall to hopefully get a permit - they are restricted in number you see, and they might not get one. In that case, being law-abiding citizens respectful of the laws of another town, they move on down the road instead, to a city that is friendlier to their visits].

I will take an immediate solution such as the Safe Parking Program, for a tiny percentage of the local homeless today over promises of temporary housing solutions that are still YEARS down the road. Those who are homeless in our city need a place to sleep TONIGHT - keep that in mind. Imagine yourself in their shoes. Most of us who are doing our best to help the homeless population find permanent housing often utter “There but for the Grace of God go I” - you should too. Thank-you.San Luis Obispo OKs pilot effort for homeless parking

LOCAL: Hello, Stranger!

Our new original western movie is now on Vimeo for your viewing (or streaming) pleasure. It is in three parts...they are all password protected as some film fests will not consider films posted publicly on the internet. You can share the password though.

begin here

Play the Movie: Hello Stranger!
password= "howdy"

the film has had three very successful screenings and is being considered for Toronto, Maui and Los Angeles fests. More to come!

I still need to edit a bit...I noticed we forgot the music credits. That will be corrected soon!

Enjoy!

Johnee Gange
Director
Adventure Club SLO
www.adventureclubslo.com
# 805 471 7889

LOCAL:CAPSLO Safe Parking Program Discussion

*****

I received a long response from a CAPSLO representative via email regarding the proposed Pilot Safe Parking Program. At the request of several members of the SLO City Council, I reviewed their 42 page document, and sent out my feedback to the city council as well as the SLO Police Chief. In addition, I sent it out to fellow homeless volunteers. Before sending it out, I sought additional information from the SLO Police Chief and CAPSLO. I heard back from the Police Chief and had an hourlong discussion about it, which was helpful in backfilling information. I was unsuccessful in reaching a CAPSLO official before my self-imposed deadline for getting my feedback to the SLO City Council. Below are two email responses from a CAPSLO Official. After the 2 emails below, I was able to speak with the CAPSLO official for about an hour to backfill some information. It was a helpful discussion.

The 2 emails preceding our discussion are reproduced below. Thanks to CAPSLO for getting back to me.

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March 17, 2012
1st Response from CAPSLO to me:
Hi Tim,

Sorry that I haven't gotten to you sooner, I did ask Bill to give you a call and let you know that I wasn't ignoring you, just swamped.  To be honest a large chunk of my time as of late has been discussing these very issues with many interested individuals.  In actuality I am glad that we as a community are willing to discuss these very tough issues.  These conversations are important and unfortunately very complicated.  The RV/vehicle encampment which has developed out on Prado Road has brought up feelings and opinions from what feels like just about everyone in the City if not the County (I am probably being a bit over dramatic as it has been a long week and I'm a bit weary).

I'm assuming that you plan to attend the Council Hearing on Tuesday and I'd hate to take up precious time during the meeting clarifying programmatic inaccuracies if they can be cleared up in advance, so I'll do my best here and welcome a follow-up conversation if needed.  

In reading your comments about our proposed program I want to say that you seem to be at a disadvantage, as it appears you don't have all the information.  You state that we will serve "5 lucky family groups" in another sentence you refer to our program participants as "lottery winners". This couldn't be further from the truth, our program participants will be people who are temporarily sleeping in their vehicles due to a variety of circumstances, but have the desire and are willing to take appropriate actions to move into permanent housing.  These people aren't "lucky" they are in tough situations and willing to partner with us to help get them out of it and into better ones.

You go on to describe the proposed program disparagingly by stating things like "it will NOT reduce the homeless problem in any statistically significant way", "will not even make a small dent in the problem",  and again that it's a "temporary place to sleep for 5 lucky homeless".  Again, I'm not going to get into all of the details but I and my staff believe that these statements are incorrect.  We believe that by offering people a safe place to park and the supportive services needed to secure permanent housing, we are making more than a small dent in homelessness.  The statistics that are collected from this program will be very valuable as we can finally stop speculating about this issue.  Having facts about why people are choosing to sleep in their vehicles rather than a shelter and what they're willing to do about it, will help us to decide if more sites are needed.  You state that our MLM Shelter is full and most nights this is correct, but I should remind you that it's not full of "case managed" clients.  If someone agrees to save their money for housing and work on barriers/set goals they are guaranteed a bed until they are housed (out of the 80 or so beds available including Over Flow less than 30 are choosing to save money and work with a case manager to get a job etc).

I must admit I was saddened at the way in which you call into question our Case Management program statistics and outcomes, in your e-mail you state "I MAY BE DUMB, BUT I’M NOT STUPID:  Sorry, but the statistic on page B1-10 that “CAPSLO has a 100% success rate transitioning people who remain in case management into permanent housing.” is misleading, self-serving, or both."   The “100% success rate” will always be 100%, since a client either drops out, stay in, or gets housing - voila! 100% success rate every time - by definition. Logically, the statement will always be true. This is absolutely not true, we could have clients who are doing everything right, working with a case manager and saving money, addressing substance abuse issues, looking for work etc, but due to the economy as you state either can't secure housing or employment.  In these instances. to no fault of their own these clients aren't successful forcing us to drop them from the program "voila our success rate would go down".   This is not the case!  We have a 100% success rate despite the lack of affordable housing, the economy, job market, etc.. If someone agrees to case management and works on goals with their case manager we will house them.  We often take people with $0 or very little income and get them permanently housed.  Once again if you want to have a discussion about the people who  for whatever reason (more often than not due to drug/alcohol and or mental health issues) choose not to work with a case manager or once housed stop paying their rent, get evicted or even voluntarily move out and onto the streets or back into the shelter  that's a very important discussion which deserves thoughtful conversations driven by evidence (you mention that we should keep these statistics, and we do).

I give you my word that we don't advocate for our Case Management program to be deceitful and/or self serving as you state, adding more work to my staff's load only benefits our clients. as it adds to our workload. We advocate for this because it's proven successful.  All that being said nowhere in our proposal or in the staff report will you see that I or anyone affiliated with this proposal is stating that this program will solve all illegal parking in this County or even the City.  How the City responds to people who for whatever reason(s) do not want to participate in any of our programs is not for me to answer.  I can simply continue to develop programs, I can't force people to take advantage of them. 

I hope I can clear up your stated "confusion" when you ask, "how can CAPSLO Guarantee spots for the willing? Aren't we limited to 5 spots: “those who are willing to actively participate in the case management program will receive a GUARANTEED PARKING SPACE until they are housed”. How can this be guaranteed with only 5 spaces?  Since this program is brand new to our county all we can do at this point is speculate as to how many people will chose to take advantage of it.  One indicator could be our warming station.  We allow people to park in our lot when the warming station is activated.  Since it's inception we've never had more than 5 vehicles at any one time. In fact a recent example of utilization would be last night, as our warming station was activated and 3 vehicles took advantage of this service.  We also look to the fact that all people currently living in their vehicles have access to our case management program and very few are actually taking advantage of it.

To clarify your correlation between, proposed  regulations which may restrict parking in "extreme circumstances and even close select city streets"  and the Prado Road encampments.  I can tell you that my staff and I have made it clear to the City and the Chief that the unregulated encampment on Prado Road has been extremely problematic for our staff and clients. The health and safety issues are extreme and include physical altercations, verbal threats of violence,  drug/alcohol use, defecating/urinating/littering,  among other behaviors.  This encampment has not only our staff/volunteers but many of  our homeless clients report fear of walking down that street to get to our program and use services.  We have also stated clearly our apprehension in developing and running a parking program inside the Prado gate while the behaviors described above continue at the  encampment  right outside.  We've asked them to work with us on solutions and we believe that this program is an essential piece and a substantial solution again for those that are willing to take advantage of it.

I am confused by your statement  "Where should I go if I am homeless and Prado is full or will not take me?" as a volunteer to the program I assumed  you would know that in Prado's 15 year history we have never turned a client away due to "over capacity".    You also state that Prado doesn't allow animals and go on to state why they shouldn't be allowed into our parking program, in  actuality Tim this is incorrect.   In an effort to be more accommodating and reduce another barrier for potential clients to access our services,  several years ago we had on site kennels built in our garden area.   These kennels can and do accommodate up to 6 animals at any time. So far we have found this to be a sufficient # as we have yet to turn any pets away due to over capacity.  We are very proud of this program, we instituted it on a leap of faith believing it was the right thing to do despite the liability issues. To this day we continue to manage our pet program as we do all others and we've achieved such success that we plan to not only continue but expand this program to our new Center on South Higuera.

In regards to the trash in the creek you state, "YOU CALL IT 40 TONS OF TRASH - HOW MUCH OF IT WAS THE PERSONAL PROPERTY OF SOME HOMELESS PERSON (WHO COULDN’T CARRY IT AROUND ON THEIR BACK?" 

Again I can only speak from experience Tim, as someone who regularly works with the rangers and does outreach to the people at the creeks, the Trash they discuss is TRASH.  I, Shawn, and others have witnessed first hand the trash that's  strewn around these camp sites and in our creek right next to the empty plastic trash bags that we're given to campers a few days prior by the rangers.  Another complicated issue which deserves thoughtful discussions based on facts.

In regards to your question regarding the correlation between the economy,  and the rise in crime and/or police calls specific to the homeless, all I can do is speak from our experience and statistics.   We are all in agreement that the economy is tough it's hitting all of us in a variety of ways, but in order to come up with real solutions we need to be completely honest in regards to the problem.  We in homeless services have not seen a dramatic rise in people being displaced and actually on the streets/shelters due to the economy if you're equating that directly with "job loss".  For the most part with a few exceptions the majority of the people we work with and have the most difficult time housing are those who have severe drug/alcohol, and or mental/physical situations and in this regard it could be that the economy is exacerbating these issues as much needed services are cut. Again, this topic is too large to squeeze into an e-mail.  If you're asking me if our statistics show that there has been a spike in people who have been displaced due to unemployment the answer would be no.

Again, I appreciate your support for our programs and the fact that you obviously care about this issue.  Please let me know if you have any further questions or comments as this is very tough stuff and in my experience there are no easy answers or villains to vilify, just a lot of caring people trying to do there best to help.

My cell is ***-6760.

Best, ***

*****

March 17, 2012

2nd  Response from CAPSLO to me:

Hi Tim,

I'll give you a call and hopefully help clarify your questions.  Since there are so many people receiving these e-mails I will quickly answer the two main questions you pose below.  The 24 family units my staff identified as possible program participants are a rounded up guestimate based on several factors over a long period of time and hopefully success.  Our best guess based on our experience and knowledge, is that if this program is approved and we continue to work with the City and the Chief on enforcement issues, we think that of the vehicles currently parked on the streets possibly 24 would eventually take part in this program.  As I've stated in my e-mail to you below, everything we have right now is speculation and I've given you a few examples of actual numbers (warming station/current case management participation) that we're using to also help us develop this program.  As I stated previously the most practical and productive thing we can do right now is to begin the program, gather actual data and use that to grow if we can demonstrate the need.

As for the Enumeration that is a "point in time count and survey" which is a requirement of the Federal Government and from a programmatic perspective it's fraught with problems. This count is performed by volunteers in a 6 hour period, all information is self report (none of which is verified), and most importantly the  Enumeration data conflicts with verified data collected by our staff.  As I'm sure you can appreciate the Enumeration data is absolutely not something we use to develop our programs, instead we use our actual verified data.

Hope this helps and I will give you a call soon...  Thanks

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