Calabasas Restricts Homeless Encampments, Provides Support

Calabasas CA

26 August, 2021

5:43 PM

Description

CALABASAS, CA — The Calabasas City Council on Wednesday approved three ordinances to restrict homeless encampments in the city and approved a contract with an organization to support people without housing. The council's action comes as many similar restrictions and support efforts across Los Angeles County face public backlash for what advocates for the homeless call their effective criminalization of homelessness and dehumanizing treatment of people without housing. Currently, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority estimated there are two people experiencing homelessness in Calabasas. The council first adopted a "right of way" ordinance that will block encampments, sleeping or loitering on any public land that blocks pedestrian or vehicular traffic. The ordinance specifically restricts encampments around critical infrastructure, high risk fire areas and infrastructure that serves children, such as schools and libraries, and within 250 feet of school routes. The council approved two supplemental ordinances to define critical infrastructure and create a map of school routes. Similar policy in Los Angeles County and in L.A.'s Venice neighborhood have come under great public scrutiny. Policies like Calabasas's ordinances are thinly veiled attempts to demonize and criminalize homeless individuals and move these individuals as far away from the city as possible, said Theo Henderson, founder and host of the podcast "We the Unhoused," who works to educate about and amplify the voices of people without housing. If cities actually cared about people without housing, they would consult actual homeless people and enact more meaningful changes, such as creating affordable rent programs and enforcing a livable minimum wage, added Henderson, who himself experienced homelessness for eight years. "Houslessness is all of our problem, and the way we deal with it is [reflective of] the way we are as a society," Henderson said. In addition to considering the ordinance, the council approved a contract with the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center to provide interim housing and support for displaced homeless people — a move it hopes will be a model to other cities hoping to address homelessness. The draft three-year agreement will cost the city at least a $36,500 annually. The center would keep one bed open to a homeless person 24 hours a day, with three meals a day, storage space and hygiene supplies and clothing. The center will also provide mental health services, employment aid, transportation, help securing primary health care and more. The contract is supplemented by a $9,000 six-month agreement with the city's Dial-A-Ride service provider to transport homeless people to the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center location in Van Nuys. "I'm so impressed that we are partnering with the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center, they definitely are pillars in the community in this," Councilmember Mary Sue Maurer said.