• Homeless Outreach Update Meeting April 2019

Wildomar/Lake Elsinore and surrounding county areas have received a $1.5 million dollar grant to address homeless needs. The even better news is that additional moneys were granted too to bring the total closer to $4.2M. (see graphic below)

Though homelessness, which I categorize the bulk of it with the more accurate term vagrancy, is statewide, it is well known among the homeless that our area pays well.

Here is a story that was shared by Lake Elsinore Councilwoman Natasha Johnson. 

She works at a credit union in Lake Elsinore and she noticed a woman and two small children panhandling around the ATM.

After awhile she went out and told the woman that should couldn't be there asking for money. The woman only retreated to the curb, but didn't leave. At that point the councilwoman called the non-emergency line for the police. An officer happened to be nearby and confronted the beggar.

Posters that will be hanging in participating businesses.

The woman agreed to leave. Any guesses to how much money she told the officer she collected in the four hours she was there?

If you thought $100 or $200 would be a good haul, I wonder what you'd think of the $662 she pulled in from saps that think they're doing a good deed. 

In total she had more than $3000 on her at that time.

This story is found at the 1:27:30 mark in the video.

Remember the movie quote, if you build it they will come?
It could be reworded this way in regards to panhandlers: 

If you hand them money, 

more from out of the area will come. 

It doesn't get any plainer than that.

It's great to be charitable, but only if your money is going to a good cause. Give to one of the non-profits in the area that are geared to alleviating the blight of homelessness, not perpetuating it.

The nuts and bolts of the meeting 
Wildomar, Lake Elsinore and surrounding county areas were recipients of a $1.5M grant from the state to address homelessness. Primarily in regards to a shortage of shelter beds in the area. Currently there are ZERO beds in the entire region.

Pro Tip: with the laws of the state the way they are, if there isn't an alternate place for them to go, the options the police have become greatly limited.

How the grant money is divvied up. In raw percentages, 20% goes to Wildomar since we have 20% of the individual homeless, but I didn't detect any territorial vibe between Lake Elsinore and Wildomar over the money or how it will be spent. It's a regional issue.

The stats as compiled by SWAG.

Most of the local homeless have ties to our area. Below are a couple more slides from the meeting.

Brian is now off the streets thanks to the persistent efforts of SWAG. There have been 26 "street exits" over  the last 13 months.

Officer Glaser along with SWAG. 

The money is to be used on housing the homeless.

There is no magic unicorn place where everyone will be happy with the eventual locations of housing. ***Please see Nicole Dailey's quote on the topic below

Wildomar Councilmember Bridgette Moore

• Wildomar will have some funding [beyond this grant], it won't be anything near the numbers that you saw on the screen. We did just pass measure AA, it's a one cent sales tax, it just started April 1st, but the one cent sales tax is being divided up between police, fire, roads and homeless. It'll be a portion of that one cent, so there is some funding there, but not the numbers that you saw up there.

Highlights from Nicole Dailey, Assistant to the City Manager of Lake Elsinore

• We're looking at housing subsidies. The idea of funding up to five, potentially five, properties in our whole area, in our whole region that would be leased through SWAG or another non profit. 

We basically pay for all the costs associated with that house. Maintenance, landscaping, rent. What these houses can do is allow us to take somebody off the street and put them in a house immediately.

*** One of the things I challenge our community on a regular basis to recognize is, if these homeless individuals in our community, on our streets, are not housed, where do we think they will go? We have to provide them a way off the streets. If we don't they will be in our vacant fields. They will be on our business porches. They will be walking our neighborhoods, and they will be walking the streets at 6AM trying to warm up everyday. We can't forget that they can't just disappear, and they can't just go to jail. It's a much larger challenge and we have to start thinking about where we can send them and how we can help them.

• [A]s you saw, a majority of the homeless are from here, are connected to here. Their family members are here. There's a reason they're here. That doesn't mean there aren't [homeless here from out of the are]. What about that other 25%-30%? This is what SWAG says, and remember they're (SWAG) all across our region, so this is very important for our community [to understand], "Because we pay better out here." 

What do I mean by "pay better"? Panhandling... we give too much here, we care too much here. So I actually think that's a larger challenge than us coming up with services to help.

Highlights from Lake Elsinore Mayor Pro-Tem Brian Tisdale
• I'm a little ticked off at some of our neighbors that are in our [homeless] alliance that didn't do the declaration because in that partnership it would have allowed us to share some of the money with them. So we're calling those folks out and we're not going to let other cities dump on us, other counties dump on us, or anybody else dump on us. 

• I want to touch on the question on the continued funding. The answer is we going to always going to go after money because the homeless problem is not going to go away, and we're going to do what we have to do because if there's a problem here the people that are sitting her (in the audience) are impacted if we do nothing. The cost of letting someone roam on the street is going to hurt us. It costs our police, it costs our fire [department], it costs everybody. So if we have to take tax payer dollars to solve a problem, we'll do that, and I'm willing to take that risk politically.

If this item interests you, before blasting off on facebook, please invest the time to watch the video... then, blast away if need be. 

LINK TO VIDEO

The second part of this blog could be titled: careful for what you wish for.

After the meeting, within earshot of Officer Glaser,  I mentioned that I'd like to see the homeless camps, while pardoning his interruption he said, "What are you doing tomorrow at 2:00pm?"

Officer Glaser met me at city hall and we toured several areas that are either active or inactive homeless camps in Wildomar.

The camp near the Hospital, which can be seen by some of the balconies of Santa Rosa Apartments, was an incredible sight to see. I didn't take any pictures, but I can share photos that were shared by the Sheriff's Department earlier in the week.

This is one of the dwellings that sit less than 100 feet from the road the Hospital sits on.

The amount of stuff down under those old growth oak trees was staggering. There were five to six distinctive homesteads (for lack of better word).

Aaron Petroff of SWAG seen talking to one of the camp's inhabitants.

Some had makeshift floors, others had little fences, one had a deck that was supported with boards nailed into an oak tree.

This picture was shared by the manager of the apartment complex that overlooks part of the homeless camp during the most recent city council meeting. This is the view from at least one of the balconies of the apartments that rent for about $2500 per month.

I was told about "Honey Holes" (a euphemism for an open air privy) but was spared the fly infested visual which were dug close to the nearby apartments.

I was in this exact spot. Not really sure what they had in mind with those long tree branches.

From this location we drove west on Clinton Keith and spotted a panhandler near the McDonald's. Officer Glaser knew him by name, and that he had several warrants. He was arrested and transported to the jail without incident.

This is a image in Google Maps from April 2018.

He was told about his options, given SWAG's number and encouraged to get help, and that there is now a zero tolerance policy for panhandling in that area.

It was odd to me that there is less of a charge for panhandling on the freeway off ramp though that seems inherently more dangerous to everyone involved.

I had taken this shot a few days earlier at the same spot. Not sure if it's the same person or not, but appears to be.

There's a state law that deems it an infraction, whereas panhandling on private property is coupled with trespassing and after being warned, becomes an arrestable offense. 

This Google map image is dated December 2016. People wouldn't stand there if they were being paid well. 

The rest of the tour had us discovering an abandoned vehicle with Arizona plates, near an encampment that looked deserted, close to the Murrieta city line. 

As we neared the end of the tour, heading back to city hall, we passed another homeless man that was lounging behind Ace Hardware. Officer Glaser knew him by name and told me that he had no warrants, wasn't panhandling, and wasn't bothering anyone. He had a right to be there and that it wouldn't be helpful to overall plan to make more of it than driving by.

Community outreach is a delicate balance, and it was good to see the professionalism of our sworn officers up close.

The Denouement

Remember to make reports to the police, not just to facebook. 

This would include: trespassing, vandalism, theft, panhandling and encampments. If someone is being aggressive or threatening, call 9-11. 

Facebook is fun and all, but it's just some dot on the map in cyberspace. If you want important matters dealt with in the real world, use the non emergency number for the police: 951-776-1099.

•                •                •

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

– Henry David Thoreau

Wildomar Rap can decode the above. Handing out money to panhandlers is "hacking at the branches" which is basically a feel good measure that is a waste of time that makes things worse for society. Don't do that. 

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