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SLO evicts homeless, temporarily closes Bob Jones Trail

January 8, 2022

By KAREN VELIE

San Luis Obispo city staffers on Friday ordered homeless living along the Bob Jones Trail to leave the area to allow the city to improve portions of the trail.

Homeless, some in tears, worked on packing up their belongings while city staff suggested possible resources for shelter and food. Wearing hazmat suits, 2 Mexicans Junk Removal staff hauled away items deemed garbage.

On Monday, the city is scheduled to close the Bob Jones Trail from the Prado Road intersection to the Los Osos Valley Road corridor for about eight weeks.

During the closure, the city plans to cut back vegetation to reduce fuel for potential wildfires and remove the existing split rail wood fencing along a large section of the trail and replace it with heavy timber fencing.

“We appreciate the community’s patience as we make these important safety improvements to the Bob Jones Bike Trail and surrounding areas,” said Greg Cruce, deputy director of maintenance operations for the city’s Public Works Department. “This brief closure is a temporary inconvenience that will benefit the community and users of the trail for years to come.”


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$25,000 – $50,000 to write a motion to dismiss, if it is done well and again, like everything else the City Attorney does, the City came up short. The City has been pushing on the homeless issue for over a decade and the City Attorney, Dietrick keeps loosing. Why is that? Simple answer the City Attorney isn’t very good at her profession. Maybe she is just learning. A good lawyer is crafted a counseling their client to not make, well stupid moves. Yet, we keep seeing these stupid moves that cost us taxpayers millions of dollars (staff time, wasted time, judgements against the City) over and over and yes over again. Maybe that idiot, Cruce Deputy Director of Maintenance who orchestrated the illegal seizure of homeless property and a violation of their right to camp on public property (Article – SLO evicts homeless, temporarily closes Bob Jones Trail) should be criminally prosecuted or at a minimum be named in a suit so that he pays for the damage done, not us taxpayers.


Well, us taxpayers just need to pony up more money so that City leaders can keep paying for their errors and then give themselves huge pay raises because they are so brillant.


0

The Atascadero State Hospital has plenty of land to build buildings to house the homeless .In return Atascadero gains local jobs not located on other side of Cuesta Grade. Most of the homeless not curable by just giving them more food stamps than families with children, which most the homeless turn into cash to buy drugs and alcohol. Giving homeless a hotel room does not cure any problems they have, just makes it easier for them to get worse off .The homeless need mental health care in an institutionalized setting no day passes no work furlough passes. 24 hour constant monitoring and mentoring are needed,if program unsuccessful at long term success , then the homeless person will not be released back into the public so as public becomes their mental care babysitters .Its not fair to the public nor the mentally ill homeless person , it sounds harsh but it is long overdue for some tough love.


9

The homeless have also reestablished their formerly cleaned out encampment across from the SLO CHP, hundreds of hundreds of thousand for nothing. And now they have a $4.5 million dollar City path and bridge to inhabit between the CHP and the UPRR tracks. And living in that area I cannot so much as leave a leaf rake in the back of my truck.The only solution is to require those who cannot care for themselves to seek treatment and other resources or be committed to state for care as not being able to care for themselves. How much more do you think it costs for the police and paramedics? Then the hospital, where then tens and hundreds of thousands go into the millions. There are a lot of people who have an interest in keeping it this way including “homeless advocates (profiteers). i drove past the dead guy in Mitchell Park near the never to be reopened senior center. I thought it odd that he was sleeping halfway on the sidewalk and the planter. 20 years ago I would have pulled over as a good samaritan and checked on his welfare, Nowadays you could get knifed. And if you call the police, well, you actually have to justify your concern, as in tell me something I don’t know.


10

My dog and I have removed 28 bags of trash from the local creeks. I point and he fetches.

Some of these people, never take trash away from the creeks. We do care about the fish!

Have a wonderful day……peace to all!


11

While I applaud your civic mindedness, I am concerned for your dog’s safety. I would not want any living creature to touch some of the things I’ve seen left in creeks by drug users.


6

We wear boots. His are called “ruff wear” or something like that. We don’t like glass or any sharp things! Thanks for your input, we dig it!


1

Homelessness is a useless term used for everyone who lives on the street. This is the problem. We have plenty of resources to house people who have temporarily lost housing and are willing to follow simple rules of conduct. The rest of the people who are living on the street are; mentally ill, addicted, criminals, transients(homeward bound or ‘hobos’), runaways, released from prison, illegals, unemployable, or just like the lifestyle. Each one of these categories requires different treatments. Reopen Mental Health facilities, Say No to Drugs, Lock up Criminals, discourage transients and vagrancy, Model nuclear families and values, reform prison work release, build the wall, bring back trade schools, and hold lifestyle junkies accountable for social courtesy and cleanliness with no handouts (don’t feed the hippies). If you feel that living on the side of a beautiful trail, highway, sidewalk, or park is someone’s right then please leave your address and I am sure many of the residents of our community will be happy to relocate many of these “unvetted homeless” to your front yard or better yet leave your door open and we can move them into your living room. True compassion is getting people what they need, not just giving them what they want. Many of us work very hard to improve our community and don’t like to see it destroyed by those who don’t.


16

There are several major cases determining homeless rights in the US.

The roughly 2010 decision wherein the City of Laguna Beach was found guilty of reducing the standard of care / services provided to the homeless following the great economic contraction of 2008.

The Orange County decision in roughly 2017, wherein the Court admonished the County of Orange and individual staff members for ignoring court orders routinely under Judge Carter. The County removed homeless property without adequate notice or no notice, then concocted a story that the work was done to provide necessary flood control protection maintenance. This resulted in a cost to the County of Orange in the amount of $32 million dollars. This sounds just like the conduct of Greg Cruce.

The City of San Luis Obispo decision, wherein the City of San Luis Obispo was found guilty of harassing, annoying and molesting the homeless in legal terms. The City Attorney was admonished in that civil suit and ignored the judge and even bad-mouthed the judge to the press. This cost the City millions of dollars in staff time and actual damages to the affected class.

Then there is the infamous Idaho Court decision in the roughly 2017 wherein the Supreme Court of Idaho decided that a homeless person can go to the bathroom wherever they want, since their restroom facilities are where they happen to be at the moment.

The common factors for all of these decisions involve the constitutional right for the wayward traveler the right to camp on public property at any time anywhere. And personal property rights of the homeless, which now in California relates to decisions involving both the County of Riverside and Fresno. The other common factor is that the justices ruling on these decisions were all conservative republicans. Now remember the late great President Reagan with the goal of saving tax payers money closed down all mental institutions throughout the country and pushed those individuals out onto the street. Since, early 2000 our government has been on a role to save tax payer money and release prisoners early. These ex-cons also end up on the street, because no one wants to hire them. The cost to individual communities is 10 fold.

Ignorance of the law and the fact that one’s boss and the City attorney told one if you did this you would get a promotion and raise is no excuse. You are now guilty of violating the rights of the homeless and the Citizens of the City of San Luis Obispo will pay.


-31

Let them camp in the driveway right in front of the Rangers subsidized housing by the golf course, then send the rest to Hearst Castle parking lot….Gavin’s driveway is also another great option.


34

I had a dream last night that instead of “Queen for a Day”, an old TV show I remember well, I was made “God for a Day”. Anything I did was irreversible forever. So, in my dream, I not only repealed Proposition 13, but I increased homeowners’ property taxes to three times the level they were in California before 1978. As my dream continued through the years, I saw millions of homeowners, especially old geezers on fixed incomes, evicted from their million dollar fixer-upper homes for non-payment of property taxes. Poor evicted geezers had tears in their eyes. But, property values crashed while home building skyrocketed. In ten dream-years, the average price of a California home fell to 200K dollars, and everyone could now afford their property tax bill. Young couples who were first time home buyers were thrilled that they could now afford a home in California! But, then I woke up. Aw shoot! Just a dream. So, I said a little prayer for the homeless along the Bob Jones Trail; “Oh Lord, please teach California homeowners a lesson. Please send a righteous earthquake of magnitude 9.6 to California to reduce the homes of heartless Californians to piles of rubble. Lord, they have no mercy for the homeless, so please show them no mercy in return. Amen.”


-80

Too bad your dream didnt also include no public employee union, and public servant salaries, benefits and pensions that dont bankrupt us, and then allow cities and the state to actually address issues.


25

You do not have the right to live in the streets or along highways and relieve yourself at will wherever you wish…its called vagrancy and you should be jailed and given enough time in jail to clean up from whatever addiction you suffer from…yes I said suffer….


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