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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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Looks family friendly.


14

Open up your homes for these poor people. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you have compassion? I don’t.


19

A new multi million dollar homeless shelter and several more taxpayer millions spent every year, compassion isn’t lacking….


27

I’d like to try to make my comment based on reason and not on politics. So here are the facts. Very few non homeless citizens use that part of the trail because it is directly adjacent to the sewage treatment plant and 95% of the time it stinks. The smell is absolutely disgusting. I bet the vast majority of you have never once even gone down that trail. Aside from the sewage treatment plant, it has a lovely view of the freeway. This is not some pristine family park.


That being said, there is another reality here. It is the law of the land (ruled on by the conservative-leaning supreme court of the U.S.) that you cannot move people on from public land unless you provide them an alternative location. It’s not some Newsom or Harmon instituted liberal policy.


So where better to allow these people to camp than in this location? If it makes a giant mess, let’s try to mitigate THAT problem, with some public garbage services. Otherwise, pushing the homeless people out of that area is just going to send them into your neighborhoods. So ask yourself, judgement aside, what you actually want. Come to terms with reality. We have NO CHOICE but to let people camp on public land, period, so figure out where you want them.


-30

actually, I’d be all for finding a way to shift the public budget around to cover clearing out an area of land, putting in restrooms, showers, potable water faucets, and trash service and letting people camp there. They started to dabble in it with the temporary overnight parking areas (for people sleeping in their cars).


There are a bunch of little details that could be difficult to work out, but it could be a good thing to work towards.


11

The minute these folks started urinating and defecating in public and creating unimaginable messes , they lost the right to be “campers”. They are “homeless” by choice in that they refuse options available to them. They refuse medications, healthcare and many are a danger to themselves or others. Enough, enough.


69

Don’t worry, the Bob Jones “Boom Town” will return after the work is done. It will be just more inviting.


24

“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”. Whatever lie you need to proffer Greg. Now there is a qualified person, barely got through high school, can’t write or compose a letter by himself and run’s his side business during City hours. The City was legally barred from evicting the homeless from public property, so they concoct a story that their actions are really for routine maintenance and this idiot proffers the lie to the public. Greg, you can be personally sued by homeless advocates for your actions.


-98

That is correct. It was the Supreme Court of the United States (which is conservative-leaning now) that made the ruling that people cannot be evicted from public land unless you have an alternative location they can camp. But no one cares about facts and details, they want to blame it on the city council or specific liberals like Newsom.


-26

The earth is a big place. I’m sure there’s room for them somewhere else.


22

Agreed, it was the SCOTUS that decided this point.


However, there is absolute empirical evidence that liberal policies and liberal political leadership has made the homeless situation in California the worst in the nation. Everybody knows this, no sense arguing about the failures of the California leadership, it’s a fact.


My question is, what do we do about? How do you adequately and fairly balance the rights and desires of the producers in society against the “homeless ?”


Again, I’ve said this before, in terms of homelessness in California and the nation, it is not a housing issue but a mental health CRISIS. We need bold , objective and non political leadership on this issue.


23

Derasmus – I think there is plenty of blame to go around on both the left and the right for this problem, all the way back to Governor Reagan’s policies of closing down mental health institutions and releasing people. Was he wrong in doing that? Not necessarily, but it did contribute to the homeless problem. Anyway, I am not here to claim like I know all the causes nor cures of homelessness. I am here to argue that under the current state of affairs and the current legal restrictions, it’s better to have the homeless in this particular location, and provide some services, than it is to spread them all over town.


-7

I also think it’s worth pointing out that Arizona currently has the highest growth rate for homelessness in the country. And while they may have shifted blue in national elections recently, they are still a very conservative state.


-11

Maybe go to The massive homeless shelter right down the street…. If they want to follow rules like the rest of society.


89

I think both perceived and missed the whole point. Let’s assume they don’t want to follow rules like the rest of society. Short committing actual crimes against others, what do you with such people? Imprison them? Do you REALLY want to pay for the cost of that?


So let’s assume that there will always be people that don’t want to play ball. How do you suggest those people are handled?


-14

And I’m sure Target sold someone that shopping cart….


15

We need to overhaul our mental health system. By that I mean we need to return to mental health and substance abuse in institutional settings, It need not resemble the dark, inhumane systems of the past. In fact, Governor Reagan signed the bill in California sponsored by two Democrats and one Republican that ended the involuntary institutional system in California because the ACLU pushed it and because the thought was that the burden was supposed to be shifted to outpatient services at the local level. The Republicans thought it would also save a bunch of money (it really didn’t). Heck, even prior to that JFK was advocating something similar at the National level. Obviously this didn’t pan out. I say this because of the knee jerk reaction that I always hear that it was Reagan who “kicked everyone out of residential mental health facilities…” Blame it on mean ol’ Republicans…That point of view is not accurate and is a political distraction to what we need to do. And yes, to blame all homelessness on liberal , left leaning policies is also an overly simplistic and political point of view. It is however relevant to look at the last 20 years of Democratic policies In California and parse out good policies ( if there are any) from the bad ones. That’s because the Dems have pretty much been running everything for a while without having to factor in opposing points of view. That’s just a fact.


Again , in my opinion, we need to fund (and yes it will cost money but in the long run save money) compulsory, short and long term residential treatment mental health treatment centers.


In the short term dedicating some spaces here and there for “camping “ might be fine but at some point the people want their cities back, to be able to walk in public areas without being hassled, stepping around human waste; safety, and quality of life for those who produce, and play by the rules (yes, the taxpayers) are entitled to this. Taxpayer is not a dirty word.


So, short term vs long term strategies…what should they be? How do you implement those?


-2

Look at that picture! I knew it was getting bad in slo, but not venice beach bad


72

It is like this in many parts of the country now. And it’s not just liberal policies to blame. There’s a financial crisis, massive inflation, a drug epidemic (a delayed reaction from the pill popping frenzy fueled by big pharma), and the supreme court ruled that people could not be evicted from public land unless they were provided an alternative location. Anywhere that it doesn’t get freezing, people are flocking to.


10

More than 50% of the country’s homeless live in CA.

“Many parts” of the country DO NOT look like this because the greater majority of homeless are HERE.

Biden’s open southern border will knock this problem down a few notches when the drugs that are streaming in to the country really take hold.


2

How about a permanent eviction?


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