Front Page  »  

San Luis Obispo County to close safe parking site

February 2, 2024

Homeless parking site

By KAREN VELIE

San Luis Obispo County plans to officially close the safe parking site on Oklahoma Avenue on March 18. On Feb. 1, the county gave tenants of the site a month and a half to move out.

In early October, county officials held a meeting with individuals sleeping at the safe parking site and offered them $1,000 and additional resources if they moved out by an agreed upon date. While many took the money and moved on, there are 21 people still living at the site.

Since its establishment in Oct. 2021, 115 people have lived at the site, with 67 people having successfully moved on to other housing solutions.

A grand jury report in 2023 found that those managing the site were unsuccessful at helping the majority of its participant households successfully transition to permanent housing. With a transition rate of 14%, the county safe parking site falls well below the median rehousing rate of 40% found in a 2021 nationwide study of 43 safe parking programs, according to the grand jury report.

During the approximately two years the safe parking site was operational, emergency personnel responded to calls for assistance 493 times, according to the grand jury report. Those calls include three deaths, 43 medical, 42 disturbing the peace, seven spousal abuse or battery, five threats, 13 burglary or theft and 50 for mental health issues.

Sign up for breaking news, alerts and updates with Cal Coast News Top Stories.

 


Loading...
Subjects:     
Related:


9 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

These are the professional homeless who will not participate in any program. They want free everything with no restrictions on behavior or drug use. The government programs we fund reinforce these “rights” with no improvement in their behavior. F’em. If you are not going to meet me half way, F’ you, they are playing you. Are they smarter than those attempting to provide services? Hell yeah, you chumps!


24

Should be no camping outside of paid camp sites, no living in cars or vans more than 1 night in the same place. We have people living in a motor home om my street setting up their lawn chairs and living for free while making my street look like a campground. If you can’t afford the rent here then go somewhere that you can but don’t use my street as your own personal campground. We used to call these people bums and arrest them for loitering.


38

Your street is my personal campground and there is nothing you can about it.


-21

I can hardly blame people not wanting to be neighbors to a safe park or homeless shelter.

Since Oklahoma Ave opened there was a steady flow of people walking back and forth from downtown to the safe park site,now that they are not admitting anyone anymore,the issues my neighbors and I have experienced have stopped.

We have had individuals trying doors to houses in broad daylight,at night breaking into cars,one I told he needed to leave he was on private property,I guess he missed the sign coming down off the highway because he was glassy eyed and high.

Help the ones that want help,whether it’s mental health,housing,jobs.But from what I seen a good portion of the homeless choose to live that way,high and under the stars.


27

I thought rather bribe was $5,000 not $1,000. Karen should check…


-10

Typical Bruce Gibson strategy of ready, shoot, aim. Bruce told the world that it is a moral imperative that we address the “un-housed.”  Standard un-hinged political babble by Gibson. Moral imperatives from a man who has no morals (sexual affairs with his employees) is laughable. Truth is from the beginning, Bruce was deflecting the county’s abysmal record of helping the homeless by doing something/anything, even if leadership throughout the county said without a well thought out plan Oklahoma Safe Parking will fail. And fail it did, spectacularly. 


So Board, what are you planning to do in three weeks you couldn’t do in two years? What are you planning to do with the terminally ill residents who have no relatives and no resources? What are you going to do with the mentality ill who can’t fend for themselves and there are no resources for them? What are you going to do with those just can’t leave because there is literally no where for them to go? And Bruce, where is your moral imperative now?


30

Speaking of county homeless failures, what have they done with the $18 million they received six months ago from the state to open an 80 bed homeless shelter, originally planned for South Higuera Street? The neighbors lawyered up and kicked the county’s legal butt and kicked the county out of the neighborhood. Ironically, the County’s Homeless Shelter is itself homeless. 


Rumor has it Ortiz-Legg is going to surprise her personal neighbors and put it on Johnson Street. Same strategy as South Higuera, ambush the neighborhood and see if you can strong arm a homeless Mecca in a neighborhood that is already overrun with the downtrodden.  Ortiz-Legg is spending her time literally “tilting a windmills” instead doing the hard work at home. 


22

A 1000 dollars to move somewhere else, great deal for the tax payers.


-14

There’s already a half dozen motorhomes on Turri Rd, with the ever present homeless trash surrounding them…


32