Do you want to know why homeless encampments become trash heaps, costing millions over time for clean-up? Look in your garage, you have stuff you might need. You and the unhoused aren’t so different. Some of you may lose your housing and end up on the streets also. Age deterioration, mental illness, addiction — the County’s resources are restrained and sadly under-addressed.
To have no ground zero where you’re welcome, no safe place to ‘be’ and work on your current uncomfortable situation, wanting to institutionalize you in homeless recovery to go from street to housing. Housing that hardly exists. The homeless legally now have nowhere to even sleep legally. That fixes everything, eh? Uh?
Camp San Luis has a last large acreage area at O’Conner Way, across from a very financially successful Paint Ball field that enjoys a lease with Camp San Luis. CalFire has plans for a large training camp to the north. Setting up a well-managed (Kansas Ave completely mismanaged) encampment village is the first step to helping the homeless have a home. Not a bad location.
Imagine yourself living without. And then imagine yourself trying to find a path back to normalcy. It’s scary to be on your own, maybe thrown to the wind. The shelters are full already. Many can’t qualify for help.
I urge ‘us’ to develop Village concepts on our un-used government lands to provide homeless victims the option to not have to survive on our community streets when there is a decent and helpful place to ‘be’.
Linde Owen
Los Osos