1 Step Toward a Solution

The social workers may have outnumbered the homeless they were there to help, but the “Connection Day” City Councilman Joel Wachs’ office helped organize in Tujunga’s Howard Finn Park was a step in the right direction. It is also one of only many steps that will be needed.

Representatives from social service agencies and volunteer groups set up shop at the park for a good part of the day, offering medical screenings, mental health and substance abuse assessments and information about housing and other benefits. They also provided a free meal and arranged for transportation from several locations in the area so that homeless men and women had a way to get to the park. About 20 homeless people showed up, far fewer than the 50-plus officials waiting to greet them.

It’s a start.

Sunland and Tujunga face a homeless problem that’s going to get worse, and soon. For years, men and women have found refuge in the area’s rural canyons and abandoned lots, setting up camps that no one particularly noticed. That’s changing.

The week before the park meeting, a homeless camp on private property near the Foothill Freeway was bulldozed by the lot’s owner. The destruction of “Jurassic Park,” as its residents had dubbed it, made homeless people in the area suspicious that city officials called the meeting as a way to trace other homeless encampments and destroy them too. Rumors circulated that officials at the meeting would give away bus tickets out of town.

The city indeed wants to close all such camps because of fire danger. But city officials at the park were trying to reach camp residents before they’re displaced to help connect them to whatever city services are available. In the social services field, where demand so vastly outstrips resources, it’s a rare effort at prevention.

Why are the homeless camps being closed now? It’s a familiar story that, ironically, can be traced not to hard times but to good ones.

Just as good times have transformed the flophouses and pawn shops of many urban areas into townhouses and boutiques, an economic upswing is remaking the brushy lots of Sunland and Tujunga. What’s good news to people with regular jobs and real houses means an eviction notice to people who live on the margins and who find some measure of refuge in these marginal places.

That’s one reason the camps have become more visible. Another is that both city officials and city residents, wary of the fire risk posed by El Nino growth followed by a dry winter, have stepped up brush removal, leaving the previously hidden camps more exposed and nearby neighbors more nervous about campfires.

It’s hard to find fault with either an economic upswing or fire prevention, but that doesn’t mean we can turn our backs on the people displaced and pretend that the rising tide really does raise all ships. The phrase “homeless residents” may sound contradictory, but these squatters’ camps are the only home many have, and for reasons both humanitarian and practical we should try to help.

It won’t be easy. Anyone who’s worked with alcoholism, mental illness and other problems that often accompany homelessness already knows that. And some camp inhabitants, who own dogs or just like to be outdoors, say they can’t abide the structure of a shelter. It will be especially challenging to steer them to an alternative.

The social agencies that put on the park meeting may decide that such a large gathering of officials is itself too structured and intimidating and that smaller outreach programs would work better. The important thing is to keep trying and to keep meeting in search of solutions. For some, it marked the first time they’d gotten together to exchange information and ideas and to talk with police officers and park rangers who deal with homeless encampments. If Connections Day made connections between the various groups who work with the homeless, that’s a start.