Santa Clarita to Again House Winter Shelter

A Los Angeles County maintenance yard in Santa Clarita will be the site of a winter shelter for a second year, after Castaic residents rejected plans to create one in a parking lot at a county jail in that community.

An agreement to set up the shelter at the county-owned flood-control maintenance yard on Centre Pointe Parkway was announced Wednesday by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who sought to resolve a dispute between supporters of homeless services and residents of Castaic.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority last week approved a proposal to create a winter shelter in the parking lot of the Pitchess Detention Center. But after two hostile community meetings at which homeless people were denounced as criminals, Antonovich, who represents the area, said he would find a new location.

The opposition mirrored that of a year ago, when Santa Clarita officials initially objected to placing a winter shelter there and proposed instead to pay to bus homeless people to Los Angeles.

Officials said there were no complaints or police activity associated with last year’s winter shelter. The maintenance yard is in a commercial and semi-industrial office park and fairly isolated from residences.

Santa Clarita officials did not return calls Wednesday seeking comment, but an Antonovich spokesman said they were aware of the plans and had been cooperative.

“It was a suitable and successful location last year,” Antonovich planning deputy Paul Novak said. “All of the parties are aware of what we’re doing and we haven’t encountered a negative reaction anywhere.”

Officials said it was important to quickly find a location so the shelter could meet its scheduled Dec. 1 opening. The winter program, coordinated by the homeless services agency, operates about 2,000 beds from Dec. 1 through March 15 at several sites throughout the county and city of Los Angeles. The homeless are picked up at various sites and spend the night in a shelter, where they are given food and provided with social services. They are then returned to their original pickup points.

Barbara Preheim, director of operations for the Santa Clarita Community Development Corp., which will run the shelter under a contract with the homeless authority, said the agency would work to get the same trailers and other equipment used last year.

Preheim called the new plan “fabulous,” adding, “It’s a good site and the neighbors are very supportive.”

County officials said they would begin looking now for next year’s site to avoid the kind of opposition that has erupted in the Santa Clarita Valley.