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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Self-Help for Homeless

The Valley Eye Center had a problem. There was a tent city in the parking lot behind the Van Nuys optometry clinic, and the business couldn’t get the residents to move. “Patients would ask if we knew there was feces out there,” Center Office Manager Debra Enokian recalled. “It was really just a health hazard.” A similar scenario played out in an alley behind janitorial supply company McCalla Co., also in Van Nuys. The 60-year-old business was plagued by vandalism and theft for months before the presence of a nearby charter school prompted the Los Angeles Police Department to close the area to the homeless, owner Jane Phillippe said. “It’s awful,” Phillippe said. “It has been a mess. The last five or six years it has gotten bad.” Such stories are shared by many local business owners, who find themselves torn between sympathy for the homeless and frustration with the ramifications of having dozens of people living on sidewalks, in alleys and in recreational vehicles throughout the San Fernando Valley. “People now are experiencing homelessness out on our streets to a greater degree than they were even just five years ago,” Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, chief executive of North Hollywood-based LA Family Housing, said. “Of course it affects businesses negatively – nobody wants to open up their storefront and have customers need to walk over people.” San Fernando Valley business-owners recognize that the issue is about much more than their bottom line. That’s why many of them are stepping up to be part of the solution, rather than leaving the problem to nonprofits or government. “The response of the business community, in my eyes, has been remarkable,” Ken Craft, executive director of Hope of the Valley Rescue Mission in Mission Hills, said. “(Businesses) see that it takes all of us to solve this problem, and I’ve seen an incredible outpouring of compassion.” Real solutions Valley business owners recognize that to solve the problem, small businesses and large corporations need to participate through political support and other resources. Last year’s passage of Measure HHH in the city of Los Angeles and Measure H in the county, for example, made it clear that businesses are paying attention, Klasky-Gamer said. “The business community through our chambers and business councils were at the forefront of making sure these measures passed,” she said. “The collaboration on these measures was instrumental.” A number of the projects funded by Measure HHH – a countywide initiative that allots $1.2 billion in bonds for the building of housing for the homeless – are slated for the San Fernando Valley. A shelter scheduled to open in December in Sylmar will have a dog kennel and room for storage. The new headquarters of LA Family Housing will add 50 units of permanent housing for the homeless later this year, as well as a short-term shelter and a health clinic in 2018. Yet another development in Lake View Terrace will offer units for veterans. “There’s a lot going on in the Valley,” Klasky-Gamer said. Individual businesses, too, are finding ways to be part of the solution. Some, like Phillippe and others at McCalla Co. routinely give money to those who camp out near their businesses. “You know some of them are just on hard times,” Phillippe said. “You can tell they’re really thankful.” Others are joining the cause through partnerships with homeless services. Last year, Mor Cazakov, president of Ninja Plumber in Van Nuys, decided to provide free plumbing services to all Hope of the Valley facilities. “I was looking to get myself involved in the community in some way that was going to be helpful,” Cazakov said. After hearing Hope of the Valley’s Craft speak at a Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Cazakov approached him with the idea of donating toilet paper to the group’s facilities. After Craft took him on a tour, he realized that Ninja could offer much more, Cazakov said. “If I had to put a number on it, we’ve probably donated somewhere in the range of $25,000 to $30,000 in services,” he said. “This is a forever deal.” Large corporations such as Keyes Motors and SoCalGas have also provided resources to Hope of the Valley, Craft said. Other small businesses send volunteers to the rescue mission’s facilities during the week, or make donations to pay for meals, he added. “We wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for our partnerships in the business community,” Craft said. San Fernando Valley Rescue Mission also has benefitted from its relationships with business owners, particularly those who are willing to hire formerly homeless individuals. Large grocery chains such as Kroger Co. subsidiary Ralph’s as well as local landscaping and sprinkler companies have participated in the organization’s workforce development efforts, said Wade Trimmer, the mission’s director. “Those kinds of relationships are key,” he said. “Being back in the workforce means you’re back in the community.” Security response For some business owners, policies that forbade the removal of homeless individuals’ property have led to major headaches. Under one Los Angeles city municipal code, for instance, homeless persons are allowed to live on the street so long as their tents are down between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. They are allowed to have a 60-gallon barrel of property and one operational bicycle, so long as they leave 36 inches of passage on the sidewalk. Such rules limit how businesses can respond to homeless encampments near their properties. For months, McCalla Co. and the Valley Eye Center were told by police that there was nothing they could do about the nearby homeless populations. Though neither claimed that the presence of the homeless hurt their sales, both businesses spent money beefing up security. “We now have a camera, and we added more stuff to the fences. It’s better now that they aren’t back there,” Phillippe said. The security upgrades cost between $15,000 and $20,000, she said. The Valley Eye Center, too, is installing cameras in case the encampment returns. “They could come back at any moment,” Enokian said. In some cases, programs such as the LAPD’s Valley Homeless Outreach and Proactive Engagement – a collaboration between police, sanitation and service groups – have brought relief to businesses and homeless individuals. Launched just over a year ago in the San Fernando Valley, the local HOPE team answers residents’ and businesses’ calls when encampments encroach on private property. “Homelessness is not a crime, but traditionally there’s been no other entity besides the police that can handle it,” said Sgt. Gerald Case, who oversees the San Fernando Valley HOPE bureau. “Our approach is outreach, housing placement – things that offer a more permanent solution to the problem, rather than putting people in jail.” But the HOPE team can only do so much, Case notes. There is a misconception among area residents that authorities are able to forcefully move homeless and transient individuals into shelters. “They aren’t going away; they’re going to migrate,” he said. “It’s not possible to make them disappear.” Complicating the issue for businesses is a city ordinance that bans vehicle dwellers from parking near schools or neighborhoods. As a result, motor homes and vans with homeless set up in front of commercial properties, or along sidewalks in industrial parks like those in Van Nuys. “We have businesses that have never dealt with the homelessness issue, and now they have an RV parked in front of their business,” Trimmer at the Rescue Mission said. “I think what it points to is that the ordinances are really designed to share the social cost of the homeless issue. My concern is that it’s not sustainable.” Valley loyalty While policy is problematic, the biggest impediment to getting the homeless off the street is a lack of shelters, Case said. As many as 75 percent of the San Fernando Valley’s homeless grew up here, according to figures from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Their unwillingness to leave the Valley is compounded by the fact that many have dogs, partners or property they would have to separate from were they to accept the HOPE team’s offers of placing them in a shelter in downtown L.A. or further south, Case explained. “Probably about 15 percent of the people we come in contact with are going to accept our services,” Case said. “Resistance is overwhelmingly common.” Without sustainable interventions, the rising cost of housing will likely worsen the problem. According to a report by real estate firm CoStar Group Inc., the average rent of a one-bedroom apartment in the central San Fernando Valley is a little more than $1,600 a month; though many individuals and families likely pay much less through subsidized housing programs, sluggish development has made such units hard to come by. “The root of the problem is our housing costs have continued to escalate and our income hasn’t kept pace,” Klasky-Gamer said. “A slowdown in (housing) production further aggravates how much a landlord can charge in rent.”

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