How would SLO County Board of Supervisors candidates fix homelessness? Here’s what they said
How do the candidates running for the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors plan to address homelessness?
Six candidates discussed the issue on Tuesday night during a debate at Cuesta College’s Cultural and Performing Arts Center hosted by the San Luis Obispo County Citizens Commission on Homelessness and Mustang News.
Everyone in the running for board seats in the June primary election attended the event except incumbent District 2 Supervisor Bruce Gibson, challenger Geof Auslen and incumbent District 4 Supervisor Lynn Compton.
The debate was moderated by Tribune reporter Nick Wilson and Mustang Media Group reporter Ava Kershner. Here’s what the candidates had to say.
District 2
Four people are competing to represent District 2.
Gibson is running for his fifth term. Also on the ballot are Auslen, an Atascadero business owner; Bruce Jones, a retired orthopedic surgeon who moved to Templeton in 2017, and John Whitworth, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and business owner.
From subsidizing tiny homes to treating addiction, Whitworth and Jones agreed on most debate topics.
Jones and Whitworth agreed that life in San Luis Obispo County is growing more expensive — from rent to car payments to gas prices — which could put more people on the street.
“A lot of people are sitting on the edge right now,” Whitworth said.
They support the county’s new plan to address homelessness, which the board discussed on Tuesday. The plan establishes a Homeless Division under the Department of Social Services and creates a Homeless Operations Center that “centralizes homeless care,” Jones said.
“Part of the problem over the last decade has been the lack of communication between well-intentioned, hard working people trying to make things right,” Jones said, and the Homeless Division will improve coordination between these people.
Jones said the new District 2 offers assistance to unhoused community members through ECHO and TFS shelters in Paso Robles, but the county needs to release more funding to create more resources.
Jones and Whitworth both support subsidizing a tiny home village. Whitworth wants the village to feel like a community — complete with a community garden.
Jones said people who are unhoused avoid congregate living facilities such as shelters because they want their own space, and tiny homes give them that space.
Jones also wants to pursue Home Key Projects, which use state funding to convert hotels or motels into housing.
Jones’ priority is public safety, followed by addressing homelessness, he said.
Whitworth’s priority is treating mental health and addiction, he said, which is “tied together” with homelessness.
When discussing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed program that allows judges to compel people with severe mental health and addiction issues to undergo court-ordered treatment, Jones said he liked hat the program could help people “get their lives back.”
But he and Whitworth were concerned that it could violate people’s civil liberties.
Jones said he’s concerned that short-tern vacation rentals such as AirBnB properties reduce the amount of housing available in the community, especially smaller units that could be affordable. He would tighten regulations on such vacation rentals to limit them in the county, but wouldn’t remove them entirely, because “property ownership has to be respected, and it’s difficult to take that right away from people,” he said.
Whitworth said vacation rentals bring value to the community if properly regulated, but didn’t mention specific regulations. He also said he wants to respect property rights.
Both want to bring a fresh perspective to office and set partisan politics aside to solve homelessness.
“I don’t think that taking care of homelessness is a progressive issue or a conservative issue. I think it’s a human issue,” Jones said. “Irrespective of one’s ideology, we all seem to care about this.”
District 3
Newsom appointed Dawn Ortiz-Legg to the board after Supervisor Adam Hill’s death mid-term, so District 3 will have a special election to fill the seat for the next two years.
Three people are running to represent District 3.
Ortiz-Legg is vying to keep her seat on the board, while insurance agent Stacy Korsgaden is running for office a second time, after challenging Hill for his seat in 2020. Retiree Arnold Ruiz is also in the race.
For Ortiz-Legg, the key to addressing homelessness is strengthening county leadership. The county, cities and nonprofit organizations are all working hard to help people, she said, but they’re not working together.
That’s why she’s glad the Board of Supervisors agreed in its Tuesday meeting to create a Homeless Division within the Department of Social Services.
The county needs to coordinate collaboration between the “alphabet soup of agencies and programs’‘ that support unhoused folks, she said, “so I’m glad we’re finally getting there.”
Korsgaden wants the county to act faster on homelessness by declaring an emergency and using the Emergency Operations Plan to get people off the streets.
As a business owner, Korsgaden said she’s results-oriented and wants to “hold people and projects accountable.”
She proposed that the county build emergency tent shelters for people who are unhoused. There, they can sleep, take showers, do laundry, access medical and detox services and more.
The shelter would then bridge people with longer-term housing such as tiny homes, she said.
Once the county builds enough shelters to house everyone, Korsgaden proposed, it should pass an ordinance that prohibits sleeping in undesignated areas.
“It’s not a criminal act to be homeless,” Korsgaden said. “But we need to provide a situation where we don’t have people that are using drugs in our parks and in the community causing crime.”
Ortiz-Legg said she would support adding beds to the 40 Prado Homeless Services Center, but wants to see initiatives other than another shelter.
“Folks need community,” Ortiz-Legg said. “They stay in the riverbeds and all because they want to be in a community. They don’t want to go to a homeless shelter.”
Ortiz-Legg said she will pursue nuanced solutions to homelessness, noting that people lose their homes for different reasons. Whether they are people struggling with addiction or mental health, teenagers who aged out of the foster care system or medically fragile seniors, she said, unhoused people need different types of support.
“Understanding the problem is really critical, and that takes time and details,” she said. “You have to be able to sit with folks and listen to them and work with them. There is no simple fix.”
Korsgaden and Ortiz-Legg disagreed on the concept of “housing first,” which is when a person is placed in housing before addressing mental health, addiction and employment.
Korsgaden said that people should be housed in shelters while they address issues such as mental health and addiction so they can be monitored and supported. She would focus funding on public safety and building shelters, she said.
Ortiz-Legg, however, supports housing first. While on the board, she approved 20 so-called pallet homes in Grover Beach, and would support other initiatives to house people, such as tiny homes and adding beds to the 40 Prado shelter.
She would also support building more day centers, shower centers, training centers and affordable housing. The county will need to allocate more money to homelessnes, so she’s looking for more funding sources at the county level, Ortiz-Legg said.
Ruiz, who brought his pet rabbit to the debate, made two points related to homelessness. He said he supports providing food and shelter to unhoused community members, but not long-term housing.
In addition, Rutiz doesn’t want commercial spaces converted into housing or shelters. Instead he wants “active, commercial, small-businessmen in there,” he said.
He also wants the county to focus on teaching people how to work, potentially through training programs, he said.
District 4
In the District 4 race, Compton is once again competing with Arroyo Grande City Council member Jimmy Paulding for office.
Paulding challenged Compton for her seat in 2018, and lost by only 60 votes.
Paulding said the county must take a regional approach to solving homelessness.. He supports the county’s plan to create a Homeless Division under Social Services, which would include a Homeless Action Committee with leaders from local cities, nonprofits and the county to coordinate regional efforts to tackle homelessness, he said.
“Homelessness does not know jurisdictional boundaries,” Paulding said, which is why collaboration between the cities, county and nonprofits is critical.
He said the county needs more temporary shelter such as tiny homes, pallet homes and safe parking programs in addition to “permanent supportive housing.”
Paulding and the Arroyo Grande City Council is working with local churches to build a safe parking program — which is fiscally responsible because churches provide the land for free, he said. He voted with the council to allocate $300,000 of American Rescue Plan Act funds to build a partnership with 5Cities Homeless Coalition, he said.
Paulding said he would work to engage neighbors who may be opposed to living next to a homeless facility, and give them a say in the process. When working on a controversial project, outreach is key, Paulding said.
“Make sure that the community is engaged in the process, that they have buy-in in the process,” he said. The community should know who will live in the facility, and what the rules and processes at the facility are, he said.
Paulding said he would feel comfortable living next to a homeless facility if it was properly managed, adding there’s plenty of local nonprofits that excel at this.
Paulding said a recent overdose death at the Oklahoma Avenue Safe Parking Site is tragic, but “comes with the territory. The county is trying to do something new.” He said it’s critical that facilities have the right management and support services.
“I hope that moving forward, we can learn from these lessons and make these types of communities safer,” he said.
Paulding wants to bring stronger leadership to South County when it comes to homelessness. He said he’s committed to setting aside partisan politics and “working together across the aisle to get stuff done.”
“When we’re talking about South County, we need leadership. We need somebody who has vision and we need somebody who’s collaborative,” he said. “Until we have that political will to make this a priority, we’re not going to see the progress that we truly need.”
The statewide primary election will be held June 7.
This story was originally published April 22, 2022 at 3:18 PM with the headline "How would SLO County Board of Supervisors candidates fix homelessness? Here’s what they said."
