Cambria responds to homelessness on two fronts

Progress was made last week on the related but separate issues of Cambria’s homeless encampments and the community’s financially home-strapped population. Seven transient camps were cleaned up, and there was a good turnout for a meeting about sharing homes.

Encampments

According to Carlos Mendoza, facilities/resources supervisor for the Cambria Community Services District, crews cleaned out four camps on the eastern part of Fiscalini Ranch Preserve, by Rodeo Grounds Road. “The other three were located by the Santa Rosa Creek Trail on the west part of the ranch.”

He estimated that “approximately 20 yards of trash was removed from all sites.”

Cleaning up the largest camp found on the Ranch was a priority, he said of “the camp next to the creek bank behind the pickleball courts. Mendoza said “the next significant rain would have washed all that trash away.”

District workers and a contract crew from West Coast Tree Service did the cleanup.

Now, the crews are working with the Sheriff’s Office Community Action Team (CAT) and Cmdr. Jim Voge “to patrol the areas that are known to have homeless activities on the Ranch,” Mendoza said. “We are hoping that we can find the campsites before they become established.

Voge and Senior Deputy Rainer Bodine said they’re also working with Caltrans to clean up a large camp found in that agency’s right-of-way along Highway 1.

Bodine said Sunday, Nov. 12, that “there are still multiple occupied camps” in the area. He and the action team are working to “see what services they can offer” to the campers, to give them time to leave the sites voluntarily before the deputies must issue formal eviction notices.

He said they’ve recently had more calls than usual related to the homeless, especially from businesses and people who’ve come out and been confronted.

Evicting the homeless “has a double-sided effect,” Bodine said. The areas are cleaned up, but the occupants have to go somewhere, and that often winds up being in occupied or business areas.

So far, “the only warming center in rainy seasons is in Grover Beach,” he said. So the homeless “have to look for people to take them in, or hide under the overpasses” and bridges, or find other protected areas.

Bodine said one Main Street property owner reported finding “150 to 200 pounds” of personal belongings in bags, hidden under a tarp beneath a bush. “We helped post that,” he said, and if the items aren’t removed promptly, “they’ll be considered abandoned trash and removed.”

Both men said the encampments will be an ongoing issue, and finding them quickly, before they get well established, is the key.

“With limited resources, it’s a challenge to keep on top of this issue,” Mendoza said, “and so we are relying on the community to let us know of any issues they find on the Ranch. They can report suspicious activity on the Ranch to me at 927-6220 or (by email to) cmendoza@cambriacsd.org.”

Home sharing and other services

Nearly four dozen people attended the Nov. 9 workshop designed to help Cambria’s seniors find resources they need and then describe to attendees the process of sharing a home.

Linda Black of Square One Elder and Health Advocacy provided a list of documents everybody should have, especially as they get older. Those items range from a list of emergency contacts, a summary of medical conditions and medications, insurance policies and vehicle data to an inventory of assets and liabilities, plus essential documents (do you have an advance health care directive and a will?).

HomeShareSLO helps to connect responsible people who need housing with those who want to remain in their homes, but need extra income and/or help to do so and are willing to share the space.

One well-discussed subject was the tricky topic of how to maintain a certain level of privacy when sharing a residence.

According to Anne Wyatt, HomeShareSLO’s program coordinator, it’s all about identifying the individuals’ needs and desires ahead of time, and then matching people who have similar privacy goals.

All that needs to be hashed out ahead of time, and HomeShareSLO will help with that, Wyatt said.

Maybe the homeowner wants to share the kitchen but not the living room, or wants to watch TV with the homesharer, but not eat meals together.

Sharing a residence can range from being neighborly — maybe only interacting on the porch or in the yard — to being roommates with some shared time but separate lives. Some homesharers may opt for even more companionship and interaction.

Success or failure can rest on the personalities involved and the design of the home, which are among the things HomeShareSLO will assess long before the prospective homesharers ever meet.

As Wyatt said, “We have a greater variety of housing options available than is often imagined. To meet the needs of an aging population — with more single-person households — we’ll require different types of housing” than what’s typically considered the norm.

She noted that “it’s amusing and also somewhat disheartening that the current system of inequitable tax incentives, marketing propaganda and production limited to where the money is forces many of us who desire simple housing to consume more of it than we can keep up with.

“Housing should serve us, yet it seems a lot of us are stuck in a deepening hole serving our houses.”

Wyatt said, “Creative solutions don’t always come in the form of new bricks-and-mortar construction. Solutions can come in the form of existing housing and commercial stock through building social capacity,” such as sharing homes and giving people the skills to live together successfully.

“Statistics suggest that roughly 15 percent of Americans want housing different than standard types provided (often tiny houses with fewer amenities).” That may be a minority, she said, “but that’s something like 800 Cambrians and 45 million Americans.”

“Housing and multiple individual and community-wide benefits are within reach,” Wyatt said, “if a few of us interested in something different come together to reach out and grab it.”

This story was originally published November 15, 2017 at 9:24 AM with the headline "Cambria responds to homelessness on two fronts."