Inyo County Board of Supervisors take up homeless issue again. Little appears to have been done.
According to INYO350, the local community activist group, at this Tuesday’s June 8 meeting of the Inyo County Board of Supervisors, Marilyn Mann, Inyo County’s Director of Health and Human Services, will be making a presentation at 11:00AM about homelessness in Inyo County. They ask that you please attend the online meeting, and if possible, participate in the discussion.
In what many considered an appallingly poor decision on February 16, the Inyo County Board of Supervisors overruled a unanimous decision by the County Planning Commission to grant a permit to IMACA and the Bishop Church of the Nazarene to operate a Safe Parking Lot on the Church’s property on West Line Street. The project would have provided a nighttime refuge to local people living in their vehicles. Three-and-a-half months later, nothing has been done either by the county or the City of Bishop.
The homeless often include veterans and families with children living out of their vehicles
Supervisors Roeser, Kingsley and Pucci voted against the project, literally leaving this vulnerable and unprotected population was “literally kicked to the curb.” By doing so, they also took away the promised overnight security patrol to insure the safety of the homeless, several of whom are families and veterans, but apparently not voters or supporters of the three supervisors. The safe refuge at the church would have also prevented harassment by the police and others.
INYO350 says that its members and other local residents have spoken up at each County Board meeting, urging Supervisors to fix what they had broken and to inform the public regarding their progress on an alternate Safe Parking sit
And still, 3 months later, nothing has been accomplished. The decision by the three county supervisors has been described as callous and remarkably insensitive to a real and serious community need. One supervisor made a rather inept comment about “rural values” which many later expressed outrage and “not representative of the county’s values at all.” Most supporters of the homeless project feel that the community values held by the people of Inyo County are “to look out for and take care of each other and those in need,” which coincidently, several pointed out, happens to be a well-known religious value as well.
The agendas for the Board of Supervisors meetings can be found here and the topic is set for discussion at 11am tomorrow, Tuesday, June 8. If you wish to speak to the issue using a “hand raise” feature on the online site or forward your comments and questions to Board Clerk Darcy Ellis ([email protected]). INYO350 suggest that you ask that your comments be read aloud during the meeting.
INYO350 has a few key points that you might wish to make and posted a detailed Letter to the Editor in the Saturday Inyo Register about the homeless issue. To find out more on how you can more effectively address the Board of Supervisors on this important issue, please contact Harold McDonald at [email protected].
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A challenging situation for most communities nowadays. One thing is certain though, ignoring it isn’t going to make it go away. So management is sorely needed. If leaders can’t support the proposed plan then they need to come up with a new plan. Because doing nothing is a lose/lose proposition.
It is the responsibility of the people who attend those churches to follow Gods work and help those less fortunate, hypocrites say one thing on Sunday and yet live another the other six days. Safe places to sleep at night is a simple humanitarian thing, no one asking you to give up a room in your big, well stocked homes. What will you answer when you get to the pearly gates?
Maybe the Inyo350 group could have the homeless people park on their streets, in their driveways and front yards and put up some portable outhouses too! It is NOT a churches responsibility to provide overnight parking for the homeless…
You do realize the church *volunteered* to host this site, right? And that caring for the poor USED to be a primary tenet of Christianity?
WWJD, Lynette? You sound like you think you know him pretty well.
Once you open it up more and more will come.At Echo Park in LA it cost the community tax payers over $600,000 dollars (over a half a million) to clean up the hazardous waste, needles, trash the homeless left behind. Taxpayers money spent to clean up after all the homeless. Huge amount of money. No easy answer here. But once you open it up quarantee more will come and more money will be spent.
The whole idea behind safe parking lots is to provide services (like trash cans, bathrooms, etc) which in turn literally prevents the situation you are talking about. If we give people nowhere to go, they will turn to parks and other public spaces, what choice do you have if you are unsheltered?
This is such a fallacy. Addressing an issue that already exists does not create the issue that already existed. Just because you want the homeless out of site and out of mind, that doesn’t mean it isn’t an issue our community is already dealing with.
Wondering why “Harold MacDonald” who lives in Chalfant is so concerned about homeless parking in a city he doesn’t live in? Can we have the homeless parking in Chalfont instead?