SAFE PARKING FOR HOMELESS MAY BE COMING TO LOS ANGELES - SANTA BARBARA PROGRAM THE MODEL

LA TIMES LOCAL - SAFE PARKING PROGRAM full article by Gale Holland

EXCERPT:   (read about the families, students, and others moving ahead in their lives while having an assigned parking space!)

The Santa Barbara program takes 115 vehicles off the streets overnight, placing them in designated spaces in 20 city, county, church, nonprofit agency and industrial lots in Santa Barbara and Goleta.

New Beginnings Counseling Center, which runs the $270,000 program on a city contract, furnishes bathrooms and spot monitoring....

 

The 12-year-old program gets homeless people off the streets at night, but the lots close at daybreak, sending the RV dwellers back into the neighborhoods.

Officials say the lots make it easier to connect homeless people to services and housing. New Beginnings says it has placed 47 in homes in the last nine months...

Still, some L.A. officials see safe parking as a useful strategy as part of their $2-billion homelessness plan. More than 3,300 inhabited cars and RVs were counted in 2015, part of an 85% countywide jump in homeless encampments that has aroused fury from San Pedro to Verdugo Hills.

LAIST -9600 PARKING SPACES NEEDED FOR PEOPLE TO SLEEP IN THEIR CARS

EXCERPT:  Part of Los Angeles' $2 billion plan to end homelessness in the city is formally addressing the approximately 9,500 people who fall asleep each night in cars, trucks or RVs parked on city streets....

The fact that so many people live in their vehicles has been an issue for L.A. for several years now. Back in 2014, Los Angeles ordered LAPD to begin enforcing a ban against people living inside their vehicles after a batch of tony Venice residents began complaining to the city. Police began arresting and citing people for living in their vehicles but were stopped in their tracks when a group of homeless people banded together and sued the city.