Dick Spotswood: Battling homelessness can be overwhelming
The homelessness quandary has hit the states of the Pacific Coast particularly hard.
The existence of unhoused people isn’t a new phenomenon. “Hobo jungles” near railroad tracks are part of American lore. The inhabitants suffered from substance abuse – usually alcohol – or the consequences of psychiatric illnesses. Today that remains the cause of chronic homelessness propelled by the proliferation of fentanyl.
Older readers will recall skid rows in every major to medium-sized city. Even in the 1960s, these neighborhoods were zones to exercise caution. San Francisco had the South of Market and Tenderloin neighborhoods. Oakland, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego and even Fresno had equivalents.
Smaller county seat towns like San Rafael, Santa Rosa and Redwood City had seedy hotels on their main street referred to as “flop houses.”
The 1970s closing of California’s residential care state psychiatric hospitals was a bipartisan public policy failure propelling many to live on our streets.
Chronically homeless people didn’t just “lose a job.” These folks live under freeway overpasses, along San Rafael’s Andersen Drive and on fire-prone wooded areas. Due to their diagnosis, most wouldn’t be able to get or hold a steady job. Many are resistant to aid and refuse to accept the reality of their illnesses. Just building more housing doesn’t do much for them.
Those we consider homeless but who don’t exhibit substance abuse or mental illness are far easier to assist. Many are the working poor.
Marin’s official “housing first” model is the top-line answer. First, get the homeless off the street; then provide needed services. Unless they are using existing structures for housing, it’s a very expensive model to widely apply. Housing first is a part of the answer, but it’s not the only way to address the unhoused.
Let’s address those who simply can’t afford California housing. Many presented with that dilemma moved to say Texas or the Deep South with lower home costs. Others chose to stay. There are old-fashioned solutions. Mobile home parks are common in most of America but not so much in the Bay Area.
The Manufactured Housing Institute reports, “The country’s roughly 43,000 mobile home communities are home to 22 million people.” Adding just one more mobile home facility in Marin (ideally operated as a co-op) would allow every trailer now parked on Novato’s Binford Road to be relocated to a safe, sanitary, low-cost site.
This isn’t temporary housing. Witness late Larkspur Councilmember Kevin Carroll. He permanently resided in an East Larkspur mobile home park. Most Binford Road residents aren’t chronically homeless. They just need safe, secure and sanitary places to park.
Likewise, replacing the skid rows of yesterday isn’t economically feasible. What remains along scattered segments of Marin’s Highway 101? Faded motels.
Corte Madera’s old Casa Buena Motel is a good example of what the state-funded Project Homekey can accomplish to provide homes for the chronic homeless. There are similar semi-decrepit motels that can be acquired by the county when funding is available. This plan works if (and it’s a big if) they are professionally operated. Project Homekey sites have few if any negative impacts on their host communities.
We need to think outside the box and examine approaches which were once common in addressing a sad situation that has existed for more than a century.
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Between now and Labor Day, Marin candidates in November’s election will showcase their prized endorsements. In the top-two runoff contest for the District 2 seat on the Marin Board of Supervisors representing Ross Valley, Larkspur, Greenbrae and Kentfield, Heather McPhail Sridharan, a former Kentfield School District trustee, released the names of an impressive list of backers.
McPhail Sridharan has been endorsed by several mayors from municipalities within the district. The include San Anselmo’s Eileen Burke, Barbara Coler of Fairfax, Scot Candell in Larkspur and Ross’ Elizabeth Brekhus.
Columnist Dick Spotswood of Mill Valley writes on local issues Sundays and Wednesdays. Email him at spotswood@comcast.net.