Funded by a $50,000 grant from Los Angeles County through Measure H funding, the outreach program will consist of eight teams working concurrently to make contact with homeless people who are on the street, in temporary housing, or living in RVs and cars. The goal is to interview the individuals and complete comprehensive surveys that will help the city of Palmdale formulate a homeless plan to combat homelessness within the city. The ultimate goal is to have zero homelessness in the community.
Community partners participating in the outreach effort are Advancing Communities Together, Palmdale Victory Outreach, AV YouthBuild, Antelope Valley Partners for Health, Mental Health America, Valley Oasis, Salvation Army, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and South Antelope Valley Emergency Services (SAVES).
The consulting firm of LDM and Associates will be providing technical assistance in the preparation of the homeless plan.
There will be three community meetings held over the course of the outreach program for the public to attend and learn more about the program and the outreach results.
Community meetings schedule
The meetings will be held:
6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 6
Victory Outreach Church
37419 25th Street East
6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 13
AV YouthBuild Campus
38626 9th Street East
6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, March 22
Highlands Church
39625 20th Street West
The community is encouraged to attend and meet with the various service providers and to share thoughts and opinions while learning more about what the city does to combat homelessness through prevention and to assist those in need.
A community survey is also available on the city’s website at www.cityofpalmdale.org.
Residents are encouraged to take the survey, which is available in English and Spanish and share their thoughts and opinions, which will be used to develop the city’s homeless plan.
For more information, contact Palmdale’s Neighborhood Services Department at 661-267-5126 and ask for Stacey Andrews or Mike Miller.
[Information via news release from the city of Palmdale.]
–
justsayn says
I hope they check the palmdale portion of lake la. there’s all kinds of people living in motorhomes in other peoples yards, or just squatting in the desert. is this “study” restricted to city limits or to the rural areas as well? shouldn’t they have code enforcement with them as well?
Randy says
There is no Palmdale portion of Lake LA. Lake LA is part of the county. The county should be doing its own study.
Alice says
Egregious abuse of taxpayer funding, the problem’s already been studied. Taxation is a sacred trust. The basis of Measure H was conceived, upon redress and relief of homelessness, not flushing sacred taxpayer funding, straight down the commode on redundant research programs, studying, restudying, think-tanking the problem, ad nausium, at every federal, state, county and municipal level. These Palmdale government people, imbeciles!
Thankful says
Spending tax money to help find a solution to a real problem like homelessness is well worth it. The impacts of homelessness on society in terms of spreading of disease, crime, costs of medical services, and the strain on resources are great and becoming greater. Society as a whole, both those who are homeless, and those who are not homeless but pay for the effects will be better off addressing the situation.
Certainly this is money better spent than on the millions of tax payer subsidies paying for unnecessary electric busses and a ridiculous Eye in the Sky, both of which do more to pay back political contributors than anything.
Johannes Gutenberg says
Study what? What is there to study? We already know. Homeless = hunger, disease, depression, soiled, dirty, lack of hygiene, smelly, stinky, dirty. Why not take the 3 million dollars for that study and build a shelter with warm showers, clean bedrooms, hot meals, clean clothes and a psychiatrist, psychologist, some meds, locked gates and a armed security at the front entrance.
Robert says
Granted studies of the Homeless in Central Park revealed 80% of those homeless persons showed signs of mental illnesses. However such isn’t a reason to turn a cold back on them, as the City of Lancaster has done, as heartless as Lancaster’s officials are.
These are still human beings, who deserve the medical treatment necessary. Not all those with mental illnesses are beyond help or repair. Many persons with mental illnesses can live productive lives, given the proper opportunities, counselling, meds, et al.
At least the City of Palmdale is doing something, anything to help this situation, which is much more than the nada Lancaster has not done, and won’t do as long as the Lancaster Fat Cat Cronies are creating playgrounds for themselves, like the public pariah’s they are.
AV Observer says
The city of Palmdale does just about everything better than the city of Lancaster, and yet Hofbauer and Bishop, the puppets of Rex and Marv, are doing everything they can to make Palmdale like Lancaster. Bishop is young and completely ignorant. Hofbauer should know better. Neither one is very bright.
If they succeed, it is time to leave. Can you imagine the Antelope Valley under the control of the Parris-Visco-Gilley triune?
Positively Sure says
The Hofbauer is taking direction from Rex and Marvin because he isn’t bright enough to do much himself. No accomplishments that he can say he has lead the City in for 3 terms. A pawn at best.
Positively Sure says
Wait I’m wrong, he supported Marvin’s homeless tax for Palmdale. We’re lucky he was stopped by the Mayor.
Karen Lea Caron says
Palmdale and Lancaster need to make provisions for homeless mental patients and ex-convicts in their own city limits and not rid them from there city limits by dumping them in Lake Los Angeles’s neighborhood in what was meant of be a school for children not a asylum for the criminally insane…..We don’t want this.
Philip Sanders says
… biggest waste of taxpayer dollars, at county and city level: studying the problem –
Johannes Gutenberg says
The majority of your homeless people are seriously mentally ill and must be put in an institution. It is cruel and unusual governmental punishment to allow them to live on the streets, sick, cold and dirty and hungry. They are a danger to themselves and to our society. It is the ACLU that is to blame for this believing that they have the right to be free on the streets. We all have the right to be free on the streets,even live on the streets if we wanted to but such a decision must come from a mind that is not mentally ill that has properly considered the pros and the cons. A mentally ill person is not capable of this decision.
Sandra O says
I agree!