HomeMy WebLinkAbout9/6/2023 Item 4a, Hamilton (3)
Wilbanks, Megan
From:Lynn L. Hamilton <lhamilto@calpoly.edu>
Sent:Wednesday, September 6, 2023 3:06 PM
To:Advisory Bodies
Subject:Planning Commission - Safe Parking
Attachments:Dear Planning Commission.docx
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Attached please find comments for tonight’s Planning Commission meeting
Thank you,
Lynn Hamilton
1
Dear Planning Commission:
My comments regarding the Safe Parking Program are being revised now that CAPSLO has
withdrawn its application for the Palm Street Safe Parking location; this letter would have had a
different focus several hours ago before the withdrawal was announced. However, it is
LUDICROUS that a local community member was the one who did the research on case law and
discovered that is actually illegal for the City to close off a public street for such a purpose.
How did the City miss this relevant fact? Do we not employ a city attorney? Daisy Wiburg and
Kyle Bell claim to have conducted a “significant” amount of research on the Santa Barbara,
Fremont and Mountainview safe parking programs1– not one of them use city streets for their
parking locations. Would that not have been a clue as to Palm Street’s (or ANY street, for that
matter) unsuitability for this program in San Luis Obispo?
Since the CAPSLO has wisely decided to withdraw the application for this program to operate on
a closed public street, my comments will now focus on the City and CAPSLO’s mishandling of
this entire Safe Parking Program. I will preface my comments below by stating that I am in favor
of providing services to help those in a need of housing; and I have volunteered many hours
over my 27 years living in SLO in serving as an overnight volunteer when my church hosted the
overflow program for women and families; prior to the opening of 40 Prado. I have also
prepared many meals for lunch and dinner service at 40 Prado, and prior to that location
opening, at the Day Use Center across the street. However, the way that City and CAPSLO has
managed the Safe Parking program is abysmal and is not serving the clients or the community.
The City’s poor planning and management of this program has led to complete shutdown of
safe parking services for unhoused people living in their cars. That burden is not the
responsibility of the Palm Street neighborhood who put up a fight about this location. The
burden lays solely with the City, and also with CAPSLO, the contractor for the program.
Santa Barbara’s New Beginnings program has been successful for almost 20 years because it
committed resources, management and oversight, and it actually has the support of the
community both in spirit and in monetary support. No documentation provided by the City
indicates that City or CAPSLO staff have availed themselves of the 3-day training provided by
New Beginnings, or that they’ve even spent the $149 to purchase the manual. An overview of
SB’s program from the New Beginning’s website makes it clear that their program is vastly
different than the Railroad Square program, which was supposedly “modeled” after SB’s
program. Santa Barbara has multiple locations, all in parking lots across the city, and they have
successfully signed on 27 host sites. I’m sure that’s because the host sites know they can count
on New Beginnings to provide effective oversight of the program. Here are the differences that I
see:
• Each site has an overnight staff/security assigned to it, and manager visits the locations
on a drop-in basis every night. (CAPSLO only has staff present at check-in and checkout,
less than 1.5 hours per day)
1 SLO City Planning Commission Meeting, Safe Parking Presentation by Daisy Wiburg and Kyle Bell, July 12, 2023
• Each client is admitted to the program and is under case management (which was not
the case for RR Square, and it is not clear that CAPSLO has hired additional staff to make
this feasible for the Rotational Safe Parking program)
• Each client is assigned a particular spot and must occupy it for at least 4 nights per week
while in the program. That helps create buy-in and accountability on the part of the
clients. (SLO’s program has no such requirement)
• Participants are only allowed to use the location for sleeping, not the variety of other
activities allowed by SLO’s program
• Rules are actually followed, and participants who violate the rules lost the privilege of
participation.
There are other differences, but as the deadline to submit the letter is nearing, I will limit my
comments to those primary areas.
I personally visited the RR Square program during the day on August 24 at 3 p.m. Though
CAPSLO says the bathrooms and dumpsters will be locked during the day, I witnessed a man
going into the portapotty at that time. It clearly was not locked. I also noticed several vehicles
still parked inside the water barriers, leading me to believe the restriction on daytime use is not
monitored either.
The Grand Jury Report on the Oklahoma Safe Parking Village run by the County, but operated by
CAPSLO noted numerous unsafe activities and lack of management and oversight. I can’t
believe that given damning evidence against CAPSLO’s ability to run the Oklahoma Site for the
County, that the City of SLO would take CAPSLO’s word for anything regarding the efficacy of
their program. Their metrics of success are weak, they do not report the denominator of the
number of people in the program in writing, and they also hide the number of police calls that
have been made to RR Square site (123 as of the opening of the site, per Police Report logs
provided by the Police Department).
I truly hope that the City and CAPSLO can make a concerted effort to re -set and revamp this
program that could be quite a valuable service to the unhoused, and actually learn from the
success of the Santa Barbara program.
Sincerely,
Lynn Hamilton, Palm Street Resident