IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
A state Senate committee has approved a bill that proposes to use part of Patton State Hospital to shelter homeless people.
AB 349 will convert an empty building at the hospital in Highland into a housing and mental health service facility, according to Assemblyman James C. Ramos, D-San Bernardino, the bill’s author.
The measure was passed unanimously earlier this month by the Senate Governmental Organization Committee and will now go to the Senate Appropriations Committee.
San Bernardino’s homeless population has grown 175 percent in the last five years, a trend that led the city council to declare homelessness within its borders an emergency.
More than 44 percent of that is chronically homeless, meaning people with no place to live for at least one year and who have a mental or physical disability.
“That is a travesty that can be remedied by leveraging state and local resources to provide stable housing, services, and treatment,” Ramos said in a statement. “It requires collaboration and will, but we must reverse the trends we’ve seen for almost a decade.”
AB 349 would allow the Department of General Services – with the approval of the Department of State Hospitals – to lease a building on the hospital grounds to a nonprofit corporation or government entity, according to the statement.
If they would tell landlords to not ask ridiculous requirements to rent like 2.5 or 3 times rent amounts and 650 or up in credit scores
They need to send the homeless from other counties back to they’re county. Majority of these homeless are from Riverside county, LA county and Arizona.