IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Riverside will remove homeless encampments from state freeway ramps in the city.
The city council voted unanimously Aug. 5 to take that action, which establishes one of the first homeless maintenance agreements between a city and Caltrans, according to a statement on Riverside’s website.
The pilot program is scheduled to last two years. City workers will remove the homeless and charge Caltrans up to $50,000 per quarter, or $400,000 for the duration of the agreement. Without that agreement, Riverside would be prohibited from removing homeless encampments within city limits on the 91 and 60 freeways and Interstate 10.
“This agreement will allow the city to go onto state property and provide clean-ups without going through a longer permitting process,” Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson said in the statement. “This will speed up the clean-ups, improve our public spaces, and provide for reimbursement from the state.”
City workers and contractors will provide outreach services to homeless people while the encampments are being removed, according to the statement.
Well, that is great to see this passed, however since Cal- Trans or the BNSF railroad don’t own our city streets they will not be paying for those encampments that need removed. And with the homeless being removed from the non city areas, they will be moving back to where our businesses and families are.🤔
It wouldn’t be so bad if unhoused people didn’t drag junk, furniture, trash like wires, throw-away clothing and stuff they don’t need. Some people have several carts and shopping baskets tied together. WHY? On top of that, they leave a mess of garbage behind making our streets look like skid row.
They need to be cleaned out City wide! We’re so tired of watching them shooting up in broad daylight while our kids walk to and from school! I’m tired of trying to get money outta my ATM at BofA on Magnolia and having to reach over a puddle of piss.
These things never work. It just simply shuffles around the homeless. I have spent nearly twenty-five years thinking about solutions to the homeless issue, and have no input, however, what we have been doing thus far has not helped. There are so many reasons that there seem to be for homelessness, the top issues being mental illness- people released from mental institutions or psych ward because insurance wouldn’t pay for them any longer… drug abuse- people so far given up on trying to live life in a regular structured society that they live for feeling better by being high… Inability to afford reasonable housing in California- Rent has skyrocketed over the last twenty years and buying a house is almost cheaper, if you can afford the upkeeps… and those are just three issues that contribute. Moving people around, bulldozing over anything that these homeless people have left, or have as value to them, does not solve any of those three issues. I do agree, however, that people of the streets harm the city. The trash they do not manage, the animals they let run loose, the filth they spread (because they cannot afford to clean themselves)… this all affects everybody. I am a clerk in a nearby grocery store, in which I serve dozens of homeless daily. When a man puts a carton of milk on the counter, and the bottle has black smears on it that match the mans hands, and his emaciated dog is trying to get into the store, while he is shouting at imaginary children behind him, and the smell is permeating the air, and his grocery basket is letting loose empty plastic bags in the parking lot… How does one fix that???