In 2018 a Lompoc City Council staff report was very informative on the homeless issue in our city at the time:
“During the 2017 Point in Time (PIT) count, 219 persons were counted as experiencing homelessness and living without shelter in Lompoc. While there is one homeless shelter that serves the City’s homeless population, it is a 56-bed year-round emergency shelter, which is often full year-round. In fact, the city, like many other cities throughout the State of California, declared a housing shelter crisis in October 2018.”
Addressing the homeless issue has been a “priority” all over the state for the last decade; there have been lots of meetings, seminars, conferences, and handwringing, but there hasn’t been much improvement. Maybe it makes people feel better just to talk about it. There, problem solved, can’t we just move on to solving the global warming problem?
To their credit, our City Council tried one plan to “fix it.” The staff report suggested that “If the City Council directs staff to move forward and solicit proposals in order to provide a comprehensive Safe Parking Program, then those proposals will be presented to the City Council for funding consideration. As mentioned earlier, the range could be between $55,000 and $360,000.”
There, now at least the homeless won’t be parking their derelict campers and motorhomes on our streets. So, a place was chosen for the parking area, cleaned up, and folks are now using it. Did that solve the problem?
Not really, there are still numerous derelict “campers” parked all over the city. The police try to keep them moving, but some have been in place for several weeks at a time, along with their collection of trash.
Noozhawk recently reported that on Feb. 23 this year the PIT count revealed “there were 1,962 people experiencing homelessness countywide, which is an increase of 65 people from the 2020 count. About 30% of those people were living in emergency shelters or transitional housing (“sheltered”), which is a lower rate than the two previous counts in 2020 and 2019, when about 35% of people were sheltered.”
Where did that increase occur?
The report went on to say that “The homeless population counted in Santa Maria, Lompoc, and unincorporated areas increased by about 200 people from previous years.” Meanwhile, the homeless population decreased by 142 on the South Coast. Could these two facts be related?
The Lompoc population shrank to 211 in the 2020 PIT count from a previous 249 in 2019. Folks thought we were making progress but, in the 2022 count, it increased to 290.
It does raise a question: Why did Santa Barbara’s homeless count shrink by 92 while Lompoc’s went up by 79? Could it be the homeless migrated north on their own, or did they get help?
In a related event the county provided funding for a homeless shelter expansion at the Sweeny Road shelter on the eastern edge of Lompoc.
That’s the ticket — move more of the homeless population north to a city that is already utilizing over 29 percent of the available housing stock for low- and medium-income housing while other cities in the county have only 6% or less dedicated to solving the housing crisis.
So, it appears one community is working to solve its problem at the expense of another. And as Lompoc leaders try to clean up the community, the homeless population problem only seems to get worse.
— Ron Fink, a Lompoc resident since 1975, is retired from the aerospace industry. He has been following Lompoc politics since 1992, and after serving for 23 years appointed to various Lompoc commissions, retired from public service. The opinions expressed are his own.
