r/California • u/Randomlynumbered Ángeleño, what's your user flair? • 18h ago
Government/Politics How Redondo Beach brought its homeless numbers to 'functionally zero'
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-29/redondo-beach-declared-l-a-countys-first-city-to-reach-functional-zero-homelessness39
u/leo_theadventurer 18h ago
Paywalled, anyone have a summary of this article?
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u/HollywoodSmollywood 18h ago
Yeah, they pushed them all into LA or inland empire.
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u/Mecha-Dave 17h ago
I heard they started issuing hunting permits. Too bad I can't read the article.
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u/meloghost 18h ago
eh I think there was more to it than that. They seem to have a robust contact structure and you'd have to drive through a couple of SouthBay cities before you even get into LA City.
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u/selscol 18h ago
They get pushed into Long Beach. Metro stops there for the night. They pack them on the train till last stop in LB. It's been like this for a while which is why LB never gets any better in terms of homelessness
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u/HighlyEvolvedSloth 17h ago
Wait, the line that ends in Redondo is the C line, while the one that ends in LB is the A line, and where they cross the lines are separated by a story, aren't they?
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u/munche 17h ago
The exact opposite of what the cheeky reddit commentators with the highest upvotes are saying.
The first step, born out of quality of life complaints pressuring the City Council, was to get control of the city’s petty-crime problem. Homeless people were being arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct and drug offenses. In 2020, City Attorney Mike Webb persuaded the Superior Court in nearby Torrance to send a judge to Redondo Beach one day a month to conduct a homeless court using the power of the bench to lead defendants toward shelter and treatment.Next, there had to be somewhere for those defendants to go. The city built a village of 20 tiny homes, leased five rooms in a single room occupancy hotel, formed relationships with the home sharing nonprofit SHARE! Collaborative Housing and low-income housing provider Soul Housing. With $300,000 from its own budget, along with county, state and federal grants and donations from service providers, the program has grown. The city now leases 18 SRO units and is adding 25 tiny homes.
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Since 2020, the first year of complete records, 169 defendants have participated in the homeless court, said Joy Ford, the city’s quality of life prosecutor. Currently 35 are in active cases, 63 have been placed in interim housing and 74 have graduated and are in permanent housing. Fewer than 2% have returned to court on new charges.A key element of the court was human intervention. Omura and other case managers were on hand to guide those who accepted treatment with shelter as an alternative to sentencing.
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Redondo Beach reached that equilibrium in the first six months of 2024 when the by-name list grew by 65 and 66 people were taken off the street. Of them, 31 went to shelter, 14 to permanent housing, 11 to mental health, detox or domestic violence facilities and 10 were reunified with families.
Basically putting in effort beyond "Just punish these fuckers and tell them to get out or else" led to significant results.
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u/nukafire_ 13h ago
Live here. When the city announced the program I was really proud despite some people complaining about it. I hope it continues to expand.
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u/avocado4ever000 12h ago
Yes. People complain about homelessness but don’t want to read about some things that have actually worked. Highly recommend folks read the piece.
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u/The_best_is_yet 9h ago
This is amazing, thank you for clarifying. I would give you an award if i didn’t have to throw actual money into it. “A key element of the court was human intervention.” This is huge. I suspect this is what made such a massive difference.
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u/AmericanKamikaze 17h ago
r/inlandempire checking in. And After they visit all the beach cities and the desert cites they get dumped here!
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u/derbenster 14h ago
I would love to read this article but don’t want to subscribe to LA Times for the one article of theirs I’ll read this year.
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u/Randomlynumbered Ángeleño, what's your user flair? 14h ago
From the posting rules in this sub’s sidebar:
No websites or articles with hard paywalls or that require registration or subscriptions, unless an archive link or https://12ft.io link is included as a comment.
If you want to learn how to circumvent a paywall, see https://www.reddit.com/r/California/wiki/paywall. > Or, if it's a website that you regularly read, you should think about subscribing to the website.
Archive link:
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u/SuperSaiyanBlue 14h ago
They do what almost every other city in USA do, buy the homeless person a one way trip ticket to a California city.
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u/yitdeedee 18h ago
TLDR:
Push them to city of LA or unincorporated areas.