The Lompoc homeless emergency shelter, or triage center, closed on Oct. 9 of this year but not before county social workers were able to assist some 70 affected individuals.
According to Lompoc Police Capt. Deanna Clement, about half that number made what she called “positive moves.” At least three were relocated to permanent housing; another three were reunited with families; 10 received temporary housing; and another 10 got access to emergency shelters.
“That’s pretty impressive for the [triage only being open for 30 days], but I think that was mostly because of the huge partnership that went on inside [the center],” she told the Board of Supervisors at its Nov. 13 meeting. “Some were people living in the riverbed for a great amount of time, and this was the step they needed to finally help push them into services.”
Agencies that helped staff and operate the center included AmeriCorps, Coast Valley Substance Abuse and Treatment Center, the Good Samaritan Shelter, Northern Santa Barbara County United Way, Planting a Seed, Care for Paws, Micah Mission, Helping Hands of Lompoc, North County Rape Crisis and Child Protection Center, and Transitions Mental Health Association.
“With our county partners, they way we did it, I’m pretty proud of that,” Lompoc Police Chief Pat Walsh said. “Instead of just saying, ‘Get out of the river,’ we said, ‘You’re leaving the river but we have a triage for you.’ And that 30-day triage center was, I think, the right way to do it.”
The effort to cleanup the Santa Ynez Riverbed, where some homeless “residents” had been living for as long as a decade, has thus far cost Lompoc more than half a million dollars. It’s a number that’s expected to rise in the coming months and years as city contractors pick up and clean out thousands of pounds of trash and hazardous waste.
Lompoc City Manager Jim Throop said 88 tons of hazardous material, including human waste, along with 300 tons of garbage, had been picked up in the first week of cleanup efforts alone.
He added that the city’s stormwater waste specialist estimated that the riverbed trash and human waste issues exceeded in volume similar cleanups conducted in Anaheim and Orange County over the past two years.
The Lompoc City Council has thus far drawn some $532,000 from city reserves to pay for the riverbed cleanup.
“We were in a [city budget] deficit last year and we’re in a deficit this year,” Throop said. “So we are looking for help anywhere from the county, to the state, to the [federal government] to assist us.”
And new problems continue to emerge, according to Throop.
“It’s almost a daily report [from staff examining the 3-mile stretch of riverbed] of, ‘How do you fix this? How do you fix that?'” he said.
This article appears in Nov 15-22, 2018.