Homeless for the Holidays

Over the course of the past five weeks, Valley News has spent time speaking with homeless individuals and the people who work with them on a daily basis.

We’ve seen how Homeless Outreach Team deputies, working in conjunction with CityNet social workers, helped a woman off the streets for the night and laid out the plan for a long-term solution for her.

We’ve talked extensively with Project T.O.U.C.H. President and founder Anne Unmacht about the programs her organization provides and the tidal wave of homelessness that she believes the area is facing.

And we’ve talked with Ray, a man who has been homeless or in prison for the majority of his life, and the trials and tribulations that he has experienced as someone who lives on the streets.

But we’ve only just scratched the surface.

By all accounts, the homeless issue in southwest Riverside County is continuing to evolve and expand with no end in sight.

According to the 2018 Point‐In‐Time Homeless Count, which was conducted in January 2018 by the county Department of Public Social Services, the unsheltered population grew to 1,685, an increase of 47 since 2017 and 334 since 2016.

The year-to-year jump may not seem like a lot, only about 3 percent, but keep in mind that oftentimes the PIT count isn’t exact, and according to experts like Unmacht, the totals are expected to grow again when the count happens again this month.

“Man, there are more and more homeless (expletive) coming into Southern California every day,” said “James,” a 27-year-old man perched near the corner of a local gas station on a brisk Saturday morning. “People from all over. It’s warm here, usually. (Expletive) people are a lot more nice here than in L.A. or the bigger cities, too.”

According to the PIT count, the total number of available beds increased by more than 1 percent countywide, but the number of sheltered homeless decreased by almost 18 percent from 2017.

Riverside County is the fourth largest county in California and ranks 10th largest in the United States. According to the PIT count, that means only less than 1 percent of the total population of Riverside County is homeless.

A strong economy and home prices continuing to increase, despite a sales slow down, experts have said the rental prices continue to climb. That increase means more people will be priced out of communities in southwest Riverside County.

According to Unmacht, it means more people on the streets with no place to go and more people forced into shared-family residences and more people at risk.

Another contributing factor could be California’s realignment policy which moves nonviolent felons from prisons to jails, subsequently overcrowding the county-run jails and forcing the facilities to release those individuals before their sentencing dates.

“Me included?” “James” asked, saying he did a stint in the county jail for burglary about five years ago. He wouldn’t say where. “I would say at least half of these (expletives) are homeless after being in jail.”

He was asked, “What about the other half?”

“Drugs, man,” he said. “(Expletive) drugs is the reason most of us lose our jobs, our families. Then we have nothin’ but the drugs.”

So, where do we go from here?

Over the course of these last five weeks, we saw how the cities in southwest Riverside County are beginning to address the homeless issue and starting to put some money behind their words.

In 2016, Temecula, Murrieta, Menifee, Lake Elsinore and Wildomar came together to form the Regional Homeless Alliance, which was formed to “solve homelessness within southwest Riverside County.”

The organization’s Responsible Compassion program is designed to “further improve quality of life by developing residents’, businesses’ and visitors’ awareness, understanding and participation in a comprehensive strategy to solve homelessness in southwest Riverside County.”

Their ultimate goal is to increase collaboration between service providers to help the homeless become more self-sufficient, continue to establish trust between Homeless Outreach Team officers and homeless individuals and work closely with local outreach organizations.

The organization serves a link between the homeless and case management organizations such as the Social Work Action Group and CityNet.

In addition, RHA works with the community to teach Responsible Compassion with tips such as saying “no” to panhandlers, calling in illegal activity to 911 or non-emergency law enforcement at (951) 696-4357, offering help by dialing 211 community connect and volunteering or donating to organizations that help the homeless.

And the alliance does need help.

At the center of this growing issue, according to many involved, is the need for local communities and individuals to support the organizations that work with the homeless populations.

If anything can be learned by our brief examination into this issue, it is that it will take the commitment of cities, communities and members of those communities to be responsible, generous and compassionate to make progress.

First and foremost, most everyone involved agrees, the public needs to realize that this is a growing problem that isn’t going away anytime soon.

“I ain’t leaving,” “James” said. “I got nowhere to go, my family (expletive) disowned me, and I can’t give up this (expletive) (drug). I don’t want to go back to jail; that’s for (expletive) sure. But, man, being here isn’t too bad, I guess.”

For more information on the Regional Homeless Alliance, visit http://www.responsiblecompassion.org/regional-homeless-alliance.

For more information about volunteering with local nonprofit organizations contact the RHA’s Responsible Compassion project.

For food-based organizations, visit http://www.responsiblecompassion.org/food.

For shelter-based organizations, visit http://www.responsiblecompassion.org/shelter.

For substance-abuse organizations, visit http://www.responsiblecompassion.org/substanceabusetreatment.

For mental health-based organizations, visit http://www.responsiblecompassion.org/mental-health-services.

Jeff Pack can be reached at [email protected].