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Long Beach Council Meeting July 1 - Add Your Voice!
By webadmin | June 29, 2008
Please plan on attending the Long Beach City Council Session this Tuesday, July 1 beginning at 5PM.
New develoments in the Schroeder Hall Army Reserve base at Willow and Grand are listed below:
http://www.presstelegram.com/ci_9713988
Homeless center still on the table
LONG beach: A project that many believed had been scrapped hasn’t found another location.
Article Launched: 06/26/2008 10:25:49 PM PDT
LONG BEACH - A proposed mental services center for the homeless in East Long Beach isn’t necessarily off the table, despite an announcement at a recent City Council meeting to the contrary, a city official said.
Officials also have rejected a list of alternative locations to the controversial homeless services site near the Schroeder Hall Army Reserve Center at Willow Street and Grand Avenue, according to a letter sent this week by Community Development Director Dennis Thys to City Manager Patrick West and members of the City Council.
Schroeder Hall is slated to close in 2011, and in order to use the property, the city must follow strict federal rules that require former military bases be used for homeless assistance.
Under the city’s original plan, the Long Beach Police Department’s East Division substation was to be relocated to the 4.73-acre Schroeder Hall site. Across the street, a 1-acre city-owned lot next to the Department of Health and Human Services at Grand Avenue and Barnett Street was to become the homeless assistance center.
Although no housing for the homeless was planned at the site, and clients reportedly would be shuttled in and out to receive service, the proposal sparked outrage among nearby residents.
Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske of the 5th District, where the site is located, announced at a June 10 council meeting that the homeless service provider that had been chosen to run a program there, Mental Health America, had agreed to look for alternative locations.
But while many opponents of the original plan left that meeting with the impression that the project had been scrapped, Thys said Thursday that isn’t necessarily the case.
“The plan that was approved by the City Council was for the Grand Avenue site,” Thys said. “Until we can find an alternative site, that’s still the plan.”
Activist group Neighborhoods First, which had organized neighbors to pressure the city to rethink the project, gave officials a list of 70 possible alternative sites.
But in his letter, Thys says that none of the sites is viable. Twenty-six locations are at city parks or are zoned for future park expansion, another 15 are zoned exclusively for airport development, and others face problems such as being used for port activities, being on school campuses or even being outside of the city limits entirely, the letter says.
“Those were just supplemental for the city,” said Joe Sopo, vice-chairman of Neighborhoods First. “I’m sure the city was already aware of those locations. We have faith in the city that they will find an alternative location.”
Thys said city staff is working with Mental Health America to identify other possible sites, but that this isn’t the first time the city has done so.
“We did spend nine months looking at alternative locations prior to this, so it’s not an exercise that we’ve not pursued,” Thys said.
Officials with Mental Health America didn’t return phone calls seeking comment Thursday.
Thys still defended the original plan.
“Despite what some people have been saying, it is in fact located in an industrial area, it doesn’t have a direct impact on the residential community,” Thys said. “The site has a buffer, which is the proposed police substation.”
If a substitute site is found, then the police substation is still expected to be able to open at Schroeder Hall. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and then the Army, must approve the city’s plan for it to proceed.
However, if the city gets bogged down by the search for a new site and doesn’t submit its proposal to HUD, or doesn’t include homeless assistance in it, then the Army could create its own plan for Schroeder Hall. That would mean residents and city officials would have little say in what is built there.
But whether the city can find a new location within this densely populated city - one that won’t raise the ire of a new set of neighbors - remains to be seen.
“We’re gonna watch them,” Sopo said. “We don’t expect it to be on Burnett Street, and we don’t expect it to be in another neighborhood.”
Topics: Council Action, Homeless Center |
June 30th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I will be in Alicante Spain playing the Centro de Technificacion, so I can’t make the meeting on the 1st.
Funny, even East Long Beach has mentally ill living on every street and yet we scoff at those helping others.
In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an’ they gave me a lethal dose.
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn.
“Come in,” she said,
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and greed were born.
“Come in,” she said,
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”