Sunday morning at 5:13 a.m. there was another homeless encampment fire at Big Rock and PCH. I’ve lost track of the number in recent weeks; it seems like every couple of days. With no wind and cool, moist weather, most are quickly controlled by our firefighters. I say most because we almost lost Topanga in a fire started by a vagrant in the Palisades Highlands.
How does this connect to the election of a new supervisor? Sheila Kuehl is retiring. The article on page A8 of last week’s Malibu Times spoke of some of the many candidates running. While Ms. Kuehl’s assistant, Lindsay Horvath, former mayor of West Hollywood, is focused on LGBT issues, Assemblymember Richard Bloom lists his top priorities as “climate change, environmental protection, congestion relief with a focus on public transit, bike and pedestrian investment, and sub-regional connectivity, job creation with a focus on the green economy, affordable housing, and homelessness.” Neither candidate addresses what concerns most Malibu citizens.
Bloom’s positions are a repeat of past programs that are ruining Los Angeles and have proved to be a complete failure. Turning streets into bike paths, defunding the police, allowing vagrants to set up tents in our public places, defunding the sheriff, passing legislation to kill Uber and Lyft jobs, and removing the CHP from patrolling PCH are not what most citizens of Los Angeles want. Neither candidate should receive one vote from Malibu. Hopefully Henry Stern will run.
These issues are difficult. We need a candidate to offer ideas that work. Saying you’re for the homeless or the environment is platitudes. Pouring money into the homelessness industrial complex may result in job creation for more bureaucrats, but it doesn’t help those who are homeless.
According to Sheriff Alex Villanueva, for every two homeless housing units we build, three more will come. Will the new supervisor confront the policies that make LA so attractive? Homeless outreach workers say less than 10 percent will accept housing and of that 10 percent, only a handful stay in a program. California has 70 percent of the nation’s homeless population. It is growing.
This is an excerpt from a longer letter, which can be read in full at malibutimes.com.
Scott Dittrich