City’s Public Safety Department holds virtual community meeting to discuss homeless issues
By Barbara Burke
Of The Malibu Times
The City of Malibu’s Public Safety Department held a well-attended virtual community meeting to discuss homelessness in Malibu on January 17. The city’s Homelessness Working Group met with representatives of the People Concern, an area nonprofit whose outreach workers assist unhoused individuals and advocates for them obtaining services and housing; Melissa Stallings, community library manager of the Los Angeles County Library, Malibu Branch; Gabriel Graham, outreach coordinator for the Las Virgenes-Malibu Council of Governments; Terry Davis, president of the Community Assistance Resource Team (CART); Kay Gabbard, CART’s treasurer; Doug Stewart, Malibu mayor pro tem; Susan Dueñas, Malibu public safety director; city staff; and concerned citizens.
Luis Flores, public safety liaison for the City of Malibu, provided opening comments and noted, “Areas of concern regarding the homeless population include addressing the needs of the increased numbers of unhoused persons in Legacy Park and of a few individuals at Zuma Creek. The homeless volunteer teams are placing signs at Legacy Park and reminding the unhoused to not camp there, and the teams are going early in the morning to ensure there are no camps.”
Addressing homelessness in Malibu through the Homelessness Working Group provides, “a unique partnership as we have so many hands on deck and we have a great division of the labor needed to help the unhoused,” Flores added.
The group was originally formed in February 2018 to provide input for the City’s Strategic Plan on Homelessness and it meets regularly to discuss issues and opportunities for addressing homelessness in Malibu.
Several members of the group were heartened by the fact that Malibu has experienced its lowest homeless count in years, with 71 homeless, as compared to 239 homeless persons in 2020. The volunteers attribute the significant reduction to many of the homeless who were served by their organizations being able to transition to housing, reuniting with their families, or returning to their places of origin.
“It’s a testament to the great work of our outreach volunteers, with the help of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, that there were only two homeless encampment fires this past year and our goal is to have no such fires this year.” Flores said. “Our teams have placed signs in areas where the homeless camp to remind them to not start fires. Our outreach teams are out visiting with the homeless day in and day out, as do the Sheriff’s.”
Flores noted that when dealing with the unhoused, who sometimes have mental illnesses, volunteers and professionals must first engage with them and build trust, a process that takes some time.
Zachary Coil, director of Westside Outreach for The People Concern stated, “Our job is to get people off the streets into permanent housing and to help them to improve their mental health. In order to accomplish that, we must first meet with each unhoused individual where they are at, and then we try to open the door to providing them with supportive services.”
Coil noted that the Venice Clinic provides street medicine to the homeless. Flores elaborated, saying, “Providing street medicine has improved the lives of our homeless population significantly.”
Flores added, “We have made great strides at Zuma Creek as we used to have 11 homeless encampments and now, we are down to four. That area is under the supervision of Beaches and Harbors, so our two organizations collaborate to try to clean up the area.”
The challenges of serving Malibu’s homeless
Helping unhoused persons in Malibu is very challenging, Coil noted, stating, “There are not a lot of services available in Malibu. The closest county-funded mental health department, regular hospitals and the county hospitals and clinics are all far away.”
Therefore, Coil explained, the outreach workers provide homeless persons with special care transportation, as well as assisting them in getting identification and taking them to the Social Security and Veterans Administration offices, steps that are essential to helping the homeless clients try to get social security and veterans benefits.
“Low rent in Southern California is not so low,” Coil said. “We do all we can to help the homeless persons sign up for waiting lists for housing.”
Davis expressed concerns about the homeless encampments in Tuna Canyon where there have been encampment fires in the past.
“Only two of the encampments at Tuna Canyon are within city limits and those individuals have been cooperating with us and there have been no fires,” Flores stated, noting that the rest of the Tuna Canyon area is within the county’s jurisdiction.
Meeting attendees Joann and Burt Ross complimented the efforts of the Homelessness Working Group.
“Almost every community has a homelessness concern,” Burt Ross said. “It’s so impressive that we have reduced the homeless from more than 200 persons to 71 in just a few short years.”
That feat is attributable to the tireless efforts of the outreach coordinators, Dueñas said.
In Fiscal Year 2022-2023, the People Concern team had 4,019 contacts with homeless people in Malibu, placed 34 clients in interim housing, 11 clients in permanent housing and the reunified 25 people with friends and family, Coil stated, adding, “From July 2023 to November 2023, our team had 1,994 contacts with clients, placed seven in interim housing and 10 in permanent housing and our agency numbers are reported at 90 percent retention in housing.”
Davis noted that Stallings ensures that the library provides homeless clients with computers so they can look for housing. “The partnership with homeless outreach workers and the library is incredibly important,” Davis said.
Kay Gabbard, CART’s treasurer, addressed the importance of that organization providing meals to the homeless.
“Our meals provide consistency for the clients who know that the Street Medical Team will be there to serve them,” Gabbard said. “When we build such trust with the homeless, we are more likely to succeed at getting them into housing and having them stay in housing.”
Flores added, “The Sheriff’s have been very proactive and sometimes don’t arrest a homeless person, but instead exercise compassion and their handling situations in that way has led to much success.”
As of press time, the coalition of public employees and community organizations and volunteers were preparing for the annual homeless count which was held on Jan. 24.
“I have been an observer for the homeless count,” Mayor Pro Tem Stewart said. “The success of all those who work with Malibu’s homeless is attributable to the work of all those who participate in Malibu’s [Homelessness] Working Group and we help with homelessness one story at a time and by providing one helping hand at a time.”
For more information on the topic, go to MalibuCity.org/homelessness.