On last week’s episode of the Z107.7 Up Close Show, host Gary Daigneault had a lengthy conversation about homelessness in our county with Dawn Rowe, Chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors; Dr. Georgina Yoshioka, Director of County Behavioral Health; Diane Rundel, Assistant Executive Officer for San Bernardino County.
When asked if efforts to alleviate homelessness have ramped up in the last several years, Rundel said,
“Well, I mean, I think there’s a level of pressure for folks to solve this problem. We can’t just let it exacerbate and we look to our neighbor in LA County and we look at the problems that they face with homelessness and they’re almost overwhelmed at this point with the issue and how to solve it. We don’t want to get to that place.
We know that the Inland Empire is growing. We know this county is growing and expanding and with that, some of the challenges will grow with it. Our leadership and the leadership of Dawn Rowe and our CEO and the board all support really being more proactive and preventative and getting ahead of the problem, having solutions and capacity to get ahead of the problem so that it doesn’t exacerbate, it doesn’t become greater.
But with growth in the population, so do other things grow in the community and it comes with the territory.”
Supervisor Rowe discussed an $11 million dollars coming to the County from the State of California. Daigneault asked if the State’s money hinges on the immediate clearing of encampments, which is an initiative championed by Governor Gavin Newsom. Dundel said:
“So the Office of Homeless Services, Community Development and housing are focusing on that capacity building, but also on the intervention and resources. The team that she supports, but overall as a county, we have multidisciplinary teams that go out there. And before any kind of clearing takes place, we try to do some intervention and some case management.”
Daigneault asked if the plan was to to show up at an encampment with a truck and take it all down, to which Rundel responded,
“Taking it all down, that’s a nice concept, but it’s not super effective. We have to deal with the problems in front of us, and we have to take out the Swiss Army Knife, if you will, to address the problem. There’s no one solution, there’s no one size fits all.”
