ScannerAndrew
Update by edhat staff
A fire at a homeless encampment spread to nearby brush and trees off Highway 101 at State Street.
Santa Barbara County firefighters responded to the southbound lanes after 9:00 p.m. Monday and discovered a 100×50 spot fire.
Five engines were on the scene and knocked down the fire.
There were no injuries and the official cause is under investigation.
Homeless Camp fire. SBC and STB on scene of a homeless encampment on fire. Hwy 101 SB at State Street. 100×50 spot burning in brush and trees. 5 engines on scene. No injuries reported. Under investigation. Traffic restrictions in the area. pic.twitter.com/Ctra4BITMm
— Daniel Bertucelli (@SBCFireInfo) March 8, 2022
Reported by Scanner Andrew
County and city firefighters are on scene extinguishing a vegetation fire on Hwy 101 SB just under the State Street overpass.
Today I saw a guy panhandling at the State/Calle Real intersction. He’s been a fixture in that area for over 20 years. Guys like that are homeless by choice and not about to live where there are the normal rules and responsibilities of life.
GIMLI, until recently in human history there was always a frontier where the discontented, unsocial, angry and unhappy could venture. The “West” served this function for a century and a half at least in the US. The world is now full of people and there is no place to allow the libertarian experiment to continue. This is the dilemma. In a Philip K. Dick book we follow the adventures of people who crashed on a planet but can’t understand how they got there. They disclose increasing social problems. Eventually we find that they were sent to treatment for mental health problems but their transport failed. They have to survive with their infirmity. Absent that alternative we should now create a better/more humane process for housing the absolutely predictable part of our population that cannot conform and cannot compete and cannot comply with the rules. This probably requires some sort of restraint on their civil liberties and some sort of community commitment to their support.
Due to the addictions and habits of some homeless, they are a clear and present danger to everyone.
I have some insight on this. Caltrans was clearing out a lot of homeless people at this location Monday afternoon at around 2:30PM. It look like a parade of homeless people and their belongings along the sidewalk. I suspect someone went back and purposely started the fire in retaliation, fortunately it was put out right away as there is a large retirement community close by.
Thank the ACLU for “protecting the rights” of the drug addicted vagrants/”homeless”, that cannot be forced into a rehabilitation program. You can not fix this broken cog in the wheel of our society until this changes and this ever increasing population is addressed by rehab.
Still not as much as a public nuisance as people selling chicken sandwiches right city council!!
The city’s mission is to minimize productive activity and tax revenue. Encampments and daily fires help achieve that mission, thus we encourage that. However, business that becomes so successful that it causes traffic is absolutely unacceptable. We only allow vacant buildings and struggling businesses around here!
I saw the same situation –CalTrans cleaning out the area– Monday morning at 8:30. They must have been at it all day before the fire was started that evening.
LUVADUCK – “they are a clear and present danger to everyone.” — So, what do you propose? Should we send in Jack Ryan?
This homeless encampment and fire situation in the foliage next to the freeway is a never ending problem.
Take a lesson from the Isla Vista Recreation and Park District. Starting in 1992, and continuing to this date, we ameliorated the problem (slowly) by removing dense growth, trimming up the underbrush to create sight lines, and adding low wattage lighting throughout our parks.
With the original single-point, harsh (500 watt) lighting, intense shadows were created, and people didn’t feel safe in our parks at night. Nobody, except the homeless used our parks at night. Doing the trimming and adding many low wattage lights allowed people to feel safe in our parks at night, and the parks were used.
Take a lesson from Highway 15 in Las Vegas. This freeway is very evenly illuminated, i.e. , there are no shadow areas. The lighting is not bright, just uniform. This result is achieved with bright halogen light groups (4) on 100′ poles in the freeway center divider. Also, by having the light sources at 100′ elevation, they don’t shine in driver’s eyes.
CalTrans (or the cities) should follow this example here (depending upon whose property is the problem). The dense freeway foliage should be cleared of undergrowth and thinned. The existing lighting is on short (relatively) light standards at only at freeway entrances and exits.
When there is a homeless encampment fire, it should be treated as a controlled burn, and allowed to do this clearing.
The USS Starship Enterprise should pick up all the homeless and send them to an uninhibited earth type planet so they can settle there. No drugs and no alcohol. If only that can be real. “Make it so”! – Captain – Jean Luc Picard –
GIMLI – funny, but why should the homeless be rounded up and taken away? Why not help them?
If you don’t contribute to upkeep and services in a community or chose to cause trouble for others, you don’t have a right to live there… I’m okay with these folks being forced to leave.
I think the main goal at the city is to increase affordable housing, which is impossible here given how desirable this place is, and how impossible it is to increase the housing supply. Plan B is to allow our town to become less desirable, and therefore more affordable once people start moving out. Supply and demand, where they have no influence over the supply side but do on the demand.
Not agreeing they should be sent to space (wtf?) but generally the folks living and starting fires in the bushes along the freeway don’t want help.
SFGA – how do you know that? These aren’t arsonist fires (aside from TV hill), they’re negligent fires. They’re human beings with rights. We can’t just haul them away and stick them in a camp or desert island or something.
I have been in Santa Barbara since 1974. There have always been campers choosing to live wherever, ever since 1974. These people enjoy not being housed, not because they are drug addicts or mentally ill. They can easily adapt to the mild climate and can enjoy the advantages of being in Santa Barbara. Even if low-cost housing is available to them, many would still opt to live outdoors for free. Santa Barbara needs to acknowledge that this is an ongoing situation and address it for what it is: free choice.
HUMANITARIAN – good point. There ARE many out there that prefer this way of life. How do we address those? I feel like those refusing help, but insisting on living on the streets (who aren’t suffering from addiction/mental health issues) should be treated differently. For example, the gutter punks. Generally younger adults, they’ve made a “culture” of living work-free. Do we treat these the same as those who are unwillingly homeless or those who are unable to work/help themselves due to addiction and/or mental issues? This is where it gets tricky. There’s not one size fits all solution here. Rounding them ALL up is definitely illegal, not to mention inhumane. No easy solution!
DBD, the city says it’s goal is affordable housing, but it’s really to stifle any change and prevent any new housing from being constructed. Just look into what would be involved in building new housing units in the city, it’s a wonder any projects actually make it to completion. From architectural review to rain collection, the red tape is simply prohibitive. Unless you’re a big developer with influence and connections, forget about it.
LA City audit 2022
A $1.2 billion program intended to quickly build housing for Los Angeles’ sprawling homeless population is moving too slowly while costs are spiking, with one project under development expected to hit as much as $837,000 for each housing unit, a city audit disclosed
LA City Audit 2020
The average cost of building a single unit of housing for the homeless in Los Angeles has risen to $531,000, according to an audit from the city controller
A city audit of the 1.2 billion dollar housing bond measure that Los Angeles voters approved 6 years ago shows the longer it takes to build permanent housing funded by HHH, the more money it costs to build a single unit.
Originally, the average cost to build a single apartment was $350,000 dollars. Now, it’s close to $600,000 dollars per unit and some units will cost as much as $837-thousand dollars.
The audit also found that although 10-thousand units were promised, only 8,000 will be delivered and so far, only 1,042 of those units have been completed.
OK so in six years they’ve only built 1042 units.
Where does the money go?
Cynical people might think that the people in the homeless business are paying themeselves well, and have no interest in fixing the problem.
At some point it is either gross incompetence, corruption…. or both
Make New Cuyama a real town with low real estate prices and room for a facility.
Darn that Constitution and those silly rights it guarantees!