John Wiley
Scroll through the above photos
By John Wiley
Looking at Tangerine Falls after the previous rain, do you see more orange? It sure looked more orange to us, and we hadn’t noticed before that the base pool is now filled with loose brown gravel. Is that a new waterfall sloping down from the right, created during the debris flow?
The community of “Cliff Dwellers” with fabulous views is still expanding on the eroding slope below the Summerland exit on 101 South. Will this eventually lead to re-routing the trains and narrowing 101 if the erosion continues? Does one of the new dwellings have ladder access, or is that from rescue of the pickup truck driver that went over the side?
If a private property owner living within the Coastal Zone were to try to erect any building, ladder on a slope, or even a patio deck on their ocean front property they would be subject to complicated County building requirements, CEQA and County environmental review procedures, and finally Coastal Commission review. And you would likely need to incorporate expensive environmental mitigation measures if any plants/bugs were impacted, or if slope erosion was a possibility. I guess if you are homeless you get a pass in this County……
Hey you can always choose to live outdoors if you think you’ll have more rights and privileges not afforded the rest of us. You can then write a book on how enlightening it was to not have indoor plumbing, a permanent shelter and the million dollar views afforded from your tarp lean-to nestled between the RR tracks and the freeway. And you can get one of them there Obama debit cards.
We taxpayers pay a lot of money to have our roads and infrastructure kept clean of crap like this. If Lompoc can clean up its riverbed of homeless encampments and accoutrements, any community can do so.
uhm…have you driven in Santa Barbara city? There are no good roads and our infrastructure in the county & country has been on a downward spiral for decades….
don’t politicize this…
Poverty comes with its own set of challenges specifically tailored to every person’s circumstances. Just because you don’t see poor people struggling doesn’t mean that they’re not. Among people of traditional and reliable means, ‘poverty with a view’ does not (or should not) equate to privelege. If you continue to envy the poor, then you are just as crazy as you think they are (or maybe you are more).
Every time you go to the gas station to fill up, remember you’re paying on average $5 extra for taxes to fix roads. Then realize what you’re actually paying for is retirement funds for people given jobs and promised life time pensions.
I don’t envy the homeless in any way, and they don’t get “a pass”. They have suffered some horrible fate to end up the way they do, I don’t believe anyone chooses to be homeless, it’s either mental illness, substance abuse or hardship, none of those are enviable situations.
As for the city being hard on home owners, they are even harder on small business owners trying to make it in this city. INSANE ordinances, RIDICULOUS rules and stiff fees make it next to impossible for Mom and Pop Shops to make it here, which is shameful. SHAME on you, SB.
One can be both upset about stuff like this causing danger for homeowners, the homeless people themselves, and the pollution and damage done to the local environment as well as the problems these people face and an anger at the lack of resources available to prevent things like this from even needing to happen.
Not on topic but right on that the city government has made it nearly impossible for mom and pops to run a business in SB. It’s just way to expensive and time consuming (also an expense) to get things approved and permitted.
The infrastructure here should be protected. That is one of the really necessary reasons we pay taxes.
Whatever it takes, the people should be moved out of this location.
Imagine the cost of building a trestle and bridge and the concurrent transportation nightmare. Yes it will eventually be needed, but why hurry it up by turning a blind eye to this problem?