Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
Two large homeless camps have been removed from the side of Highway 101 in Santa Barbara this week.
Both camps located near the Castillo and Haley Street onramp were overloaded with bicycles, tents, and a large amount of debris, reports John Palminteri of KEYT News.
The cleanup involved Caltrans, Santa Barbara Public Works, California Highway Patrol, Santa Barbara Police and homeless advocates. The people living in these camps were notified ahead of time of the cleanup and offered services.
These camps have been the source of recent fires along Highway 101 and the railroad tracks threatening nearby homes and property.
Read more on keyt.com
Photo: John Palminteri
It is civilized and prudent to remove these messes. But where are we sending this population? As a society we too often only want to see the nice things and pretend that the miserable is not with us.
I agree RHS. Most voters and the mayor herself continue to pretend this is nothing but a housing crisis. Clearing the occasional camp or building a bunch of high density low cost housing will never solve the problem. The vast majority of the people living in these camps are addicts. In order to help them, we must acknowledge this is an addiction problem. The only way to help these people is to intervene in their lives, break the cycle of addiction, and put them on a path to rehabilitation. These people desperately need our help, but we steadfastly refuse to acknowledge their problem let alone offer a solution.