By Brett Callwood
Dozens of people living in RVs in an unincorporated area near Gardena have been placed in transitional housing. At one point, there were upwards of 500 people camping in the area, leading to problems with hygiene and crime.
As reported by the LA County website, “Los Angeles County’s new Pathway Home program to resolve encampments, including recreational vehicles (RVs), successfully placed 58 people into interim housing – including families with children – and removed 30 dilapidated RVs being used as makeshift dwellings on the streets of unincorporated East Gardena bordering West Rancho Dominguez.”
Since Pathway Home launched on August 9, 108 people have been transitioned into hotels and motels. The program uses Measure H funding and “helps people in encampments come indoors by offering them a hotel or motel room or other type of immediately available interim housing, along with a comprehensive suite of supportive services that can help them achieve stability and ultimately move into permanent housing.”
“This is LA County government in action,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who, with Supervisor Kathryn Barger, authored the motion to establish the pilot program that became the foundation of Pathway Home’s RV encampment resolution protocol. “Ending homelessness, especially for people living in RVs, requires collaboration with residents, multiple government departments, municipalities, and community partners. The launch of Pathway Home proves we can do it. By building on our established best practices and ongoing outreach efforts, Pathway Home creates an infrastructure for every entity to quickly work together in fulfilling its unique role in helping to end this crisis. We cannot do this without Measure H funding and a sustained urgency for getting every resident off the street and into permanent housing. I look forward to bringing this program to every encampment in the 2nd District and throughout Los Angeles County.”
“RV encampments cannot be resolved by simply posting ‘No Parking’ signs,” added Cheri Todoroff, executive director of Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative within the Chief Executive Office, which is leading Pathway Home. “In East Gardena and West Rancho Dominguez, the County mobilized an all-hands-on-deck response and assembled a package of resources that offered people a way out of the streets and into housing with services.”
This was the second Pathway operation, though the first to focus on people in RV.
