This site was put up in answer to Palisades Avenue in Los Osos—someone somewhere posted that this was a free place to park your RV and in they came—from all over the country. Oklahoma was an answer to get people living in their RVs off Palisades.
Regardless of what anyone thinks, this site is successful. There is community: People watch over each other and care about each other. There is a well-run refrigerated food pantry that supplies the villagers with nutritious food. The goals of county administrators were lofty given there is no truly affordable housing in SLO or elsewhere in the county. Not everyone has housing vouchers (even if there were landlords who accepted vouchers), nor does everyone belong on welfare. So trying to find the villagers permanent housing is unrealistic at best.
There are drugs in any population—housed or not—professionals and houseless people use alike. And there are fires and theft in any population.
SLO County is doing the best it can; they truly believed people could move on to more suitable places to be. But there is no place to be. Case managers are trying in vain to find places for folks to go, but to where? Most have little to no income or they’d be somewhere else. Many don’t have families to turn to. RV park rates are sky-high and they won’t take your vehicle if it’s over 10 years old.
Thus, the solution of cost-effective tiny house villages … .
It’s easy to sit at our desks and criticize and think we have all the answers—but when you point the finger, you have three fingers pointing right back at you.
Becky Jorgeson
Hope’s Village of SLO
This article appears in Jun 22 – Jul 2, 2023.