San Luis Obispo County gained its first homeless union after months of unrest brewing at the Oklahoma Avenue safe parking site.
“We just want to be involved in the decision-making process and have a say in our own futures,” said SLO County Local of the California Homeless Union President Mallory Mejia.
Mejia has been a safe parking program participant since the beginning, in August 2021. Previously called the Kansas Avenue safe parking site, the open space by the Men’s Colony quickly filled up with RVs and cars belonging to people living out of them. Overcrowding is a persistent problem at the site along with disjointed resources and care, according to previous New Times reporting.
“We want to come together and make everything positive, and it hasn’t been positive so far,” Deana Clarke, union vice president and site resident said.
Both union leaders told New Times that Oct. 17 was a “new start” for participants after concluding the union’s first meeting at the site.
The union listed out its desires in a press release dated Oct. 14. It described itself as a self-governing body with selected residents acting as officers. Primarily, the union said it wants to be present for all the management decisions made by the county and the Community Action Partnership of SLO County (CAPSLO), which are responsible for the site and the services provided.
“At any interaction between a resident and the county and/or CAPSLO, the resident will be allowed to have another union member present as advocate and to document the proceedings,” the release said.
The union also wants site residents to be the auxiliary security team until that power is transferred to the newly hired guards.
Clarke said that the biggest request is for county officials to install low-income housing in the area. But other immediate problems exist, too, such as the far-flung location of the site that cuts it off from the main city. With the rising cost of gas, residents have a hard time traveling around the county.
“Laundry is a big deal. Morro Bay and Los Osos provide free laundry once a month. We’re working with CAPSLO to get us a bus to get there,” Clarke said.
She added that the union’s working on getting electricity for the site too because it gets expensive to leave vehicles running for the generators. Mejia and Clarke said they’re looking forward to partnering with Joe Dzvonik, the principal homeless analyst for the county.
“He’s very receptive and we can only go forward from here,” Clarke said. “We’re all shooting for the same goal: to get housing.”
Jack Lahey, CAPSLO’s director of homeless services, said that while the union hasn’t directly approached his staff yet, they’re willing to support the residents. When it came to the specific union desire to have a representative accompanying participants while they receive case management from CAPSLO, Lahey paused.
“There are a lot of privacy protections that people have when working with homeless providers. They can’t be blanket overwritten like that,” he said. “If they [the participant] chooses to have someone present, they can. But that choice has always been there.”
He added that CAPSLO coordinates ride-on programs to and from the site to help with the transportation problems. Free laundry is also available at CAPSLO’s 40 Prado Homeless Services Center.
“We’re always getting feedback to improve from the community,” Lahey said. “Our mission is to alleviate poverty.”
This article appears in Oct 20-30, 2022.
Thank you, Bulbul, for continuing to give the unhoused community a voice in the media. Jack Lahey’s responses are worth a few comments. While it’s true that Prado has a laundry facility, in order to use it an individual must go through an intake process at Prado. From my two years of working with the unhoused community I’ve learned that many are wary of CAPSLO in general and Prado in particular, making them hesitant to engage in that process.
According to Lahey, CAPSLO is “always getting feedback to improve from the community.” Unfortunately any feedback from the people they are supposed to be helping, as well as from community advocates, seems to vanish into a black hole. It’s easy to say that CAPSLO’s “mission is to alleviate poverty.” I’ve never seen anything that tells me they are fulfilling any part of that mission. Just ask anyone who’s had dealings with them.
Kudos to the Oklahoma site residents for unionizing. Their purpose to “to be involved in the decision-making process and have a say in our own futures,” is the right way to go. Unhoused people deserve self empowerment and a “seat at the table”. We all get that the issue of homelessness is huge, but it has to be done with the direct and active involvement of the unhoused individuals themselves. I look forward to seeing the County and the service providers responding to the wishes of Oklahoma site residents, as quoted in the article: “We want to come together and make everything positive, and it hasn’t been positive so far.”
A Union? I’d guess that the threat of a strike or walkout won’t provide much pressure on the county.