At the March 28 Pacific Palisades Community Council meeting, Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness Board Member and Law Enforcement Committee Member Sharon Kilbride updated the community on the organization’s successes and challenges to date.
“Let me tell you a little bit about Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness successes and challenges,” Kilbride said at the meeting. “I’m going to tell you first about some of our successes: Right now, we have 104 people off the streets. These stats are from 2016 to now, which is 86 percent of the population that we have basically gotten into shelter. We have 72 people housed, which is amazing.”
The PPTFH recently signed a three-year contract with The People Concern, a social services agency that sources outreach workers to PPTFH.
“Our two outreach workers for The People Concern, they’ve got a busy job,” Kilbride explained. “Not only are they out there outreaching to the homeless folks … but they also have to do home visits for housing retention for those that we have housed.”
Kilbride added that the team is “extremely busy,” which is why PPTFH is struggling right now.
“We’re always needing funding, so be generous because we are making a huge difference in the Palisades, as I’m sure you all have noticed,” she explained.
Since 2016 PPTFH has cleaned up 85 abandoned encampments on the hillsides of the Palisades.
“Most of these folks have been housed that were living there for multiple years,” Kilbride said. “Approximately 200 abandoned camps on our beaches have been cleaned up by community clean-ups and also Beaches and Harbors—they really help us out.”
PPTFH also posted fire restriction entry signage in high fire-risk zones where camps have been found in the Palisades.
“Our Law Enforcement Committee volunteers have engaged and offered services for over 900 individuals since we started in 2016,” Kilbride said. “We offer them the cards, we send them to the meet ups.”
Kilbride shared that most of the homeless population coming through the Palisades is from out of state and transplanting to the Los Angeles area.
“We’ve had a few tell us, especially from the state of Nevada, that they give them a one-way ticket here but we have no way to prove that,” Kilbride explained. “It’s going to be a busy summer.”
Kilbride also reported that newly appointed West Bureau Police Captain Vic Davalos will allocate two more officers to join LAPD West Bureau Officers Rusty Redican and Jimmy Soliman on their beach patrols.
“We’re going to actually get two more officers in the next few months, so we’ll have a total of four for the summer months,” Kilbride said. “Rusty’s going to try and get six. Captain Vic Davalos, he’s very much in favor of supporting us with an additional two, but we’re going to try to get six. Vic has already promised me directly that we will have four officers. Rusty’s very convincing—we might get six.”
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