Neighbors Rally Against Plans For Valley Homeless Shelter

LOS ANGELES, CA — Plans to open up short term housing for homeless people at a former mental health facility in the San Fernando Valley are provoking the ire of surrounding communities where residents worry about the proposed project’s impact on safety and property values.

Dozens of residents in the San Fernando Valley attended a community meeting Tuesday night to register their concern, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. Many urged the county to scrap plans to purchase the property at 7621 Canoga Avenue to convert into interim housing for the homeless. However, the West San Fernando Valley has been experiencing the same spike in homelessness plaguing the rest of the city with few solutions to the problem, county officials countered.

The proposed site will be near the Canoga Park Elementary School.

“That’s a dumb idea to put a homeless place near the school,” one man whose daughter attends the school told the newspaper. Parents said they worried that a homeless shelter would increase crime in the area around the school.

County officials don’t plan to make a final decision until the end of the year. If the county does move forward with the plan, they are looking at using the building for an interim housing project as a bridge for people looking to get off their streets and into permanent housing in the Valley.

For the full Los Angeles Daily News article click here.

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