It's the John Phillips Show. It's the fixed California Hour. Johnny's on vacation. It's Randy Wang here and the phone number to join us is eight hundred two two two five two two two one eight hundred two two two five two two two. Your emails at Johnny Don't like show at gmail dot com and search for the John Phillips Show wherever you get your podcasts. I literally just posted the twelve o'clock hour. Our next guest is the editorial director and CEO of the Voice of San Francisco.
You can check out the website and read all of the inside info on what's going on in San Francisco The Voice SF dot org. The Voice SF dot org Susan Dya Reynolds. Welcome back to The John Phillips Show.
Hey Randy, how are you doing great?
So recently Daniel Lurie had his big State of the City address. He's celebrating one year as mayor of San Francisco, and one of the accomplishments that he touted during the State of the City address is, and to quote from your article, we stopped freely handing out drug supplies and letting people kill themselves on our streets. You disagree with that.
I don't just disagree with that. There's evidence everywhere that that's a complete lie. Hence my title Lurie's Big Lie, because you know, as much as I would love to see him succeed, he has to tell the truth. And the more he lies about things that are clear to the eye and that are videotaped every day by community advocates like JJ Smith. And if you don't follow him, everybody should, you know that there's just no way that he can stand there with a straight face and say it, and yet he does so.
Tell us about some of the nonprofits that are still participating in harm reduction, handing out drug paraphernalia funded by the City and County of San Francisco, even though Daniel Lurry says we're not doing that.
Well, you know, the biggest one is the Ffaid's Foundation, which was started back in the day for a great cause. I have friends who died of AIDS, and I have friends that were saved because they were into drugs and they got safe needles, you know, and didn't share needles. But right now they're handing out needles to drug add it and not just needles but smoking supplies for fentanyl, so pipes foil, and they don't just hand they they
don't just give you one. Right. The very idea of a needle exchange started out being you bring us your needle, will give you another needle. Or bring us three needles, will give you three needles. Now they're going into the ocean. They're all over the streets as you know. And JJ does these undercover videos all the time where he will go to ffaids, which despite Danie Lurie saying in April that the new regulations were they couldn't hand them out outside,
they had to do it inside. They had to have counselors available, people from public health to offer treatment options. None of that is happening. And JJ has seen a seven. He has video of a seventeen year old getting harm reduction supplies. He goes undercover, they fill his bag. What do you need and he says, ohbrillo, I need a you know of pipes, so I need a bubble, I need here you go, here you go, here you go. No counseling offered. So they're the big dogs. That's who
our public health department in San Francisco. The behavioral part which is run by Hillary Coonan's who's a one hundred percent harm reduction fanatics. She's not an advocate, she's a fanatic and needs to be fired. I'll just say it out.
I actually just won a journalism award for coverage of a secret recording I got of the San Francisco to part of public health with all the harm reduction groups talking about how it was other people's problem that they had a problem with seeing drugs being used on the street. They won hundred percent support people doing drugs on the street, and that means they percent support overdoses, because there's no way anyone can keep up with two people a day overdosing.
And by the way, JJ, who's out on the street every day, he you know, he videotapes them putting bodies in the medical examiner van and they open it up at seven in the morning and there's already three other bodies in there. So I think it's probably more than two a day.
It's just insanity that we're allowing this, and we're paying for this, And it seems like Laurie is giving lip service to the common sense people out there that realize this is nonsense. But apparently he's not able to detach the city from all of the people inside public health that are obsessed with this ideology.
Well there's that, and then there's also the fact, and I warned people this when he ran that he was handed on a silver platter by his mother, Mimi Haff, who married into the Levi Strauss fortune. He was handed on a silver platter Tipping Point, which was his nonprofit, and at one point they put one hundred million dollars out and said, we're going to solve fifty percent of homelessness in five years. Well, homelessness went up by thirty percent.
What was he doing the same things that the city did. He supported and still Tipping Points still supports the same ones of these, the same harm reduction nonprofits. His crowding achievement on Bryant Street that he bragged about, I did affordable housing on Bryant Street. You know eight fifty five Bryant Street is run by Episcopal Community Services, as they do client services there who have the highest overdose rate
in San Francisco over the past five years. We actually took the numbers and we broke them down and wrote a story called Housing First More Second, and it's a series that we're working on their deep and investigative dives, and thirty percent of the overdoses are happening inside these supportive housing buildings, one of which you know Lurie himself, you know, set up with Charles Schwapp Foundation, and it's one of the worst ones by the way. It's run
over by rats. There's dog fighting, there's breeding of dogs, which you know, I have a very big issue with. A social worker was stabbed. There's another one was shot. I mean, this is not you know, the way harm reduction and housing first is not the answer, but that's what comes from he has a nonprofit background. So the one I wrote ab up in this particular article harm
reduction Therapy Center. They have vans and the city gives them a sanctioned parking space where they pull up in a van and they dole out harm reduction supplies and massages for the drug tourists. So by school, by the way, not by school, by a park where there are children playing in the park, they have a massage table set up, a sitting massage table where they're getting massages on sides of the I can't make this stuff up. They're getting
about six million dollars from the city. Seventy five percent of that goes to salaries, only twelve percent, less than twelve percent goes to services. About five hundred and sixty thousand dollars of six million goes to services. And I'm assuming the services are driving the van around and giving massages.
Yeah, I wonder what the line item on their budget says how much they are charging the city for each one of those massages.
What's really funny that you say that, because these nonprofits are masters of the empty nine to ninety. They are absolutely masters at it. They don't tell you anything, They just give you the numbers, and they get as little information as possible. I mean, I'm not an accountant, but I go through them quite often and very rarely do
you see line items. And their mission statements are always something like to help with the suffering of drug addicts or they don't even call them addicts drug users, and to not stigmatize them and to show them that they are people too, something like that. Those are their mission statements six thousand, you know, six million dollars to thank you.
That's quite lightly insane. We're speaking with Susan Dya Reynolds, the Voice of San Francisco. You've got to check out her latest article, Lurie's Big Lie, on the fact that harm reduction is still alive and well in San Francisco. And it just drives me crazy to know that, you know, San Francisco is in a massive budget deficit. How are these programs not the first ones on the chopping block? Who is stilst defending this? There is no track record of any success with these programs.
There isn't any at all. And you know, and especially a group like HRTC, which I really started to dig into because it was one I was not familiar with until JJ took video of drug tourist getting massages and another guy sitting down shooting up next to our a bunch of kids were playing and they they say on their website that they have created a therapeutic mew that attracts one hundreds of people literally with the number one hundreds of people to seek therapy and other services, and
their mission statement is straight schlock out of the nineteen seventies. HRTC exis to transform substance user treatment by providing low barrier, person centered, integrated mental health care, as well as clinical harm reduction training to people and organizations impacted by the War on drugs? What come on? Now, you know, I mean,
I mean, there's va whole thing. And then you know they also were there was an audit of the San Francisco Street Teams and they got called out for performing work for the City of San Francisco's Department of Public Health without a signed, executed contact contract for over eighteen months. And they were there at the Resource Center attending weekly meetings, leading trainings, mental health counseling, substance use for outpatients. Are
you serious? I mean there's not a doctor amongst them, Like, what is this?
We're speaking with Susan Dyer Reynolds. You've got to check out the voicesf dot org and make sure you follow her on Twitter at Susan d Reynolds. Now, another thing that Daniel Lurry made a big promise when he became mayor was he was going to dismantle the open air drug markets that plague the tenderloin and SOMA and now the mission. We've seen some big raids, we've seen a whole bunch of arrests, but the open air drug markets persist. What's going wrong here?
I bring it back to the harm reduction stuff. I always say every time he stands up there and talks tough, how he's not going to allow people to sell drugs on the street and use drugs on the street. Everybody says, get rid of the drug dealers. Well, of course, but that's easier said than done, because you know, in that case you have to deal with not just local authorities but California law. And everybody's sawt on crime California, as you know that the justice system here is an injustice system.
So my you know theory. When I go to other counties and watch how they deal with things, I note that they don't have harm reduction vans driving around handing out bags full of needles and smoking supplies. So my number one suggestion to Daniel Lurie is that he stops handing out smoking supplies altogether. There's no no, and I don't buy the harm rediction theory that they might prevent a colds or whatever. No, you don't need to hand
out smoking supplies. No other civilized cities do. And then just makes them come inside to get which is what he promised in April. Inside only you come to us. We don't come to you. You come to us. You hand us your needles, will give you needles, and also counseling and someone to tell you where you can find treatment. And now he wants to do this. You know, we're going to send them home. We're going to fly them home and give them some money to get set up
in their own town. Stop treating them like they're the victims. They're victimizing San Francisco. These are not These are drug tourists who also commit crimes to keep their habits going. So the way other cities do it is they're not
nice about it. They just they throw them in jail, they check their warrants, They make it uncomfortable and until Danie Lurie, you know, it takes some lessons from Matt mahon and Sama's and actually does what he says he's going to do, it's not gonna nothing's changing as long as you go to them and hand them drug supplies. Drugs are plentiful. You know, we know that the dealers are a problem, but getting rid of them it has
to be federal because locally they go into diversion. That's my article coming out this week, I believe Tuesday is how many of the drug dealers go through mental health diversion, So there really isn't any any action on that end locally. It has to be federally, and we don't have enough federal you know, the lawyers to deal with all of them. There's no deportation happening because Daniel Loury doesn't want to hear that word, because you know, sanctuary city, sanctuary city again,
you know, just common sense. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think sanctuary city shouldn't count for people that are violent criminals, sells, drug dealers. Seems to me they shouldn't be protected, and yet they are so until some of those things change, and I don't see that happening. So you know, all I can say is he's one really good candidate and three more State of the City addresses away from losing his job if he doesn't do something serious.
Well, and to that point, on the drug dealers, especially the ones that are in the country illegally, most of them from Honduras, I think you remember a few years ago when Supervisor Matt Dorsey wanted to change the sanctuary policy in San Francisco to just make it that if you're selling fentanel, we will hand you over to Ice and he got shouted down as a racist for that.
Well, so did I. And it's ironic because several years ago I wrote a story called the Mansions that Sentinel built, and I took it from a federal case, and there were pictures of the mansion in the transcripts, and I read the whole transcript. I did the story about this family that was caught on audio with a tapped, you know,
a line. And also the son was going back and forth to Honduras building a mansion, and the mother was caught on the phone saying to his uncle, oh, you know, he's just he doesn't know he's going to put in Marvel columns or if he wants a granite, And of course somebody was called a racist. I think because of that, the Chronicle decided they wanted to prove me wrong, and they sent reporters down to Honduras and guess what they found, mansions. And so it was absolutely true what I wrote five
years ago or so. They go back and forth, no fear. Maybe a little more now, but in those days there was Biden's time, they had no fear. And you know, they're by far the biggest the drug dealers on the street in the tender wine particularly by far the majority of them are from Honduras. But they have no fear because they go in. They you know, the judge says, okay, we release you on your own recognizance, and then they go out and they're back on the street selling in
an hour. And that still happens.
Well, and I remember Brooke Jenkins complaining that they would go in front of the judge and say I'm a victim of human trafficking and the judgers say, oh, oh, I'm so sorry.
Yeah, mental health diversion, there you go. But unfortunately Broke Jenkins, you know, has the last say about this is what you'll find out in my outcoming article. In California, there the law states that the district attorney has the final say on diversion. They're supposed to once a year look at these programs and decide if they're working, and they
actually do have power there. So in my article I suggest that perhaps these all of these programs need to be looked at because you know, on another show we can talk about what I found. But let's just say murder, you know, attempted murderers, you know, are in diversion for mental health. I mean of course, if you're an attempted murderer, you probably have some mental health issues. But there's a fine line between that and someone who probably deserves to go to prison. The big difference.
Well, in the Sacramento Shire, Jim Cooper try to get those laws changed last year and it got killed in committee in the Assembly, where we are all in on diversion, even when you think it's supposed to be for nonviolent crimes, We're going all in on diversion for any self attested mental illness, including ADHD for the most heinous of crimes. And it makes no sense.
Oh, in an opioid now they are you know, in San Francisco, if you say I have an opioid problem, they send you to mental health diversion, and then there's drug diversion that I'm looking at those deaths right now, that's my next one. But I got to tell you that the mental health diversion is out of control. The
selons that they allow. For example, in santave three selonies were allowed into diversion, whereas in San Francisco it's over a thousand, and you know, and first of all, I think in many ways this stigmatizes people who actually are mentally ill. You know, there's a big difference. Only about three percent of people with mental illness who aren't impacted
by other things like drug addiction commit violent crimes. So basically, you're saying there's a thousand people with mental illness and three, you know, a third of them or drug dealers. That seems like a stretch.
Susan Dyer Reynolds. The website is the Voice SF dot org. The Voice SF dot org. Thank you so much as always for joining us.
Thank you so much, and you can also follow us on Twitter, on the VOSF dot at at the VOSS.
At the vos F, thanks so much for joining us today. Eight hundred two two two five two two two is the telephone number one. Eight hundred two two two five two two two. It's Randy Wang here on the John Phillips Show. It's Jilly Buffett Friday on the John Phillips Show. Johnny's on vacation, so it's Randy Wang here. Eight hundred two two two five two two two is the telephone number one. Eight hundred two two two five two two two. You can email us at Johnny Don't like show at
gmail dot com. You could search for the John Phillips Show wherever you get your podcast, and I do noon to three here every day with Johnny. But I also do a local show from five to six on our southern California station seven ninety KABC. It's called The Newsplitz. We talk local issues facing all of California and occasionally some fun food topics. Tonight, we're going to discuss the readers of Condie Nast Traveler voting Oakland as the number
one food city in America. So if you want to listen to that, go to KABC dot com or download the KABC app. Have I got something exciting for you right now, seven ninety KABC welcomes John Mellencamp to the Hollywood ball on August tenth. Tickets are on sale Friday at ticketmaster dot com, but right now calling number nine at one eight eight eight seven ninety five two two two gets a pair of tickets to the show. Tickets
furnished by Live Nation. Good luck dialing. We've got an hour and a half to go here on this Jimmy Buffett Friday, and when we come back, we'll go to the other side of the Bay and see what's going on in San Jose. Crap that rhymed. It's Randy way Here on the John Phillips Show. It's Jimmy Buffett Friday on The John Phillips Show. Johnny's on vacation, so it's Randy wang here. Eight hundred two two two five two
two two is the telephone number. You can email us at Johnny Don't Like show at gmail dot com and search for the John Phillips Show wherever you get your podcasts. You know what's really exciting. In two weeks, we've got another live remote, the second live remote of the year, and it's coming on Friday, February sixth, join us for a live broadcast at Gladstone's in Long Beach. We're heading to Gladstones in Long Beach for our next live broadcast,
and you are invited. Great food, good vibes, great my ties. Let me tell sag Meister right now, I can't have one while we're doing the show because I will enjoy it just a little too much. But you could enjoy when if you come watch the show, show have a fun afternoon by the water. We're gonna have special guests with us, including Susan Shelley from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association. She'll tell you more about your taxpayer rights and protecting
Prop thirteen. The courts have made it easier to raise your taxes. Come by and sign the petition to save Prop thirteen. The deadline is coming fast February seventeenth. She needs those signatures to get this on the November ballot to strengthen Prop thirteen and stop the judges from finding all these exceptions to Prop thirteen. Come hang out with us, grab a bite, and be part of the broadcast. It's the John Phillips Show Friday, February sixth from noon to three,
live at Gladstone's in Long Beach. I love that spot. Actually, I love downtown Long Beach. Like at some point when I relocate out of the San Fernando Valley and I am thinking about where, if I'm going to stay in southern California, where I would be. Long Beach is pretty darn fun. Long Beach has its issues, but I'm really, really, really tired of the boring San Fernando Valley. I'd like walking to things, and I live in a part of
town where you can't walk to anything. San Jose has been getting a lot of attention lately, because there's a lot of people wondering if San Jose Mayor Matt Mayhan is going to be running for governor. He made waves himself saying that he's thinking about it because all of the candidates on the Democrat side have yet to impress him.
Interestingly enough, over the weekend, Matt mahon invited Republican candidate for governor Steve Hilton to see what he's doing when it comes to homelessness, to see if anybody running for governor will pay attention to one of the few success stories in California. And San Jose has its share of problems, but Matt Mayhan seems to be doing a lot more than a lot of other cities. Let's see what's going on here. Here is NBC in.
The Bay We now to the race for governor in California. Dealing with the on house appears to be a big issue with the upcoming gubernatorial campaign. Many of the candidates are coming to Santase to learn about how the city is dealing with the issue. Today it was Republican hopeful Steve Hilton, NBC Bay Area's Damnsure Heo is at a tiny homes facility in Santase with more.
Mayor Matt Mayheon seems to be selling this tiny homes idea to all of the gubernatorial candidates. Many are getting a first hand look at this concept concept right here in San Jose. Steve Hilton toured the facility on Guadalupe Parkway with the mayor. The mayor used the opportunity to discuss what he sees as major achievements and roadblocks at the state level. This is known as an emergency housing site with ninety six modular units. The facility also offers case management and job training.
Oh you don't hear that one that much job training, making sure that the people that are in these places are only there temporary, because we're going to find to get you away where you can support yourself. A lot of other counties, especially Los Angeles, we want you to be a ward of the state forever because that means more money.
The idea is to get the unhoused in here and get them back on their feet so they don't have to live on the streets anymore. The city says there is a high success rate in moving folks into permanent housing, So the mayor is hoping that.
I still don't understand what that term means I mean, technically it means subsidized housing. But how permanent is permanent? You know? I want to hear more stories of people like Tom Wolf, who's going to be on the show on Monday, who you know, struggled with addiction, got to the worst of it, went to the Salvation Army, went to rehab, got his life together and is now an advocate for all of the insanity that is going on out there. We need more of those stories, you know.
And if our programs were truly successful in the state of California, shouldn't we have like just testimonial after testimonial after testimonial of all the former homeless that were changed by some of these programs, and now they've got their family back, they've got their lives back. We're not hearing it.
So the mayor is hoping this can serve as a model for the state moving forward.
What I'm interested in is how we can solve this problem in a real way, not shoft with people around from one place to another, not you know, make statements about how things are getting better when everyone knows that they're not.
No matter who are next governors, no matter which party.
By the way, Props to Mayhean for you know, reaching across the non existent island California, you'd be like, I'm looking for anybody that has good ideas, and Steve Hilton has a lot of good ideas no.
Matter who are next governors, and I'm.
By the way, same exact thing. Props to Steve Hilton for even though Matt Mayhan is a Democrat, he is a common sense guy and these are sense issues.
No matter who our next governor is, no matter which party they come from, we need them focused on solutions. And that's what today is about. We are leading the way on homelessness, on public safety.
The mayor held a similar tour with other candidates a few weeks ago, including Tom Steyer and Katie Porter.
So ThisDay, Katie's here and Johnny's not here to take a cheap shot. She did wind drop of the year.
You're out of my shot.
So this is a message that the mayor hopes the next governor is focused on, and the mayor is willing to give a tour of this facility to anyone who is willing to help and make a change. He says, we're in San Hoose, I'm Damien through he o NBC Bay Area News.
So Matt Mayhan, that story ran on NBC in the Bank, and Matt Mayhon posted a video with Steve Hilton, and I'm going to read you what he posted because apparently this pissed off Gavin Newsom, who sent his attack dogs after Matt Mayhan, who is shining just a little brighter than the absentee landlord governor that we have right now. So here's Matt Mayheen's tweet. Last year, Steve Hilton posted a video of San Jose's largest most dangerous encampment, Columbus Park.
Today he came by to learn how we decommissioned it, move people indoors, and plan to keep the area clean and clear so the entire community can join it once again. He is the sixth gubnatorial candidate to come by and learn about our approach. The truth is, no matter who our next governor is or what party they come from, we need them focused on what works. Neither side of
the political spectrum has a monopoly on the truth. We need to be able to talk to each other, find pragmatic solutions, and move toward a world where we uplift good ideas regardless of who came up with them boys. He have breath of fresh air and one idea that change the game in San Jose, a shift away from the status quo approach in California to an all of the above strategy focused on those suffering the most, the
people living unsheltered on the streets. We scaled the faster, cheaper housing solution that has reduced unsheltered homelessness by a third over a decade of growth, and when it's available, we require people to use it. I hope that Steve, along with the other candidates in the race, adopt our approach as a model of what's possible and commits to holding every city in county accountable for doing their fair
share in investing in what works. So nothing to you know, scandalous there not even calling out Gavin specifically or the legislature. But here's what happened. Mayhn posted that, and then there was a reply from a woman named Tera Gagos, who is a spokesman for Gavin Newsom. Apparently she used to be the spokesperson for Banta, and before that she was the spokesperson for or gubernatorial candidate Javier Bacarihea. But when you do the scrub You know that guy scrub it.
So what did she write? What did she respond to? She said, Gavin Newsom paid to clear this side and open these tiny homes. You're welcome. Why are all of Gavin's Twitter people this bitchy, including against someone from his own party who is one of the examples of success
in this failure of a state. But Matt Mahon replies, not quite Tera, No state dollars were used to clear Columbus Park, as a majority of the funding for this interim housing community was raised via local and philanthropic dollars. People who are sick and tired of excuses. You're right that a portion of the site was paid for using HAP funds, which Sacramento zeroed out in last year's budget, and the governor only proposes funding at fifty percent this year.
We're grateful for the role of the state has played in building and operating solutions like this, but scale, billing
and sustating what works requires an ongoing commitment. So let's work together to fully fund half this year and brace sober living environments, implement Prop thirty six to get repeat offenders into treatment, and implement a fair share framework that gets every city in every county to do its part in the era of encampments and end it, and Tara writes back, not quite, Matt, it's a bold move to try to emrase the funder when the funds are still clearing.
Your city is sitting on millions of unspent funds, money you could have used to ensure that people you have cleared from encampments were getting connected to the services they need. The state is giving another one billion dollars another five hundred million from this budget available with Prop one funds, and Matt says, sorry for the late reply. We are not sitting on unspent funds because these dollars are not
assured each year. They have often taken more than a year for Sacramento deploy and we budget them carefully, both to build out new interim housing to operate the sites we've already built. Ending homelessness is rarely a one time cost. Once we build a shelter, we have to operate it every day. The inconsistency of these dollars makes it all the harder to plan ahead and ensure that we're not investing solutions that we won't be able to operate on a long term basis and it just went back and
forth and back and forth. So Gavin Newsom spokesperson is getting paid. I'm assuming this is a government job. Maybe it's a campaign job. But she's getting paid to bitch out and try to fact check McMahon and she's not right on the facts. It's Randy Wang here on the John Phillips Show. It's Jimmy Buffett Friday on the John Phillip Show. It's Randy wang here. Johnny. You'll be back a week from Monday. Eight hundred two two two five
two two two is the telephone number. There are a lot of successes in San Jose, but not everything is perfect when it comes to homelessness. As evidence by to competing our safe parking sites, one operated by the city, one operated by VTA, and there's a feud going on for mar Here's NBC in the Bay, a big.
Fight over little spaces. A parking lot in San Jose being used by homeless people could be forced to close because of code violations. The city says that lot is not approved as a safe parking space for the homeless.
So what, by the way, I think that this entire concept of safe parking needs to go we change the laws. It is now way more effective to crush these things into cubes. Most of these are barely operable. We have got to get these RVs out of the ecosystem.
So what happens now. NBC's Robert Honda has the details.
Well, this small VTA parking lot where some homeless are living in vehicles is off Santa Teresa Boulevard, and it is right next to another VITA lot that also houses people living in their vehicles.
Well, here's what I do not understand. And look, everyone's situation is different. You know, you can't generalize how people ended up here. But if you have a vehicle and you can't afford to live in San Jose, why don't you drive it somewhere cheaper.
However, this lot is approved by the city, this one is not. San Jose is strained to find places to put all the people swept out of homeless encampments such as Columbus Park. Late last year, the city set up two so called safe parking sites, including one off Santa Teresa Boulevard, a joint project by San Jose and property owner Valley Transit or VTA. Homeless advocates were encouraged but say it's not enough.
It's never enough because the advocates need more funding.
I think it's very crucial we need more. I'm really sad that the city is not stepping up getting more. I know there are places we can put our these say parking.
So the community group Amigos they Go Wanta Loupe made a contractual agreement with VITZ.
If you don't know Spanish, that means the friends of Guadalupe see this dual Lingo's paying off?
Are these say parking?
So the community group Amigos they Go Wantaloupe made a contractual agreement with VTA in twenty twenty four to allow about a dozen vehicles to stay temporarily on a lot right next to the city's safe parking site, but a neighborhood group complained to the city, saying it never agreed to this new safe site and that it wasn't actually safe city.
Well, there is that. You remember the lawsuit that's coming out of the safe camping and safe parking sites that are in San Diego and the derelic conditions that are going on the vermin because these sites are not clean. Because Shaker, the nonprofits are taking the money to operate it and aren't making sure that they are safe. In fact, they had a security guard at the one in San Diego that was trying to solicit prostitution from the homeless women.
Code enforcement inspectors sent compliance orders to VTA after they found violations, including what they called property blight, hazardous conditions, and inadequate solid waste management.
We've got to stop this entire concept. Safe storage, safe parking. We change the laws a little, we need to change them more. If the RV is not driveable, it needs to no longer be considered a dwelling or even a piece of property. It needs to be crushed into a cube. These things are dangerous and what happens in Los Angeles is the worst. Where we toe one of these things, the police impound lots are full. So the laws of change.
It used to be that if it was worth more than five hundred dollars, you couldn't crush into a cube. Now I think that's up to four thousand dollars, depending on if counties opt into that, and I hope they do. But what was happening was these things we get auctioned off for fifty bucks. The van lord would get them put them back out of the street and rent them to a homeless person for five hundred bucks.
VTA told us compliance is the responsibility of Amigos they Guadaloupe. Amigos de Guadalupe says it's stepped up to help during a moment of crisis and we'll work with residents.
I wonder how much money Amigos de Guadalupe is getting to set up this RV camp.
To bring the current situation into compliance. One issue looming over all of this is that San Jose says, despite Amigo's agreement with VTA, under city land use rules that parking lot is not allowed to be used as a safe parking lot. Advocates say the city, VTA and Amigos need to find middle ground for the sake of those in their vehicles.
Well where are they going to go?
Well?
How about the sake of the neighbors that don't want this? I mean, gosh, there is and I'm sure they'll say, oh, I'm we did, we did some public input, we had some town halls. They don't care about that. And who has the actual time to go to these things? Do you know what's going on in my neighborhood? In the San Fernando Valley. There is is the Metro G line, which is the we call it the Orange line. It's
the big bus. They have a big parkin ride lot where it's right at Victory and Balboa Caddy corner from a big high school and homes and shopping. It's, you know, a very residential part of town. But they have this parking ride lot for Metro and to deal with the problem of all the RVs showing up in my neck of the woods. Ammelda Padilla from the La City Council. You know this Amelda Padilla street pavements that are cooler, This Amelda Padilla oken windy theory. This Amelda Padilla.
The neighborhood kids, the down as kids don't like it.
She cracked a deal because she's also on the Metro board to take away that parking lot so people can use the bus that they want you to get on, and they're going to stuff it full of RV's. Currently there's police caution tape on the entrance to that parking lot. They haven't put an the RVs in there yet, but nobody can use it. How can we not just crush these things into cubes?
Well, where are they going to go.
They're going to go to maybe another VTA site or another neighborhood. They keep sweeping these these RVs and they're moving one am to the next neighborhood.
Now that'm by, we give them a one way ticket and enough gasoline to get them to Slab City.
Now, this issue first came up in early December, and the original compliance deadline has been extended from December twenty eighth to the end of January. The city and VTA says until then, no one will be forced to move, but after that there are no guarantees unless the two sides reach an agreement.
I do not understand why our transit agencies that want you to get out of your car are taking away parking lots so you can use their services and turning them into RV safe camping. What nonsense. Hey, we got one more hour to go here on the John Phillips Show, and when we come back, we're going to Oakland and we actually have some somewhat positive stories from there. Hey, I'm here for it. It's Randy wag Here on The John Phillips Show.