Fresno’s effort to remove homeless camps near highways makes major progress. What’s next?
The Fresno project to get hundreds of homeless people to relocate away from highway embankments will have cleared those spaces by the end of the week, according to Mayor Jerry Dyer.
About 33 people were expected to move from the embankment into a room on Monday, Dyer said while speaking to reporters near Highway 99 and Kern Street.
That brings the total to 351 people who were placed in a shelter through the effort called Project Off-ramp, he said. More than 400 have been moved from highways 41, 99, 168, and 180 and a section of the old Golden State Highway called the Triangle.
“We’ll make sure that everyone that chooses to have a room, that chooses to have services, will have that opportunity,” Dyer said on Monday.
He went on to say recent temperatures in the high triple digits aids the program because people are ready to get out of the heat.
Poverello House officials said about 76% of the people living on the street they spoke to through Project Off-ramp had accepted services.
The relocation effort is also buoyed by Project Homekey, some $35 million from the state the city has used primarily to purchase and refurbished blighted motels. The city of Fresno committed $6.8 million to those purchases, which are supposed to eventually transition to permanent housing.
The push to connect with people on the street, offer them services, and get them housed has been a team effort from community groups, according to Zack Darrah, the CEO of Poverello House.
“It should not be seen as anything other than an innovative and successful initiative,” he said.
Freeways are state property, so city officials have worked with California Highway Patrol and state leaders to move the plan along.
More housing
Homeless for about 18 months, 29-year-old Steve Williams rode up on a bike to the site of Dyer’s news conference on Monday. He said he was trying to find a place for himself and his girlfriend.
“I think it’s good. A few people I know got off the streets,” he said about the program.
It wasn’t immediately clear how long Williams would have to wait to get a room, staffers told him. The rooms were full on Monday, according to Sara Mirhadi, chief programs officer at Poverello.
A lack of affordable housing is an issue in Fresno, as it is in much of California.
There were about 2,500 homeless people in Fresno and Madera counties, according to the 2020 tally from the Continuum of Care shared by the two counties. The count was canceled in 2021 because of pandemic concerns.
On Monday, Dyer said the Fresno count is probably closer to about 4,000 homeless people.
Project Off-ramp is expected to move from the highways to neighborhoods, officials say. But, its ability to be successful away from freeways remains a questions mark, according to Dez Martinez, a homeless advocate who was once homeless herself.
Relocating people off of the freeway is widely supported by people who are homeless and their advocates, according to Martinez. It’s simply not safe for anybody to camp on the freeway embankment.
Martinez said one benefit of the effort is Project Homekey and its former motel rooms showed doubters that people don’t want to languish on the street.
“It showed everybody that people do want shelter,” she said. “Now that we have shelter, they’re flocking to it.”
