Bedding and personal belongings left on a mattress in a Riverside parking lot — the kind of scene that prompted Raincross Gazette-hosted candidate forums in Wards 2, 4 and 6 to open with the same question: what is the city's most basic obligation to someone living on the street? (File photo)
The Raincross Gazette hosted city council candidate forums for Wards 2, 4 and 6 last month, asking each candidate the same opening question: what is the city's fundamental obligation to someone living on the street?
Moderator Dan Bernstein, a former Press-Enterprise columnist and longtime Riversider, posed this question to candidates at all three forums:
What is your philosophy – not your plan, not your five-point program – about homelessness. What is the city's most basic, fundamental obligation to someone living on the street? Where does that obligation end? Assuming that obligation is met, what do Riverside residents deserve in return?
Here are each candidates' answers on homelessness and housing in the city.
Nonprofit director and Budget Commissioner Aram Ayra, entrepreneur and Planning Commissioner Christen Montero, Western Municipal Water District Director Gracie Torres and financial and IT consultant Mike Vahl are running for the Ward 2 seat soon to be vacated by Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes, who is running for state Assembly.
Ward 2 covers neighborhoods including Eastside, Canyon Crest, Mission Grove, Sycamore Canyon and the University District.
Torres: "This is an issue that everyone is dealing with in every ward, and one thing that we know is that homelessness is not going to be resolved by one person, not by one city.
It really is going to take a regional approach. The County of Riverside is going to be receiving funding for mental health care. They're going to be receiving funding for substance abuse, support for job development – and the city of Riverside, it is incumbent upon them to lobby for those dollars. We need to work with our partners.
As far as philosophy, though, we need to be accountable to those who are experiencing homelessness, right? Dumping a ton of money into a problem and watching it just go down the well is not the solution.
Housing first is the first step, but we need to continue to support those that we are trying to keep housed, and so we do that…not only through regional approaches, but through real accountability on what we are doing with the money that is being spent.
…We need to be accountable. We need to take a hard look at what we are doing after somebody is housed, and how we plan to support them. People suffering from homelessness come in many shapes and sizes. Whether it's the lack of jobs, whether it's mental health support or substance abuse support, all those things, they're different.
So let's continue to help them through creating jobs. Everyone knows that I want to be the jobs candidate. We have to create jobs. We need to lobby our partners throughout the county, throughout the region."
Vahl: "...As Gracie said… we dump tens of millions of dollars to these firms out there that say we're going to fix this problem. As a business guy, when you go to an investor, the first thing they say is, 'what are you going to do with our money? And what can we expect?'
We want benchmarks…We don't do that. We just say, here's a check, and how much of it goes to administration? God only knows, but what we need to do with these firms is – we're going to give them our money to work on the homelessness problem. I want to see what you are going to spend it on? And what can we expect after one year?
Because right now, they say, give me $2 million and next year they come back and say, give me $2.5 million nobody asked, 'what did you do?' They can say, 'Okay, here's the check,' and almost [nothing] got better after spending tens of millions of dollars. So accountability with where we're spending the money is a good start, and then we've got it from there.
Just figure out the people that have substance problems. We need to get them into treatment programs. They don't want to go, they want to stay on the streets, but we have laws on the books that say we need to put these people into [mental health] programs…we have to get work with the county to build some mental health facilities for the people that have mental issues. They may not be on drugs, but they've got mental issues, and those people need to have housing and treatment.
That's how you're going to start getting this solved, because…a lot of these people don't want help. We need to start working on it in the next couple of years, because in 2028 in Los Angeles… there's Olympics coming. None of those homeless people that are in Los Angeles are going to be in Los Angeles."
Ayra: "I think if we're talking about accountability, we also have to talk about accountability for our elected officials and actually doing the right thing.
My philosophy is that the city of Riverside was founded on the spirit of neighborliness. This was in our founding documents. In our charter, John W. North only talked about that, about progress, about neighborliness. And we have failed our neighbors in the city. We have failed them, most recently, when the council voted against one of the most consequential investments in homelessness we could have made in a generation – the University Terrace project – we turned down $20 million-plus from the state to get a third of our unsheltered folks off the waiting list, which would have been huge.
So if we're going to talk about accountability, we should talk about holding our elected officials accountable to actually presenting a solution, not just voting no every time that it's politically convenient, or [so] they can use that on the next flyer to say that they protected the community. And if we want to protect the community, we don't have to protect them from homeless people. We have to protect the community from Orange County, LA County, and the other cities that take advantage of our city and do homeless dumping, an issue that many of you know about, many of you have heard about, and I intend to do that through legal action and through a variety of different ways to make sure that our resources and our neighbors are not being taken advantage of."
Montero: "The accountability piece has been a huge missing part for our city council today, along with compassion. Right now, research shows that tons of our homeless are residents that were one paycheck away from not being able to make rent anymore. At the same time, it's also people struggling with addiction that need help, need those core services.
And also research shows that the housing first model is one of the most proven models to actually help people out of homelessness, rather than a shelter model, where it keeps people trapped. It doesn't empower, it doesn't really help them to really get out of the struggle that a lot of us are very sometimes close to. Making just one wrong decision, or maybe it's just completely out of our hands and it's circumstantial, and all of a sudden we're laid off along with that.
Not having a lot of shelters anymore is one thing, but having a scattered psych model where people are more inclined to be more involved into the community, surrounded by people that are not homeless as well, so they have a better chance of really getting acclimated back as neighbors back as being able to contribute into our neighborhood in our society as well.
My philosophy definitely is housing first [as a] priority. At the same time, I think the elephant in the room is the Quality Inn project. A lot of our city council…talk about accountability. Three years ago, they all voted to apply for that grant, and then in the end, we got the money, and it got turned down for other political agendas. And I think that needs to stop today."
Ward 4 covers neighborhoods including Alessandro Heights, Mission Grove, Orangecrest and the Greenbelt, which became a part of Ward 4 during redistricting in 2023 – meaning many residents in this area will be voting in a Ward 4 race for the first time this year.
Vandenberg: "For me, prevention is the key. I take a pragmatic approach to these things. If we're going to solve a problem, we have to first identify what's the cause of homelessness…in Riverside. It's not drugs, it's not alcohol, it's not laziness, it's affordability.
Houses cost too much. We don't have income to support affordability is the issue. So how do we solve that? We build more affordable homes, we provide more living wage jobs.
In addition to that, on the prevention side, one of the leading contributors to homelessness is our foster kids aging out of the foster care system. I have a close personal attachment to this. We adopted my daughter when she was seven years old. In the city of Riverside last year, I made a motion on the budget engagement commission to create a $500,000 budget line item for…funds to work with these kids before they reach out to prepare them for a life. Many of these kids are 18 years old, they lose their support and their housing.
Drugs and alcohol and mental health are the other two side effects or contributors to homelessness. We have Proposition 36 now, which gives us teeth to combat these things. We can pull them off the streets, but we cannot apply this yet. You don't have a place to put them. If you have someone dealing with mental health issues, and we can verify that…we can put them in mental health facilities…if they have drug or alcohol addictions, we can put them in drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities. We don't have drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities. So to me, the responsibility [on] cities to provide new services, number one of prevention for the kids [at] risk, [then] drug and alcohol facilities and mental health facilities."
Conder: "Incorrect information. The problem is drugs, alcohol, and mental illness. Walk the streets, talk to them. We're out there every day talking to them. It is not the price of houses. You might have one or two. That is another problem…This is not a Riverside problem. It is a regional problem. And we cannot solve it [in Riverside]. Yes, we have the county seat. We have the most support here, but we can't solve it alone. So the last meeting…we are trying to find ways we have the county jail here ... .Mayor [Lock Dawson] and I are working… trying to intercept these people [so] when they come out of the jail, [we] get them back in their homes, back into the city they're from. The taxpayers [are tired]. We cannot keep doing this. We spent over $14 million a year on homelessness. I've got Christ in my heart. I want to help these people. I walk out there and I ask them – I talked to one individual where I said, Well, hey, by the way…I say, I can get you home tonight. I can give you a bath, get you clothing, get whatever you need tonight. And I probably get too close…[and i say will you] let me help you? And he leaned forward. "I don't want your efforts." So this is my belief. This is what we're trying to do. I'll ask you once if I can help you. You say no, we'll come back a second time. I'll come back to you a third time, you say no that third time, we're gonna find a way to move [you] out of our city. Our people do not need this, our business is my neighborhood. We don't need this around our school."
Qattawi: "I would like everybody to go do some research and look up the homeless industrial complex. Once you watch this video, it's a 15 minute video, it's going to teach you why most cities don't ever solve the homeless issue. Now, in 2023 the city of Riverside spent $10 million on the homeless, but do you know where the majority of that money went? 90% of that money went to payroll for the city staff, and we need to make sure that we're using our money properly to actually make a difference and either figure out some affordable housing, getting these people mental help.
And so I did a survey. I sent out a survey to all of the ward four residents, and homelessness was the main issue that everybody was concerned about as well. We can start with some prevention. I went door knocking, and I met a lady that she's about to lose her home. She's a single mother with two children, and so we can either prevent her from becoming homeless with her and her children by providing some type of assistance. So rather than using the money towards just hiring more people to work for the city, maybe we can use that money to prevent that person from becoming homeless. Also our seniors are living on fixed incomes and the increasing cost of living now, from the food, the gas – they can't afford this, so we need to provide some assistance to our seniors to prevent them from becoming homeless.
I also went out interviewing homeless people in Riverside, and I will tell you this, we've got lots of shelters that have all these beds, but do you know why they don't want to go? They don't want to go to the beds. They don't because they don't want rules. So you've got all these homeless shelters that are getting all this funding, and nobody's going in there. They don't want to go in there. They don't want the rules. So we do need to figure out some type of plan. I did create a plan on my platform when I ran for mayor. It's on my social media page. It's a two-part solution. One part is getting them off the streets, because our children did not need to see people shooting up on the streets, or them walking around and they're just coming home from school.
And then the second part is a rehab center located within this facility, and I discussed this with the homeless and I discussed some people that were homeless before and they all agreed."
Oz Puerta, executive director of the Arlington Business Partnership, Luis Hernandez, vice chair of the Board of Ethics, and Alvord Unified School District Board of Education Trustee Norma Berrellez are vying for the seat vacated by Councilmember Jim Perry, who announced last year that he is not running for reelection.
Berrellez, however, was not in attendance at the April 30 Ward 6 forum.
Ward 6 covers neighborhoods including Arlanza, La Sierra, La Sierra Hills, La Sierra South, and portions of Arlington.
Hernandez: "When it comes to homelessness, it's important for people to understand that these are human beings on the street. Just recently, I was walking around the neighborhoods and ran into a gentleman who I knew from LA Fitness who was homeless. I was trying to talk to him to try and help him get services. And while I was talking to him, a lady came looking for her son, and it really affected me and it hurts when people talk about homelessness and unhoused individuals as if they're just numbers for people to be pushed around to different areas.
My philosophy when it comes to homelessness is that the opposite of homelessness is being housed. Four walls and a roof, doesn't matter which shape or it takes. If we want individuals off the street, they have to go somewhere. Pushing them along to other areas is part of what's gotten us where we are today as far as just them moving around to different areas because they're not going to disappear in the thin air.
We have to come up with real long-term solutions to address the homelessness crisis that's going on in our city and only getting worse. As is when it comes to homelessness, the increased population of homelessness is unfortunately seniors. That's starting to happen and we're going to have a lot more individuals on the street who are of senior citizen age and that's just unacceptable. And I think no matter who gets elected, no matter who's on city council, this city really needs to make some efforts to address this issue with understanding empathy and the fact that these are human beings and many of them, aside from those individuals who are struggling with severe mental health, want help to get off the street."
Puerta: "My philosophy is pretty simple. The reason we haven't really dented the homeless problem is because it requires more than one entity to come together to work on a solution. It requires the city. It requires the county and it requires the state. In ward six, we have an influx of county services. The state has legislation that defines what the meaning of great danger is, which can mandate services on individuals with either addiction problems or mental health issues. I completely agree, compassion first, but I don't think compassion should allow for chaos. I don't think we need to let things get to that point where it's impacting our neighborhoods, where it's impacting our residents. I think we need to do a couple things. At a local level, the best way to deal with homelessness is prevention.
We set up the right environment for people to succeed so they don't have these problems or don't have these issues. At a county level, we partner up with our county and we make sure that we address how much services are put and where they are located at, so that way we can make sure that each city, the obligation for each city is to take care of its residents, not necessarily for Riverside to bear the brunt of the entire county.
And then finally, for the individuals who refuse services and we cannot mandate services on them, I do believe in stronger policing. I believe in enforcing our anti-camping ordinances, and I feel that we give people every opportunity to get off the street, but we help those who want to help themselves. Until laws change, until we can mandate services, we have to move forward. I don't think that compassion should come at your expense."
A follow-up question was asked at the Ward 6 forum: What goes into prevention?
Hernandez: "So when it comes to prevention, which is a big key to this, to not increase the number of homelessness that are on the street, is affordable housing. We currently have no affordable housing plans here in Ward six, and the city is focused on market rate housing. Me and my wife, we pay over $3,000 a month rent. That's more than most people paid for their mortgage who bought a home before 2020. That's ridiculous.
There's no wonder that there's homeless people on the street. If you're making minimum wage, I don't know how people survive. A big chunk of prevention is making sure that we have affordable housing for every individual at every level when it comes to their income. So for example, the Cypress Springs Apartments over here on Cyprus and Van Buren, those apartments go off of an individual's income, and it's been incredibly successful in helping people maintain their household, get ahead, save up. Those are the types of things that we need to focus on to try and prevent more homelessness.
When it comes to money that's already been spent, oftentimes it's fruitless because it's short term plans that only help individuals for a short amount of time. Again, we need to think long term and we need to develop plans that are in place long after we get elected and someone else takes our place."
Puerta: "As far as prevention goes, I'm [of] the philosophy that no one's going to come save you. You're going to have to put in the work yourself. So I feel that there are two components to this. One of them is housing to make sure that we meet the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA) mandate, 18,000 units by 2029, and we have to take a balanced approach on affordability and market rate, because if we take a balanced approach on housing, we can make sure that we set up the right environment so that the business community thrives, so that our sales tax revenues increases and we can provide more of these core services without raising taxes. The other portion of prevention is education, in my opinion.
When we talk about fixed incomes, individuals with fixed incomes, financial classes have just started being mandated in California. I believe graduates graduating in 2030 are going to have to take financial literacy classes. We cannot depend solely on pensions[ and] retirement programs. We need to do our education, make sure we plan for the future. We plan for the future 20, 40 years ahead of time. I think that right now we've done a good job at addressing youth homelessness with prevention. I believe the mayor just said at the state of the city that we're at net zero on youth homelessness, but it comes with education and housing. Those are the two biggest components at a local level."
Civic Engagement Reporter who calls the Inland Empire home. Five years covering SoCal. APU journalism grad. Good conversations over coffee and stories that matter.
With Norma Berrellez absent, Oz Puerta and Luis Hernandez faced questions on the Magnolia Corridor, RTRP construction and the future of the Galleria at Tyler.
City staff reported 401 affordable units in development at Monday's Housing and Homelessness Committee meeting, as advocates pressed officials to move faster.
