Fresno Landlord Hopes Her Home Can Be Model To End Barriers For Housing

Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, October 11, 2024…

• Last month, a Fresno County ordinance went into effect that prohibits people from sleeping or camping on public property. So where will the city’s thousands of unhoused people go next? An untraditional program is attempting to reduce some barriers to housing.  
• A federal judge this week ordered a much faster timeline to add homes for unhoused veterans on the sprawling West L.A. VA campus, directing officials to add dozens of pre-built tiny homes before winter and hundreds by spring.
• The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA, gives protection from deportation to more than half a million undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as kids, including tens of thousands in California. The latest in a series of legal battles over the program came Thursday in a federal appeals court.

A Fresno Program’s Novel Approach To House The Unhoused

The Independent Living Association (ILA), got its start in San Diego in 2012 as part of another organization known as Community Health Improvement Partners. With funding from the state Mental Health Services Act, the program expanded into Alameda, Santa Clara and Fresno counties. Operations in Alameda and Santa Clara shuttered earlier this year due to lack of funding. The program follows what’s called a “housing first model,” a housing strategy that prioritizes secure shelter ahead of other additional resources.

Rizpah Bellard is a rancher in West Fresno with a huge property. Seven-and-a-half baths. Two living rooms. Fourteen bedrooms. She’s now known as an “operator,” through the ILA, often renting to people who have psychiatric conditions or disabilities, like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and PTSD. According to Bellard, many of her tenants were at risk of becoming homeless – or already were – before moving in.

A month after the city and county of Fresno began enforcing an anti-camping ordinance, the city’s nearly 4,500 unhoused residents are looking for where to go next. Programs like the one Bellard helps run are just one of the options around.

Citing Veteran Homelessness ‘Emergency,’ Judge Orders Housing Built Faster At VA Campus

A federal judge this week ordered a much faster timeline to add homes for unhoused veterans on the sprawling West L.A. VA campus, directing officials to add dozens of pre-built tiny homes before winter and hundreds by spring. It comes amid a brewing showdown between the judge and UCLA over his shutdown of the university’s baseball stadium there.

“This is an emergency. It’s as simple as that. It demands our attention every single day until we reach an agreement or an impasse,” U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said at a hearing Monday where he issued the new orders.

Following up on a broader ruling last month following a trial, Carter issued two emergency orders Monday to speed up the creation of temporary “modular” housing on the campus — essentially, tiny homes that are built ahead of time in factories. One order requires the VA to hire a vendor within 30 days that would install 50 homes within a month and a half of being hired, and install 200 to 300 homes within 120 days of being hired. The second order requires VA officials to provide him with information by Friday to help decide where temporary homes can be built on the campus. Specifically, he ordered information on what kind of utilities — like water and power — exist on several parcels of land there, including UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Texas Makes Another Push In Federal Court To End DACA Program

The fate of tens of thousands of immigrants legally living and working in the U.S., including in California,  could hinge on arguments presented to a panel of federal judges Thursday in New Orleans.

The hearing before the Fifth Circuit of Appeals was the state of Texas’ latest attempt to end the popular and controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, commonly called DACA, that began in 2012. The program grants some young, undocumented immigrants a reprieve from deportation and a two-year work permit.

Texas has argued it’s suffered irreparable harm under DACA because of the costs incurred to educate and provide medical care for undocumented immigrants in the program. Nina Perales, the vice president of litigation for MALDEF, said Texas hasn’t proven that burden and could be cherry picking its data.