City sponsored homeless experiment for Alameda?

We’re all for solving homelessness and supporting the less fortunate. However supporting measure A and opposing measure B is a dangerous, slap in the face of Alamedans.

Cost in city expenses
The pro-center argument includes already approved funding is available, what’s not said is this funding is only for the first year. The argument there will be little tax impact caused by building this center is laughable. The existing buildings proposed to become a new center are old dumps and will soon need to be retrofitted or rebuilt to avoid lawsuits. The additional law enforcement and ambulance services will be extremely costly.

Denies overwhelming majority votes for park expansion Measures A and B disregard the previously established will of the voters who decisively supported Measures WW and FF to buy and expand Crab Cove into the full 7.5 acre McKay Avenue area. Alameda taxpayers already voted, raising $6.5M, and are still being taxed for those Measures. Alameda taxpayers will never see that money again if this misplaced center is approved. Bottom line is this sham should never have come into question. We want the park we voted for, not this atrocity that will ruin an otherwise rapidly improving neighborhood.

Homeless patient dumping
This summer CA SB 1152, the anti homeless patient dumping law will come into effect. SB 1152 requires hospitals to transport homeless patients to a shelter within 30 miles or 30 minutes. The proposed Alameda Wellness Center will be ground zero for the fallout from this new law. Alameda County’s homeless population is growing fast, now approaching 10,000 people. 40% of the homeless report serious psychiatric and chronic health issues. Yearly 40% of the homeless report they are treated in an emergency room and 29% report they’ve been treated in an ambulance - every year! Combine that with the very recent 9th circuit ruling that the homeless cannot be displaced from public lands – such as Crown Beach Park or any of Alameda’s other parks and its likely this proposed center will make Alameda a dumping ground for an unhealthy homeless population. Look at the encampments around Kaiser’s hospital; the homeless desperately, tragically, need healthcare.

Invites dangerous people.
It’s only human to perceive the homeless as unlucky but honest citizens who’ve fallen on hard times. But statistically that’s not the reality; more than two-thirds of the community-defined homeless population in Alameda County had been in either jail or prison at some point in the past.

Alameda already does their fair share. We’re supporting hundreds of homeless in the old Naval Air Station – away from the parks and this is more permanent supportive housing not a hospital dumping ground. We’re just a small town, this problem is far too big to solve by carrying it on our backs.

Last, I and others are raising commitments toward a fund for transporting the inevitable vagrants that will be pulled into this west end dumping ground sham to other areas of Alameda; neighborhoods that are more likely to support this center’s land theft movement. Destinations will include where other nice neighborhood parks and schools are located – think areas like Earhart, Otis, Edison schools, South Shore, Park Street, city offices…

NO on A, YES on B

NO on A, YES on B

NO on A, YES on B