Homeless Efforts in Westchester Park Produce Success Stories

A nonprofit group that seeks to find affordable housing and jobs for the homeless reported this week to the Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa that progress has been made at Westchester Park.

The park, which is adjacent to City Coucilman Bill Rosendahl's Westchester District Office, had become a homeless enclave with people sleeping overnight in the park's bushes or in vehicles parked in the municipal complex's parking lot.

Tomasz Babiszkiewicz of People Assisting the Homeless (PATH), which has been working with Rosendahl to address local homeless issues, told the board Tuesday night that three people who had been living in Westchester Park recently were found housing and three more who had been homeless in vehicles also now have housing.

The group conducted a homeless survey of the park starting Sept. 28 and over three days found 19 people living in the park and 27 vehicles occupied with overnight dwellers.

The success stories mentioned above included a "frail and vulnerable older female" who was living in the park until PATH moved her into its Westside shelter and who is projected to find permanent housing in 90 days. A "chronically homeless older man in poor health" who lived in the park and a man who lived in his vehicle were able to find low-cost market-rate housing on Venice Boulevard, Babiszkiewicz said.

Booker Pearson, head of the neighborhood council's homelessness and vehicular living committee, publicly thanked Rosendahl for opening the Westside winter shelter early and for his "Roadmap to Housing" program designed to move people from living in their vehicles into homes.

"Some of these people were going to die," Pearson said. "They were very, very ill and sleeping in bushes. It was going to kill them."

Pearson also said the eight to 10 homeless people who had been congregating in the lobby of Rosendahl's office were no longer gathering there and the clients and staff of the senior center that is also on the municipal complex are no longer being harassed or threatened.

Several other homeless people who are willing to work toward permanent housing have been contacted and expect to be housed within the next few months, Pearson said.

"Our support to PATH has paid huge dividends," Pearson said. "My biggest fear is we won't keep the ball rolling."