A new 45 unit apartment supportive apartment complex has opened to house the most vulnerable members of the San Fernando Valley homeless population.
The tenants, mostly single, receive on-site supportive services to help with mental issues, alcohol and drug addiction or chronic illnesses. In return, they pay 30 percent of their monthly government checks and adhere to rules typical of any other housing complex.
Without this housing, most of the residents would be expected to die on the streets. Many have spent years living without a home in the Tujunga wash, living a life the person in charge of creating the complex termed ‘rural homeless.’
Luckily, the community has welcomed the project.
“This has been an extraordinary community,” she said. “When they invited us to do outreach in the Wash, they felt very protective of the homeless. They said these are our homeless.”
In addition to helping the rural homeless, the complex hopes it can decrease the crime in the Wash and cut down the use of costly emergency services many of the homeless must use.
This type of housing can be life saving. Patrick Piercey was found “as he lay dying along the parched banks of the Tujunga Wash, with his 4-year-old pit bull terrier named Blue nearby.”
Even in the heat of summer and drought, pneumonia had moved into Piercey’s lungs, and he could no longer walk to the 7-Eleven for food or maintain his tent where he had lived. Bone thin and tired, Piercey thought he was living his last days.
“This place is great,” Piercey, 58, said in a quiet voice. “I still have a hard time believing I’m here. When I moved in, they had a lot of people, and they gave me a basket with things I needed. It gets me choked up thinking about it.”
New housing serves San Fernando Valley’s most vulnerable homeless – Daily News
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