By Ricardo Lezama 
With a publicity hungry Mayor, a Hollywood Oriented Honorable Mayor and no real response to homelessness, the city of Lake Elsinore appears to be overwhelmed with an influx of meth and fentanyl users who’ve made commercial, public and even personal residences theirs to use for impromptu encampments.
For instance, just a few days ago, a homeless youth, Logan Davis, was arrested for ransacking a local residence. The individual was known to the local police department, but it is unknown whether Riverside County’s lackluster efforts to address homelessness knew about Davis. Local News reported that issue, but whether the city has the capacity or interest to become proactive is unclear.
A Youtube Channel, Mike’s Random Videos, has recently taken the City of Lake Elsinore to task. The Youtube has driven around Lake Elsinore frequently to document the presence of homeless individuals. Commentors relay information about their lost trailers, their vandalized property and, at times, frustration with local government and sometimes misplaced anger with the state (since most federal funds are administered by the county of Riverside).
Riverside County recently administered a Point-in-Time-Count, but whether they take the data and optimize services in real time is quite unclear. Lately, more homeless individuals are seen wandering near major intersections off the 15 highway entrances.
Hollywood? Is The City Cognizant Of Pressing Needs?
To some, Lake Elsinore’s effort to attract film investment may seem ironic since it is invoking the bread and butter of another town facing high homelessness: Hollywood.
In recent years, Lake Elsinore has attempted to position itself as a potent attraction for Hollywood. During a state of the city address, its then honorable Mayor, Timothy Sheridan, announced that Hollywood could potentially lean on its ‘Americana’ (our quote not his) downtown feel to punch the clock backwards for any nostalgic film or commercial scene.
2022 State of the City: SpotlightLE! presented by Honorable Mayor Timothy J. Sheridan – YouTube
However, what most people would not expect in a commercial film shot is a nice long take of someone in tattered clothing with a gaping need for psychological help and drug rehabilitation, which are problems that are often intertwined locally.
Government Efforts Marred with Workplace Controversies
Lake Elsinore is not alone in the Inland Empire when it comes to deficient government managing homelessness. Like much of California, most of Riverside and San Bernardino County cities do maintain some kind of Homeless Outreach Staff, Task Force or Temp Agency-like organizations that service their local homeless. Homelessness outreach is the process in which members of a non-profit organization or government agency provide services to locate, identify, and build a relationship with a person experiencing homelessness. However, neither one of those tasks to be taken seriously at the moment by any of the involved entities anywhere in the Inland Empire.
A recent review of Indeed job postings and the qualms presented by former employees can provide a snapshot at the internal condition of these non-profit outreach groups. Some of these reviews hint at an unnerving workplace management style that likely isn’t conducive for homeless outreach. It appears that the homeless outreach workers are subjected to work arrangements that afflict them with anxiety, hopelessness and frustration when trying to communicate the very opposite to the homeless populations they service.
Bad Reviews, Bad Outcomes?
For instance, the LightHouse Social Service Centers organization offers an opportunity to help homeless people in need, however, it is tainted by an unhealthy office environment per Indeed reviews. This organization, which services Colton, California (a city in San Bernardino County) is characterized by the absence of a reliable HR department, special treatment for favored program managers, unreliable payment to landlords, poor client treatment, lack of job training, outdated programs, high employee turnover, gossiping, and lack of trust among the program managers. As a result, clients can suffer, and staff can become stressed under such leadership (or lack thereof).
For any talented individual hoping to make an impact in homelessness, it is important to weigh the cost of taking a job at any of these organizations when compared to a higher-rated occupation.
Reviews
This organization offers an opportunity to help people in need, however, it is tainted by an unhealthy office environment. It is characterized by the absence of a reliable HR department, special treatment for favored program managers, unreliable payment to landlords, poor client treatment, lack of job training, outdated programs, high employee turnover, gossiping, and lack of trust among the program managers. As a result, clients can suffer, and staff can become stressed. For working professionals, there is a latent cost in taking a job in human services when there is opaque intentions and just plain bad management:
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Lighthouse-Social-Service-Centers/reviews/scam?id=006b18e7620ee97a
Big Budgets, Unhappy Employees?
The State of California and the federal government via ‘Housing and Urban Development’ issue out billions of dollars, which are then distributed amongst hundreds or thousands of organizations. There are no stats correlating dollars used and people becoming housed or rehabilitated.
Even for the smallest entities in Southern California, these grants amount to millions at the individual NGO level. When employees are complaining about being overworked, it also translates into them being underpaid:
Time For Standards and Data Compliance?
Any attempts to police the non-profit groups who are assigned some very serious human services tasks would likely be unsuccessful since there is no cohesive data to examine – governments have not defined an accurate data standard for measuring either success or need.
Virtually all non-profits in homeless services prioritize data entry without any understanding of its usage. Manipulation of data is likely incentivized due to arbitrary reporting standards imposed on all service providers. Since most cities and counties do not have a universal standard for data submitted, there is little telling as to whether the final reviewer of the data (the federal government) can accurately identify trends on the ground. As a result, in order to receive funding, non-profit organizations must do one thing and apply for grants while saying another.
Today, homelessness is almost like national defense: a lucrative business for those who secure contracts with cities, which have designated budgets from the county to tackle the issue of homelessness. While the contracts are a matter of public records, actually verifying what occurs in any city as a result of them is difficult and impractical. Most cities are not even willing to publicize data or standardize the nature of the data they submit to the federal government when it comes to surveying how many people are actually homeless.
PITC Standard
The federal government relies on a one-off, annual count to determine how much money should be issued the following year when so many other factors could both influence the current and future need. In point of time counts (or PITC), minimally trained, but well-meaning volunteers canvas a city early in the morning to (hopefully) come across some homeless individuals and enter them into an ESRI powered app. For that task, ESRI gets a sweet County level contract, often staffing county jobs and their own ranks with the same people simultaneously.
While a priority is placed on expensive motel vouchers and somewhat permanent housing, there are also factors such as mental health and substance abuse that go ignored. Thus, the expensive and temporary solution goes to individuals who suffer from neither substance abuse or mental illness. Unfortunately, neither outreach nor staff in county level organizations can help people through crisis, as some of the ailments are cross over into the domain of emergency healthcare.
Additionally, “clients” (as homeless people receiving services are called under Maslow’s school of psychotherapy) must be numerous and hit an arbitrary benchmark based on perceived need. There is no true effort to actually peg a dollar amount per homeless individual need. Even so, organizational dollars are allocated a budget to cover all outreach expenses, which includes salaries for staff and any other expenses incurred.
Ultimately, homeless outreach organizations likely inflate and duplicate their data either through accident or as a result of city, county and state demands, as each “client” case is completely different and tracking a population that is constantly moving and abusing substances is complicated. Efforts to do so, would require acknowledging that in the one effort identify need, there are inherent issues with identifying substance abuse users since most people are unwilling to relay these facts to poorly trained surveyors.