City of Norwalk seeks state of emergency over homelessness
The city of Norwalk is pressing the panic button due to a homelessness crisis that has business owners and residents on alert.
Norwalk Mayor Rick Ramirez announced on Wednesday that the city is seeking to declare a state of emergency due to the growing number of homeless people in the city.
The number of homeless people in Norwalk has risen from 168 to 311, according to the Whittier Daily News.
Ramirez and Norwalk officials blame the Project Roomkey initiative that was supposed to house homeless at vacant motels. Instead, the growing number of homeless has turned into a nuisance for residents and business owners.
Soledad Gomez opened up her thrift and vintage store, Sol's Place, a couple of years ago, and is emotional thinking about moving it somewhere else because of issues she's having with some of the homeless population in Norwalk.
"The issue is becoming where I am looking to move out of Norwalk," Gomez said. "Constantly I have issues with homeless coming in confronting me. I've had thefts. People that I thought were going to physically assault me. I've had feces in front of my store."
For all of those reasons, she is glad to hear that Ramirez is seeking a state of emergency to deal with the growing homeless population.
"Norwalk had been one of the dumping grounds for the homeless in the county with the failed policies of Project Roomkey and Homekey," Ramirez said. "You have an entry plan but there's no exit plan and there's no means of getting those homeless people the help that they need."
Ramirez told Kim that declaring a state of emergency would give the city the ability to work outside the mandates and regulations placed on the city by the county, state and federal governments.
The mayor said that Norwalk is one of a few cities that has its own social services department, which can identify and provide resources to the homeless. It also has a public safety department that has two teams that are strictly assigned to address homeless issues.
"It allow us to enforce our city ordinances regarding homeless, loitering, shopping carts, illegal encampments, without having that restriction of you can't touch the because they are identified as homeless," Ramirez said. "My whole passion is to serve Norwalk. I don't want to leave but I do have to do it for my safety."
He has asked staff members to draft some material in hopes of bringing the state of emergency proposal forward for approval with city council, hoping that the process can begin by the end of the year.
