Matt Mahan

I think there's a scale issue.

If a site gets to three, four, 500 people, it becomes really unwieldy and you can have a lot of challenges.

So there's this

Dunbar number of what is like a social capital rich community.

We have tried to build these smaller, you know, convert a motel with 50 to 75 rooms or build these prefabricated modular units on public land with one to maybe 200 units.

And initially when we started on this journey about five years ago, you know, you would get 500 people showing up to a public meeting, you know, practically with pitchforks.

threatening to recall everyone and just like red in the face, angry that you would even propose building interim housing in the neighborhood, nevermind the fact that the folks who are homeless are already in the neighborhood.

So they're there, they're already having an impact because there's no structure, no rules, no infrastructure, their impact is much greater and their suffering is much greater.

And so it took a lot of courage for our city leaders early on to kind of break through that and say, we're going to do this because we owe you a solution.

We owe you a solution as the residents and taxpayers.

We also owe...

our vulnerable neighbors a better, an option, a path out of the misery that they're in.

Now, I was an advocate from the beginning, and it took a long time, surprisingly.

This is where I think some of this sort of maybe overthinking, over-intellectualizing, progressive impulse can be challenging.

i argued we need to be really practical about it with the residents we need to promise that their neighborhood's going to be better off so what does that look like we're going to prioritize moving indoors the people who are homeless in their neighborhood we should then create a no a strictly enforced no camping zone around the site in a radius so that that neighborhood sees no homelessness no tents no trash we should enhance our blight eradication we should enhance our police patrols we should guarantee that neighborhood

that it will be made better, not worse off by taking on a solution.

And we've moved in that direction.

I don't think that we've been, we certainly haven't been perfect at it, but philosophically, that's where I think we have to go is we will have to implement, and I think all cities and counties in California should be accountable for building shelter, building treatment, getting people indoors, but the neighborhoods where these solutions are built-

have to be made better off.

They have to have enhanced services and more enforcement, and you can't allow these sites to be poorly run or to become magnets for more homelessness or other challenges.