Lake Tahoe and Lake Elsinore: rare success stories in helping unhoused residents MORE North Lake Boulevard (California State Route 28), in Tahoe City, California looking northeast. Photo by Finetooth/CC 2.0, via Wikimedia
Billions of dollars and good intentions have not been enough to solve California’s homelessness crisis. But some communities are faring better than others. Zocalo commentator Joe Mathews says that Lake Tahoe and Lake Elsinore are in that group. As cities, they don’t have much in common but in their approach to tackling a growing population of unhoused people within their borders, they are on the same page. Mathews says it starts with the recognition that community conflicts are often the biggest obstacle to getting people off the street.
The coronavirus pandemic, protests over the police killing of George Floyd, the Blue Ridge fire, lockdowns, and the closing of schools rocked the Chino Valley and the rest of the nation during this extraordinary year.
The devastation was matched by the goodness of residents who helped school children cope with social isolation, collected food and items for those hit hardest by the pandemic, and rallied around frontline healthcare workers.
Barely had the year begun when the coronavirus pandemic originating in Wuhan, China spread across the globe resulting in 334,000 deaths in the United States by the end of the year.
There were 11 deaths in Chino Hills and 70 in Chino, with 26 of those at the California Institution for Men in Chino and one at the California Institution for Women.