Family & Home
La Crosse city, county governments working on homelessness
What are local governments supposed to do about homelessness?
City and county officials in La Crosse are working on the problems affecting unsheltered people.
They have a planning meeting scheduled for June 6 to discuss possible action.
La Crosse County administrator Jane Klekamp on WIZM’s La Crosse Talk PM this week said she sees homeless people in downtown parks every day.
“The county is in no way trying to ignore the issue,” Klekamp said. “I think we are working hard with the city and community organizations, to try and figure out what we can do to help alleviate some of it.
“It’s a very challenging issue. Obviously, if it was easy to fix, it would have been fixed a long time ago.”
The planning meeting comes after people showed up at a city Parks Board meeting, asking the government to do something about the homeless in area parks.
Klekamp said the latest estimate of homeless people in La Crosse is around 80 individuals.
The county also has provided funding to groups in town that work with the homeless to begin purchasing properties for bridge housing that will help people get into temporary shelter until they can afford something more permanent.
The city and county also teamed up to launch what’s called the Eviction Defense Program, to try and pre-empt homelessness.
It’s designed to provide legal help to renters who are threatened with being evicted.
Legal Action of Wisconsin will get funding from the city of La Crosse and the county, along with the La Crosse Community Foundation, to pay for attorneys to represent clients in court to avoid eviction.
The La Crosse County Board voted two years ago to launch the program but starting the program was delayed by staffing shortages.
County Board chair Monica Kruse hopes the program will prevent families from becoming homeless, which could lead to people missing work or school and developing health problems.
Rhead
May 25, 2023 at 7:34 am
Arrest them for vagrancy put them in jail??? 3 hot and cot. When are you people going to wake up. These people will go away when you stop treating them as normal. Stop being a stupid . Just remember we are laughing at you not with you!!!!
Kent
May 25, 2023 at 1:04 pm
Public INTOXICATION and
DRUG USEAGE IS AGAINST THE LAW. LOCK THEM UP
Kent
May 25, 2023 at 1:06 pm
Public INTOXICATION and
DRUG USEAGE IS AGAINST THE LAW. LOCK THEM UP now OR HAVE THEM STAY WITH THE MAYOR ANDCOUNTY BOARD MEMBERS
Dedra K Duebler-Towne
May 25, 2023 at 10:21 am
Start patroling the parks and streets better. Kick them out,fine them,whatever it takes. Safety for all should be of most importance.Buy some land and put tiny houses on it for temporary housing,ect…… Lots of options.
Dumbass lacrosse
May 25, 2023 at 11:15 am
Yeah quit being pushovers and catering to these drug addicts. You are throwing your functioning community under the bus for these absolute pieces of sh*t.
Pat
May 25, 2023 at 12:46 pm
This is a really bad solution. Rant warning ⚠️
Last I checked, property managers and landlords do not evict people unless it’s an emergency. They hate filing evictions, its a loss of time and money. Making eviction harder screams “come to La Crosse, you don’t have to pay rent or follow the rules and we’ll pay for your lawyers.
Now the city and county thinks they’ll solve homeless problem by dumping it on local homeowners and further eroding neighborhoods? They are completely tone deaf on the damage they are causing. Saw this pop up on my feed over 100 replies, suffice it to say if you live next to people who are given a free pass to conduct their behavior living without following rules, there is av limit to what you will put up with. If you disable the rules, people will leave!
Fighting local property owners right to evict is more of the same idiocy. They think temporarily disabling the rules (eviction) will help!! What is obvious for everyone else is WE DON’T WANT TO LIVE LIKE THAT! Quit watering down the requirements and rule of law.
People are fed up. They’ve had enough and want their city and parks back.
A reminder of the rules WE USED TO HAVE:
You don’t belong here if you can’t refrain from:
– drinking vodka on a park bench at 9am
– defecating by the swingset (where kids are supposed to be playing)
– leaving dirty needles around for others to clean up (and step on)
– helping yourself into people’s cars and garages at night to help pay for your own inability to walk into an employer and say “I have feet and arms that function and would like to trade my time and effort for a paycheck to support myself” (the rest of us do that)
If you can’t refrain from those behaviors, don’t take over the park. Don’t come to La Crosse! Don’t rent an apartment, create chaos with drug use & prostitution keeping the neighbors up all night, then ask the city to pay for your lawyers to fight the big bad landlord who expected you to pay rent.
What should you do? Stop feeling entitled that someone else should take care of you. If you are a parent, step up and be the Mom or Dad your child needs. Its time to grow up, or face consequences. The city is not your Mommy. Admit that you need help. Admit that you must stop taking drugs and stop drinking. Do that! Once you’re clean, good things can happen.
If you can’t get clean you are saying “I have given up and expect someone else to provide for me”. If that’s where you are you need jail to force sobriety, then you get one last chance to become productive member society. If you keep falling back on “I don’t know how to take care of myself and cannot follow rules” then unfortunately you need to be taken care of at an institution, an old folks home but for any age person. If you don’t follow rules, there ARE consequences. You lose freedom. That simple.
City of LA Crosse and the county need to get real. Everything they’ve done thus far has made the problem worse. Why? Because their answer is “we’ll bend the rules for you”. This is enabling! Mayor Mitch – all the drug overdoses and deaths, you are partly to blame. Not 100% but you played a role. You thought you were helping but people died. More people are dying!
Did you enable this? Yes. The truth is yes, the policies did. You felt bad and tried to help, but the solutions created wound up bringing more people here, we have more drugs flowing through here than ever, more thefts, La Crosse is less safe. You didn’t create this initially but you sure as hell enabled it. That should be on your conscience.
It may have been well intentioned, but you need a serious look in the mirror bud, confront the ego that said “we’ve got to do something, I can solve this”. You made it worse and people perished. What we need is tough love.
Pausing evictions and letting those who don’t follow the rules take over the kids parks isn’t right. You know that. The results are in. We have new information. What we tried did not work.
Change in direction is needed. Go back to “if you want to live here we welcome you, but we do expect FOLLOW THE RULES”. If not, they must live with consequences.
Fighting evictions? Come on!
And what of the neighborhoods and people who will now have to live near horrible neighbors who should have been gone but now apparently don’t have to follow the rules? I guess the city doesnt care that their solution forces the RESPECTFUL NEIGHBORS TO MOVE AWAY.
Glad I don’t own a house in La Crosse where the city has so much spare cash to pay for homeless to have free wifi,
hotel rooms to sell drugs, but is also raising property taxes which are already very bloated (meanwhile schools are closing, roads need to be fixed, thefts and crime have increased big time, and safety has gone down for normal citizens)!
The city and county has now wasted millions on giveaways. La Crosse received $22 MILLION in ARPA funds. There are plenty of people living below the poverty line who are working, who are trying and who haven’t given up. We could have given a major boost to those in the lowest income bracket and given almost $5000 to ten peecent of the entire city (22 million divided by 5000 people).
In a household with a Mom and a Dad that’s almost $10,000 to the household! That would have been a down-payment on a house – for literally thousands of people! What did we do instead? Well we supported drug habits, theft, enabled actions that caused people to die. We made the problem worse and now the money is mostly gone.
Why have eviction laws if you then turn around and proclaim they can’t be used?
In summary, city and county taxpayer dollars will now pay for lawyers to keep tenants housed who either:
a) didn’t pay rent
b) broke the lease
c) created an unsafe or poor living conditions for nearby neighbors
d) multiple people in the building or neighborhood likely complained either they go or WE ARE LEAVING because they party all night, people can’t get any sleep, or theres drug dealing, theft, people no longer feel safe with kids living there.
How much money was wasted paying for hotels that only encouraged this to become a bigger problem? They could have given that funding to everyday people living below the poverty line, but those have jobs, who ARE trying.
THIS IS THE BEST PLAN THEY HAVE? Horrible horrible idea. When people break rules there should be consequences. All this does is more of the same – ENABLING.
Current administration has no idea what they are up against. Time for a new approach. We need someone with backbone to take back the parks and say “THERE ARE RULES AND CONSEQUENCES AGAIN”.
Jana
May 25, 2023 at 2:28 pm
Ok Kent and Rhead youre tax payers I assume? Next your going to bitch cuz the city locked them up for failure to pay the fines you wish to impose and your tax dollars are being used to support them in jail! Am I correct? There’s no permanent solution to this problem but as far as the city working on transitional housing is a joke! The mayor has had several housing ideas presented to him and he’s done nothing! Every proposal to build or rent a building to house the homeless have been rejected. I had a great idea for the homeless to house them. I wrote a proposal and broke it down into cost i even found a company willing to help us out with building materials and such and I presented detailed information on cost and location it could be built at and nothing the mayor is doing nothing but empty promises
Pat
May 25, 2023 at 4:32 pm
Btw,
the link didn’t copy in my other message,trying it again here. Over 100 responses. People are sick and tired of this selfish behavior, bad choices, and the nonsense of expecting us to support and enable adults who choose not to follow rules!
https://nextdoor.com/p/_X_chGnnmCPk/c/948663848?post=273157806&comment=948663848&ct=7RlsYTL1E8F8vbVYWLyrjygpQY7vYiQZEh23Soc4AI6w5Sg9a-A_C4mB0R3SEDcT&ec=CUuITXfgC4y3JTZ2xRbYqsCEDVfj1pLaDEEEO8rW-uw%3D
If you can’t see the post or aren’t a member of Nextdoor, here is the gist of a recent community members experience (and many others are having similar experiences, businesses losing customers, kids can’t even go play at the park):
Carri Galster
Downtown La Crosse • 2d •
I live downtown. Love living downtown. The Cameron park situation has got to be resolved. This evening as my partner was coming home, parked in our private lot on the third floor of our building, he saw a man rummaging through all the packages in our mail room. He confronted the man and then the man got up in his face threatening him. We called the police and “there was nothing they could do about it since he didn’t physically hurt you” I am appalled by this. This situation could have been 100% avoided. They have already robbed multiple cars in our lot and now this?? When is enough, enough. I am frightened for myself and my partner. Not really sure what to do from here. I feel the city needs to do something.
Pat
May 25, 2023 at 4:40 pm
This is a really bad solution.
Property managers and landlords do not evict people unless it’s an emergency. They hate filing evictions, its a loss of time and money. Making eviction harder screams “come to La Crosse, you don’t have to pay rent or follow the rules and we’ll pay for your lawyers”.
Now the city and county thinks they’ll solve homeless problem by dumping it on local homeowners and further eroding neighborhoods? They are completely tone deaf on the damage they are causing. Saw this pop up on my feed over 100 replies, suffice it to say if you live next to people who are given a free pass to conduct their behavior living without following rules, there is a limit to what you will put up with. If you disable the rules, people will leave!
Fighting local property owners right to evict is more of the same idiocy. They think temporarily disabling the rules (eviction) will help!! What is obvious for everyone else is WE DON’T WANT TO LIVE LIKE THAT! Quit watering down the requirements and rule of law.
People are fed up. They’ve had enough and want their city and parks back.
A reminder of the rules WE USED TO HAVE:
You don’t belong here if you can’t refrain from:
– drinking vodka on a park bench at 9am
– defecating by the swingset (where kids are supposed to be playing)
– leaving dirty needles around for others to clean up (and step on)
– helping yourself into people’s cars and garages at night to help pay for your own inability to walk into an employer and say “I have feet and arms that function and would like to trade my time and effort for a paycheck to support myself” (the rest of us do that)
If you can’t refrain from those behaviors, don’t take over the park. Don’t come to La Crosse! Don’t rent an apartment, create chaos with drug use & prostitution keeping the neighbors up all night, then ask the city to pay for your lawyers to fight the big bad landlord who expected you to pay rent.
What should you do? Stop feeling entitled that someone else should take care of you. If you are a parent, step up and be the Mom or Dad your child needs. Its time to grow up, or face consequences. The city is not your Mommy. Admit that you need help. Admit that you must stop taking drugs and stop drinking. Do that! Once you’re clean, good things can happen.
If you can’t get clean you are saying “I have given up and expect someone else to provide for me”. If that’s where you are you need jail to force sobriety, then you get one last chance to become productive member society. If you keep falling back on “I don’t know how to take care of myself” then unfortunately if you don’t follow rules, there ARE consequences. You lose freedoms. That simple. La Crosse cannot afford to pay its citizens bills and their housing costs.
City of LA Crosse and the county need to get real. Everything they’ve done thus far has made the problem worse. Why? Because their answer is “we’ll bend the rules for you”. This is enabling! Mayor Mitch – all the drug overdoses and deaths, you are partly to blame. Not 100% but you played a role. You thought you were helping but people died. More people are dying!
Did you enable people to live in a way that they hurt themselves and others? Yes. The truth is yes, the policies did. You felt bad and tried to help, but the solutions created wound up bringing more people here, we have more drugs flowing through here than ever, more thefts, La Crosse is less safe. You didn’t create the initial problems but you did make it worse. That should be on your conscience.
It may have been well intentioned, but you need a serious look in the mirror bud, confront the ego that said “we’ve got to do something, I can solve this”. You made it worse and people perished. What we need is tough love.
Pausing evictions and letting those who don’t follow the rules take over the kids parks isn’t right. You know that. The results are in. We have new information. What we tried did not work.
A change in direction is needed. Go back to “if you want to live here we welcome you, but we do expect FOLLOW THE RULES”. If not, they must live with consequences.
Fighting evictions? Come on!
And what of the neighborhoods and people who will now have to live near horrible neighbors who should have been gone but now apparently don’t have to follow the rules? I guess the city doesnt care that their solution forces the RESPECTFUL NEIGHBORS TO MOVE AWAY.
Glad I don’t own a house in La Crosse where the city has so much spare cash to pay for homeless to have free wifi,
hotel rooms to sell drugs, but is also raising property taxes which are already very bloated (meanwhile schools are closing, roads need to be fixed, thefts and crime have increased big time, and safety has gone down for normal citizens)!
The city and county has now wasted millions on giveaways. La Crosse received $22 MILLION in ARPA funds. There are plenty of people living below the poverty line who are working, who are trying and who haven’t given up. We could have given a major boost to those in the lowest income bracket and given almost $5000 to ten peecent of the entire city (22 million divided by 5000 people).
In a household with a Mom and a Dad that’s almost $10,000 to the household! That would have been a down-payment on a house – for literally thousands of people! What did we do instead? Well we supported drug habits, theft, enabled actions that caused people to die. We made the problem worse and now the money is mostly gone.
Why have eviction laws if you then turn around and proclaim they can’t be used?
In summary, city and county taxpayer dollars will now pay for lawyers to keep tenants housed who either:
a) didn’t pay rent
b) broke the lease
c) created an unsafe or poor living conditions for nearby neighbors
d) multiple people in the building or neighborhood likely complained either they go or WE ARE LEAVING because they party all night, people can’t get any sleep, or theres drug dealing, theft, people no longer feel safe with kids living there.
How much money was wasted paying for hotels that only encouraged this to become a bigger problem? They could have given that funding to everyday people living below the poverty line, but those have jobs, who ARE trying.
THIS IS THE BEST PLAN THEY HAVE? Horrible horrible idea. When people break rules there should be consequences. All this does is more of the same – ENABLING.
Current administration has no idea what they are up against. Time for a new approach. We need someone with backbone to take back the parks and say “THERE ARE RULES AND CONSEQUENCES AGAIN”.
Lisa M.
May 25, 2023 at 10:09 pm
I know someone working at a local organization that deals with substance abuse and mental health issues. He is mentally exhausted himself at trying to help many in the homeless community at this park. The drug use is overwhelming and he said that there is absolutely NO incentive in many of the homeless in this area. This is alienating people from supporting local businesses or renting local office space. You cannot keep enabling drug use by giving people free food, free clothes, and free benefits under the guise of mental health issues. How long before the tax payer says enough? Even the local wildlife is being displaced because these people refuse to work and maintain an honorable livelihood. Something has to change.
david greener
May 26, 2023 at 5:07 am
A couple of years ago the city estimated the homeless population at around 200. Why the huge reduction since then? The only thing thats different is no Huska park. So if the new estimate is accurate (which I highly doubt) maybe if you dont make it easy for them to live here they wont.
Mayor west
May 26, 2023 at 6:25 am
If thay wanted to help keep people from being homeless help them with rent not with lawyers the landlords don’t want to kick them out thay want to get paid and put stipulations on the program like help people who are actually working and trying to make it work not all these junkies that lost everything because thay make bad decisions with thare lives thay need other types of help
Dustin
May 26, 2023 at 9:16 am
To all of the comments most of those people are sex offenders no one will rent to them. Because people think they a homeless sex offender is safer
Peter
May 26, 2023 at 9:43 am
I’ve know people assaulted down there including myself when I went looking for my bike that got stolen, 2 guys one pulling a knife out threatened me. The city thinks they’re going to be hero’s,but we the people are treated like the zeros. They don’t want to work or better themselves and I think they actually like the freedom to what they want. They just want freeeeeeeeee every thing. Move them into the country with a security guard and fenced in mini homes like Madison does. Wake up, they’re solutions, the city just throws all our money away on that and the school deal. Fix our roads,water, etc…put them to work cleaning up at least!
Justin
May 26, 2023 at 1:04 pm
Lock them up??? For what?? Good thing kent up there isn’t calling the shots. If he had it his way we’d all be locked up. Clearly you don’t know about addiction or the issue at ????…every city has a homeless population! How is the city of la crosse making it easy for them??? The people in these comments love chiming in on topics they THINK have a resolution for …
Burr Ito
May 26, 2023 at 4:15 pm
Landlords would not be evicting tenants if they paid their rent and didn’t cause problems. They would be welcoming them into their apartments. This program misses the whole problem.
The problem is mental health and drug abuse. Should have spent money on this instead. Who wants to live next to someone with serious mental issues and drug addiction?
Amy
May 26, 2023 at 6:26 pm
Maybe if we closed the boarder and quit putting illegals in hotels we could actually afford to take care of our own.
Randy
August 22, 2023 at 12:49 am
For once there’s a comment i can agree with. Close the dumb boarder, so we can take care of our own.
Paul Kinserdoll
May 26, 2023 at 6:39 pm
Put them in churches how simple can it be??? Tax exempt buildings that “WELCOME” everyone! Come on gotta do it or you won’t go to heaven!
LE ANNE MARTINEZ
May 26, 2023 at 8:42 pm
You all that are making such negative comments…you have no idea what it is like to walk in their shoes. These people are human beings the same as you & I. They are afforded the same basic human rights to a home, food, clothing, medical care, the same as you and I. Until you have lived the life of homelessness, Mental Health & or substance use….It is no life believe me!! Walk in their shoes…is truly when you can say you understand!!! Stop by say HI, listen to them share with you what this life..they are livin is like. Im sure its a far cry from where you are at. You will meet some very friendly souls. Ask if they need something. ..Empathize..help out…Volunteer. be a part of the solution…not the problem!!
Nancy Ames
May 27, 2023 at 7:55 am
Bravo! Homeless people are human beings who have fallen through the cracks of life. They are all of us, given the right set of circumstances.
There, but for the grace of God, go I.
AT
May 26, 2023 at 9:15 pm
If anyone else did this we be locked up & fined,. The mayor needs to do more to help the constituents that voted him in to resolve this.vThey are loitering, littering not to mention public intoxication by a school. Seriously Do we need to protest in front of City Hall ?
Dennis
May 27, 2023 at 9:20 am
God bless all of the commenters.May the Lord bless the homeless and the individuals that are serving the community and their search for a better way.
Darren Myers
May 27, 2023 at 3:16 pm
A third of them are just looking for a place to shoot up. Mental health makes up about another third.The rest are in the ether.