The San Bernadino business owner who vowed to bus homeless people away from his restaurant is working with local nonprofits to provide them with care packages and gift cards as well.
Celebrities Sports Grill, located on West 40 Street, has been owned by Max Zahir for the past 12 years. However Zahir has relocated his other investments to Riverside County.
"The crisis is just getting increasingly worse and when I talked to our county supervisor, I learned that homelessness is not even one of their top 10 priorities," he said.
Rex Parris
| provided
It was widely reported that fires had been set by vagrants at the back of Zahir's restaurant because they are trying to keep warm.
"They're not being taken care of," Zahir told the Southern California Record. "I see them deteriorating. I know most of them by name and over the years, I have seen many start out as normal human beings walking down the street. They eventually deteriorate mentally and then die of an overdose."
Data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) shows that 30% of the U.S. homeless population reside in California. There were 3,333 in San Bernadino, according to a 2022 county study.
Zahir alleges that the flow of people experiencing homelessness are arriving from a detention center in Los Angeles where they are given a one-way ticket and told to exit at the last stop on the Metroline, which is just two miles away from Celebrities Sports Grill.
“People want homeless people to just go away and that's a hard thing because humans don't just disappear," said Glen Dunzweiler, who produced and directed a film about homelessness in Los Angeles called yHomeless. "Positive direct action usually comes from community and family.”
As previously reported by NBC Los Angeles, Zahir doesn't plan to relocate them without resources or to the middle of nowhere.
"We're in the process of collecting care packages and they will be ready on Feb. 4," he said. "The care package has a sleeping bag, a jacket, a blanket, a hygiene kit, snacks, and a hundred dollars food gift card. Once those care packages are ready, then we will be asking these homeless persons if we can drive them to the city where they are from."
The city of San Bernardino is scheduled to vote on a resolution to declare a homeless state of emergency on Feb. 1. However, the newly-elected Mayor Helen Tran has been unavailable to meet with Zahir except publicly at an upcoming homeless count.
"I have tried to communicate with her office to see if I can have a one-on-one meeting, but unfortunately, she's too busy doing different events, so she won't have any time," Zahir added.
Tran did not reply to requests for comment. However, Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris said his city is experiencing a similar influx of people experiencing homelessness because Lancaster is the last stop north on the same train that Zahir complains of.
"I refuse to deal with a homeless problem in Lancaster," Parris told the Southern California Record. "What I deal with is single mothers living in cars with their children and military veterans who don't have housing."
Lancaster, a charter city in northern Los Angeles County, feeds about 500 homeless people a day, according to Parris.
"We have the most innovative homeless shelter in America because we allow pets," he said. "A lot of people won't go into a shelter because they won't accommodate a dog who is their only friend and I appreciate that. We also allow couples to stay together and we graduate them into housing. They are very nice apartments."