Friday, February 23, 2018

Canoga Park Responds to Flourishing Homeless Population With New 24-Hour Resource Centers

By Charlotte Rudnick, Quilt staff




DATELINE: ROSCOE BOULEVARD

Homeless people in the West Valley will soon have two new local options for getting much-needed assistance to help cope with life on the streets.

A 7-11 convenience store in the space previously occupied by Duke of Bourbon Liquor in Westridge Plaza, in the hustling RoscoSoto neighborhood is due to open “any day now,” according to sources, while just down the street, at Roscoe and Canoga, in the bustling RoscoNoga neighborhood, a Chevron gas station featuring a large mini-mart is on track to open its doors in the near future as well. 

Both will offer microwaveable burritos, nachos and heat lamp dogs, among other goods and services.
A Chevron gas station and a 7-11 (inset) are two new businesses slated to open in the Canoga Park area in
early 2018.  Residents and others who just kind of hang around here are excited by the news.  Staff photo.
“I can’t wait,” says Ernie ‘Nalgas’ Holvik, wearing an overstuffed backpack while carrying another as he awkwardly rides your bike on the way back to his camp beneath an LA River tributary overpass along Canoga Avenue. Tired from a busy day in West Hills where he works as a freelance Amazon Prime package re-acquisition specialist, Holvik looks longingly at the gas station, still under construction. “I really gotta take a dump.”


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