Just five months after the last homeless camp cleanup on the Bob Jones Trail, the city of San Luis Obispo is preparing for another in the same area slated for Oct. 19, a move that’s drawing criticism from homeless advocates due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and recent positive cases at the 40 Prado Homeless Services Center.
Assistant City Manager Shelly Stanwyck said the upcoming cleanup is an effort to address the health and safety concerns at the camp, which is situated along the Bob Jones Trail and San Luis Obispo Creek. Homeless camps near SLO Creek are always problematic, because drainage from piling trash, rodents, bugs, and human waste could make its way to the waterway.
Stanwyck said that along with numerous outreach efforts at the camp throughout October, city staff hosted a Services and Support Outreach Forum on Oct. 14 at the Bill Roalman Memorial on the Bob Jones Trail, where individuals experiencing homelessness were able to connect to housing, medical, and mental health services prior to the cleanup.
But advocates like Paul Andreano—a volunteer with Hope’s Village of SLO, a nonprofit that advocates for and feeds homeless individuals—say more needs to be done to ensure that residents of the Bob Jones camp have somewhere else safe to go.
“Our contention is that if you’re not offering some type of other transitory place for these people to go,” Andreano told New Times, “then it’s not cool.”
The upcoming cleanup is one of several camp cleanups that the city of SLO has carried out throughout the pandemic, despite Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidance that homeless encampments should be left alone until the spread of COVID-19 is under control.
On May 18—just a week after the CDC updated its guidelines for addressing homelessness during the pandemic, stating that people living in homeless camps should be allowed to remain where they are to prevent further spread of coronavirus—city officials and police officers forced dozens of individuals living in a camp near the Bob Jones Trail to move along so that human waste and trash dangerously close to the SLO Creek could be removed.
Andreano said he’s heard complaints about homeless people getting pushed out of popular parks, and SLO County is planning to clean up a small homeless camp behind the Los Osos Library later this month.
Though city and county officials continue to point to available beds and safe parking spots at 40 Prado, Andreano said that’s just “a convenient line they use.”
Many of the residents of the Bob Jones camp aren’t ready or willing to follow the rules and paths required at the shelter, Andreano said, and would likely benefit more from some kind of a safe camping program, where they could legally camp out in tents overnight without having to go through the case work required at 40 Prado.
“We just don’t have anything that’s in between where those people are now and 40 Prado,” Andreano said. “Unless you want to talk about the jail. That’s it.”
While Andreano said he understands the city’s health and safety concerns related to the camp near the creek, it’s also not a good time to be stuck living in a shelter with a bunch of other people.
After four 40 Prado residents tested positive for COVID-19 in September—the only positive cases at the shelter since March—the shelter closed its doors to new residents for a month. Without any positive cases in the last three weeks, Deputy Director Grace Macintosh said 40 Prado is now open to three new SLO County residents a day, and typically has about 10 to 15 beds available.
Still, the ongoing homeless camp cleanups caught the attention of attorneys at California Rural Legal Assistance, which is currently conducting interviews with SLO’s homeless community members and advocates as part of a larger investigation.
“We are conducting an ongoing investigation of the sweeps,” Directing Attorney Frank Kopcinski wrote in an email to New Times. “We have serious concerns as to the legality of the sweeps.” Δ
This article was edited to correct a spelling error.
This article appears in Oct 15-25, 2020.
Since Assistant City Manager Shelly Stanwyck said the upcoming cleanup is an effort to address the health and safety concerns at the camp, and the issues she cites are “drainage from piling trash, rodents, bugs, and human waste [that] could make its way to the waterway. If those are the issues, then why not address them with trash pick up and some portable toilets. Those basic services would go a long way toward helping to mitigate the dangers. At least until the city gets real about finding a campground or other housing.
Prado has 10-15 beds at any time, probably because the 100s of folks that are homeless prefer their current “accommodations”
These people are not “homeless” but vagrants and free loaders. What does Andreano mean these people are not ready to follow the rules and path of the shelter. Because they are drunks and drug addicts? So they, many of whom don’t have any connection to the community are allowed to trash our parks and public spaces that responsible citizens pay for. How many COVID-19 cases have been contracted in these trash camps? Make it as uncomfortable as you can for them and perhaps they will start complying with the rules or move on.
When your not willing to follow the rules or any rules then we need to change the rules its not going to age well you want people in tents all over the place doing nothing only grows the problem most of them are Drug addicts and most take no responsibility they really just dont give a ship there needs to be some rules and options when it comes to homeless but it should not be a option to do nothing dont let them live on the street its time to get tough when people say have some compassion like they have the moral high ground the reality is words dont mean a thing with out action .