Contra Costa County Boots Homeless People
Categories: City of Concord Headlines, Focus on Concord
Written By: Mayor Concord California
Another one of those stories that caught my eye. Claycord just ran a nice story about how the Contra Costa County Sheriff Dept. along with other agencies moved in on local homeless camps and removed the people and cleaned up their garbage. The homeless people were either relocated to shelters or even better, the transients just moved to another city. (did they drive them?)
I’m glad he posted this. I was planning on taking a few pictures of the camps I have seen all over Concord from under the overpass of 680 and the full tent city that is set up off HWY 4 near the water treatment plant. Looks like I missed my chance. Read his post for all the details but I want to give my thoughts on this action by the CoCo Sherriff.
Dealing with the counties homeless problem is always a touchy subject. Lets face it, they’re homeless, where else are they supposed to go? The shelters are over crowded and many of these transients are mentally ill or addicted to drugs like the Concord Crankster. I’m thankful they are not sleeping in downtown Concord or in the doorways of businesses like they do in San Francisco. But other than pushing them out of the city, what are the options?
San Francisco was put under a fire a few years back when they though an option to get rid of homeless people was to give them a BART ticket and send them to another city to set up camp. Where are they supposed to go? It’s not like the man who hasn’t showered in a month and wears the same clothes everyday that he sleeps in can walk into the library and look on the internet for open shelters in the area. Well, I guess he could but I’m sure that wouldn’t go over well. By removing these camps, we may see more homeless people wondering the streets looking for another hole to crawl into for some shelter.
Chances are that these people that were removed from their camps will just move downstream and setup camp somewhere new. What surprised me from the pictures that Claycord posted is that the CoCo Sheriff Deputies weren’t wearing gloves. Looking at the pictures, these people were not living in sanitary conditions which is one of the reasons it was needed to get rid of them. Since homeless people live in a survival cycle, living near water is nessassary. If not a creek or stream, they will find some other place with a water source to call home.
I’m glad the Sheriff’s office took care of this but as much as we need to make sure we have a clean city, there are bigger issues to deal with when it comes to the cities growing homeless issues. Where do they go from here?
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February 25th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
This is a huge problem. The homeless around there are no joke. I stopped walking back there because I didn’t feel safe. I glad the S.O. took the lead and did something about it. Other government agencies buried their heads in the sand.
February 25th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Maybe the the homeless people will become Walnut Creeks problem next year.
February 25th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Good riddance. Thank you for removing them from Concord.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
I’m thankful they are not sleeping in downtown Concord or in the doorways of businesses like they do in San Francisco.
So where do they sleep? Try the half empty lot behind Jiffy Lube on Clayton. After hanging out behind McDonalds they go over there. You should see all the trash they leave behind. They yell at each other, swear, threaten to stick each other. When they’re out there yelling at each other it scares the kids that live in the apartments around there. They use the lot as one big bathroom. That part of the lot never gets mowed. Most of the year they drink and smoke in field of dry grass. Some day there is going to be a major fire. They store their mattresses and sleeping bags back there. I talked to the manager of Jiffy Lube and he won’t do anything about it.
February 27th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Just like baseball, it happens every Spring.
BGR’s last blog post..Chevron battles Richmond tax
March 5th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Homeless/jobless/helpless what a mess.
Do we want government to start to determine on the spot to toss people into basically holding cells for the mentally ill, addicted? Probably something to be said for that in some quarters…oh wait we are talking about homeless so they have no quarters … or dimes or nickels for that matter.
What are we going to do about the homeless and incapable but not addicted or insane? If we make a massive effort to put them ‘right’ at what point do we lose sight of the masses in favor of concentrating on the morasses of broken lives? At what point do we put 10 thousand dollars of effort into a homeless person yet tell the working poor making less than 10 grand that they are on their own?
These are not easy questions, nor is there a host of great answers in history. When you are sitting in an economic mess and large numbers of people are only separated from homelessness by the virtue of a greater family unity to move in with it is scary. There are a lot of sofa couches being used these days and a lot of kids moving back to mom/dad or Grandparents.
I do think we have get the insane and the addicted out, and we need to try with the other categories because it is part saving our own souls in a way, but we have to balance the effort with an eye towards that growing group that but for the grace of circumstance could be there in the flash of a failed paycheck and be us.