LAND OFFERED FOR CAMPGROUND GETS LITTLE INTEREST FROM CITY
CHICO >> As debate over handling Chico’s declared homelessness crisis grows more heated each week, proposals like private land for sanctioned camping have garnered little interest from Chico staff and the Chico City Council.
Former Butte County Supervisor (from 1985 to 1997) and current Durham Unified School District board of trustees president Ed McLaughlin has offered a deal to the city — five acres for sanctioned camping for five years, contingent on an easement to place a road for access.
He owns 43 acres off Cohasset Road south of the Chico Airport with Coldwell Banker realtor Barbara Weibel, and wanted to make good use of the property knowing how great the declared homelessness crisis in Chico has become. The camping area could go in the property’s north corner, using Thorntree Drive to enter, he said.
“We’ve tried several times,” Weibel said of proposing the idea to the city. “We can’t seem to find anybody that would even want to talk about it.”
The property needs a direct easement for a road to properly connect to the north corner area McLaughlin was proposing to use for sanctioned camping, as the current easement is very difficult to access off Cohasset Road with a pumping station in the way. He said the property was condemned through eminent domain through the clear zone for the Chico Airport until it got a 60-foot easement which he said “is not workable.”
While he said he knows it’s technically illegal to not have a usable 60-foot easement from the city, McLaughlin said. “My partner and I just aren’t into suing or anything, so we just let it be, paid the taxes. “
“We’ve never really done anything with it for that reason,” he said, after about 31 years of owning it.
Cows from another property currently graze the land. He had once offered it for camping use for Camp Fire survivors, but as people moved away, McLaughlin said he considered other options.
That led to offering it to the city for use. McLaughlin ended up walking the property with Chico’s Homeless Solutions Coordinator Suzi Kochems and former Assistant City Manager Chris Constantin in late September 2020.
He said he was told by the city staffers the property is too far from the city for people who would want to camp there — and on their walk, promptly found people camping on the city- owned portion of the lot, who said they had been there three years.
Those campers were still there Tuesday. McLaughlin said city workers have never come to clean up trash in the area, and he is worried cows from another farmer that come to graze could get sick if they eat garbage left on the ground.
McLaughlin said a retired biologist recently looked at the land and said since it’s been farmed with cattle and alfalfa it
likely doesn’t have any native plants left, but he hasn’t gotten a formal environmental review of the land. McLaughlin said that would have to come through the city, as would advice from the city planner about a new easement for a road, which McLaughlin hasn’t sought out.
But as of this week, there doesn’t seem to be interest from the city in a camp site.
Kochems said Tuesday the current city and county group of three Chico councilors, two supervisors and city and county staff “determined that additional emergency shelter beds may not be necessary.”
“There is consideration that there will be enough beds for the homeless who want to stay in a shelter bed once the “new” beds currently under development are made available by service providers,” Kochems said. “This thought process is considering that there are quite a few of the Chico homeless that prefer to live outdoors in a nomadic type of environment.”
She said to test that theory, the county is coordinating an outreach effort in the next several weeks with surveys conducted throughout the city and county to determine the needs of the unsheltered, “if individuals desire a shelter bed, another type of sheltering environment or want to connect with a family member for support.”
The surveys will come back to the city/county group and eventually to the Butte County Board of Supervisors and the council for further discussion. Kochems did not say what group will be in charge of those outreach efforts.
Mayor Andrew Coolidge, who said he had not been informed of the property offer from McLaughlin, said what he has been told is that campsites cannot use the same kind of funding from federal or state sources.
“There’s a lot of issues with camp sites, liability issues,” he said, which can apply to tiny home villages as well.
McLaughlin added he tried to talk to the council at a regular meeting in early fall when in-person public participation was allowed, but never got a chance to present about it when the meeting went late.
He thinks his property would be a good choice for addressing the need for a place for people to shelter since it’s private and out of the city — “There’s no people who should be upset about it.”
“It’s just that they’re going to have to come up with some kind of a solution,” he said. “I’m just a farmer, but … whatever would be the best way without using any more money than they have to.
“We aren’t aggressively pursuing it because somebody would think we had an agenda or something.”