ROCKS HOPED TO PREVENT HOMELESS FROM MAKING NEW CAMP
Several tents cleared out in Oceanside; some still standing
City crews installed large rocks alongside South Oceanside Boulevard on Wednesday morning in an attempt to keep homeless people from erecting tents where a large encampment had been cleared the previous day.
“Oceanside has solved homelessness,” yelled homeless advocate Michael McConnell in a mocking tone as he stood in the street near the workers. “All it took was some rocks.”
While McConnell saw the rock installation as a waste of money that could have been used to help homeless people, one business owner in a mall adjacent to South Oceanside Boulevard saw it as a positive move and said he had lost potential customers because of the encampment.
“In my opinion, it’s a good thing,” said Ray Mendez, coowner of Natty Bella Bridal Couture in the Oceanside Town & Country mall. “I won’t have to look for another place to have my business. I was getting depressed looking at that every day.”
About 30 people who had been staying in tents alongside the street were taken to an Oceanside motel Wednesday as the city began
enforcing a new ordinance prohibiting camping on public property. The rooms were provided through a new $600,000 voucher program approved by the City Council last week.
There were not enough vouchers for everyone, however, and nine tents remained on the east end of the street Wednesday morning. Oceanside Housing Management Analyst Salvador Roman said the city expects to have 10 more rooms available at Marty’s Valley Inn in Oceanside next Tuesday, and officials were working on identifying funding for more vouchers.
According to an update posted online by the city Wednesday, 28 people were provided rooms at the motel through the voucher program, with three of those people referred to the Whole Person Wellness program operated by Exodus Recovery.
The post made no mention of rocks being installed alongside the road. Oceanside city officials and City Council members were not available to explain the decision or the cost of the installation on Wednesday because they were attending a budget workshop expected to run into the evening.
Oceanside and many other cities across the country have been abiding by the 2019 Martin vs. Boise lawsuit ruling that said laws against camping and sleeping in public cannot be enforced when there are no other places for people to sleep.
The city has no shelter for homeless people, but the new voucher program gave the city the authority to enforce its ordinance against public camping. The voucher program is funded for six months and provides each person a 28-day stay and assistance in finding housing.
While the city cannot cite people for camping in public when no vouchers are available, the new rock installation appears intended to keep any new tents from being erected at the old encampment site.
McConnell, who usually monitors homeless activities in the city of San Diego, said the installation reminded him of when San Diego placed similar-sized rocks under a downtown bridge where people had been camping in 2016.
“It’s obviously not about solving homelessness,” he said. “What it’s really about is just clearing this one patch of land the city has been getting a lot of complaints about. They’ve installed these really heavy rocks here to keep people from coming back, but
they’re not doing anything about the 300 or so people living on their streets..”
The rocks extend up to one of the last remaining tents, where Tony Ramirez, 54, was relaxing on a chair Wednesday morning.
“I signed up for a voucher early, but nobody called me,” Ramirez said about not getting a room when they were offered Tuesday.
Ramirez has been homeless two and a half years and had stayed at Catholic Charities’ La Posada de Guadalupe shelter in Carlsbad for the past four months. He said he came to the Oceanside encampment about a week ago after his time at the shelter ran out, and he had hoped to be placed in a room. Ramirez said he worked 35 years as a
brick mason, but needs eye and foot surgery now and is hoping to receive disability payments.
About two dozen tents once had stretched about a third of a mile alongside South Oceanside Boulevard, with several tents supplied by homeless man Rodney McGough. While he made efforts to keep the row relatively litter-free, police made several arrests for drug use at the site, and paramedics were called numerous times to aid people who had overdosed. City officials considered the area a public safety hazard.
McGough was among the people who got a room Tuesday.