It took a couple dozen specialists in hazardous waste removal, several Caltrans officials and workers, and three or four Highway Patrol Officers to remove a homeless camp along Highway 99 on Monday, January 4. That’s in addition to the 18-wheel trucking rig that was needed to haul off the tents, lean-tos, and accumulated trash.
Most of the campers along the strip had moved across south Seventh Street in Modesto from a camp that had been cleared a few weeks earlier. Everyone involved in the cleanup, from the highest Caltrans official present to the last homeless person to exit knew the cleanup was an exercise in futility.
Veterans of homelessness, some of them with decades of experience on the streets, moved to nearby locations they’d been using for years. After a short wait, they’ll infiltrate their old haunts, one or two at a time. Within a few months, the encampment will be reestablished.
The newer homeless, a growing cohort, wandered the streets. Some will bed down behind buildings, in the doorways of local businesses, and on the sidewalk. They’ll spend their days on the streets or in local parks, until new camps are established. Then they’ll migrate to the new camps.
Especially since the closure of Modesto’s Outdoor Emergency Shelter (MOES) in late December of 2019, Modesto’s streets and parks have filled with growing numbers of people with nowhere to go. The 182-bed shelter in the Salvation Army’s Berberian building on 9th Street never had enough capacity for the 450 residents of MOES, and many of those who got into the new “low barrier” facility in 2020 left within a few months, even before Covid-19 restrictions posed stricter rules and entry requirements.
Critics of MOES cited drug use, trash, and “lack of progress toward improvement” as reasons to close the tent city down. They never explained how drug use and trash would diminish once people were spread around town, nor did they explain how people would be improved when scattered to the streets, parks, and isolated encampments.
When MOES closed, City of Modesto spokesperson Thomas Reeves said,
“We’ve seen a direct correlation between allowing for our homeless individuals to go into one location and the calls for service and the quality of life crimes that we would otherwise experience in other parts of the city go down.”
Nonetheless, Reeves and other city officials said they were prepared to crack down on, “the negative impacts of vagrancy-related issues in town” once MOES was shut down and people returned to the streets. For the most part, the crackdown has consisted of ticketing people and forcing them to move on. Some receive jail time at a taxpayer expense of over $100 per day per person. For comparison, the cost of MOES per person per day was estimated at $13.
Reeves said that MOES hadn’t done anything to address long-term homelessness, and that the city was working on alternatives to the outdoor shelter. Since that time, homelessness has burgeoned and the disconnection between local officials and reality has grown even faster than the homeless population. Some observers have hopes that newly elected leaders will bring a change of direction. The homeless themselves aren’t optimistic. Long resigned to the status quo, they’ve learned to endure. Whether along the freeway, under a bridge, or on a cold, hard sidewalk, the homeless abide.
“If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you got” Henry Ford. Question becomes, do we really want a different outcome? Sure doesn’t look like it! Why is that I ask? Could it be because our ‘leaders’ are stuck in an ideological bubble that believes: they are ‘bums’ and we need to get them out of sight? “Out of sight out of mind” seems to satisfy many of the folks who are the most vocal on the subject. To be fair I’ll admit I’m in a bubble too but it’s far different in that its beliefs are, Caring for Others, as can be found here: https://www.openbible.info/topics/caring_for_others. If you want to become involved/more involved, check out the new Facebook group: Stanislaus Homeless Advocates and Resource Enterprise (SHARE) group.
Thank you, frank, for your consistent replies here and below.
It looks bleak, and is bleak, yet We need to KNOW both from an outsiders view and an insiders perspective.
Again, thank you, keep us replied to…
I asked for help and i have a child i was told nothing but to talk to this person like a run around for almost a year i did not see my kid or get any help . Than i move to the shelter on 9 th an d where i was promise shelter to where i could have my kid but after 7 months of it not see my child i left because i was not getting any help besides more thing’s for me that was not right to do that already done. Now i been told that they no longer have any paper in the housing that i am on record . in which i had to do to get into the shelter for housing at then move me to the Kansas house but i was told lies . i was homeless with my child asked for help again and what housing told me that they could not place me and they had no funding to help me and there assistance jimmy yalnell and maria told in front my child i need to worry about myself before my child which was wrong even my child heard it .
MOES needs to return. It is better than people spread across town and in the neighborhoods. It was good to be able to consolidate services (garbage, porta potties, clean up, social services, job info) and have a designated place for charitable organizations to donate and provide meals etc. This just makes sense, and the fact is that during the MOES operation time, the vandalism and issues in the neighborhoods were lower.
Chris, tx for the advocacy for doing the right thing.
First step would be to find a couple of suitable areas. We learned from BBV and MOES that 400 is too many in one area to manage well, 200 would be about right.
Got some ideas, let them be known.
I am Nextdoor ( Oakdale) and encounter “ they’re bums” mindset regarding the homeless.
This seems to be the predominant mindset wherever one goes.
I’ve seen homelessness at all the rest stops on I-5 in CA, OR and WA. Seen it in small towns in OR, in Portland, in downtown Spokane, up in the Sierras, you name it.
What is it going to take to wake people up that we have a huge income and housing inequality in the US?
Soon, we will have Brazilian style favelas here. It’s only a matter of time.
I never understood why the city closed MOES. Are all those tents just sitting in some warehouse?
Thom, no, none of these units were salvaged as most were worn out after months of rigorous use they weren’t intended for.
Fortunately these units were all donated to us from the gamp.com company that went out of business.