Salinas turns over homeless encampment cleanup services to local company
Salinas city council members say homelessness is a top priority for them.
“Homelessness is affecting all cities on the Central Coast, and it is especially bad in Salinas,” Councilman Steve McShane said. “We are the county seat, and we’ve seen a double and triple-digit increase in the last 12 to 18 months.”
Between May and October of this year, city crews cleaned up 51 encampments; for several decades, the cleanup responsibility has fallen on the shoulders of Salinas City Public Works. But McShane said the growing number of encampments in Chinatown made the work so overwhelming that other city work was taking a backseat.
On Tuesday, the council voted to turn the job over to a local company called Smith and Enright Landscape Services, Inc. The company has been working with the city for some time, McShane said, and was picked amongst six proposals.
Salinas city council members also finalized how they’ll enforce a recently-passed law that allows for the removal of camps on 24-hours notice.
It’s something the homeless community has been protesting, including Ronald Wilkerson.
“That’s like cleaning up a mess to make another mess,” Wilkerson, who stays in Chinatown, said. “Where are the homeless going to go?”
Despite the protests, city council is moving forward with a policy on how to clean out these camps. McShane said the public will start to see a difference now that a policy is in place.
“This action we took is collaborative,” he said. “It’s with the homeless population and the service providers at the table. And ultimately, I think we have a city that’s giving this topic more attention and we’ll see a remedy to the issue.”
The new policy is modeled after similar ones in San Jose and Seattle. It includes some flexibility for homeless people to collect their belongings — 90 days. It also includes working with outreach teams to help the homeless find a new place to stay. Finally, it doesn’t prohibit sleeping on sidewalks between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
