Salinas Homeless Brace For Freezing Temperatures

The Central Coast is under a freeze warning until Tuesday morning.

Monday night is expected to be one of the coldest we’ve seen this year with near freezing temperatures. Salinas city officials are encouraging homeless people to head to the city warming shelter but some said they’d rather endure the cold.

The National Weather Service issued a freeze warning for the San Francisco and Monterey Bay Area until 9 am on Tuesday.

Marina Diaz lives on the street and she is doing whatever she can to stay warm.

“Sometimes we have a little stove, sometimes we have enough money to get butane,” said Diaz.

City officials encourage the homeless to head to the winter warming shelter on the corner of West Alisal and Church Street.

“You get someone that’s maybe not in the best of health laying out there on the concrete in this cold weather could very well, you know, if their health isn’t good, they could die in this weather,” said Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter. “Our officers (from) the police department that finds someone on the street gets them transportation to that facility to help them if, you know, people can’t get there, women, children, we don’t care who it is to get them off the streets.”

But Diaz is taking her chances because she said she wants to stay with her partner.

Diaz said, “We also have personal belongings, that’s all we have to our name, and if we leave it behind, it won’t be there tomorrow.”

Mike Husted also lives on the streets of Salinas and said, “Perhaps they need to smoke in the middle of the night or they need to drink in the middle of the night. There are several things you can’t do in the mission and the warming shelter that they probably want to do. So they stay outside.”

The shelter has indeed been seeing an influx of people. City officials said there were about 65 people there Sunday night and they can accommodate about 40 more.