72 hour vacate notice posted at massive Santa Cruz homeless encampment

Notices are now posted around the massive homeless encampment in Santa Cruz telling people they have until 10 a.m. Friday to leave.

The notices were posted around 10 Tuesday morning, less than 24 hours after a federal judge decided the city could move forward with clearing out the camp.

City officials say they will began their efforts to clean out the camp no earlier than 10 on Friday.

Once that deadline hits, assistant city manager, Tina Shull, says they will acess who and what is left at the camp.

“We will carefully go through and we will take into custody and hold for people that they claim later. So if they weren’t able to take all their possessions with them, we will be taking ones that are not unsafe and not a biohazard and holding those in custody for people,” said Shull.

If there are people who have not vacated the city will deal with them individually. “There could be some individuals who are holding it out and want to stay, in which case we would want to have a person-by-person discussion with them to really encourage them to move on. Police and fire may be involved in those conversations, but we really are trying to come to more of a collaborative decision.”

They say arresting someone who does not move is a possibility, but they don’t think it will come to that.

After everyone is out, then the city will start going through the items that are left.

“We will carefully go through and we will take into custody and hold for people so they can claim later. So if they weren’t able to take all their possessions with them, we will be taking ones that are not unsafe and not a biohazard and holding those in custody for people.”

Once all of the items are gone through, comes the tear down and clean up, which Shull said will be a massive effort. “With the camp there since November there are layers of debris, there’s been human waste across the camp, needle waste as well. So we will have to remove some layers of soil to make sure anything that is buried underneath is removed and we make this site safe.”