City crews clean up Salinas’ Chinatown Thursday morning

The City of Salinas is working to clean up homeless camps in Chinatown Thursday morning, according to assistant public works director Don Reynolds.

Crews were expected to wrap up just before 10 a.m. and street sweepers were being used through the area.

The city said 65 shelters were identified and a lot of people were able to leave before the sweep. Reynolds said most people in Chinatown were cooperative, having experienced previous sweeps and knew what to expect.

The clean-up comes as the city prepares for its annual Asian Festival. Private contractors and police were on hand to ensure the sweep is successful.

Despite the city giving them notice, people who live in Chinatown said they are upset over the planned deep cleaning. Many said they don’t want all their stuff to be taken away and put into bins.

Each person was told to put all their stuff into a 96 gallon container, which will then be moved to a temporary storage and many said they don’t feel comfortable doing that.

“Pictures whatever that’s all they have. That’s all they own. I don’t think its ok because what are people suppose to do in the meantime if it’s put in storage. We have no access to it until the festival is over with,” said Melissa vanHorn.

“We don’t trust them how do we know that they are really put in storage. We got over 70 people to put their tents down from seven to four and all the people on this paper will do the same,” said Diana Blaylock.

However, just pulling their tents down wasn’t enough this time around. According to public works director Gary Petersen, this is not uncommon

“Asian Festival is this week. We have traditionally gone in like we do on the east side for El Grito, for the airport for the Airshow. We always want our city to look it’s best. It’s not uncommon. We use to only do cleanup three or four times a year. Now, we’re doing several hundred cleanups around the city year by year,” Petersen said.

People can go get their stuff when they want, however KION was told most don’t ever do that. Police were scheduled to arrive first to close the street off to traffic and pedestrians. The cleanup started around 6 a.m. at the corner of Soledad and Lake Streets and then continue throughout the neighborhood.