River Street emergency transitional camp opening for Benchlands residents

UPDATE 2/27/2018 5:25 p.m.: A multi-agency effort is underway in Santa Cruz to help get the homeless off of the streets. On Tuesday, KION got a first look at the River Street Camp, an emergency transitional camp for dozens of people.

On Tuesday, crews wrapped up some of the finishing touches to the site, which is slated to open on Wednesday.

Modeled after something similar in San Diego, organizers said this is the first of its kind on the Central Coast.

“People can be here during the day as long as they’re connecting with services and being productive and they can be here at night so it’s not a place where people come and go but can reside and connect with services,” said Santa Cruz City Manager Martin Bernal.

The camp will provide shelter, security, storage, hygiene stations and hot meals for up to 100 individuals. Pets are allowed, but children are not. Different arrangements would be made for families with small children.

There are rules like no weapons, no drugs, no nuisance behaviors and people who break the rules will be kicked out.

Since safety is also a major concern, Santa Cruz Police Chief Andrew Mills said there are three layers of security.

“The internal ring is going to be handled by the people working here, just to make sure the rules are followed, the orders are maintained inside the camp,” Mills said. “We’re going to have security in the immediate area of the camp so walking the perimeter, making sure people aren’t passing drugs over the fence, or doing other things, stealing property and whatnot. The third level is we’ll have patrol officers here, assigned in the area, 24 hours a day to make sure the order in maintained in this community and so we’ll take care of that.”

Mills said they may scale down some of the patrols once the program is up and running.

Even with these additional security measures, nearby neighbors are already on edge, having to deal with homeless people behind their home along the San Lorenzo River.

“Me and my housemates, none of us are really happy about it,” Tristin Brown said. “We moved in here without knowing a bunch of homeless people were going to be living, literally ten feet away from us. It just feels kind of unsafe, my parents aren’t happy about it. I feel like they should’ve started it next year so the new tenants of all these homes could know what they’re getting themselves into instead of just springing it on all of us without giving us a choice. But yeah, not happy about it but we’ll see how it goes.”

The camp is only supposed to be temporary, while the city and county works on a long-term solution, finding a permanent location for services and a shelter.

“The first phase is this temporary facility with tents, the second phase is a lease or rented building and then the third is a permanent building that would accommodate all these services and facilities on an ongoing basis,” Bernal said.

The cost of the River Street Camp is about $90,000 a month, split between the city and county. More than half of that money goes to the onsite staffing, the rest is for the services they offer.

ORIGINAL POST: A new camp will be opening to allow homeless people from the Benchlands and other areas to move into a more regulated area.

The River Street Emergency Transitional Camp will begin in-taking unsheltered campers on Wednesday, February 28. Modeled after a transitional camp in San Diego, the River Street Camp will be the first of its kind on the Central California Coast. The temporary emergency transitional camp will provide shelter, security, storage, hygiene stations, and one hot meal per day for up to 100 individuals.

Officials say goals for the camp are:

To create a safe and secure place to sleep for those experiencing homelessness in our community. To provide easy access to County services that may enable an exit to homelessness. To provide relief to the community impacts of having unsheltered individuals residing on streets and in public spaces.

The camp will be a collective home. Once populated, the camp will not be open to the public for privacy reasons.

KION’s Mariana Hicks will have more on this camp at 5 and 6.