Homeless vacate Sherwood Park as overnight camping ordinance enforced
The hat structures at Sherwood Park are no longer surrounded by tents as Salinas Police and the city are beginning their strict enforcement of the overnight camping ordinance.
That ordinance has been in place for some time, however complaints of needles and human waste in the Sherwood Park area have forced the city and police to be stricter about it.
So far the homeless who were once staying at Sherwood Park have been compliant, however they’re upset because they don’t feel there’s enough shelter space in the city.
“Give us a place where we can set up and sleep. A place where we can leave our stuff while we go to work,” says homeless resident Frank Doss. “It just seems like they’re making us do the same thing over and over again. Move to a spot, they say it’s okay for a while, then they tell us it’s not okay.”
Doss says Sherwood Park was the best location because it had employment assistance programs nearby.
Many of the homeless are afraid they’ll be pushed so far away from what they considered a safe sleeping location that they’ll have to settle in the Chinatown area of Salinas, which they say is not ideal at all.
Some are choosing church parking lots to settle in overnight, but Doss says even those places aren’t safe.
“It’s wide open. You can’t really control who walks through at night or know who they are,” he says. “You spend so much time worrying and then you’ve gotta wake up and get stuff done in the daytime.”
The homeless say shelter space is limited to the point where they have to sleep out in the streets.
City leaders were at the Sherwood Park camp on Tuesday helping with storing personal items.
Beyond that, the Doss says there isn’t much being done about the lack of shelter space in Salinas.
“For as long as I’ve been homeless I’ve been hearing the same thing,” Doss explains. “They say they’re gonna make shelters and open up housing but then they don’t do anything. All they do is tell you to move along. We can’t just keep moving along. We gotta be able to sleep somewhere some time.”
