WATSONVILLE—The city of Watsonville is planning to follow through on a plan to clean out a homeless encampment on Bridge Street early Wednesday morning.
The decision to stick to the ultimatum given to the 25 or so people staying in the parking lot on Sunday—the day the city had originally asked the campers to move—comes as an injunction seeking a temporary restraining order against the city weaves its way through the federal courts.
Anthony Prince, general counsel for the California Homeless Union, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the members of the Pajaro/Watsonville Homeless Union in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Sunday.
Prince says that the case was assigned to a judge Tuesday, but it is unclear when they will consider the matter.
The suit claims, among other things, his clients would be dealt irreparable harm if they are moved without meaningful alternative shelter.
But Watsonville spokeswoman Michelle Pulido says that city staff on Wednesday morning will offer the campers vouchers for “extended” stays at hotels. The vouchers, Pulido says, will last through, at least, the upcoming Christmas holiday. In addition, the city says it will provide the campers transportation, a facility to store their belongings and access to local food pantries on Wednesday morning.
“We understand their concerns, we want to work with them as much as possible,” Pulido said.
Pulido said that the city is hoping for “volunteer compliance” on Wednesday and that Watsonville Police Department officers will be on hand if there are any issues—as they have been in previous interactions with the camp.
Prince says he still has several questions about the city’s plans. He says that the city has yet to confirm what hotels his clients will be moved to and whether those businesses will take people without identification. He also says that the campers are planning a religious ceremony at 8am—about a half-hour before the scheduled cleanout is set to start—to honor Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day, a national event in which people pay respects to the thousands who have died while living on the streets.
On Tuesday, Housing Matters, the county’s Homeless Persons’ Health Project, Wings Homeless Advocacy and The Salvation Army held Santa Cruz County’s annual homeless memorial ceremony. It recognized the 94 people experiencing homelessness in the county that died this year—17 more than the year prior and the most in the past 23 years.
The Watsonville City Council discussed the injunction in a closed session on Monday night.
Prince says he has asked city officials to grant a 14-day moratorium on the clearing of the camp so that they can continue to work with Monterey County to relocate his clients to shelter. That county displaced members of the local homeless union during a cleanup on the Monterey County side of the Pajaro River levee conducted by the Monterey County Water Resources Agency.
A federal judge last month placed a temporary restraining order against Monterey County, giving the county and the residents until Dec. 13 to get hotel vouchers and work out a plan to move the people into those hotels. Prince said that the judge in a case status hearing on Dec. 16 ordered the Homeless Union and Monterey County to continue working toward housing the homeless people with hotel vouchers.
The camp is across the street from the Buddhist Temple in a parking lot typically frequented by people who use the neighboring levee trail for recreation.
There were at least 30 people who showed up to the camp Sunday to stop the cleanup, which city leaders said was part of a regularly scheduled cleaning of city trails.
The people staying at the camp say that it is a warming center they established on Dec. 13 after heavy rain from the recent atmospheric river forced them out of the Pajaro River levee.
Complaints from residents on Bridge Street and the surrounding communities have poured into Watsonville City Council, but the people living in the camp have also received donations, including blankets, tarps, food and pallets that they have used to elevate their tents in anticipation of incoming rain.
During the public comment portion of Monday night’s meeting, some two dozen people spoke both for and against the camp in a forum that, at times, turned testy.
About a third of the people who spoke said that they were concerned about litter and public safety if the camp would be allowed to stay. Some also worried about their home value, the possibility of catastrophic fire and the impact on the surrounding natural environment, particularly the Pajaro River.
But the majority of the people who spoke said that the people staying at the camp were peaceful and clean and that the city needed to do everything in its power to keep them safe during the harsh winter weather.
“It just hurts for me to think about that, that you guys would value more people’s voices just because they have money than someone who’s going to freeze to death,” said Yesenia Jimenez. “What’s uglier: an encampment or death bodies?”
If nothing else, people on both sides of the argument agreed on one thing: the city has to do something to address homelessness—quickly.
“I think this is a very difficult situation all the way around,” said one woman who lives near the encampment. “I really believe that people need to have shelter. I think it’s cruel to evict them just before Christmas. But I also understand other people’s concerns about health and safety … I think there needs to be some sort of collaborative effort because I’ve seen what happened in the city of Santa Cruz and I would hate to see the same type of divisiveness here.”
