WATSONVILLE—An attorney representing a group of people experiencing homelessness that has set up camp at a parking lot on Bridge Street has filed an injunction seeking a temporary restraining order against the city of Watsonville.
Anthony Prince, general counsel for the California Homeless Union/Statewide Organizing Council, filed the injunction in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Sunday, the day his clients, members of the Pajaro/Watsonville Homeless Union, were facing a planned cleaning of the parking lot from Watsonville Public Works.
The city did not go through with the cleanup. Watsonville Police Department officers instead posted a notice at the camp that the 25 or so people staying there had to vacate by Wednesday at 8:30am. Officers and other city employees also offered vouchers for a local hotel and tried to connect them with service providers. But the people at the camp chose not to accept the vouchers because, among other things, they were only good for a two-night stay and the hotel would not accommodate people without identification, Prince says.
The Watsonville City Council is meeting tonight at 6:30pm to discuss the injunction in a closed session.
It is unclear whether the city plans to move forward with the cleanup on Wednesday, or when a federal judge will consider the injunction.
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.
Prince says that his clients are not refusing services—they have multiple times called local shelters looking for beds—but they want meaningful help that could aid them in escaping homelessness.
“Nobody wants to be out here,” he said Sunday. “It’s cold, the rain is coming and it’s about to be Christmas … What we’re asking for is indoor, safe accommodations.”
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 from around the county 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 there have also received donations, including blankets, tarps, food and pallets that they have used to elevate their tents in anticipation of incoming rain.
Prince contends that disbanding the camp without providing a long-term shelter solution would put his clients in danger of the inclement weather and the spread of Covid-19.
The move would also, a local physician says, make it more difficult to provide the people there with needed medical care.
Jason Johnston, a physician assistant with the County Health Services Agency’s Watsonville Health Center and Homeless Persons’ Health Project, in a letter asked city leaders to honor “my patients’ right to health and safety.”
“A closure of the encampment would endanger the health of my patients in multiple respects, and the necessary measures to mitigate this harm are not in place,” he wrote.
In his role, Johnston provides primary care as well as addiction and behavioral health services to many of the people gathered at the camp. Through this work, the county has helped many people escape homelessness, he says.
“These services everyday (sic) save lives from addiction and overdose, and provide critical care to support medical and behavioral health,” he wrote.
He added: “A primary obstacle faced in the provision of this care and moving homeless residents into housing are the attempts at dispersing unhouse Watsonville residents by city and law enforcement. Due to aggressive measures like the attempts to close the Bridge Street Encampment my patients are forced into hiding from these public agencies in order to find the basic shelter they need to survive … My patients’ lives are in jeopardy if this is allowed to proceed.”
