California Department of Transportation contractors moved in to clean up an encampment under the Olympic Boulevard offramp from southbound I680 in Walnut Creek Wednesday, carting off two truckloads of debris after giving the site’s occupants time to move out.
Neighbors who have complained of cut fencing, trash, prohibited vehicular traffic and other behavior associated with the encampment celebrated the transformation.
“Finally,” wrote Adam Jensen, an area business owner who said he had complained about the site in the past, watching as contractors removed bags of trash and hauled it away.
Workers, who told a NEWS24/680 photographer they had cleaned the site before, left abandoned items of apparent value in neat piles nearby. A car, which neighbors had complained also appeared on the site one day, was also recovered and removed.
Wednesday’s cleanup, while welcomed, was not believed to be the end of the encampment.
“They’ll be back,” one worker said.
The new normal…
A huge problem only getting worse.
Come back in two weeks and see how it looks.
Appreciate the effort
Where did they go? It’s been raining and cold.
I believe in housing and caring for the deserving. But there are far too many people abusing the system. We can’t keep trying to spend our way out of the problem.
Temporary fix but still better than what it was.
Ladies ahead of me at Safeway talking about this today. Appreciate the cleanup.
That’s a good start.
Hopefully they get the memo to move where they can afford to uphold the social contract.
Few News24-680 readers can afford Belvedere, Hillsboro or Atherton, and fewer still (if any) live in such prestigious locales. That’s why we settled in the East Bay rather than squatting under bridges across the Bay. Plenty of childhood contemporaries couldn’t hack it in our hometown, so they decamped to more affordable environs rather than camping under highway 24. So it goes.
Don’t blame rampant vagrancy on a “housing shortage” or “affordability crisis;” blame it on people who refuse — or otherwise lack the wherewithal — to accept and adapt to their economic circumstances.
That’s not mutually exclusive with a housing shortage & affordability crisis.
Vacancy rates near zero and record low inventory prove that nearly 100% of housing units in the East Bay are “affordable,” to their current occupants.
There is indeed a regional housing “shortage” insofar as local governments have refused to allow private property owners and developers to build enough supply to absorb demand. Such market inefficiencies are a predictable result of government infringement upon private commerce.
This policy failure does not excuse vagrants’ squalor and trespass. Rational people adapt to a regional housing shortage by relocating to places with more abundant housing. Squatters sleeping rough and depositing their refuse in our community are inherently irrational and refuse to heed the most basic standards of communal living. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the housing shortage.
I am fairly confident that they crawled back into the sewer from which they originally emerged. Simple fix: provide medical care to the bat shit crazy folks, rehab and job training to the extreme substance abusers and for the last group of lazy thieves, serious jail time if they cannot get their life in order…
Don’t try to push them into places you find suitable. Help them survive in places they find suitable
If you are hungry I will help feed you. If you are cold I’ll help find you a blanket. Steal from me or pollute the land and I will do everything possible to move you out and make sure you don’t come back. Your rights don’t supersede mine.
We’re getting really close to declaring this a hopeless problem.
Wow, in reading the above comments we have sure changed our attitude towards the ‘homeless’ in just the last 2 years. Two years ago there was all this compassion and heartfelt concerned for these ‘poor souls’, and how Walnut Creek should do its part by funding the Trinity Center hundreds of thousands of dollars so it could help them. Well a lot of us skeptics thought that it would only attract more street people to Walnut Creek. Which it has definitely done- along with all the associated troubles . All these services are available over in Concord in much better situated areas. Walnut Creek needs to stay tough on the situation and not let them come back. there’s equally comfortable freeway Crossings in Concord Pleasant Hill Pacheco and Martinez. I may sound cruel but I’ve been working with homeless for 20 years genuinely helping them. In 90% of them need to start helping themselves. We are actually just enabling them by doting on them so much. They lose their self-esteem and desire to work… creating a further downward tailspin. We need to be tough and firm