Hi Claycord! Long time listener, first time caller, lol. Anyway, I was driving today, looked over and was shocked to see what I saw in the attached picture. I get being homeless. I was actually pretty close to being homeless at one point in my life. But why must people just completely trash the area they’re living in, and why aren’t our local (useless) officials doing anything about it? Why do we just look the other way when someone is homeless and committing crimes, as if the rules don’t apply to them? It’s so frustrating to see our local cities turn into trash. And don’t get me started on how many homeless people start fires. If I started a fire in the street in front of my house, and it burned the surrounding vegetation, I’d most likely be cited for arson.
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I’d call the cops everyday but they can’t do much about it.
Even if the feral people did enough to be arrested they’d just come right back the next day.
There was a nutjob homeless person in a town near me who would commit petty crimes and get arrested every week, then come right back…… until that person deliberately set a building on fire, that did it.
Been gone about 8 months so far.
It’s pathetic that the homeless leave such a mess, but in reality, I’m not surprised. It’s not like they have garbage service that will come pick up their trash. They don’t care and this is the end result.
California is a great place to be homeless and get paid for it.
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As to competency of democrat politicians in California,
“Just a few months after Gavin Newsom was sworn in as mayor of San Francisco in 2004, he announced a plan to get all of the city’s chronically homeless residents off the streets within 10 years.”
sacbee https://tinyurl.com/vdw3uhau
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What about SF ?
“A self-proclaimed’ old-school junkie’ who moved from Texas to San Francisco because ‘it’s f*****g easy’ to be homeless there claims he’s being paid by the city government to live on the streets, getting $620 in cash per month and hundreds of food stamps while he sells Narcan and enjoys Amazon Prime and Netflix on his phone.
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‘This right now is literally by choice, literally by choice. If we’re going to be realistic, they pay you to be homeless here,’ James, a homeless man with face tattoos who has been living in San Francisco since June…” …
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“…it only took one phone call to receive government assistance, including hundreds in cash and food stamps worth approximately $100, and notes that the ‘free money’ is motivation to remain homeless.”
dailymail https://tinyurl.com/bdhc5put
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Self medication is another problem of many homeless.
When personal drug use became a misdemeanor (Prop 47) it took an extremely successful tool away from Judges. Ability to impose a harsh Felony sentence which would be immediately stayed, provided defendant got clean-n-sober, stayed that way and maintained steady employment. Defendant was placed on 3 – 5 years of probation with the VERY CLEAR understanding if terms of probation were not adhered to the original Felony sentence would immediately be imposed.
Saw that method work from 1983 to 2014, more times than I can count.
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These days IF a substance abuser even gets to Court and Judge learns of substance abuse and offers treatment, defendants decline opting instead for jail. Knowing full well due to jail overcrowding they’ll be back out on our streets after serving a mere fraction of their sentence and long before a 90 day treatment program would end. They’re turned back onto our streets with their addiction behavior intact. Prop 36 did much to restore Judges ability to force substance abusers to hit bottom.
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Then there is,
the problem of which we do not speak of, . . . . mental health.
Leave a mess?
they leave a hazmat situation.
Do we pay for a dumpster?
porta-potty , if so how many?
Sharps container for needles?
what about showers and how many a day?
Because the people who run the cities in this area are liberals?
What would conservative leaders do to eliminate the problem?
Cut funding. Arrest and prosecute people for criminal acts. Break up the camps. Tow away the junker cars and RVs.
Basically remove the incentive to be homeless HERE. Keep feeding the wild animals and they will keep coming back. Keep feeding the animals and they become dependent.
Address the mental health issues when you contact the homeless.
Sounds like a solid start to me.
Addressing the mental health issues is the only item mentioned that will help eliminate the problem. Aside from putting people in jail for criminal acts (e.g. government housing), your actions won’t eliminate the problem; it will only move the problem somewhere else. I agree with you we should increase funding for addressing mental health. We will also have to increase funding for our court system and build more jails because we will be arresting a lot of homeless people.
Joat, this is an unsolvable problem. There will always be homeless people, some by choice and some by chance. You will never eliminate homelessness.
The idea is to eliminate the incentives for vagrancy. Keep paying people to not work and you will get more non-workers. Keep paying people to stay homeless and they will continue to be homeless. Make things harder instead of easier and they will fix their own situation or move on. If they move on then they are someone else’s problem.
Help the helpless, not the clueless. Offer drug/alcohol treatment for those who want it. Job training for those who want to better their lives. Things like that. But just writing checks and turning a blind eye to what is going on only makes the problem worse.
There are a reasons why you do not feed wild animals. They will return for the easy meal. That is dangerous to the populace AND the animal. Think about a bear and unlocked dumpsters. Once the bear realized that dumpsters are easy pickings, they will seek out the easy food and eventually lose their ability to hunt and forage. They become dependent.
The homeless are synonymous to the bears. They get tax payer cash to spend. Free phones. Food from charity groups. Needles and crack pipes in govt kits. They have no reason to work and be responsible (hunt and forage) because their immediate needs are taken care of. Also, these perks are a signal to other homeless that there is lots of free stuff if they just move here.
Take away the freebies and they will either clean up their act or move on. My point is that it would be wonderful if homelessness were eliminated yesterday, but we all know that isn’t going to happen. And since it isn’t happening then it would be better for me and my community if they were someone else’s problem.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. Although I’m not sure I’m in agreement with your last sentence, I also don’t have a better answer.
It’s us. We elect people that consider a tent on concrete and some fentanyl to get you through the night or OD as compassion.
I don’t look the other way – I’ll say something, do something…. .but alss know Becton won’t back us or LE up – unless she gets with prop 36 soon maybe we’ll be looking for a replacement
For 3 weeks we’ve had a pile of garbage from the homeless encampment just yards away sitting just over the shoulder on the westbound on ramp entrance to southbound SR242 at Olivera Road. The City of Concord doesn’t clean it up because they believe it’s state property, the State of California won’t clean it up because they believe it’s Contra Costa Water District property, the Contra Costa Water District won’t clean it up because they believe it’s state property, and the homeless encampment just adds to the pile of garbage. Jurisdictional incompetence is the problem here. Nobody in government seems to want to do the right thing and just clean up the garbage. Everyone in elective office seems to want to move on to higher office and therefore they’re unwilling to do anything that may tarnish their reputations to party voters.
I don’t, never did. Talked straight with DOR ect after 12 years years of of crap thru the county with both children. Trained, she listentened. Done. She knew the next step.
And why is the city responisble for cleaning up the crap the homeless leave lying around but the taxpayers citizens are required to clean up their place? Ever heard of code enforcement? I cannot have an expired vehicle in my driveway, or leave a car on the street for more than 72 hours … but the cars in the homeless camps have no plates, been smashed, no windows and yet that is OK? Forget the cars, if I left a pile of rotting garbage in my front yard, how long would it take for code enforcement to come by and tell me to clean it up or pay a fine … but a homeless camp-NEVER. Why, cause people like you think it is a harmless crime and that we should just hold them and hug them and tell it it will be okay as they stick the third needle into their arm that day after stealing from the local safeway.
You are either the biggest troll on Claycord or your priorities are completely screwed up. I dont know which ..
Calm down man. The government goes after whoever has the $. And use the revenue to support those who don’t. Welcome to socialism that exists under capitalism.
How will the homeless pay fine if they have no $? You could do the things that they do but it will cost you as you stated.
The ‘We’ that looks the other way when homeless people commit crimes are the Democrat politicians and their supporters.
Well we have to look the other way otherwise we’d be shooting them and then we would be the ones that get taken off the street and thrown in jail exactly opposite of what we want to happen.
I ignore them and don’t even think twice about it, they don’t bother me they actually don’t affect me as long as they aren’t in my face and invading my privacy in any way I’m not going to beat the living crap out of them.
It would be incredibly easy to blame Governors Ronald Reagan (for emptying psychiatric facilities) and Jerry Brown (for emptying prisons) for a lot of this. It’s time to discontinue enablement and place people back into these institutions. Also, admit that a few people simply cannot ever be rehabilitated.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/03/hard-truths-about-deinstitutionalization-then-and-now/
We don’t look the other way. We watch it with contempt and shake our heads, knowing that if we tried to do anything, we would be the ones in trouble. A certain political philosophy has turned the civil society upside down. Illegal aliens and lawbreakers take precedence over the taxpaying citizen.
California does nothing for the homeless and everything for illegals.
If you visit the Nature Park in Concord, there’s a homeless guy that’s been living there in his blue mini van. He’s there everyday.
Acts like he owns the place, swears, smashes beer cans, and smokes in his vehicle in the parking lot. He even has a black lab puppy.
The police say they can’t do anything unless he’s “illegally parked”.
So if 5 more homeless people start joining him, I guess it’s ok.
They can start building houses in the nice park that’s supposed to be clean.
There’s also 2 vehicles from a man living in the parking lot in Clayton Rd. of the new Dollar Tree.
How is this allowed?
Why does CA not care? They do nothing to help people on the streets but illegals get everything for free.
We’re living in 🤡🌍.
What’s really kind of disturbing to me is that all of you assume that homeless people are all the same, all criminals, all don’t care…. Just like having an issue with people being racist, we should not be judging people and making assumptions categorizing, each is different in their own way, and as Americans we have the right to live free. We have the right to free speech, for the most part but why say something negative instead of DOING something positive. So if you put your fear where it belongs on the back burner, and maybe ask whoever it may be to not trash the area because you have to live there too maybe that would be a positive way to bridge the gap between the homeless and housed. I’m not saying all homeless care, but you’d be surprised at what you find past all the statistics politicians and newspapers report. Have a great day.