City of Lakeport removes homeless camp
- City of Lakeport
- Posted On
LAKEPORT, Calif. — The city of Lakeport reported Thursday that it removed a large homeless camp on the south side of Safeway.
The Lakeport Police Department and Public Works staff removed the site, which was located on city-owned property known as the Ninth Street extension, which is an unimproved road right of way.
Officials said this location has been a regular site of camps and a concern for surrounding residential and commercial property owners for numerous reasons including safety, sanitary conditions and fire danger.
Police said they surveyed the property and contacted the occupants numerous times in efforts to mitigate the situation.
Lakeport Police’s embedded crisis responder from Lake Family Resource Center worked with occupants to offer resources from the many agencies working on homelessness in Lake County. In this situation, one offer included housing and a job.
On March 9, by direction of the chief of police, the property was ordered vacated, with written notices posted and personally served on occupants, giving them sufficient time to remove their belongings. These notices and removal times are required by federal court case law decisions.
Over the past two weeks, numerous other follow-up contacts were made at the camp and persons were notified the removal would start this morning, officials said.
When police arrived at 8 a.m. Thursday, they located only one occupant in the camp. That occupant was offered — and accepted — resources to be transported to a local homeless shelter and to be further provided with other resources on Friday.
Numerous public works and police staff proceeded to clean the camp and rehabilitate the area over the next nine hours. This work included hauling off 15 yards of trash and fire fuel reduction. Numerous complaints involved the use of cooking and warming fires in this high fire danger area.
Police said they also safeguarded, removed and stored a pickup bed load of personal property which had value to the occupants. This safeguarding and property storage is also required by federal court case law decisions as well as being the morally appropriate action to take, officials said.
Authorities said the removal of homeless camps can be complex and when they take this action they want to be sure that the problem will not just move down the street to the next neighborhood or business district.
“For this reason we are very persistent with offering resources and assistance with connecting people to programs including those for housing, behavioral health and drug and alcohol addiction,” the police department reported. “The most significant reasons we see people being in a homeless situation are behavioral health and substance abuse problems.”
Police said many of the people causing issues for neighborhoods and businesses are people who refuse assistance because they do not want to recognize or change their conditions.
Additionally, many of the tools police have used to have to deal with misdemeanor criminal behavior have been removed by voter or legislative initiatives.
Much of this kind of criminal behavior is the very thing affecting the lives of the residents and business owners and generally making people feel unsafe or hesitant to use their public spaces or even being able to run their business, police said.
“It is sometimes difficult for us to address this bad behavior but we want the community to know we continue to work hard every day to keep Lakeport safe. Please continue to contact us with your concerns,” police said in the Thursday report.