Taxpayers in Berkeley, California, which is located just across the bay from San Francisco, paid for the removal of 75 tons of trash from homeless camps, which included human waste and drug paraphernalia.
According to the city’s proposed budget for 2023 and 2024, the rubbish was collected between September 2021 and March 2022 by Berkeley’s Homeless Response Team.
During the Covid-19 lockdown in 2021, homelessness rose in the city. The budget also said that because to COVID and a challenging legal environment, homeless shelters were “still functioning at reduced capacity.”
On Berkeley’s streets, there are thought to be 535 homeless persons. That equates to 500 pounds of trash each person, according to the city’s budget.
After more than a year of neglect in the city’s homeless camps, Berkeley’s Homeless Response Team started its operations in September 2021.
Over a dozen homeless camps that they deemed unsafe were shut down by the organisation during that time.
In the budget, the group’s actions saw them: ‘Resolving conditions that included raw sewage and human waste, loose and scattered syringes and drug paraphernalia, rodents and other vector hazards, rotting food, and obstruction of sidewalks and vehicular lanes of traffic.’
In those closures, just one arrest was made.
The documents say that the city offered shelter to more than 200 homeless people, more than 160 of those refused.
Last year, another famous homeless encampment in the Golden State, Los Angeles’ Echo Park, underwent a clean-up that garnered 723 pounds of biological waste that included 180 pounds of human feces. Over 200 homeless people were relocated following that clean up.
Amid the drama of his impending recall election, that he won, California Governor Gavin Newsom seemed to invite the homeless community to his state, saying: ‘I’m proud of people from around the world looking at California again for opportunity, and that, again, that should not just be for certain people. All people should aspire to that California dream regardless of their income level and regarding their lot in life.’
Local resident and California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger told the Washington Free Beacon said that the amount of garbage being collected reflected the harsh realities of living on the street.
He said: ‘The data showing that Berkeley’s homeless population is producing 500 pounds of garbage per person is yet more evidence that it is unsafe and unsanitary to allow homeless people to sleep outside,’
Shellenberger went on: ‘The evidence comes just a few weeks after showing that homeless people in Los Angeles are three times more likely to die than homeless people in New York because most of the homeless in L.A. are unsheltered.’
He added: ‘Newsom and Democratic mayors appear intent to use the homeless population to destroy California’s once-beautiful cities because they are in the grip of an anti-civilization ideology.’
One of the areas historically used by the city’s homeless is Berkeley’s iconic People’s Park, the site of numerous anti war protests in the 1960s.
The University of California at Berkeley, who own the land where the park is situated, announced plans to move homeless people away from the park in order to build student housing on the land in March 2022.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said that the school was backing a project to rehouse homeless people living in the park in a converted motel.
Christ said: ‘It begins with partnership … and it also begins with the university’s accepting that this is our responsibility to address the tragedy of homelessness in our midst.’
There are reportedly between 40 and 70 people living in the park at any given moment.
KTVU reported in June 2022 that demonstrations were planned to stop UC Berkeley from removing the homeless people from the area.
Police were called to the People’s Park that same month after a man started striking a couple with a golf club while setting their tent on fire, according to Berkeley Side.
According to the same website, the city saw at least one homeless person’s death every month between August and December 2021.
Berkeley War Apartments and Hope Center, a planned 142-unit affordable apartment and shelter facility, will debut in September 2022.
The Public Policy Institute of California reports that 74% of those polled in some areas of the state believe homelessness to be a major concern.
California was one of 14 states that reported an increase in homelessness in 2021, despite a federal government report claiming that there was an 8 percent national drop.
According to EveryOneHome, there will be a 22% increase in homelessness in Berkeley’s county of Alameda between 2019 and 2022.
The percentage of homeless people in the county is highest in Oakland.
More than three times as many people live in Oakland as in Berkeley.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin reportedly stated in a May 2022 report that the city spends more “per capita on homelessness than any other jurisdiction in the area.”
The Greater Bay Area, which encompasses San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, lost approximately 115,000 residents between April 2020 and July 2021 as people abandoned the area.
Nearly 70% of individuals who fled the area said in a survey by the San Francisco Examiner that they felt less comfortable there because of “homeless and mentally ill people on the streets.”
According to the same survey, 88 percent of San Francisco residents believed that homelessness had gotten worse.