Unhoused residents living at the Comanche Creek Greenway are still awaiting a judge’s decision on how long they will be able to remain there.
Six unhoused plaintiffs sued the city on April 8 over its policies of sweeping homeless encampments. The lawsuit claims that there are no other appropriate options for shelter in Chico and the city is criminalizing homelessness.
The city of Chico has maintained that there are enough shelter beds available for those willing to use them. U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England, Jr. on April 23 gave the city of Chico and the plaintiffs three weeks to come to a resolution. In the meantime, the city is barred from sweeping encampments.
NSPR reporters visited Comanche Creek multiple times in recent weeks to speak to those living there about what the past weeks have been like and what closing the encampment would mean for them.
The Day The City Closed The Parking Lot
On April 7, the City of Chico issued a press releasestating the parking lot at Comanche Creek would be temporarily closed from noon the next day through April 23. The day of the closure, April 8, Crystin Jaimes spoke with NSPR, saying the notice hanging on her tent stating that she had 72 hours to vacate the premises had shown up a few days earlier.
“Today, yesterday, and the day before that, they’ve been out here like three days in a row like just harassing us you know,” Jaimes said. “I mean like once is enough, let us pack.”
Jaimes has been living at Comanche Creek for sixteen months, she said. After being fired from her job, she said she hasn’t been able to find work since the pandemic hit.
“It affected everything, like everything,” Jaimes said. “I don’t think there’s not one thing it didn’t touch in none of our lives out here.”
At the time of the closure, Jaimes’ plan was to move to a new location in Chico that was eight miles away. She’d take her belongings and the five pitbull puppies she’s currently watching for a friend to the new site by way of multiple trips on her bike cart. It was a distance she was worried older adults living at Comanche Creek wouldn’t be able to make.
“There’s a lot of them out there that are disabled,” Jaimes said. “They’re really old and they can’t really move like that, and that’s a faraway distance from everything.”
Comanche Creek has offered older adults who are unhoused more security than camping in other places in the city, Jaimes said. The location has portable restrooms, water fountains and is close to grocery stores, which Jaimes said the “young cats” go to and shop for the seniors at the encampment. There’s also a nearby convenience store that Jaimes said is “cool” about letting people air up their bike tires or get water.
“It’s kind of like settled right here,” Jaimes said. “It’s like, stable for them.”
Across the park, Ambur Bond echoed Jaimes’ sentiments regarding unhoused older adults, who she’s worried about during the pandemic. Bond was offered a room with Project Roomkey, but said she didn’t take it because she thought “there might be an older person who really needs it.”
Bond — who had a heart attack and open-heart surgery last year — said one of the hardest things for her has been going on social media where many community Facebook groups are filled with disparaging comments about those who are unhoused. Anytime she goes on there she feels the need to defend her neighbors, she said.
“People are always talking bad about us and I’m just like, ‘They don’t even try to understand or they just think that we're incapable and like disgusting,’” Bond said. “We’re not all like that, just some people have issues that need to be taken care of and they don’t get help they need.”
Like many people at Comanche Creek, Bond said she doesn’t know where she’s going to go next, but she thinks the evictions are going to cause more problems than they solve. Unlike many previous encampments in Chico, Comanche Creek was mostly out of sight, Bond said, but with the location no longer an option, she worries more people will be on the city’s streets.
“It’s going to look worse than LA, with the homeless,” Bond said. “Like, if they could just have little 5x5 mini homes, and as long as everybody kept cleaned up, then it would be okay.”
As for an immediate solution to homelessness in Chico, Bond said the answer is simple — don’t move people out of Comanche Creek.
“What they're about to do is going to be catastrophic,” Bond said.
Saying Chico’s sidewalks would be a sea of tents if Comanche Creek closed, Bond said, unhoused people in the city weren’t going to get rid of the few possessions they own or leave after being moved from another public space. They’ll migrate, she said.
“They’ll migrate somewhere else,” Bond said. “If they have to take over another location that they've been kicked out of before they will — because what else do they expect us to do?”
Those Who Remain Await A Verdict
On April 8th, six unhoused plaintiffs filed a lawsuit seeking to bar Chico from clearing Comanche Creek and other encampments located on city property. Three days later — a day before the camp was scheduled to be cleared — a U.S. district judge granted a temporary restraining order which prevented the city from sweeping encampments while the lawsuit was litigated.
The day after the news, Pete Pedro Martinez and Rebecca Geroge sat around a picnic table eating lunch.
Martinez had been at Comanche Creek for a couple of months and homeless for about five years.
He and several others camped there had already decided not to leave Comanche Creek, he said, even if the judge hadn’t blocked the city from clearing the encampment.
“By having no place to go, we came to a decision of not even going at all, because there's no place to go,” he said.
Rebecca George agreed and said she hadn’t been provided any resources.
“The city doesn’t really say too much that I’ve seen or noticed,” George said.
She said she feels Chico has been very closed-minded in addressing the issue.
“There's no solution. I mean, there's got to be some form of compromise and solution found, otherwise, you're going to have a problem,” she said. “To me, it seems like this is a perfectly industrial area...it's a good spot.”
For George, leaving Comanche Creek wouldn’t just be difficult physically, but also difficult emotionally, as she’d be leaving friends and neighbors who support her.
“These people have helped me more than my family has in some ways,” she said.
What Happens Next?
On April 23, a federal judge extended the temporary restraining order preventing the city from removing encampments for three more weeks. He said the city and those bringing the lawsuit forward need to collaborate on finding a resolution.
In the meantime, those camped at Comanche Creek remain unsure as to where they’ll be able to find shelter, but they hope that wherever they go, they’ll get to stay together.
The city of Chico has repeatedly told NSPR it does not comment on ongoing litigation.
NSPR’s Andre Byik contributed to this report.
