Caterpillar construction vehicles dumped piles of trash and abandoned belongings into a seemingly never-ending line of dump trucks at Teichert Ponds Tuesday.
The city of Chico enforced its anti-camping ordinances in a section of the park this week as part of its ongoing effort to crack down on unhoused people camping in public spaces.
Chico Public Works Director of Operations and Maintenance Erik Gustafson said people camping in the area of Teichert Ponds marked for enforcement were notified in the weeks prior.
"We have a handful of folks that wait till the last minute, unfortunately,” he said. “They have to move along if they're not going to accept a shelter bed. And if they don't, they could be cited or arrested."
Due to the Warren v. Chico settlement agreement between the city and a group of unhoused residents, the city must have shelter options available before enforcing its anti-camping ordinance.
In the weeks leading up to enforcement, Gustafson said a city outreach team contacted campers to try to direct them to shelters. The city directed campers to the city-funded Pallet shelter site, which was established as a result of the settlement agreement, as well as other shelter sites.
When the city began removing campers at Teichert Ponds Tuesday, Chico resident Nick Hastings was loading up blankets and clothes into a shopping cart. He said he had recently moved his camp from Teichert Ponds because it was getting crowded, but had returned to get some things he’d left as well as to salvage any usable items abandoned at the park.
Hastings said he had stayed at the Pallet shelter, but was asked to leave after fighting with another resident. He said the fight was not his fault, but there was no appeal process. He said he felt the city could offer options that better suited the needs of the unhoused population.
“It's almost like they don't want anything to work,” Hastings said.
Other unhoused residents in Chico also had concerns about accessing the Pallet shelter. Ashley Threwit is currently camping at the city-sanctioned alternative campsite on Eaton and Cohasset roads.
These campsites were intended for people who weren’t able to be admitted to other shelters. Threwit said she and her husband tried to voluntarily enter the Pallet shelter, but weren't able to.
"The pallet shelter has been a doozy for us," Threwit said. "But in our process of trying to get into the Pallet shelter, we started by going to the Pallet shelters directly because we didn't have a working phone. We went to the site, and they said we had to have a phone and we had to call the outreach team. And since we didn't have the phone, [...] we're stuck."
Threwit said she heard their best bet at getting into the pallet shelter was to be visited by a city outreach team member — which isn't likely to happen since Threwit and her husband camp on a city-sanctioned site and not a public park marked for enforcement.
Gustafson said during previous enforcements, fewer than half of those camped in public spaces agreed to go to a shelter site offered by the city when approached by outreach teams.
“We've experienced, you know, about a 30% occupancy rate of those through the outreach and engagement efforts that actually take us up on a shelter bed that we offer to those folks,” he said.
According to the city’s website Wednesday, there are currently 25 Pallet shelters available and 21 open beds at the Torres Shelter, which is a congregate homeless shelter in Chico.
City officials said clean-up will continue at Teichert ponds in the coming weeks.
