Home, home in the rain

With the RV problem largely behind us, our focus must now shift to those folks farther down on the housing ladder. Recently I’ve been observing a marked increase in the number of homeless encampments throughout the city. Redwood City has always had a few, but these days I’m seeing tarps and tents in places I’ve never seen them before.

Early this week, with a powerful storm bearing down upon us, I took some time to visit a few local places where homeless people typically set up camp. These camps, although easy to spot when you are on foot, are usually tucked away where they are less easily noticed by passing motorists. For instance, there are at least half a dozen of them along Seaport Boulevard, mostly hidden behind bushes. From a car you might catch a flash of color from a tarp or a tent, but walk along the sidewalk — which passes behind those bushes — and you’ll see the entirety of these handmade homes.

The four I counted on the south side of Seaport Boulevard came as no surprise, since they’ve been there for months. The ones I spotted on the north side did surprise me, however. Once there had been a good-sized encampment on that side, squeezed between the freight tracks and the concrete recycling facility’s fence. But a couple of months ago those were cleared out, along with much of the vegetation that had partially concealed them. Some are back now, and this time they seem to be inside the fencing.

Not all camps aim for discretion. Drive down El Camino Real where it passes beneath Woodside Road and you’ll see two, one on either side of the overpass, right out in the open. In both cases the residents have pitched actual tents. The setup just south of Woodside Road consists of a large red-and-gray dome-shaped tent, placed neatly behind a chain-link fence. There, the tent not only houses the occupant, but likely all of their belongings: the “campsite” consists of nothing but the tent.

As for the tent just north of the overpass, it is a much smaller blue one pitched right beside the sidewalk. That tent sits beside an even taller pile of what presumably are the person’s belongings. Although the pile was topped with a blue tarp, the tarp was a small one. The sides of the pile were fully exposed, and undoubtedly got soaked.

Can you imagine riding out this week’s rain and high winds in a tent, much less a makeshift shelter built of tarps, scraps of wood and cardboard? Even on a good day, many of these shelters seem unsafe and probably unsanitary. Although a few of these people, if offered, would turn down a space in a homeless shelter, perhaps by taking a carrot-and-stick approach similar to what they did with our RV dwellers the city can persuade most of these folks to transition into more conventional, and safer, housing. Of course, this presumes that we have enough beds for these people in our shelters, which may not be the case. But whatever we do, we need to do it quickly, before the situation gets out of hand, and Redwood City begins to resemble cities like Portland, Oregon, where people camp directly on the sidewalks and where giant encampments can easily be seen from the freeways.

Homelessness can be an “out of sight, out of mind” issue. In Redwood City, at least, our homeless people are no longer entirely out of sight. With our recent weather putting extra urgency into the need to solve this problem, it’s time for bold action. With any luck, the city can successfully deal with these homeless encampments as they did with our on-street RV parks, improving life for not only those who are homeless, but also for the community at large.

Greg Wilson is the creator of Walking Redwood City, a blog inspired by his walks throughout Redwood City and adjacent communities. He can be reached at greg@walkingRedwoodCity.com. Follow Greg on Twitter @walkingRWC.