Several dozen homeless people and tens of tons of trash coexist on a chunk of land split into several parcels in Arcata, where O Street ends and a grassy field and a few groves of trees and blackberry bushes begin, and it’s here that the recent protests at Arcata’s City Council meetings have been waged over. 

Some activists have claimed that Arcata’s government is unfairly and brutally forcing them off of land they have a right to keep camping on; because it’s private property, the city disagrees and says they’re doing their best to make sure the inevitable egress proceeds fairly and safely. 

So what’s going on?

The occupied land is split up into four parcels, about 20 acres total, located west of the Wing Inflatables factory and north of Samoa Boulevard and bisected by the railroad. One of the property owners reached out to the city about doing something about six months ago after years of struggling with the problem.

John Shelter, the operator of New Directions, the company contracted by the property owners and the city to clean up the site, flagged 27 encampments when he first started work in May this year (an encampment could be one tent by itself or a few together). That number has gone down a bit; only 24 of those encampments are occupied as of last week. It’d be impossible to take a census on the place, because people come and go, but he said in an interview with the Outpost that an occupancy of around 50 people would be a safe guess. 

The mental and physical costs of living outside and being crushed under the weight of extreme poverty are immense. Shelter says he met people that were camping on the properties all the way back in 2007. One of them, an older woman who can’t walk, still lives there and is often robbed. He and his crew have removed over 4,000 syringes from the area, and the lack of bathrooms force people to fill empty containers with their own waste. He couldn’t say whether or not many of the occupants were sick.

The other main occupant of the land is the trash, mounds and mounds of it, visible even via aerial photography taken last year. Shelter and his crew have removed 91,000 pounds of the stuff since May from the fields surrounding the encampments, fields of decomposing clothing and household appliances and straight-up garbage; Arcata’s city manager Merritt Perry called it a “solid-waste catastrophe.” 

There is plenty more of it. He says they haven’t touched the area people are camping in (Shelter says one of his top priorities is making sure no one’s personal items are junked), and there’s more detritus in the thick berry vines and trees ringing the property. Some of it is recyclable, but the overwhelming majority of it gets trucked to the landfill.

Figuring out what to do with the people is a lot more complicated. 

“I’m gonna say a majority of them probably don’t want to leave,” Shelter said. “The ones that had been embedded there for a while — they probably don’t, you know, and I would never say that most of them want to. But [they might] if we provide an opportunity that is neutral, that is a compromise.”

Letting them stay isn’t an option either. The property owners want the city to enforce the trespassing laws, and despite the outbursts, the city can’t just decide that the homeless can stay there. 

There aren’t any immediate plans for the properties, but even planning any development requires the garbage thrown away and the people gone.

Perry said that they had enough funding to house all of the campers in city-funded housing projects if they did decide to leave, though there might not be enough space to accommodate all of them.

“Do you accept people who choose not to go into housing, and do you allow them to live on private property against the wishes of a private property owner, or do you enforce trespassing laws?” Perry said in an interview with the Outpost. “And I think when people aren’t looking for solutions, I think you have to enforce trespassing laws. I think you have to do both things. You have to exercise compassion: invest in housing, invest in very low income housing, but at the same time, you can’t relax the standards of a community to allow trespassing on private property or camping in public spaces.”

Shelter’s approach so far (and thus the city’s) has been far from the heavy-handed demolition many of the protestors at the city council meetings have been accusing him of, he claims. None of the campers have been arrested or forced off and have been given months to move elsewhere or into city-sponsored housing. He believes that a little prevention would have been the best cure.

“That whole area on O Street started because it was out of sight, out of mind,” Shelter said. “That’s the biggest crap I’ve ever heard in my life. I kept telling people from day one, out of sight, out of mind is not good. It’s not good. ‘Oh no, it’ll be fine. Don’t you care about them? John, let them be over there. They’ll be fine.’ Well, 15 years later, it’s not fine, right? We should have never allowed it to get that big. We should have helped these individuals.”

Perry said anyone that wanted to discuss long-term solutions would be welcome to reach out.

“The city wants to engage in dialogue for solutions,” he said. “Just yelling and insulting the council or staff really isn’t going to lead to a productive outcome. But I think the city really wants to do it the best it can, to see people transition out of homelessness into housing, and they put their money where their mouth is. I mean, they put the time and effort to create a lot of low- and very low-income housing, and the city will continue to do that — but then we also need to see people who are unhoused step up and pursue those housing options.”