Daily routine cleans up Baker Street encampment

Sep. 2—The homeless encampment on Baker Street made quite a mess Thursday night. Scattered on the sidewalk the next morning were candy wrappers, broken glass, half-eaten cookies, assorted shoes and an empty carton of chocolate milk.

But by 9 a.m. Friday, it had all been removed in a coordinated cleanup by men who spent the night there.

"We're getting better cleaning up after ourselves," said Dennis Rucker, who made several passes with his tarp to sweep debris into the gutter. A scooper came along after him and mounds of trash were taken away.

The morning routine on Baker Street is a unique example of daily life at local encampments whose spread has put residents on edge while testing teams of workers assigned to one of Bakersfield's most pressing challenges.

People who would otherwise be camping in the dry bed of the Kern River are instead using shopping carts lately to prop up tarps and blankets for shelter on the sidewalk. They huddle for safety and, in the case of Baker Street, convenient access to the St. Vincent de Paul Homeless Center that opens every morning for coffee, breakfast and showers.

City officials often hear from residents alarmed that encampments have grown in size and number. Although the typical response is to take down information and send someone to check it out, at a deeper level, officials say much is being done to get at root causes and develop effective means for heading off a bigger problem.

"There's a lot more to this than just cleaning up an encampment," said City Councilman Andrae Gonzales, whose Ward 2 includes the Baker Street and other encampments.

Steve Loftus says it's not enough. Last month, he emailed photos of the Baker Street encampment to city officials, as he does regularly as part of a one-man pressure campaign. He included The Californian in the email distribution list and invited the newspaper to come take a look.

The northeast Bakersfield resident said in an interview last week encampments are popping up around the city, sometimes just two nights after they were cleared away. That tells him the money local government spends combating homelessness isn't going to good use.

More should be done to move people off the streets and into rehabilitation or mental health treatment, he said, so people can use sidewalks and businesses can operate unimpeded.

"It's kind of like a game of cat and mouse," Loftus said. "But it's almost like the city looks the other way." He added that he has asked how much money the city spends cleaning up encampments but received no answer.

"My whole issue with this is, all this money that the city of Bakersfield gets and Kern County gets, why are all these people on the street?" he asked. "Where is the money going to?"

Executive Director James "Jim" Wheeler at Flood Ministries, which connects unhoused people around Bakersfield to various resources, said he shares the frustrations of taxpayers who don't like seeing the consequences of encampments in their city. But he said progress is being made to address them.

Flood Ministries has placed more than 600 people in shelters, Wheeler said, and local government has created more than 400 shelter beds, almost all of which fill daily. Doing more will require greater resources, and not necessarily money, he said.

Otherwise, people who had been out of sight along the river will simply move from place to place.

"At the end of the day," Wheeler said, "there has to be someplace to go."

City spokesman Joseph Conroy noted the Bakersfield Police Department Impact Team and the city's Rapid Response Team regularly patrol and clear away known "hot spots" such as the Baker Street encampment. He said by email officials also respond to individual complaints made directly to local council members and reports filed through the Bakersfield Mobile app.

The city addressed 49 encampments the week before last, Conroy wrote, which was about the average last year, when municipal workers also removed 2,568 tons of trash. He added that Flood makes contact 122 times per week on average with people living on the street.

Generally, Conroy reported, staff trying to address problematic encampments post a notice saying people must vacate the premises within three days. The case goes to a hearing officer who may issue an abatement order leading to the removal of items left behind at encampments. He added that Loftus receives before-and-after photos from the city.