SOLANO COUNTY, CA – Homelessness is a growing concern throughout America, as a variety of factors – including economic hardship, mental illness, drug addiction, and an ongoing housing crisis – have led to the rise of homeless encampments in many cities across the nation. Often these encampments leave scores of garbage, waste, and other hazardous conditions in their wake, requiring local municipalities to spend large amounts of taxpayer dollars to clean them up. Such was the case in one California town recently, echoing a growing trend that is becoming all too common in the United States.
Officials in Vacaville, California, were recently forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars for cleanup operations involving several illegal homeless encampments within its borders whose interloping inhabitants had been cleared out; money that clearly could have been used for other uses benefiting the greater public good.
According to the Vacaville Police Department, the cleanups were necessary due to the fact that the waste left behind by the homeless often presents a very real danger to local residents, and one that must be removed as soon as possible to prevent public health and environmental impacts.
“These illegal encampments can quickly develop into public health issues due to the presence of biohazard material, illegal drugs, and drug paraphernalia,” Vacaville Police said in a statement. “The large-scale accumulation of waste and property can also threaten critical waterways in the city.”
Vacaville officials have established a routine when encountering complaints of homeless encampments in the city; when one is identified, the inhabitants are contacted and efforts are made to relocate them to better living conditions, such as local shelters. If those efforts fail, the trespassers are then forced by other means to move out. But whatever way the undomiciled are dispatched, a thorough – and often costly – cleanup always follows.
While some cleanups are performed by employees of the city, such as the sanitation department, some encampments are so polluted by biological waste that private contractors specializing in that type of disposal or called in, often at very large expense. One such location was so beset with biohazard-level waste that its cleanup set taxpayers back over $22,000 alone, illustrating the very real problem that homeless encampments can present, and the underlying issues that perpetuate them in today’s society.
