SLO clears out homeless encampment near Cal Poly: ‘We can’t settle down’
Curtis started Thursday morning by collecting cans to sell for recycling. The 53-year-old has been homeless for about six years, and had lived beside the railroad tracks near Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo for a while.
Around 11 a.m. Thursday, city officials told him to pack up and leave his camp.
“We can’t settle down and have a sense of any kind of permanency,” said Curtis, who declined to give his last name because he doesn’t want to embarrass family living in the area. “You’re constantly on the edge of your seat, waiting for something to happen. That gets to you after awhile.”
On Thursday morning, San Luis Obispo city staff tore down a homeless encampment beside the Union Pacific Railroad tracks along California Boulevard north of Pepper Street, displacing about four people who lived there.
The city cleared the encampment because it was near the railroad tracks and on a culvert, according to Kelsey Nocket, the city’s homelessness response manager.
“Both pose an imminent safety risk to inhabitants of the camp as well as surrounding community,” Nocket wrote in an email to The Tribune.
According to Nocket, the camp inhabitants violated three penal codes by living near the railroad tracks — breaking rules against trespassing on railroad property, squatting and littering.
The city’s Public Works Department coordinated the camp removal, which started at 8:30 a.m. and continued throughout the day.
A case worker from San Luis Obispo’s Community Action Team was on hand to direct folks to services and temporary housing, and the San Luis Obispo Police Department sent officers “to ensure safety,” Nocket said.
“Our goal is to ensure health and safety of all community members,” Nocket wrote in the email. “Encampments are not safe environments, especially for inhabitants due to the environmental hazards, personal safety and health risks of living in areas not intended nor equipped for human habitation.”
The city normally posts a notice ahead of camp removals so residents can prepare for the move and find services, but won’t provide notice when there’s “an imminent safety risk,” Nocket said.
Curtis said the city didn’t notify him about the move ahead of time, and he doesn’t know where he’ll end up.
“It’s completely unplanned. I’m tired. I haven’t eaten,” he said.
Curtis said the city frequently asks him to move — with the frequency varying from once a day to once a month.
“We usually get chased out pretty quick,” Curtis said. “When you know you’re gonna leave, the hopelessness gets to you. It’s hard to do what you need to do.”
Curtis said he once stayed at the 40 Prado Homeless Services Center in San Luis Obispo, but didn’t like how he was treated so he hasn’t gone back.
After staying in the hospital for 10 days, his doctor told him he could recover at 40 Prado. But the shelter didn’t let him stay in a bed when he arrived, he said.
“It was the first time getting out of the hospital for a week and I didn’t feel good at all,” Curtis said. “It just wasn’t a comfortable place to be. I couldn’t relax, didn’t stay in my bed, and I ended up just walking out of there because of the way I was being treated.”
He also said the homeless services shelter isn’t compatible with his lifestyle.
“It doesn’t fit my life,” he said. “You’ve got the hours that are just very consistent. ... I need to go out in the middle of the night.”
Curtis said he makes his money by recycling cans. He doesn’t steal from others, he said, or use food stamps or accept welfare checks from the government.
“I don’t want to break any law and I don’t want to be messed with. I just want to live like everybody else does,” Curtis said.
Curtis said that people have negative assumptions about him because he’s homeless, which can be painful.
“People look at me and I think they automatically judge me,” he said. “I believe in God. I went to church my whole life. I don’t want to hurt anybody. I don’t want to steal from you. I’m not different than anybody else. This lifestyle and the way you’re treated makes you feel like a different person.”
Curtis wasn’t the only person displaced by the clearing of the camp.
Duff, 54, has bounced around different living situations — from the Kansas Avenue safe parking site off Highway 1 north of San Luis Obispo to the encampment beside the railroad tracks on California Blvd. He doesn’t know where he’ll end up next.
“The plan is, for me, is I try to have a good day,” said Duff, who didn’t give his last name.
Duff said he and Curtis look out for each other on the streets.
“That’s my boy,” Duff said. “If somebody came over here and stole from him or they beat him up or something like that, they get the blues.
A woman wearing a cowboy hat hummed along to Bob Dylan on Thursday morning as she packed up her camp, which was nestled between a fence, some trees and a hill. She’s lived in San Luis Obispo since October, she said, and spent most of her stay camped beside the railroad tracks.
The woman declined to share her name with The Tribune but said she’s “about 60 years old.” “I think I look pretty damn good,” she added.
The woman said the city didn’t tell her in advance that she had to move on Thursday.
“They woke me up and I was deep in sleep,” she said. “I was upturned and stupefied.”
She said the police officer who woke her didn’t introduce himself, ask for her name or offer her water.
“It’s shameful,” she said.
Living on the streets is dangerous, she said, and women are often attacked and raped.
Before moving to San Luis Obispo, she bounced around the southwestern United States, going from from backpacking in Mount Shasta to living in Arizona. She met her late husband in New Mexico.
“I saw a camp like a Bedouin temple and I thought ‘Oh my god,’” she said. “I saw all this jerky and herbs hanging from the ceiling and I thought, ‘This is my teacher.’ He gave me the most beautiful son before he died.”
The family later moved to the high desert of Arizona, she said.
“We lived in tepees. We lived in all kinds of things. Garbage houses from the dump — back when you could go to the dump and shoot the rats,” she said with a smile. “That was a good day.”
Her husband died when their son was about 9 years old, she said.
In her 30s, she worked as an emergency room nurse and took some shifts at San Quentin State Prison to provide for her son.
She said she doesn’t have a retirement fund because she started working too late. “And I don’t know what to do with money,” she said. “I come from a good family, but unfortunately I didn’t learn somehow, like my grandma and grandpa learned in the Great Depression, how to deal with money.”
She recently saw a psychiatrist who offered her some help, she said.
“This is the fixed me, but this is as fixed as it’s gonna get,” she said.
This story was originally published August 4, 2022 at 6:25 PM.
