The San Francisco-area city of Berkeley collected 75 tons of trash and hazardous waste from homeless encampments between September 2021 and March 2022.
The problem is so egregious that city officials discussed the cleanup and ways to handle the crisis in their latest budget proposal. Homelessness worsened during 2021 following more than a year of lockdowns by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the report said.
The Homeless Response Team closed 16 “large and dangerous encampments, resolving conditions that included raw sewage and human waste, loose and scattered 119 syringes and drug paraphernalia, rodents and other vector hazards, rotting food, and obstruction of sidewalks and vehicular lanes of traffic — all while issuing zero criminal citations and only one arrest,” the budget said.
The team conducted weekly trash collections throughout the city’s homeless encampments, and the amounts are equivalent to 500 pounds a person per year for the 535 homeless living there, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
LA HOMELESS CAMP CLEANUP NETS TONS OF TRASH AND BIOLOGICAL WASTE
Berkeley was the first to declare itself a sanctuary city in California and has welcomed homeless residents while continuously backing Newsom and the politics of the Democratic supermajority legislature.
However, the budget admitted that social workers need a “more specific policy” to deal with encampments and that city shelters were “still operating at reduced capacity due to COVID, and a legal landscape that has limited the City’s ability to intervene.”
A federal homeless assessment for 2021 revealed that while homelessness declined 8% nationwide, 14 states saw an increase, including California. The Golden State is now second behind New York with the largest number of homeless at 51,429.
Former California gubernatorial candidate and Berkeley resident Michael Shellenberger criticized Berkeley and Newsom to the Washington Free Beacon.
“The data showing that Berkeley’s homeless population is producing 500 pounds of garbage per person is yet more evidence that it is unsafe and unsanitary to allow homeless people to sleep outside,” Shellenberger said.
“The evidence comes just a few weeks after the release of data showing that homeless people in Los Angeles are three times more likely to die than homeless people in New York because most of the homeless in L.A. are unsheltered. How many more must die before California governor Gavin Newsom and the Democratic mayors of California’s cities act?” Shellenberger added.
Last year, Newsom proclaimed that California would welcome the homeless of the world during a campaign stop to ward off his eventual recall election, which he won.
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“I’m proud of people from around the world looking at California again for opportunity, and that, again, that should not just be for certain people,” he said. “All people should aspire to that California dream regardless of their income level and regarding their lot in life.”
Like Berkeley, the famed Echo Park Lake in Los Angeles underwent a massive homeless cleanup in 2021 that yielded 723 pounds of biological waste, including 180 pounds of feces. More than 200 homeless were relocated amid protests by activist groups that viewed their removal as unconstitutional.
