Oceanside Officials Roust Homeless From Valley

Making good on its hard-line promise, the city of Oceanside Thursday moved in with officers and bulldozers to evict homeless men and women who had created campsites in the brush near a growing industrial park.

Shortly before 9 a.m., a cadre of clipboard-carrying officials, including an assistant city attorney and the director of city code enforcement, raided the makeshift encampments that have been set up in recent months in the San Luis Rey River Valley.

Two men were arrested when they refused to vacate the premises, officials said. They were charged with trespassing after they ignored repeated warnings to pack up their belongings, said Oceanside’s assistant housing director, Margery Girbes.

Officials said they have long warned homeless squatters that they would be evicted.

“One of the men just refused to leave, I don’t know why,” Girbes said late Thursday. “The other one, I think, was under the influence of some kind of drugs. But they were not together. These were two isolated incidents.”

Girbes said she didn’t know how many people were at the site when officials closed in.

“It was not dozens and dozens, no,” she said.

The city’s get-tough move came in response to complaints from local businesses that homeless people were breaking into cars and causing a nuisance on both public and private lands in the area, which stretches about 3 miles east of Interstate 5 along the picturesque river valley.

City officials staged an early-morning sweep 10 days ago, handing out written warnings to several dozen homeless people, who were told to move out by Thursday or face arrest and the prospect of having their belongings impounded.

Oceanside has said that the homeless have caused more than just crime problems in the area and that the trash they leave behind is endangering the delicate river valley environment.

“You should have seen the trash and stuff we found when we went in there,” Girbes said.

On Thursday, four officers walked into the area, rousting more than a dozen residents and then tagging valuables left behind, making way for the heavy equipment that later rumbled in. “Things went pretty smoothly,” Girbes said. “Most of the violators moved out as soon as city officials came in. Of course, there were a few exceptions.”

One observer at the sweep said he was disgusted by the city’s disregard for the homeless. “They were pushing people around,” said Robert Walchli, an Orange County photographer who is documenting the plight of homeless in the region.

“There was one guy in a wheelchair and a couple who was struggling to gather up their kittens into a box. The whole scene was disgusting. It was the equivalent of Nicaragua and Guatemala going into the villages to drive innocent people out.”

Girbes said the raid was not done recklessly.

“We didn’t just ride in there on bulldozers and bulldoze people’s belongings,” she said. “Everything of value was tagged. Then we moved in with forklifts and the bulldozers. There was just a lot of trash and debris that needed to be taken care of.”

City officials said they would continue to be vigilant in the area.

“These people had several weeks of warnings to move out or face the consequences,” Girbes said. “I mean, they knew we were coming.”