Countywide : ‘Club Homeless’ Razed by Caltrans

“Club Homeless” is no more.

The California Department of Transportation on Monday razed the elaborate homeless encampment that had sprouted among the thick bushes near the San Diego Freeway’s Beach Boulevard exit.

The crunch of bulldozers and the whine of chain saws signaled the end of a catchall community formed several years ago by a dozen or so homeless people.

Only one man was left at the camp Monday morning when Caltrans moved its equipment in: Craig Fritts, 38, who had lived in the tangle of acacia and oleander bushes for five years.

“They should have respected us,” he lamented, watching Caltrans workers pile items salvaged from the encampment--including a tool box, a computer monitor, an ice chest and several chairs--along a fence.

“We had a society there. A lot of people get hungry,” Fritts said. “They came here for a sleeping bag and a meal.”

The others have scattered, and Fritts said he doesn’t know where he will go.

“I hope I don’t go to jail. I just don’t know,” he said.

The cleanup climaxed weeks of legal maneuvers, during which residents of the encampment filed appeals to halt Caltrans’ removal efforts.

For a while, they succeeded. But last Tuesday, the 4th District Court of Appeal gave Caltrans the final go-ahead.

Flyers were posted Thursday, giving the squatters three days to leave, Caltrans spokeswoman Rose Orem said.

“We felt we had to do something,” Orem said, citing safety and sanitation concerns. Huntington Beach police had complained about a rise in crime in the area.

The encampment’s residents said they posed no threat and claimed they had told crooks who tried to join them to return purloined property.

Caltrans is set to begin a $1-million highway beautification project, which will include some new landscaping at the Beach Boulevard exit.

Even though Caltrans was able to remove the homeless, their attorney, Paul Gray, said the whole brouhaha had a positive aspect.

“It is a victory in that the situation of the homeless people has come to the public eye,” Gray said. “The plaintiffs in this case knew they would have to move out eventually.”

With Orange County’s shelters and aid agencies filled to capacity, homeless advocates said Fritts and his friends will probably remain on the streets, but in a new location.

“They already knew about the shelters, but they didn’t want to go there because they wanted some freedom,” said Paul Wager, program coordinator for the Mental Health Assn. of Orange County. “They enjoyed living there. They had put a lot of time and energy into it and made it a home. I think if they hadn’t been removed they would have lived there indefinitely.”

Karen McGlinn, executive director of SOS, a Costa Mesa social services agency, said several Club Homeless residents, who she described as friendly and resourceful, came regularly to SOS for sack lunches and emergency financial help.

“I’m worried about them,” McGlinn said. “But these people manage to do things that are unbelievable. They’ll probably figure out a way to survive.”

As he hopped on his old blue-and-white bicycle to leave Club Homeless for the last time, Fritts stopped to read from an ode to the encampment he had penned the night before.

Entitled “Bush No. 405,” it read, in part: “But to walk on your rich soil is to always find a home in our hearts without any need to have a house, for the love and need we seek can only be found under our very own feet.”