Squatters Decry Planned Home-Improvement Store
A San Juan Capistrano proposal to sell 13 acres of city-owned land for a home-improvement warehouse store has drawn howls of protest from a predictable source--neighbors--and a less-common one: about 30 homeless people who have been camping on the property.
“For us, housing is much too expensive,” said Valentino Guerrero, who said he became homeless two months ago after his construction job ended. “Without a steady job, it is hard to pay rent. I don’t want to live here all my life, but this is the only place I have right now.”
When the City Council takes up the issue tonight, it also will hear objections from residents of Capistrano Valley Mobile Home Estates. Their main concern is that a large retailer such as Home Depot or Lowe’s, the top contenders for the site, would be noisy and would increase traffic and pollution.
“The city is unjustified in even considering a home-improvement warehouse so close to homes,” said Marianna Handler, a member of the neighborhood’s No Home Depot Committee. “We are not opposed to all development, but the other options are much better because they won’t be as massive, and they won’t increase the traffic so horribly.”
Other proposals for the property are light industry, a retail and office complex or a recreational-vehicle storage lot.
The city staff is recommending an environmental impact review for such a store before the property is sold. But air and noise pollution may not be the only environmental challenge that the project faces. Douglas Dumhart, a city analyst, said part of the site is a wetland area and as such may be federally protected.
As for the homeless, Dumhart said, they have been there for years, and the city does not have any plan in the works to help them if they are evicted from half a dozen camps they have set up on the property, known as Lower Rosan Ranch, which is north of Stonehill Drive and west of Camino Capistrano.
Guerrero said any change in the status of the city property will almost certainly displace him and the others.
“Eventually we’ll move up to something better,” said Guerrero, who once hired his company’s day laborers but is now among their ranks. “For now, we have nothing but each other. . . . We live as a family and we take care of each other. That’s how we survive.”
Colin Henderson, a former Laguna Beach Friendship Shelter employee, said the city has a shortage of emergency shelter and low-Income housing, despite substantial subsidies available from the state.
“With rent prices rising as they are and the tremendously limited amount of housing, it’s extremely hard for people making less than $10 an hour to get housing in south Orange County,” he said. “And it’s very hard to keep a job in homeless circumstances.”
Henderson said his hope is that nonprofit organizations and community members “will step in to help find people temporary housing they can afford while they are still saving enough to get first month’s rent for a more permanent low-cost apartment.”
The City Council’s meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 32400 Paseo Adelanto.
