FREMONT — Homeless folks living in RVs just steps away from Tesla’s buildings along Fremont’s Kato Road now apparently have only about a month left before they are booted from the area for good.
Multiple people living in RVs along the industrial frontage road’s shoulder said city workers, along with a police officer, visited them over the weekend and warned them they needed to leave the area in about a month.
“People are going to have to go somewhere though, you know? No matter what barrier they’re going to put up, if there’s an open spot, people are going to get in it,” said Tom Hung, who camps along the road in a van while working to support his family who live in a rental in San Jose.
“Because people want to be safe, for one, people want to be legal, two, and we just don’t want to get interrupted by the officers saying that we’re in the wrong spot,” Hung said.
“That’s why we have to come out here, in nowhere land. And now they want us to go somewhere else. It’s like, where are we going to go next, to the landfill?”
City officials, however, have not confirmed whether they will continue placing boulders and no-parking signs along another section of the road’s shoulder where homeless people and truckers are currently parking, as it did earlier this month for a stretch of the same road near Seagate.
The latest warning comes more than a year-and-a-half after the city council directed staff to explore creating a designated safe parking area for people living in RVs and vehicles to use, and some residents and councilmembers are concerned about the city’s lack of progress on creating such a program.
The city, meanwhile, maintains that its “limited resources” have been focused on preparing the city’s first homeless navigation center which is going up behind city hall and expected to open by mid-year.
A city website focused on the city’s multi-phased approach to clearing out big-rig truckers and homeless people living along the shoulder of a 1.3-mile stretch of Kato Road said that as of Monday, the city is continuing to evaluate the first phase of its effort to clear the area.
A city spokeswoman, Cheryl Golden, deferred to the city’s website when asked about the plans for the rest of Kato Road, and whether they would continue to place boulders.
However, some homeless people at the site said they received $25 gift cards for Target and Chevron from city staffers, who also informed them of social safety net programs they might be eligible for. The city has previously distributed gift cards when clearing other homeless encampments.
For years, more and more truckers had been using the shoulder of Kato as an impromptu truck stop, and over the last several months, homeless people in RVs and cars had also taken up residence there.
Just weeks after this news organization reported about the convergence of truckers and homeless people, the city announced it would begin clearing the area, citing safety concerns along the frontage road near a highway and complaints from nearby businesses as primary drivers of the decision.
Though the city cleared a section of the shoulder earlier this month, a couple dozen truckers and several homeless people are now still parking along other portions of the road
A week after some residents and housing advocates criticized the Kato Road sweep, staff told the city council that little headway had been made on establishing a safe parking program.
“The siting of a secure, 24-hour treatment center essentially (homeless navigation center), in the back of city hall was a very significant conversation for this community to take,” City Manager Mark Danaj said to the council at the Feb. 18 meeting.
“Our objective is to continue to move forward and prepare and learn and identify places for safe parking, but at the same time, our goal right now is to open up the HNC and make it successful,” he said.
“I know we’ve been doing a lot and our resources are really limited, but I am a little surprised to hear that this came up almost two years ago now and we’re still just kind of exploring,” Councilwoman Jenny Kassan said at the meeting.
“It seems like more progress could have been made on this topic,” she said, responding to staff who said an ongoing funding source and proper location for the program are challenges they need to address.
Some residents, like Vinita Verma, agreed, saying the city should have figured out a safe parking solution before beginning to kick people out of the Kato Road area.
“If we had done our homework earlier, if we had looked at the possible solutions before purchasing those boulders, the community would have really appreciated it,” Verma said. “Because you cannot do things backward. You have to plan first and then take action, not take action and then plan.”
Other councilmembers didn’t seem as concerned by the lack of progress, including Vinnie Bacon.
“Yes, arguably we could have been quicker on it, but I’m not going to fault staff on that,” he said, especially given the navigation center work they’ve done.
Councilman Raj Salwan said he felt Fremont used “our one political life” on the navigation center, and would like to see collaboration with Newark and Union City for a safe parking program.
City staff said at the meeting they expected to offer more details on potential sites for safe parking and cost estimates in about 90 days.
Lynn Shipman, who lives in an RV along Kato directly across from a Tesla Engineering building, said it seems “inevitable” that she and others will be forced to leave, and thinks long-term housing solutions are needed around the pricey Bay Area.
“We paid $10,000 for this camper, you couldn’t even get 4 months of rent somewhere for that,” she said.
Shipman said the city should be able to see that there are likely to be more people living in RVs and campers in the near future, not less, and they should prepare for that, not just move people along.
“Wake up,” she said.
