At least six people used to live behind the Gilroy Dispatch on the 6300 block of Monterey Road, sleeping in cardboard structures reinforced with pieces of wood or in battered tents along the railroad tracks. That was until a Feb. 12 fire wiped out a portion of the camp.
The fire sparked at 1:42 p.m. A plume of smoke attracted the Gilroy Fire Department, and firefighters extinguished the fire within a matter of minutes. But the camp soon caught the attention of the Gilroy Police Department and the property’s owners, the Southern Pacific Railroad Company.
There are differing view points on how the fire started. One homeless man told the GFD he accidentally left a candle burning in his tent, according to GFD Chief Alan Anderson, but others at the camp suggested the fire may have been intentional.
The camp’s residents are now trying to move on.
The morning after the fire, 55-year-old Salvador Del Rio, a Gilroy native, said the GPD told him and the other five or so homeless individuals living in the shadows along the railroad tracks that Southern Pacific officials were planning on giving them a few days to pack up and leave or simply evict them.
Rio said he has “no idea” where he’ll go next, and pointed out there is a waiting list “hundreds long” for emergency housing in Gilroy.
Other camp residents pooled together enough cash to rent a towable storage unit. Now, they just need access to a truck to help haul all their belongings, Del Rio said Friday.
In the meantime, the camp’s former residents are scattered across Gilroy looking for a place to stay.
Loredo Paster, 55, said he lost everything he owned in the fire after he allegedly left a candle burning while he was out walking. That includes his medications, which Paster depends on after being diagnosed with bladder cancer years ago, and a few pieces of clothing.
“It was totally an accident,” Paster said, of the fire.
Del Rio isn’t so sure about that. He’s upset the fire “put a spotlight” on the camp where he’s been living for the past six months with his wife of 27 years, who is ill with the flu.
Another encampment resident named Liz, 23, who preferred not to provide her last name, also lost everything in the fire. She kept all her possessions in a tent next to Paster’s.
“I had blankets, pants, shoes, socks and boxes with different toiletries in them. That’s all I had,” she said.
These types of fires do happen occasionally, according to Anderson, but they are not that common.
“If you think about how they live, they usually use an open fire for lighting and for heat,” he noted.
Overall, the department responds to encampments to render medical services more frequently than to put out a fire, according to Anderson. And because the homeless typically don’t have access to medical services, the fire department is often the first line of defense.
“They are a vulnerable segment of our population,” Anderson said. “They’re living out in the cold and they may have underlying diseases that may go untreated.”
Anderson believes the homeless deserve better access to more affordable medical care and using the GFD as first responders is not the most efficient use of the department’s resources.
“We’d certainly rather see some other method of treatment,” he said.
Each year, the GPD encounters more than 350 people in crisis – including many who are homeless, according to GPD Chief Denise Turner.
“The cases stem from calls for service for people in mental health crisis or attempting suicide,” Turner said. “The officers make the assessment from their investigation and then we call the Gilroy Fire Department to screen for medical issues.”
After a preliminary examination by medical personnel with the GFD, patients are then transferred via ambulance to San Jose to receive emergency psychiatric services.
But that’s not an efficient use of City resources either, according to Turner, who is pursuing an alternative that would involve tending to Gilroy’s homeless in crisis within South County.
Santa Clara County and Gilroy-based social services nonprofit Community Solutions have expressed interest in potentially purchasing property in San Martin to establish South County’s first emergency psychiatric service center. The center would be open 24-hours a day, according to Turner.
That is just one approach community groups are taking this year to assist Gilroy’s homeless.
At the moment, the Gilroy Compassion Center – a nonprofit organization near Monterey and Leavesley roads that provides daytime outreach services for South County’s needy – is raising funds to build the Garlic Capital’s first year-round overnight shelter, according to the Center’s Board Chair Jan Bernstein-Chargin.
And a new shelter is needed, as the Center served 417 individuals in the last six months of 2013, most of whom had their last permanent address in Gilroy, she added.
On Tuesday, Bernstein said the Center has raised roughly 75 percent of what’s needed to put a down payment on a $1.5 million building in the future, but a location has not yet been chosen. While Gilroy does have an Armory that serves as an emergency cold weather shelter and support center, it is only open seasonally during the coldest months of the year and is set to close April 1.
“For eight months out of the year, there is no shelter at all,” Bernstein said. “There isn’t a place for people to sleep that’s safe and legal where people can start putting their lives back together.”
Camping in Gilroy is generally illegal, Turner added. In 2013 alone, the GPD cleared 47 encampments, according to police records.
However, “we are response-based, so unless we call and get a complaint we don’t go looking for campers,” Turner added.
Last year, the department responded to 446 separate calls from citizens involving a homeless person.
And if an encampment poses a threat to public safety, Turner said the GPD and the City will take action.
Upon approaching an illegal encampment, Turner said officers hand out brochures directing residents to local resources. Officers also encourage the homeless to take a survey that places them on a list identifying “the hardest to house,” meaning the chronically homeless or those who have been homeless for years.
“We’d love to get these folks into some sort of transitional housing where they have an adequate roof over their head, sanitation facilities and the stuff that gets them off the street,” Anderson added.
The men at the camp explained they have fallen on hard times, from losing their jobs years ago to becoming buried under a mountain of unpaid bills. Now, just maintaining personal hygiene – and struggling to retain some self-esteem – is a serious challenge without running water. The price of a shower at the Garlic Farm RV Park on Monterey Road is $15 per person, Del Rio pointed out.
Brian Watson, 26, graduated from Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill and tried to support himself at Gavilan College for a year on his own. He couldn’t make ends meet, Watson said, and soon found himself out on the streets.
He hopes to one day attend vocational school to study electrical engineering or as a general contractor.
“We’re hoping he stays in school,” Del Rio chimed in.
Evaristo Loa, 51, has lived in Gilroy his whole life but said he lost his job and his home to foreclosure. Nowadays, he will sometimes look for food in dumpsters behind Gilroy’s restaurants.
“My stomach has no shame. I’ve got to eat,” he said. “I’m not going to go in a store and steal. That’s not me. All that’s going to do is get me in more trouble – with the law, I’ll go on probation and have to pay for an attorney. If you get in trouble with the law, that will make it worse.”
Without a place for homeless Gilroyans to go, “just policing” will not solve the problem, Bernstein-Chargin said.
“It only makes it harder for them to find housing and jobs because it gives them an arrest record,” she added.
In her opinion, a long-term solution would be permanent housing that is open to people of all income levels.
Homelessness isn’t just growing in Gilroy – it’s a national trend, she added. And Del Rio, Loa, Watson, Liz and Paster all agree.
The 2013 Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey revealed that 7,631 county residents are homeless on any given night and 74 percent of those homeless are out in the cold, living on the streets, in cars or in encampments. The 2013 “point in time count” found approximately 400 Gilroyans without shelter.
Close to four out of every 1,000 Santa Clara County residents are homeless, according to recent estimates.
But since the last survey was conducted in 2011, the number of homeless individuals in the county also increased by 8 percent, with an 18 percent jump in San Jose.
“You’ve got some very talented people out here with skills they can use to help the city,” Paster said. “We don’t want somebody to just give us something. We just don’t know where to start.”
The encampment’s former residents are calling on Gilroy officials to donate some garbage bags and place a dumpster nearby. Del Rio said he doesn’t want to be remembered by the mess he has left behind, and he’s offered to clean up the camp – ashes and all.
In the interim, Watson and Del Rio struggle to stay positive that their current situation will only be temporary.
“We’re homeless but we’re not hopeless,” Watson said. “Still, we try every day and we don’t give up.”
