Revealed: how companies made $100m clearing California homeless camps

[Jilly_in_VA]

by Brian Barth

On an October morning, a small army arrived to evict Rudy Ortega from his home in the Crash Zone, an encampment located near the end of the airport runway in San Jose, California, Silicon Valley’s largest city. As jets roared overhead, garbage trucks and police squad cars encircled Ortega’s hand-built shelter. Heavy machinery operators stood by for the signal to bulldoze Ortega’s camp.

As the workers closed in, Ortega grew increasingly upset.

“They’re going to have to drag me out of here,” he said.

The camp, one of the largest in California, was cleared between 2021 and 2023 in part by a private company named Tucker Construction. Public spending on private sweep contractors is soaring across California.

In total, private firms have been paid at least $100m to clear homeless camps, an investigation by the Guardian and Type Investigations has found. The 14 municipalities and public agencies from which spending details could be obtained represent a small slice of such spending in the state.

Astrid Stromberg, who oversees encampment cleanups for Tucker, said its business has expanded dramatically since 2020. The company had about a dozen laborers working full-time on encampment cleanup. Now there are 30, and its clients include roughly a dozen municipalities and public agencies across Silicon Valley. “[Tucker] basically created the industry here,” she said. “I could talk about it for hours.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/us-homeless-encampments-companies-profiting-sweeps

This is sad and terrible. People are unhoused for many reasons, not just because they want to bel. This is no way to treat them.

[3Hotdogs]

1. Dumbasses-- Proud boys and Oaf Keepers would'a done it for free.

[dlk]

2. What if those funds had been spent building affordable housing?

So much waste.

[mike_c]

4. this

That kind of money could have put tens of thousands into homes. Instead, it was spent to exacerbate the problem. It's absurd.

[Iwasthere]

3. Sad🙁

Here they just hired hired high school kids to help sweep the big encampment along the river. Saved big $$$$. I should bought that island years ago, to go unplugged and offgrid.

[FakeNoose]

5. It's upsetting and horrible to think that homeless people are camped at the end of a busy runway

Nearly every city in America has empty buildings in their inner city that can be rehabbed and made into shelters for the homeless. It could be done for way less than $100 million too.