Napa set to clear homeless encampment at Kennedy Park
The City of Napa is taking steps to clear out a homeless encampment at Kennedy Park.
Starting next Monday, the residents are being asked to move to a fenced area, just a few hundred yards away from where they are now.
Two things kickstarted the effort to close the homeless encampment at Kennedy Park. One was the Supreme Court decision giving leaders the ability to do so, but the other was a $15 million state grant to clear encampments and offer additional services.
The residents though are nervous about having to make another move they don't want to make.
After living on the streets for 4 1/2 years, Eric finally found a place to call home at Kennedy Park. He's been here for the last year.
"Community of outcasts kind of," is the way he describes the encampment.
It's an area with about 25 separate encampments. Some have created fenced yards and built makeshift homes.
"We just have our own areas and we just kind of do what we do," Eric said. "We just hang out and kind of support each other and look out for each other."
Word of the Napa closing the encampment has been spreading among the residents. The city said it has started helping people take their personal items to storage units in order to move them to a temporary camp just yards away on Dec. 9. It has also offered shelter, but people like Eric just prefer to live on their own.
"I mean I don't know," he said. "I like my freedom. I don't think I would feel free there. And I'm forced to be around people I don't like or want to associate myself with."
Now Eric, his girlfriend and his kitty Leroy will have to find a new place to live before the temporary camping location closes in four months. Eric said he wished he was still in his home in American Canyon and had his job.
For him, a divorce turned his life upside down. He feels homeless people are unfairly targeted when they have nowhere else to go.
"We're homeless," he said. "We're not monsters. I mean geez. Being portrayed out to be something that I'm not is what I don't appreciate, because why would you look down on somebody just because they're homeless. You don't know what that person has been through in their life or why they're homeless and what their circumstances are."
