By james art 
Fremont – Since Fremont Municipal Council is expected to discuss another camping ban in the next month, homeless residents are left to wonder where they will let them go.
Mayor Raj Salvan said in a recent interview that the ban could come before the Council as early as February 4. The exact language of the new legislation is still considered, although the draft regulation was presented during December 17 at the Council on December 17th.
The draft ordinance “creates the explicit implementation of the body for reducing personal property left to public property for 24 hours”, according to the document. It will also ban the camping and preservation of personal property “on public soil, including any street, sidewalk, city building, park, open space, waterway or waterfront shores.”
If approved, the city can spend more than $ 1 million to add more police officers who file complaints for camps and additional waste management services to clean the camp, according to the city.
The question divided Fremont: Dozens of residents have appeared at the last council meetings to oppose the proposal, while other residents have collected more than 1,300 signatures in an online petition in favor of it.
“The hope is that with this new law we can actually make them cooperate, which I think most people will do. No one wants to take a quote, ”Salvan said. “In Fremont, we were very responsible. We have never escaped the problem. We are not trying to push people. “
Fremont, a city with a population of over 226,000 people, had approximately 612 homeless people living without shelter last year, according to Alamed 2024 County in the number of time, counting data on homeless. The county had 6,343 people who lived without exchanged during the number, with a total of 9,450 having some form of homelessness according to the county data. Of the residents who live without being in Fremonth, 62% live in a vehicle or RV, and 20% live in a tent or other improvised shelter.
In November, the City Council unanimously adopted a 72-hour ban on parking of large trucks and other “huge” vehicles, including RV, which required vehicles to be moved at least 1000 feet within 24 hours. Currently, the city has a safe parking program that allows less than two dozen vehicles to park in local churches overnight.
Fremont has a homeless navigation center, which has begun to provide temporary asylum to people who are out of the way, it provides housing for 233 Unhoused residents as of June 30, 2024, according to city data, and helped 55 people receive 55 people work.
Many opponents of the new ban say that the city does not have enough resources, including temporary or permanent shelters to serve the total population of Fremont.
“This is not a way to solve the problem,” said in an interview, the inhabitant of the unfair resident Lisa Dulie. “They will still be there.”
Dulie, who said he was a veteran of the US homeless army, bearings near the Fremont Lakes Lakes Regional Park, along the ravine, which flows into the Arroyo Park into the neighboring Union City. On Tuesday, she was sitting with her 6-year border cars and an American dog mixed by ginger, at her friend’s camp, just a little away from her own camp.
Dooley estimated that over 100 people lived in the camp on the other side of Fremont’s career lakes. Fremont provides some supportive housing services, along with other non-profit groups, such as several Port-O-Potties and a collection of garbage. Doctors also sometimes visit the area to provide health services to homeless residents at the camp.
A few years ago, the city swept the place and Dulie said he found himself with a free two -week stay at a hotel in Hayward. She returned to the area as soon as her two weeks had expired and camps in the same place since 2018, she said. Neighbors in nearby homes sometimes bring her food and provisions, she said.
“If they had a problem with me, I still wouldn’t be there,” Dulie said.
Dooley said she was waiting for the veteran veteran department to provide her with residential support, a process that admitted that he had tried to pass before. At that time, she was not ready to enter a permanent home, Dulie added.
“I’m ready now,” Dulie said. “I’m tired of that.”
39-year-old Lorenzo Luki, who lives near a bicycle path behind a number of two-storey homes, had not heard of the city’s new ban until Tuesday. He has been homeless in the area for about four years, he said.
“If we are expelled, we have nowhere to go,” Luke said.
He said that his neighboring camps, who live in the water road to him, “are not homeless, they are homeless.”
His partner Latonya Baxter shares a tent with Luckey, where they built a personalized garden and warm up on cold nights, using a gasoline -powered generator, which they think it costs them at least $ 200 overnight.
“We are blessed here. People were pleasant to let us stay here, “Baxter said. “Our job is really not to see each other. We do our best. “
Mayor Salvan said the proposal aims to “allow us to change behavior.”
“The goal is not to criminalize people. We don’t want to arrest anyone, “Salvan said. “We just want to change their behavior in some cases.”
He called the mass camp in Quarry Lakes in one of the most important areas of the city. Salvan said the area had brushes and pollution in rivers and waterways. In 2022, police arrested two men suspected of killing a homeless man and burning his body on the side of the City Camp Union, who was said to be revenge after one of the suspects said the homeless had raped his mother.
The city has no plan to sweep the place at the moment, “the mayor said.
“This is most complained. We have no resources to remove every homeless man, “Salvan said. “We have to be surgical, like a scalpel.”
VIVAN WAN, CEO of Rebode Services, a FreMont -based homeless service agency, told the Council during the January 7th meeting that “it is clear that you want to make a political statement” with a new proposal to ban on a ban on Camping. She ridiculed them that she suggested that this would solve the problems of Fremont’s homeless.
“It is clear to me that we all want a magic wand. We all want to end homelessness. But you are selling goods that is incorrect for everyone here. This ban will not resolve the crisis, “Wang said.
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