_{Thumbnail photo: Unhoused people living in Waldo area encampments were told to pack their belongings and move along during a Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office operation on Oct. 2. The DNSO went to the area with Behavioral Health Branch staff and Del Norte Mission Possible representatives. | submitted photo}

Del Norte County Sheriff’s Capt. Melanie Currie said an operation last week to urge people living in the encampments near Waldo Street to move along wasn’t about kicking them out.

Deputies didn’t arrest anyone on Oct. 2, she said. They arrived with the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office chaplain, specialists with the Behavioral Health Branch and Daphne Lambert, Del Norte Mission Possible’s director of homeless services. The intent, Currie said, was to offer services and get people help.

“Daphne came out with a truck and we were helping people call family members that could come and help them pack,” she told Redwood Voice Community News on Tuesday. “Daphne was offering totes for people to put their belongings in and transportation, the same with Behavioral Health.”

Despite the intent, Lambert, who is part of a Del Norte County technical advisory committee focusing on homelessness, said the DNSO’s operation last week in the Waldo area came as a surprise. According to her, the homelessness committee has been working on a coordinated plan for dealing with homeless encampments in the community. Last week’s DNSO operation wasn’t part of that plan, she said.

“I’d known probably about 10 minutes before on Friday,” Lambert said Wednesday. “I personally went out there because I wanted to talk to the people and let them know what services we do have and to problem solve.”

District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short, who is also part of the homelessness technical advisory committee, said there may have also been a lack of communication between deputies and individuals about whether they can go to the emergency homeless shelter.

“There were comments to the people to just go to the shelter and that’s not how that works,” he said, adding that he understood that property owners in the area were asking the sheriff’s office for help moving campers along. “There was not a discussion between the sheriff’s department helping out the landowners and Del Norte Mission Possible in connecting the homeless people to services. Mission Possible got wind of this and they’re like, ‘how come you didn’t talk to us?’”

Sheriff Garrett Scott called the Waldo area one of the “most crime-ridden and lawless areas” associated with homeless encampments in Del Norte County. It’s rife with drug activity and theft, he said. There’s evidence of prostitution in the area. Deputies have also found stolen firearms in the area, Scott said.

Once the sheriff had enough staff, one of his goals has been to slowly disperse the camps in the area

“One of the problems that’s happening is the unhoused continue to expand onto private property,” Scott said. “A lot of private property owners notice this happening on their land and they get pretty concerned because of the trash and debris and the drug activity that takes place.”

Scott said his deputies have been “slowly and strategically” working on the Waldo area for about six to eight months.

“We’ve reduced that area from about 130 to 140 people down to roughly in the 20s,” he said. “There are about 20 folks remaining there in that particular Waldo area.”

Though he was out of town for last week’s operation, the sheriff told Redwood Voice that his deputies met with Behavioral Health’s mobile crisis unit at Park City Superette. Together, they entered the Waldo area at about 1:30 p.m. Friday, he said.

According to Health and Human Services Director Ranell Brown, the sheriff’s office requested help from Behavioral Health staff in its Waldo operation last week.

Lambert said she had heard rumors of a potential DNSO operation the day before from those she and her staff see as part of Mission Possible’s outreach efforts. She said she tried reaching out to Scott, but he was unavailable.

“I went in and there were a couple of very vulnerable individuals and so we tried to speed-track them to the shelter, ” Lambert said, referring to the emergency shelter the county built using state Encampment Resolution Fund grant dollars. “They seemed surprised at what was going on even though they were warned.”

Deputies didn’t arrest anyone, but they did seize drugs and drug paraphernalia on Friday, Currie said. If someone needed extra time to gather their belongings and move, they were given it. In one person’s case, his mother and stepfather came to help get his  belongings packed and move him to a better place, she said.

Currie said DNSO staff were out there for “awhile” on Oct. 2. She even returned in the evening with McDonalds.

“I bought everybody cheeseburgers,” she said, estimating that there were about 20 people living in the Waldo area encampments. “We went back out that night and we gave one to everybody we saw.”

One person deputies contacted in the Waldo area was a 14-year-old boy, Currie said, who had run away from his foster family. According to Currie, the teen has family in the area. She said she wasn’t able to connect with him when she returned the next day.

The coordinated plan Lambert spoke of is a collaborative effort connected to the emergency shelter as well as the pallet home village that is the next step up for those who “demonstrate stability, participation and progress.” 

According to Lambert, when Mission Possible is told of a date for a cleanup in the area, the organization will send its peer support specialists to the area to talk to those living in the encampments. They’ll conduct an individualized assessment and help them come up with a plan.

For those who decide not to try to enter the emergency shelter, Mission Possible will offer them a 27-gallon tote for their belongings, Lambert said. They’re stored inside a Conex shipping container and individuals can access their tote one day a week.

“(If) the congregate shelter is not the best fit, maybe it’s another program the county has,” Lambert said. “Maybe it’s bridge housing and we can use that to connect them with any kind of mental health services. PATH would also be available to talk to people in the encampments if anybody is dealing with any kind of trauma.”

Shut-ins also live in the encampments, Lambert said. They weren’t able to walk so they couldn’t get to the medical bus. 

“They need a wheelchair to get them out of there, to get them anywhere,” she said. “And they’re pretty deep in the woods and they’re scared of people too, so just even being able to get into their encampment is a bit of a challenge.”

There is also a land acquisition and camp cleanup subcommittee of the homelessness technical advisory committee, Short said. That subcommittee’s task is identifying county resources and making a plan to clean up the parcels that are there.

“We’re meeting with Code Enforcement and just trying to figure out what we can do with the resources we have,” he said. 

Mission Possible and the Del Norte County Department of Health and Human Services cut the ribbon on the Encampment Resolution Fund shelter in June. The micro village is still not complete, Lambert said.

Early in the process of building the shelter, the homelessness technical advisory committee discussed how cleaning up the encampments would work, Lambert said. That hasn’t proceeded much because of the lack of a commercial kitchen — the structure that houses it is built, she said, but there’s a leak in the roof.

“We are very lucky to have a partnership with the Del Norte Senior Center,” Lambert told Redwood Voice. “They’re allowing us to use their commercial kitchen for three hours a day to be able to prepare food. We’re just limping along right now to the most vulnerable population until that kitchen is open. Then we can open up and help everyone.”

According to Lambert, currently senior citizens, transitional age youth and medically vulnerable individuals are being admitted to the emergency shelter. There was one emergency situation involving a father who was homeless with his teenage son, but made too much money to qualify for county programs, Lambert said.

“We did look at changing up our policy so in those emergency situations we could help someone out like that,” she said. “He just got a full time job. That’s been the hindrance. And I think we got him an apartment. Our goal is to move him out really quickly.”

When asked if his office is involved in the coordinated effort to address the unhoused in the Waldo area and other encampments, Scott said there aren’t many places to go. He pointed out that the emergency shelter doesn’t take walk-ins. He said his deputies give advanced warning to the folks living in the area so they can find a different place to be. But apart from placing them with family, there aren’t many resources in the area, Scott said.

“The bottomline is we call in the limited resources we have, always, that’s standard procedure,” he said, “and if we were going to move a large group of people, say 80 people, we would obviously approach that very differently.” 

Still, Lambert said collaboration is necessary. She anticipates that Mission Possible and Behavioral Health representatives and other members of the homelessness technical advisory committee will reach out to the sheriff’s office and other law enforcement to discuss collaboration.

“We’re going to do our best,” Lambert said. “Again, it’s very challenging because we don’t have that commercial kitchen and there are a lot of individuals out there and it does take planning.”