Bum friendly = business hostile

Welcome to Chico’s newest homeless camp at 2580 Notre Dame Blvd!

My husband and I are landlords, and we’re turning over a rental right now, so we’ve been making a few trips to Home Depot, off Skyway on Notre Dame Blvd.

The store building pictured above was built in the adjacent parking lot some years after Home Depot opened. It housed an office supply business, and later one of those “Dollar” or “99 Cent” stores. It’s been empty for a couple of years now.

Bad planning. There’s another empty building right next door.

I can’t remember what was in this building originally, but now it’s empty and becoming a total eyesore. What’s with all the trash?

So, now we have these two, huge empty buildings. Get a load of the torn canopy on the first building – you know, this city has a code, and people who get paid for code enforcement, and this is all against the code. 

Send a complaint to the city? Read about that here:

https://chicotaxpayers.com/2017/01/18/city-of-chico-fiddles-while-rome-burns/

I’ve written post after post about trying to get the city to deal with homeless encampments in Middle Bidwell Park. That and a five-spot might get me a cup of coffee. 

What about private property owners? When my  husband mentioned the illegal campers to the checker at Home Depot, the man said, “Again!?!”.   That was it. 

Home Depot is right down the street from the Joel Castle’s “Farm”.

https://www.newsreview.com/chico/homeless-camp-shut-down/content?oid=23786829

It took the city and county months to roust that camp, even though they knew it was happening all along  – Castle made no attempt to hide what he was doing from the beginning. 

This is  a pattern – a policy – with the county and the city. The county tolerates many illegal camps, one of which was the scene of a horrific murder. 

http://www.chicoer.com/article/NA/20160105/NEWS/160109904

This policy is fueled by revenues the county receives for taking in these people at various facilities. Behavioral Health Director Dorian Kittrell told me the county receives $550 a day for each person they board in one of their facilities.  They are allowed to hold people up to 45 days when they are deemed to be “a  danger to themselves or others.”  When that 45 days is up they are referred to  shelters in Oroville and Chico.  That’s it – “referred” – with no requirements that they check in.  

These people are brought here from towns all over California. Some cities are not as generous as Chico or Butte County, they only tolerate a small  number of “beds” – when they don’t have a “bed” for somebody, they send them here, apparently happy to pay the $550/day just to get these people out of their towns.

You might be used to seeing these people here – go to other towns, you will find places where they don’t have filthy people laying all over their parks and other public spaces, panhandling, urinating and defecating on the ground, shooting drugs in the restrooms. 

Chico and Butte County have become an insane asylum. Business hostile? It’s resident hostile too.