A post by Matthew Cunningham on Anaheimblog.net shows just how bad the homeless tent cities are getting along the Santa Ana River Trail.
The sprawl is becoming more and more permanent, with distinct neighborhoods that have their own names. The Orange Police Department counted about 600 camps, which could be an individual tent or a cluster of tents within each "city."
Mohammed Aly, a homeless activist, posted to Facebook on August 4th and gave the names of the four distinct subdivisions of the squatter's village:
- The Big A (Next to Angel Stadium)
- The Corral (The county-owned greenbelt north of Katella Avenue)
- Rampart (The encampment below the Motel 8 and next to the Renaissance apartments)
- Fountain Valley (Off Edinger)
He's one of the many people contributing to the problem by giving supplies to the homeless camps. He's also calling for Orange County to provide it's inhabitants with showers and restrooms.
Aly says that the Rampart camp “had built a makeshift shower using water from a backflow device, but the County dismantled the shower without providing an alternative."
He added that “Rampart has a bottle filling station, the Big A has CityNet’s mobile home handing out water, and the Corral has a spigot. None of the major encampments other than Fountain Valley presently need donations of bottled water.”
Here are some photos of the camps that Matthew Cunningham took and posted to Anaheim Blog:
(Credit: Matthew Cunningham, Anaheim Blog)
Cunningham points out that he frequently sees clean-up workers wearing thick gloves, cleaning up trash and filling buckets full of needles found where children play.
The Santa Ana River shanty town is growing and getting out of control. When will this madness be stopped?!