Cleanup conundrum: What to do with homeless’s stuff?

As the number of people living outside grows, so does their need for storage. Regular cleanups around Share House, the men’s homeless shelter in downtown Vancouver, have amassed a lot of trash but also things that people want to keep.

Backpacks, bikes, sleeping bags, pads and shopping carts are the types of things locked inside eight blue containers that the city of Vancouver rents from Waste Connections. The metal containers are kept on city-owned property on the west side. Each container, which can hold between 30 and 40 cubic yards, is labeled with the date its contents were collected from homeless encampments.

The city is legally obligated to store personal property for 60 days before it can be thrown away. People have to make an appointment to get reunited with their stuff.

On Thursday morning, after the most recent cleanup around Share House, Calvin Chastang had his stuff piled near Lincoln Place, an apartment complex for formerly homeless people. He said he’s been living outside in the area for about two years. He said he has given stuff to the city to store three times and has successfully retrieved things once. He described the stuff he’s lost as amenities rather than necessities. Chastang knows that the city wants homeless people to have only what they can carry, but it’s those extra non-essentials — camp stoves, lawn chairs and buckets, for instance — that make life outside easier.

He thinks the storage system could be improved if it better resembled baggage claim at the airport, perhaps with a more sophisticated system for numbering and labeling stuff.

“It could work, if they put a little more effort into it,” he said.

To comply with federal and state laws, the city has to give notice before interfering with somebody’s property rights. A couple of days before every cleanup, the city posts notices saying that police will be ordering the removal of all people and personal property to sanitize the site. The notice reminds people that it’s illegal to camp during daytime hours and gives the phone number for Vancouver City Hall, which people are supposed to call if they want to schedule an appointment to retrieve their property within the 60-day window. Typically, people pick up their possessions at Friends of the Carpenter.

“Our current process is not ideal,” said Jonathan Young, chief assistant city attorney.

As of two weeks ago, 26 people had been successfully reunited with their property over the last two years. For every successful reunion, there are unsuccessful attempts. Young said that due to scheduling challenges, city staff may go out to Friends of the Carpenter with somebody’s belongings and that person doesn’t show up.

Susan Lindahl, the city’s liability administrator, said nobody has filed a claim alleging that the city disposed of their property when they shouldn’t have. She recently got a heads-up that somebody may be filing a claim over some wrongfully destroyed property, but she has not received any such claim.

Day center solution?

The storage issue could be addressed by the day center scheduled to open this fall in central Vancouver. Plans for the day center always included places to store things during the day, but long-term storage is still being discussed.

The city is looking into ways to more efficiently store property, perhaps a system where people can walk in and get their stuff rather than having to schedule a pickup, Young said.

“We’re likely in this for the long term unless we come up with a way to solve homelessness,” he said.

One solution could be starting a program similar to Central City Concern’s CCC Clean Start, which employs formerly and currently homeless people to clean city streets and encampments, and manage a day use storage facility. (Currently, local homeless service provider Share’s Talkin’ Trash program does some cleanup work.)

Cities across the country are grappling with how best to store homeless people’s belongings. Portland’s process is similar to Vancouver’s. The city currently stores items for 30 days in a building in south Portland but is working on securing a lease at a larger, closer-in warehouse. People have to make an appointment to pick up their things.

However, other cities have facilities where people can pick up their stuff in person.

• San Diego has its Transitional Storage Center, a secure facility that opened in 2011 after a homeless person’s belongings were wrongfully taken and destroyed. The facility located downtown on a lot owned by San Diego Housing Commission has 304 lockers and about 130 bins. A second 25,000-square-foot facility with about 500 lockable storage bins recently opened.

• Denver launched a pilot program last year that installed storage lockers on downtown sidewalks — similar-looking to downtown Vancouver’s BikeLink bicycle lockers.

• In Vancouver, B.C., First United Church runs a 200-unit storage facility.

Seeking answers

It costs about $1,000 to $1,500 per month to rent and haul the Waste Connections containers. There are other various fees associated with moving the containers or taking them to the dump.

Young said the largest cost to the city is staff time involved, though he couldn’t estimate how much that costs. The effort of cleaning encampments involves the city’s code compliance, public works and police departments. Vancouver Police Lt. Greg Raquer said he typically needs six officers to help with cleanups.

Police and code compliance officers are tasked with working with people to ensure trash is correctly separated from belongings. Last week, for instance, city employees were ready to throw out a box of rocks when someone said it was important to them, Young said.

It gets tricky because from a legal standpoint, people can keep however much stuff they want on public property between 9:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. But, during the day, they are not supposed to be camping or storing property. So if they’ve amassed more than they can carry and continue storing it on public land, they can’t comply with the ordinance.

That’s why city staff try to work with people to figure out what they can part with temporarily and retrieve later. If there’s nobody around to make that distinction, that also causes problems. The city has a process of photographing camps a couple of days before cleanups and then seeing if they’ve changed when they return — indicating whether it’s an abandoned or active camp. If a camp is abandoned, the stuff can be thrown away.

For instance, a pile of wet blankets and clothes with no known owners is fair game to throw away. If it’s temporarily unattended, the items are kept for 60 days, but they may not have a name attached to them.

Andie Checchia recalled not being around for a sweep one time because he had a warrant out for his arrest. Among the things he lost were family pictures and a jacket.

“These sweeps are really not cool. They’re disrespectful,” Checchia said. “Would you want someone coming in your house and taking your stuff away?”

He’s been homeless for years and said the blocks around Share House are where many people feel comfortable and safe.

Jamie Spinelli, an outreach worker with Community Services Northwest, estimates that more than 100 people live near Share House and that the encampment has spread down King and 11th streets. A lot of the people there aren’t comfortable giving up their stuff and feel traumatized each time the cleanup happens.

“They just don’t really trust the process, honestly,” said Spinelli. She also volunteers with Food with Friends, a nonprofit that tries to fill in gaps in the homeless service system.

In some cases, people have the city store things that they think outreach workers can easily replace: tents, tarps, sleeping bags and blankets — so it can stress those grass-roots groups that are constantly replenishing those items, Spinelli said.

Treasures vs. trash

Ryan Miles, an operations superintendent with Vancouver Public Works, said the cleanups always yield more trash than possessions. Three tons of trash were collected last week. A normal cleanup around Share House uses one Waste Connections container for possessions. Each cleanup is different and varies in size.

For their safety, city crews avoid handling the material too much. For instance, they may take a whole shopping cart but not look through it and jot down every detail of what’s in the cart. Over time, staff have learned not to stuff too many things into the containers; there needs to be room to safely walk around and be able to find something when someone wants it back.

A lot of the stuff in the containers gets moldy or rotted because it was wet to begin with, Young said. If the items are no longer usable or valuable after 60 days, they can be thrown away. Otherwise, they could be put up for auction.

If the 60 days is up and everything inside a container is getting thrown away, it’s hauled to Waste Connections and its contents are dumped.

Clay Jenkins said he was able to look through one of these containers when the city couldn’t find his possessions. In the midst of a cleanup in February, Jenkins was sent to the hospital; a spider bite caused an infection and other health complications that kept the 50-year-old hospitalized for weeks. Afterwards, he was put in a motel in Washougal for about a month.

After that, he said, he started the process of retrieving his belongings and was still within the 60-day window. It took a while to get connected with the right people, and when he gave them a description of his things, they couldn’t find all of them.

“No tent, no helmet, none of it,” he said. “The stuff just isn’t there. It’s somebody’s mistake.”

He said he searched the container that his stuff would’ve been in and couldn’t find his things, which included bicycle trailers, tools, tarps and a high-end bivy sack (a waterproof personal shelter).

He doesn’t believe that the things were stolen while he was in the hospital but rather that they somehow ended up in the trash instead of storage. The experience, he said, made him feel like Oscar the Grouch — living out of a garbage can.

Jenkins said he’s typically mobile and doesn’t stay in one spot for a long time, so losing tools that help keep him mobile was tough. He plans to file a claim with the city to perhaps get the items replaced.

Clark County was sued by Vancouver attorney Peter Fels after it was accused of throwing out people’s belongings during cleanups between 2012 and 2014. The county paid $250,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees after a federal judge found the county liable.