Homeless camp that nearly set downtown Fresno bakery ablaze is gone. But for how long?
How many people does it take to clean up a homeless camp in downtown Fresno?
In the case of one particular camp that made news this week, the answer is more than a dozen.
That total includes three officers assigned to the Fresno Police Department’s homeless task force and two with the California Highway Patrol’s homeless task force. It also includes at least five members of the city of Fresno’s sanitation cleanup crew and five members of Caltrans’ cleanup crew.
And last but certainly not least, Fresno Mayor Lee Brand.
“Amazing what a little attention can do,” said Sammy Ganimian, owner of the Hye Quality Bakery.
For the last 62 years — and since 1978 at its current facility — Hye Quality Bakery has produced traditional Armenian cracker bread and more recently soft cracker bread used in pinwheel sandwiches.
The bakery is located at 2222 Santa Clara St., part of what used to be Fresno’s Old Armenian Town. (The Armenian Community Center, Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church and another Armenian bakery are nearby.) The building also backs up to the Highway 41 off-ramp at Van Ness Avenue.
For most of the last 41 years, having Highway 41 for a neighbor didn’t impact the bakery whatsoever. But according to Ganimian, that started to change “two or three years ago” when homeless people moved into the narrow space between the building and freeway offramp, which is Caltrans property. Piles of garbage and possessions as well as acts of vandalism soon followed.
Things came to a head in the early morning hours of Nov. 19, when Ganimian said a homeless woman started a campfire that quickly got out of control after she dozed off. If not for the actions of a security guard employed by a neighboring business who called 911, the Hye Quality Bakery may have burned down.
“If (the security guard) hadn’t done that in another 10 minutes the whole building would’ve gone up,” Ganimian said. “The building’s electrical is inside that back wall.”
Sammy and his wife, Paula, say they’ve called the city, police, Caltrans and CHP about the homeless camp but received no response. However, that quickly changed after the Gaminians spoke to KGPE-47, which aired a story on the Sunday evening news.
The following morning, Brand and a Caltrans public information officer each personally phoned the Ganimians promising prompt action.
“That’s what it takes to get results, I guess,” Sammy Ganimian said.
Removing the piles of garbage and junk from the homeless camp proved no routine matter. For one, the area between the building and the offramp’s dirt embankment had to be widened before a front-end loader had enough space to move in. Second, a city hazmat crew was needed to remove hypodermic needles and human feces.
It took two days and more than a dozen people (listed above), but by noon Tuesday almost all evidence of the homeless camp was gone. All that remains are the blackened, charred panels of the building’s exterior siding.
Fresno police Sgt. Troy Miller, who heads the department’s homeless task force, said the camp’s location necessitated the larger-than-usual response.
“Normally a response on Blackstone (Avenue) would just be my officers and the sanitation crew,” Miller said. “The reason it seems like there’s a huge response is because we have state agencies that are also showing up because it’s their property.”
Fresno’s homeless task force and sanitation crew clean up an average of 30 camps a day, according to Miller.
“The problem is we’ll do 25 camps and then find out about 20 new ones, so the net is five,” he added.
It’s a complex problem that doesn’t seem to have a permanent solution, both in Fresno and other California cities. Cleanups such as this may be necessary, but they’re little more than a finger in the proverbial leaky dike.
Driving back to the The Bee newsroom, I spotted at least a half dozen homeless camps erected on city sidewalks. With rain in the forecast, several people hung plastic sheets or garbage bags to protect their meager possessions.
Besides feeling empathy, it made me think of something Miller told me as he and I spotted a homeless man loitering near the camp behind the Hye Quality Bakery.
“As soon as we clear it out the guy down at the end will be, ‘Oh, what a nice spot to put up my stuff,’ ” Miller said.
How long until the cycle repeats itself? I’ll check back in a few days.
