Homeless encampments and their waste sites around freeway access ramps throughout Riverside will be targeted for removal over the next two years under an agreement between the city and state.
On Tuesday, the Riverside City Council approved a Delegated Maintenance Agreement with Caltrans that permits municipal officials to initiate clearing operations focused on transient camps that have been established under or immediately adjacent to entrance and exit ramps along Interstate 215 and state Routes 60 and 91.
“This innovative agreement will allow the city to go onto state property and provide clean-ups without going through a longer permitting process,” Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson said. “This proactive effort will speed up the clean-ups, improve our public spaces and provide for reimbursement from the state.”
The pilot project, which is active until June 30, 2027, permits vendors hired by the city and supervised by Riverside Department of Public Works personnel “to remove debris and materials from the public rights of way,” according to a city statement.
Nearly a dozen locations, spanning 18.4 miles of freeway space, have been designated for cleanup operations.
Caltrans has made $400,000 available for the project. The city will bill the state to recover expenses after each cleanup detail concludes.
“The city and Caltrans District 8 identified that it would be to our organizations’ mutual benefit to find ways to leverage the city’s proximity and ability to respond within its jurisdictional boundaries,” the Department of Public Works stated.
Along with clearing operations, the city’s Public Safety Engagement Team and its outreach partners will communicate directly with homeless individuals impacted by the removals, providing them with assistance to secure temporary or permanent shelter and other resources, according to the city.
Similar efforts have been ongoing along the Santa Ana River bottom over the last two years. However, transient camps continue to pop up within the mostly dry channel.
There needs to be a campgrounds set up for homeless people that do not want to accept the offer to help. There needs to be a space where they can camp but be restricted to that property. It has become increasingly dangerous to allow homeless to set up their home where ever they want. So it would be the right time to let them know that if they do not want assistance then they have only the option of living at one of the homeless campgrounds set up for them..
I agree with that very strongly, but it needs to be somewhere where it’s not going to damper the environment or where they are seen because that is what bothers a lot of us in our community is that they are very inappropriate and they are very unsanitary and we don’t want that in our community. So they need to be in an encampment where they are away from the city and away from this area. The encampment needs to be somewhere where they’re not going to be within the city limits. That would be greatly appreciated by US. Residents in the city is what I feel. I have been a resident in Riverside for the last 5 years and I just feel that that’s what’s appropriate and a lot of them or habitual drug users and I know that a lot of them that are homeless are not going to go for getting a place
Yes at the Barstow military base. Best place.