Another Chinatown sweep kicks off new housing project

Another sweep of Chinatown Thursday morning was anything but routine as many who camped on the sidewalks there won’t be able to return.

The Chinatown area of Salinas is routinely cleared out of it’s homeless inhabitants, only to have them move right back in that same night. But now with a new housing project on the horizon, it won’t be so easy for them.

Salinas’ Chinatown area is what many living on the streets call home. The city unofficially began a project today that will still allow them to call it home, but will eventually move some of them indoors.

“It’s an informal groundbreaking for 90 units of housing, some of which is reserved for homeless people. We’ve spent ten years working on a four-story hou sing project here,” said Salinas Assistant Public Works Director Don Reynolds.

The 30-million dollar Midpen housing project will see a 92-unit apartment built on the corner of East Lake and Soledad Street, right in the heart of Chinatown. That means the area will have a near constant construction and security presence.

“What we’re going to see are people working here during the day, construction crews, more eyes on the street. We’re going to see less real estate available for people to camp on, so possibly more camping congestion or people trying to move to other parts of the neighborhood, perhaps moving completely out of the neighborhood,” said Dorothy’s Place Executive Director, Jill Allen.

Moving out of the neighborhood might be a necessity for the area’s homeless as this morning’s sweep ended with a large construction fence being erected out onto the street, displacing 50 or more homeless.

“This is the signal of change. This is not a permanent place they can set up and camp anymore,” said Allen.

“One of the biggest problems we have with blighted properties is the accumulation with trash and other things that happen so when we take properties like this that’s pretty much abandoned and turn it into something productive,” said Reynolds.

It may not be an easy decision to displace dozens of people, but it’s a necessary one with the new housing project set to start construction by next month.

“If they’re going to invest 30, 40 million dollars into this project, we gotta make sure that it’s a safe place for them to house people,” said Reynolds.

“I think what you see here is an evolution. People are figuring out that they can’t be here forever and they either need to do something else with their life or they need to find some other place to camp,” said Allen.

The housing project is expected to be finished sometime in the fall of next year. City leaders are hoping to attract new businesses to the area once it’s close to completion.