Homeless individuals assist with cleaning up their encampments

Antioch's homeless residents assist the Facing Homelessness and AHAC teams with making the city beautiful again.

The Facing Homelessness team along with the AHAC (Antioch Homeless Advocacy Coalition) came together to clean up the area on Sycamore Dr. near the railroad tracks. The garbage in the area seemed to have been there for years, coming from different homeless communities and the residents in the apartments in front of the tracks.

After talking to some residents and some of the homeless in the area, we found that the owners of the apartments don't supply garbage dumpsters and each resident was responsible for their own garbage service. The apartments are for low-income residents and if they can't afford garbage service, they just throw their garbage over the fence that separates the apartments from the railroad area. There was furniture and appliances such as a washing machine that had also been dumped in the location.

It seems that it would be good for the Chevron, who owns the property that we were cleaning, to hold the landlords responsible for their tenants garbage. Adding dumpster service for the tenants could prevent them from throwing the garbage across the fence.

It was a great turn-out!

The homeless community worked their butts off. We collectively put garbage in 40 bags that were provided by the city to do the clean-up. We piled up the furniture and a lot of other debris that we didn't have bags for. The homeless were happy to help us and volunteered to help us clean up another area near the location we cleaned in a couple of weeks.