Salinas votes to spend hundreds of thousands on sweeping out homeless.

Salinas’ Chinatown is a sight to behold. On any given night, hundreds of people live on its streets, surrounded by whatever personal belongings they have. They live in shacks they’ve cobbled together with pallets and plywood and tarps. They live in cardboard boxes or in tents. Some sleep on filthy mattresses that have become infested with bedbugs and fleas. They urinate and defecate in buckets, on the streets and in derelict buildings because there are no publicly accessible toilets down there at night. Many are mentally ill, many are drug addicted and some are both.

If there is hell to be found in Monterey County, surely this is it. And between the rats and the feces and fleas and bedbugs, it’s created one hell of a public health hazard.

It’s not just Chinatown where the homeless gather in these underground societies. It’s just that Chinatown is the most obvious and visible of the places. They also live at Natividad Creek Park and in the creek bed itself. They live near and under the Claes Oldenburg Hat sculptures at Sherwood. They even live in the Boronda Reclamation Ditch.

Salinas has never been able to figure out a solution to its homeless issue, although they’ve become quite adept at finger pointing, especially at the county, which has proven itself useless when it comes to homeless issues. There’s virtually no transitional housing available as those who want to get off the streets move toward stability. The city took longer than it should have to launch a winter warming shelter, this year set to open in November and run nightly through next March.

On Oct. 13, the city took a giant leap backward from any of the relationships or goodwill they’ve built with homeless service providers and the homeless themselves. On a 5-1 vote, the council passed an ordinance that will allow the city, with 24 hours notice, to clear away “bulky items” like sleeping bags and tents, and the personal property of homeless people, when it’s found on city-owned property and the homeless are unable to take it with them when these sweeps occur.

These sweeps are already happening a few times a year; the ordinance provides a mechanism for the taking and storage of the personal property. The so-called bulky items like mattresses can be disposed of by the city immediately, while the city will have to figure out a way to store the personal property that’s taken. The homeless will have 90 days to retrieve those personal items.

The city now has 30 days to figure out how to make this ordinance work. Salinas will spend $250,000 on a contractor to remove property of the homeless from the streets, dump what needs dumping and store what needs storing. For that money, one would imagine they could keep the warming shelter open all year and hire a few trained social service staffers too.

During the public comment, period, a teenage boy got up to speak. As he spoke, he revealed he was homeless. And then he began to weep.

“I wish you could put yourself in our positions. I would like you guys to really think about this,” he said. “We’re all humans.”

In the bigger picture, says Jill Allen, director of Dorothy’s Place, where the homeless can go for hot meals, showers and access to social services, the ordinance will not solve the problem and likely will make matters worse by driving homeless people out of Chinatown, where services are available.

“It’s not like they’re going to disappear,” Allen says. “If the city is willing to pay a contractor $250,000 a year to store items, why not spend that money with a service provider to provide more housing, especially transitional housing?”

Before the vote, Mayor Joe Gunter was asked if the city had a moral obligation to the homeless, and if the ordinance conflicted with that obligation.

“We are obligated to provide a safe, livable community and by allowing them to live in squalor and mess with the rats and feces, we are not meeting our moral obligation,” he said. “Sometimes it might not seem we’re doing the right thing, but I think we’re going to do this in a professional and meaningful manner.”

In the audience, a woman wearing a gray T-shirt shirt on which she had written “Please Help Us” shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

MARY DUAN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at mary@mcweekly.com