Cerritos means “little hills” in Spanish, and that gives you an introduction to its charm. As part of the “Gateway Cities,” it has a very modest population of about 49,859 people. It has a bustling arts and entertainment community and is home to the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts and Cerritos Sculpture Garden. Pat Nixon Park is home to many visitors every day who come to appreciate social events. The park itself is named after former first lady Pat Nixon (Richard Nixon’s wife) who once called Cerritos her home.

Like all cities in this area, Cerritos has recently had to contend with rising homelessness and homeless encampments. These encampments sometimes find hundreds of homeless people living in a single outdoor area of the city. They might casually be preferred to as living in “tent cities.” Life in these “cities” is anything but good or safe.

Conditions of Homelessness

Homelessness has many causes, but mental illness and substance abuse are the two ailments most commonly linked to chronic homelessness. When people are chronically homeless, they often seek to find other homeless people (who relate to their situation) to share resources with an live alongside. Because there are no homes involved in this arrangement, outdoor homeless encampments quickly pop up.

The word “camp” in the term is important to remember. In some cases, people call these areas a “tent city,” and that’s the most popular and accurate way to describe them. Some homeless members of these communities do actually have tents that they use to keep out the elements. They store clothing, food, and other items in their tents. Still other residents have no temporary, portable storage, and they sleep out under the open sky like someone in an open camping situation. 

When more than one homeless person lives in a location and begins storing their belongings there, it’s called a homeless encampment. There can be as few as two homeless people to make it an encampment or as many as hundreds of homeless people living in these areas. Areas like this are littered with all manner of dangerous substances and items, such as:

• Soiled clothing
• Spoiled food
• Decomposing animals
• Rodents
• Insects
• Needles
• Drugs
• Human and pet feces and urine

These encampments might originally arise from the heartfelt desire to recreate a home that they can go to, a “safe” place, but anyone who has ever worked to clean one of these encampments knows that it’s anything but safe and anything but home.

How Eco Bear Provides Homeless Encampment Cleanup

We’ve been working in this are for awhile as a homeless encampment cleaning company in Cerritos, California. It’s our goal to make sure that everyone who lives in one of these encampments is able to find another safer place to go. We work with social workers, mental health professionals, and local government to help relocate the homeless from these dangerous areas of disease and despair.

When we get started on our cleanup, we initially plan out a strategy that efficiently clears the area of trash, sanitizes and deodorizes it, and then restores any original facets of the environment that were destroyed during the time the encampment existed. In some cases, there are even human bodies that might have passed away in an encampment like this before it’s cleared, and as such, there’s an even greater danger of biohazards. We take special precautions depending on the severity of the encampment’s risk to the community. 

A Compassionate Homeless Encampment Cleaning Company

We’re compassionate on two levels. The first show of compassion and understanding we show is how we make sure that the homeless people in these encampments have resources before we begin our cleanup. We don’t directly provide that service, but we cooperate with all proper authorities to make sure rules, regulations, and unwritten laws of human decency are followed.

Next, we are compassionate to the city itself in recognizing that these encampments pose a major public health risk because of the infectious disease that often rampages through them. This isn’t just a group of people living together outdoors. These are the worst possible human living conditions you’ve ever seen, playing out right in the open in your city. It’s something that no one passing by a crowded sidewalk or city alley should have to see.

The human element of homelessness will always be its most important, but the environmental and health hazards of an encampment are in no way an answer to homelessness. These people live in conditions that could potentially take their very life from them if they remain in the encampment. As such, we work to promptly remedy the situation and remove the encampment and all its hazards, always mindful that we serve people first and foremost. The city itself will always be safer once every homeless encampment is removed from it and the homeless are relocated to places that really are safe.

Call Eco Bear in Cerritos

Our Cerritos services are relatively new, but we’re happy to be extending our nationally recognized biohazard services to another part of California that can really benefit from them. Our family-owned and operated biohazard cleanup continues to win praise from our clients and authorities who depend on us to keep the world a clean, fresh, and safe place to be. We want your Cerritos to be a little prettier tomorrow than it is today, and we want the homeless who live in these encampments to get somewhere truly safe where they can be helped. Help us help you. Call or write to Eco Bear today and let us take care of your next Cerritos homeless encampment cleanup.