Here in America, there is a growing population of homeless roaming the streets and setting up temporary shelters on both private and public lands. With private lands, the liability of the landowner is highly volatile and can leave one bankrupt in the case of a severe incident causing great bodily harm to someone. This liability can be mitigated by calling in a service like ours to come in and remove the danger by cleaning up and taking away the temporary shelter that the homeless have created.

These shelters can be made up of a variety of materials. They use everything from found lumber and pallets to tents and tarps to make these encampments and whatever the building materials these structures are never stable and therefore equate to a high risk of collapse or other serious problems. They need to be removed at once or the number of encampments in an area will quickly multiply. Homeless see an encampment in one area has not been removed after a while and figure it is a safe location for them to also set up shop. This is just one of the many reasons to take care of the issue immediately upon noticing it.

If you are a homeowner, landowner, building manager, or property maintenance professional, then this falls under the purview of your responsibility and you can act immediately to resolve the issue by calling in a professional service such as ours to come in and remove the encampment entirely. The risks associated with leaving it in place increase every day that it is there. This is because things like biohazardous waste, electronics waste, and other dangerous materials pile up by the day as the homeless bring stuff back to camp that they have collected around the streets. Also, biohazardous waste like human byproducts and drug paraphernalia like used syringes and broken glass pipes increase quickly and they pose a serious risk to the public. These are dangers that you or your employer are liable for. Should something happen, and someone gets hurt because of you deciding to just leave the encampment in place, for now, it could cost you a large sum of money. You must act at once to remove the danger and get rid of every trace of the homeless encampments.

There is a process of removing these dangers that includes four key steps. The first of which is just a survey of the site itself by one of our removal experts. Once called, we will send out a professional to come and survey the entire area and see what dangers are present and what we will need to do to safely remove all present materials and substances. They will create a plan of attack for tackling the removal process and will let you know how we plan to start, what the estimated cost will be to you, and schedule a time to get started right away with the cleanup process.

The second step is to find all the hazards present in the encampment and remove them. Each type of biohazard has its own standard operating procedure for removal. We follow strict guidelines in this step and everything is disposed of properly. We remove human waste, which can carry Hepatitis A and other diseases, and send it to the proper place to be incinerated or otherwise destroyed safely. Then we remove all the medical waste biohazards. This can include everything from used syringes to used bandages. All these articles present a genuine threat to human health and safety as it can carry a wide range of diseases in it including HIV, Hepatitis B and C, plus many others. This step is one of the major reasons we strongly recommend hiring a professional service to remove a homeless encampment and that you do not do the job on your own without the proper training and experience. There are many hidden dangers in one of these encampments that can go unnoticed until you get poked by a needle, cut by glass, splashed with feces or urine, or otherwise exposed to highly dangerous substances and are then at serious risk of contracting a major life-threatening illness.

Once all the hazardous waste is removed from the site, we take down whatever structures have been built and removing the bulk of the material. We haul everything away to the landfill or city dump, after separating the material that cannot be disposed of this way. Things like electronic waste material, batteries, and certain other items have to be recycled or disposed of in special manners and our experienced professionals are trained in identifying these articles so they do not get mixed up with everything else. We make sure that every single item is removed and hauled away to the proper disposal facility according to the nature of the objects we find.

The last step is where the actual cleaning and sanitization take place. We spray or treat the area for the pests that often go with these camps like fleas, lice, ants, rats, mice, and more. But only after we pressure wash the area to wash away any contaminants and filth that may stick to concrete, walls, fences, and everything else that belongs there. We use an earth-friendly detergent to sanitize the entire area and do our best to make sure that nothing remains. Our goal is to erase any sign that there was once a homeless encampment at that location to discourage other people from setting up camps there and to return the site to its original state.

All that remains to be done after we leave the site once finished with our job is for the craftsmen who are needed for repairs to the structure, landscape, or infrastructure to come in and fully restore everything to the way it was. This can be anything from replanting some grass or other landscape items to a fresh coat of paint or even repairing/replacing fences, gates, or other structural objects. The encampments can break stuff and take stuff, so what craftsmen you need depends on the situation. We can make recommendations and point out things we noticed while cleaning up, but we are sure you will know best what needs to be done to restore the property to how it was before these people made a temporary home in that location.

All of this is best left up to professional crews like the ones we employ because there are plenty of hidden dangers and health or safety hazards that you may not be fully aware of or recognize the dangers that are present if you were to attempt a cleanup on your own. This is, once again, why we highly encourage you to hire a professional service, even if it is not ours, to come in and do the work. We specifically train our team members on recognizing all the common and even some uncommon dangers that they will find when cleaning up these areas and teach them how to mitigate the risks using the proper tools or equipment for removing everything from the site.

This is a particularly important aspect, and we spend many hours educating our professional removal crews in these aspects. These hours invested in training are necessary for keeping our working family safe from harm while they do an extremely dangerous job every single day. We have the experience and knowledge needed to remove any homeless encampment safely and effectively from your property and return it to all its original glory. While we hope you never have to deal with one of these situations, if you ever do, then please call us so we can get started before the encampment and the dangers within expand and multiply. We look forward to working with you to solve any issue you may face relating to removing a homeless encampment from your or your employer’s property.