As of 2019, 58,936 homeless people called the streets of Los Angeles County home. Topanga’s location in the western part of Los Angeles County puts it as a refuge for a large number of those homeless people. Encampments have been a part of the area for a long time, and they frequently call for professional cleanup services when the encampment is abandoned. The anatomy of a homeless encampment is a sad reality of modern life. It often includes the darker side of humanity that we so fervently wish didn’t exist (but it does).

Homeless encampments serve at the “home” of homeless people. These encampments are usually outdoors and contain all the evidence you see from people who are forced to live in an outdoor environment: human feces, trash, rodents and other outdoor wildlife, and unsanitary objects that homeless people might have had to amass while they were living in the encampment. It’s not a pretty sight.

Life in the Encampment

Because homeless people are forced to live in outdoor environments with no bins or containers to store things in, their trash and belongings quickly accumulate to hoarder type levels in a short period of time. With hundreds of people sometimes inhabiting a single encampment, you have all the hallmarks of human life in one small space. Everything from human feces, to blood, to objects stained with outdoor residue from rainwater and mud are present in these encampments. Not only is the clutter and trash dangerous, but the biohazardous contaminants pile up quickly as well.

City governments often must close down these homeless encampments and call on the services of Eco Bear. We enter every job we do with a great deal of compassion for the people that have lived in these areas. We know how inhuman it is to have people living outdoors like animals, and we know that when they’re asked to move on, they’ve often formed an attachment for the area of Topanga that they’ve “settled” in for awhile. We try out utmost to make sure that they’re given a 72-hour or greater “eviction” notice before we begin our cleanup. We work tirelessly with city and local governments to ensure that our cleanup is humane and never forgets that we’re working with people here and the remnants of their often difficult lives.

What is a Homeless Encampment?

A homeless family making their home in an alley is not an encampment. Encampments are much broader and have a larger number of people gathered. They are sometimes called “tent city” areas. It’s a large group of people living in a single, concentrated area of Topanga. These areas are riddled with disease from rodent and insect activity, human blood that sometimes gets on objects in the area, and other potentially infectious diseases that derive from people living in unsanitary outdoor conditions.

Unfortunately, some people are homeless because of mental illness and/or drug addiction. When you’re dealing with a living condition that hits at the heart of human despair and loss, it’s not uncommon that people turn to alcohol or drugs to cope with the inhuman living conditions. Over time, criminal activity can break out in an encampment as well, increasing the danger of the area and the damage it does to a community’s reputation. As a result, city and state governments will need to intervene and close down the encampment. We are the compassionate, caring people who help governments perform this necessary action in the most humane way possible.

What We Do

There are three primary stages of homeless encampment cleanup that we tackle. This process is officially known as biohazard remediation. An encampment may contain such biohazards as dead animals, animal feces, human feces and urine, and even needles that were used to do drugs like heroin and meth. It’s easy to see why our professionals need an entire army of PPE gear to cleanup these sites and keep the general public safe from their disease and dangers.

Cleanup

Over 3,000 tons of trash were removed from homeless encampments in 2017. This gives you a clear idea of why the beginning of the process is general cleanup and trash disposal. Even people who live indoors accumulate a lot of trash, so you can imagine 100 people living outdoors together will accumulate dangerous amounts of trash with no means of disposing of it. Our crew steps in and takes care of this initial first step.

Sanitize

We have medical grade cleaners and cleaning equipment that allows us to intervene in a homeless encampment and begin to clean its grounds and surroundings areas and buildings. Keeping the public safe from disease is our top priority here, and we protect our workers as well. 

Restore

Once we’ve cleaned the area of trash and materials, and we’ve sanitized it, we complete the job by scouring it once again and cleaning and sanitizing every last detail. There’s never just a first step here. We don’t stop until every last piece of trash, debris, and biohazard is removed from Topanga encampments. 

Contact Eco Bear

Eco Bear wants to be the team you trust to clean Topanga homeless encampments. Our compassionate crew is dedicated entirely to our mission. If you want to work with us now or in the future, or you just have a few questions to ask, please contact us today. We look forward to serving you.