In California, rough sleepers were found living in furnished caves dug into the banks of a river, twenty feet below street level.
The groups were removed from the eight caves along Modesto’s Tuolumne River over the weekend and stripped of belongings, furniture and more than 7,000 pounds of trash, which filled two trucks and a trailer.
Some caves were decorated with murals, had broken floor tiles and one even had a makeshift fireplace and chimney.
Modesto police said, “This particular area is plagued with vagrancy and illegal camps, raising concerns due to the fact that these camps were actually caves dug into the riverbanks.”
It comes as Los Angeles conducts its annual homeless count to try to get an accurate snapshot of the city’s rough sleeper population, after 75,500 people in the county were found sleeping rough on any given night last year were sleeping.
The caves were difficult to access and police didn’t know how they managed to get so much stuff down there
Groups were removed from the eight caves this weekend
Some caves were fully furnished with an armchair, clothes and blankets
The community living in the caves had a makeshift staircase carved into the hillside leading up to them.
The caves reportedly had to be evacuated for safety reasons, local resident Tracy Rojas told CBS: “If one of these were to collapse, it would be devastating.
“This whole thing would come down and end up in the water.”
She added: “It’s not just a danger to the people who live there, but to the people who walk there.”
According to Rojas, some caves used to be fully furnished with bedding, belongings, food, an improvised mantelpiece, but also drugs and weapons.
She said: ‘You can see the hooks on the wall where bottles and things were hanging.
“I think there should be more emphasis on the homeless. They’ve gotten to the point where you can see they’re desperate.”
It was not the first time that the police cleared the caves and they are frequently inhabited.
The caves are dug into the banks of the river at water level, with steps carved into the bank
Police have removed 3,000 kg of waste from the caves
A team of volunteers showed up this weekend to help, but they said they don’t have a solution to stop people from moving back in
Volunteer Chris Guptill said: ‘It’s already proven that people will dig these up, so I don’t think filling them in with any material would work.
“We really don’t have a known solution for how to deal with it.”
It comes as Los Angeles conducts their annual homeless count, in an effort to determine how many people are living on the city’s streets.
More than 6,000 volunteers from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority are participating in the three-day count.
They are trying to take a snapshot to determine how many people are unhoused and what health or physical health care services they may need.
California is facing a homelessness “emergency” as crime rises and businesses leave some of the state’s urban centers.
More than 75,500 people were homeless in LA County on any given night, according to last year’s count, a nine percent increase from 2022.
Los Angeles is currently conducting a homeless count to find out how many people in the city are sleeping rough
Last year, more than 75,500 people were sleeping rough on any given night in LA County
Since 2015, homelessness has increased by 70 percent in the county and by 80 percent in the city of Los Angeles itself.
Last year, California had about a third of the country’s homeless population, and Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and other Golden State cities had among the largest numbers of unsheltered people in the country.
In that count, Los Angeles had the most homeless people in the state, 65,111.
But five other metropolitan centers — San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco — also ranked in the top 10 of America’s hardest-hit cities, each with their own roughly 10,000 homeless people.
About 70 percent of Californians said homelessness and the cost of housing were a “major problem” for the state at the time, according to a survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.