A community on Del Norte street just off Broadway in Eureka has been experiencing an endless barrage of issues in the last couple years in regards to their unhoused neighbors.
“We need a camp area where they can go, but, right now they are going into our housing areas and they use the back people’s backyards as bathrooms. Besides their own overdoses that they’ve done, there’s, what, three of them so far this year, deaths down there and and the trash that they leave around needles. Who knows what,” said James, a resident on Del Norte Street who has also had his car windows broken.
When asked if he has had weapons flashed at him, he said he has.
“I have, big stick. That was [like] this is a walking cane. It was probably double the diameter of this,” he said, holding his cane.
Residents say when their unhoused neighbors aren’t at the park at Broadway and Farfield, they’re busy vandalizing the Hmong Baptist church across the street. The Hmong church meets every sunday.
“Almost every day there’s people camped there in front of the church. And several times they have completely filled the sidewalk all the way across. They won’t move. And it makes it so hard to go out into the street with my dog to get around them. I’ve been threatened with a baseball bat, a knife and a hatchet and a golf club and several sticks,” said Douglas, a resident of Del Norte Street.
“The people that are camped there will become aggressive and yell things about my being in a wheelchair. It’ the garbage that they leave behind. The uncapped used hypodermic needles,” he said.
Douglas, a father of three, said all of his children have been assaulted, including his son with Autism.
“One of the ways that my son relaxes when he is stressed out and autism, it will overwhelm you. And when he feels overwhelmed, he walks. And he has been threatened repeatedly. He’s been chased . Yes, he was actually punched in the shoulder hard enough that it dislocated his shoulder. And he wound up having to go to the ER to be treated. Just for trying to take a walk in his own neighborhood,” Douglas said.
“He has a right to walk down our streets without being attacked by, by tweakers. They’re the problem. Just being homeless is not a crime,” he said.
The Eureka Police Department told Redwood News that in order for someone to be arrested and prosecuted, they must be caught in the act or have sufficient evidence a crime has been committed.
Story by Tucker Caraway
