By Brooklynn Wong
Many residents have been happy to learn in recent days that a second site for the homeless Navigation Center is being seriously considered.
Caballero Boulevard and Regio Avenue is the location at which “staff is continuing to vet another site,” said City Manager Jim Vanderpool at this week’s City Council Meeting.
And many residents will be happy to know that this area is industrial, unlike the location at 7101 Lincoln Ave. that has been the primary one considered to this point.
The shelter that Buena Park must build to get out from under a lawsuit raised against many North Service Planning Area cities that prohibits them from removing homeless people from public areas until there are enough shelter beds available for them to relocate to, has been heavily debated for months.
The city purchased a vacant furniture store that many residents strongly opposed turning into a homeless shelter because of its location in a residential area, and close proximity to people’s homes, schools that children walk past 7101 Lincoln to get to, and businesses with heavy foot traffic.
Though the city has made clear time and again that this location would be security-monitored 24/7, and the inhabitants would not be able to come and go on their own, people in this party still fear negative impacts on property values, business and young people in the area. They have been in favor of instead putting the shelter in an industrial area.
Some on the other side have been critical of this approach as dehumanizing, and of wanting to put the area’s homeless out of sight and out of mind, away somewhere where people don’t have to see or deal with them.
Vanderpool said an environmental report of the secondary site is being conducted now, and all present Council members mentioned having toured the site.
April 9 is when the city will hold its next public forum on the topic of the Navigation Center, at the Council chambers. Around that time, the Council is expected to make a final decision on where to install the Navigation Center.
The goal is to have the center in Buena Park, as well as one in Placentia, operational by late summer or fall.
Caballero and Regio is in the southwest portion of the city, between the 5 and 91 freeways, in a very industrial area that includes the Pepsi Bottling facility, JCPenney Distribution, Exemplis, and several other warehouses.
