By Brooklynn Wong
The city has been hearing mixed feedback on the proposed Navigation Center, a facility that would temporarily house homeless individuals, on Lincoln Avenue in a residential area of Buena Park.
A public hearing was held recently, and another is scheduled for April 9.
Individual residents have approached the dais at recent City Council meetings to voice their opinions.
At the March 12 City Council meeting, a resident named Dave Derosa, who lives in the area around the site, said he is opposed to the vacant building currently there being used as a homeless shelter, and the debate over it has pitted neighbor against neighbor in a way that he has never seen before.
He said he has resided there for 33 years, paid off his house a few years ago, and he “would like to stay.”
He requested that the city find another site for the Navigation Center, echoing many of the concerns that have been shared over the center being in a residential area and near to multiple schools that children walk to. He said if the homeless shelter is put somewhere else, “we’ll be able to sleep at night again.”
