1 week Ago By Delaney White
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) -- Neighbors off Orange Avenue say this isn’t the first encampment to appear in the area, but it is causing a nuisance.“If you look over there right now, there’s a pile of trash like you wouldn’t believe,” said Vance Collier.“It looks like the San Diego dump,” said City Heights resident, Jay Greenberg.
Vance Collier has been living off of Orange Avenue in City Heights for more than three decades and says the growing encampments in the area are causing safety concerns and frustration.Birdland neighborhood on high alert after multiple incidents of vandalism“Every time they cut through the fence they just trash the whole area,” said Collier.“It’s very frustrating.
I think it’s true for anybody who lives in any one of these cities where there’s just garbage all over the place,” added Greenberg.Collier tells us a few months ago a fire broke out in the encampment -- about 20 feet from his property.“It looked like a garbage dump on fire,” said Greenberg.
Crews respond to encampment fire near I-805 in City Heights areaResidents say they’ve reached out to the city, but the city says it’s not their responsibility.“Everybody’s been sending out everything under the sun, even to the City of San Diego, and the city said, 'no, it’s Caltrans,'” said Collier.Collier says Caltrans built a tall fence on the other side of the freeway that was effective, but on the side of the freeway where he lives, the fencing construction stopped before reaching his property.
“Three quarters of the way down the block, there’s an apartment building, that’s where they stopped. So, none of these buildings back here have any protection at all,” said Collier.Arsonist sentenced to 13 years for starting string of brush firesAnd the people from the old encampment relocated.
“So everybody that used to camp out there and on the other side of the freeway are all camping out right here now,” added Collier.Collier tells us his requests for Caltrans have remained unanswered.“If they finish it off from this edge here all the way down then we’ve solved the problem.
They just won’t respond or they won’t do anything about it,” added Collier.We reached out to Caltrans for an update on the situation and are still waiting on a response..
