Authorities in Modesto, Calif., discovered homeless people living in caves along the Tuolumne River over the weekend — and some of the caves were furnished with amenities.
Modesto police and volunteers with Operation 9-2-99 and the Tuolumne River Trust removed an estimated 7,600 pounds of trash from the area, which is about 20 feet below street level and accessible by makeshift stairs built into the hillside. The trash filled two truckloads and a trailer. Recovered items included bedding, belongings, food, items on a makeshift mantel, drugs, and weapons, according to CBS Sacramento.
“We had a hard time figuring out how they got so much stuff down in there, considering how hard it was to get it up the hill and out,” Operation 9-2-99 coordinator Chris Guptill told the local news station.
Modesto police said the area “has been plagued by vagrancy and illegal camps, which have raised concerns due to the fact that these camps were actually caves dug into the riverbanks.”
The finding comes amid a growing homelessness crisis in California. The blue state’s cities have been hardest hit; in Los Angeles, homelessness has increased by 80 percent since 2015.
The U.S. hit its highest reported level of homelessness in 2023, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, after seeing a 12 percent increase from the year before.
Some 653,000 Americans were homeless when the point-in-time survey was conducted in January 2023, the most since the survey began in 2007. In the first decade that the survey was performed, homelessness in the U.S. steadily decreased from 637,000 in 2007 to 554,000 in 2017, thanks to investments in housing for veterans.
The numbers jumped to 580,000 in 2020 and largely remained steady due to Covid-19 pandemic relief programs.
More than half of the homeless individuals were concentrated in just four states: California, New York, Florida, and Washington. California is home to 28 percent of the country’s homeless population. However, the state saw an increase in homelessness at just half the national rate this year, while New York’s homelessness jumped more than three times the national rate.
Jeff Olivet, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, told the Wall Street Journal that the pandemic-era assistance “held off the rise in homelessness that we are now seeing,”
“While numerous factors drive homelessness, the most significant causes are the shortage of affordable homes and the high cost of housing that have left many Americans living paycheck to paycheck and one crisis away from homelessness,” Olivet said.
“A challenging rental market with historically low vacancy rates, expiring pandemic era housing programs, and an increase in people experiencing homelessness for the first time contributed to the increase in homelessness [in 2023],” said Marion McFadden, HUD’s principal deputy assistant secretary for community planning and development.