Illegal camping by the homeless in Manteca is more than unsightly.

It is a community safety issue.

The homeless in 2024 were involved in 173 of the 470 fire calls the Manteca Fire Department handled.

That is 36.8 percent of all actual fires citywide.

To further put that in perspective, the last point in time count placed Manteca’s homeless population at 218. The number translates into 0.23 percent of the city’s 92,000 overall residents were in situations involving fires.

That is 36.8 percent of all fires involving just 0.23 percent of the population.

It underscores what is at stake in Manteca’s ongoing efforts to get the homeless off the streets and to enforce anti-camping laws that has been allowed on a more robust manner since the Supreme Court ruling last year.

Almost all of the fires connected with the homeless involve them either trying to cook food or stay warm.

Those that do get out of control for the most part become small vegetation fires.

But over the years such fires have gutted unoccupied buildings and homes as well as several occupied structures.

An overnight warming fire set on the porch of the then county health clinic in the 100 block of Sycamore Avenue in downtown ranks as among the most ironic.

The fire spread to the overhang and then to the rest of the building.

The county relocated the health clinic to Norman Drive and their insurance paid for restoring the building. The city ended up buying the remodeled structure from the county to use as a municipal government annex. 

Among the municipal services that are housed there today is fire prevention.

Homeless warming fires in open areas with vegetation that have gotten out of control over the years have burned unoccupied homes near the central district and threatened homes off South Union Road and along Airport Way with some fences being charred,

The fire department handled 11,295 incidents in 2024 of which 909 involved the homeless.

Emergency medical calls tallied 7,412 last year. Of those, 502 involved the homeless.

Other calls for service came in at 3,416 including 234 involving the homeless.

Manteca Police, when they last reported overall calls versus calls involving the homeless, indicated roughly 10 percent of their calls involved the homeless in some manner.

The more serious ones, such as assault and even robbery, are almost exclusively homeless on homeless crime.

Besides encampment and quality of life related calls, police will deal with reports of people carrying weapons such as a large knives strapped to their sides that often turn out to be homeless or the homeless seemingly walking into traffic randomly.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com