Now that the city has made it clear 555 Industrial Park Drive is “the” permanent location for Manteca’s homeless services, it’s time to stop treating the site as temporary.

Homeless shelters under state law are not governed by many restrictive rules and zoning that other concerns are.

The reasons for that are obvious.

The city, though, has a moral obligation not only to lead by example and be a good neighbor but to keep promises made and implied by a number of its current council members.

No one expects the city to build a Taj Mahl for the homeless.

But one should expect the city to set some standards.

The Manteca Industrial Park, where the city’s emergency homeless shelter is now located and  is slowly being expanded into a navigation city, is the oldest business park in the city.

As such, it has challenges securing tenants for properties.

A drive by 555 Industrial Park Drive gives you an eyeful of dead grass and dirt as frontage landscaping. You can also see the rag-tag yet functional structures in the parking lot along with other stuff.

If this were a private concern, the city never would have allowed it to open when it did in 2018 without proper screening from public view of less than attractive functions or city standard landscaping.

It is a sad state of affairs when a truck parking lot on the same street has significantly nicer landscaping than what will soon be city property once the required purchase of the former redevelopment property is completed.

A lot of nearby occupied and unoccupied property has less-than-desirable upkeep with landscaping and even buildings.

But that is not the issue since the city a few years back made cleaning up the looks of Manteca a top five council priority.

Given the high profile location of the homeless services within the business park, how the city maintains its property can have a detrimental effect on nearby properties trying to secure tenants.

The city also had promised a 6 to 7 foot masonry sound wall would encircle the navigation center when it was envisioned to go on the back part of the 8 acres at 680 South Main where the new police station and possible other municipal facilities will be built.

It was a promise to secure the site plus make it “invisible”.

The sound wall essentially would blend the homeless facility in with other nearby concerns.

It is why 555 Industrial should have a sound wall around the parking lot as well as drought resistant landscaping.

The sound wall is key for another reason.

Right now, the 55,000 square-foot formed Qualex structure needs a new roof.

But if the city were to house people within the footprint of the building that once housed equipment that processed film for Kodak, fairly expensive retrofitting would be needed.

Not saying it can’t be done with part of the building, but a more prudent and flexible approach would be to add additional modular structures to the parking lot.

The building itself could be used by the city for other purposes whether it is as a warehouse or even relocate other departments such as the water division.

The building has a separate access to the rear from Industrial Park Drive.

The city clearly wants to honor its promise to maximize the expenditure of the $16 million homeless grant obtained by the state.

In doing so, part of the money could be tapped for operations if all of it is not consumed by building structures to house homeless programs.

The city has basically promised the permanent homeless facility solution would be seamless just like one they toured in Fresno.

That means you should be able to drive past 555 Industrial Park Drive and have no inkling there  is a homeless navigation center at the location.

The city also was impressed there was no “auxiliary camping” within blocks of the Fresno navigation center as police and shelter personnel stayed on top of the homeless who tried to camp nearby.

Manteca has done a fairly good job at accomplishing that goal already.

Two years ago, driving on nearby side streets and even along Industrial Park Drive there were numerous homeless living in cars parked along the street as well as in a scattering of tents.

There also were homeless who basically plopped down on private property in front of various concerns. 

It was so bad at one point, that it prompted Tom Duffy Co. to have voice activated messaging that used loudspeakers to order the homeless to keep moving who wandered onto their property in a bid to illegal camp or sleep.

Ultimately, the flooring company did what many other Manteca concerns have done including  the FESM Hall, which is to “homeless proof” their property using wrought iron fencing.

This is not being inhumane to the homeless.

They cause property damage, often leave behind the No. 2, move on without policing their garbage, and can create other problems.

Other problems, as noted by business owners over the years, are confrontations between employees arriving for work and the homeless sleeping in front of doors.

Manteca offers the homeless an option to get off the street.

If the homeless refuse it, that doesn’t mean they have the right to carte blanche go onto private property or take over public areas to sleep and such.

Installing a 7-foot high masonry wall at 555 Industrial Park Drive is a natural progression from the city using wrought iron fencing six years ago to secure the library courtyard on Center Street.

Until they did that, the homeless every night in large numbers would camp in the court yard.

They ended up leaving trash behind including the No. 2, vandalized light fixtures so they could rig up a way to charge their smartphones, and sometimes blocked access for employees arriving to work.

The city was spending $16,000 or so a year in manpower to remove on a daily basis all traces of what the homeless left behind before most of the public saw it.

The fencing solution cost $7,500 and avoided $16,000 in reoccurring annual costs.

A masonry sound wall at 555 Industrial Park will also have a positive impact that far outweighs its cost.

That impact is making sure the city’s oldest business park remains viable with the roughly 400 or so jobs it supports directly and to eliminate an impediment to finding tenants for vacant buildings.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com