MODESTO, Calif. — It's now been almost two months since hundreds of homeless people moved into an outdoor emergency shelter in Modesto.
It's set up as a uniformed tent city underneath the 9th Street bridge.
"I got my own tent!" Kelly Fitzgerald, a homeless woman living in the emergency shelter said.
For Fitzgerald, this is home.
"It's nice to have somewhere where you're not being told to move every day," she said.
It is also a step in the right direction.
"I don't have to stress on the things that I've stressed on every day, like, where are we going to put the tent for the night or are we going to freeze? Do we have enough blankets?" she said.
It was less than two months ago when more than 300 homeless people just like Fitzgerald moved into this emergency shelter, many of which coming over from Beard Brook Park and the City of Modesto says, so far, it's working.
"All day every day, we have city personnel, county personnel and Turning Point personnel onsite meeting with individuals, making appointments with individuals, for career placement, for housing placement, for anything that they might need to break that cycle of homelessness," Thomas Reeves, a spokesman for the city of Modesto said.
In that time, they say, they've been able to place more than 40 people into more permanent housing.
"So, it's working. And when you ask how things are going, things are going quite well," Reeves said.
And the city says they've also seen a significant drop in calls for service across the area. The only major incident, so far, was a fire on April 12 that destroyed four tents right next to Fitzgerald, but luckily no one was hurt.
"Woke us up in the middle of the night, and I'm trying to get [my dog] on a leash and everybody's running and screaming and propane tanks are just exploding everywhere, it was horrible. Tents were burning, people were trying to get everybody out of the tents," Fitzgerald said.
Other than that, most people have been able to keep the peace with onsite security and round the clock care in this gated area. It's been so popular and widely accepted by the homeless community, they've just about run out of tents.
"Since we're running out of tent space, we need a larger space with cots for law enforcement referrals that come in from other parts of the city," Reeves said.
It has been a welcome place of respite for upwards of 400 people that had nowhere else left to go.
"Whoever came up with this, it's amazing, thank you!" Fitzgerald said.
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