Redone Park No Longer a Home

Although his first visit to White Park in downtown Riverside was more than 15 years ago, the city’s parks and recreation director still crinkles his nose in disgust at the memory.

Terry Nielsen was trying to enjoy a bag lunch, he remembers, when the homeless couple next to him began changing the dirty diaper clinging to their baby. Then the woman washed the infant’s soiled diaper, right at the edge of an elegant fountain flowing near the park’s entrance.

“And then they asked for the rest of my sandwich,” Nielsen said.

Such a scene is unlikely today, city officials proudly say.

More than four years ago the city closed the park, which had become a haven for the homeless, and gave it a $2-million make-over. After years of delays, caused in part by extended waits for grant money, the renovation was unveiled in November.

Today the 112-year-old park, considered the city’s first, practically shines. The grass is greener than ever, there’s a rose garden, a cactus garden, a hummingbird garden. There will even be a wedding at White Park come October.

A new senior center, police storefront and Park and Recreation Department offices also operate within the park.

Gone are the rows of cardboard boxes that served as shelter for dozens of the city’s homeless. And to make sure it stays that way, the city erected a stylish steel fence around the entire park. Rangers shoo people out at dusk. The gates are locked.

Nielsen said the gates were necessary to keep the park clean, to protect the gardens from vandals, and, yes, to keep the homeless from setting up camp. The homeless are still welcome, he said. Just during the day.

“Anyone’s entitled to come into this park and enjoy it,” he said during a recent walk through the park grounds. “What they won’t be able to do is set up tents or cardboard housing or misuse the park.”

But the homeless grumble that they are not welcome any longer inside the park. Not even during the day, when the rest of the public is invited inside.

“They just don’t want you in there,” said Clitus Tripp, 62, who was homeless for several months, but is trying to make a fresh start in a small apartment in Mira Loma. Still, Tripp regularly comes back to White Park in hopes of seeing some of his friends.

“You can walk through there. But say you want to just sit out and have a smoke and just talk about life. You can’t do that. The park rangers will come up and ask you to leave.”

Tripp and his buddies have taken to standing just outside the gate, congregating at a nearby liquor store and looking in on the grounds that used to be their makeshift home.

“They said they shut down the park because the elderly were scared of us,” said Ron Harvey, 42, referring to the senior center on the park grounds. “[But] we knew most of them. We used to walk them home at night.”

White Park underscores the conflict between cities eager to create areas where residents feel safe and comfortable and the rights of the homeless, whose very existence can intimidate some.

Riverside police said that before the make-over, calls for service in the White Park area were constant. Lt. Mark Boyer, who oversees patrol services in the area, said his officers were there 30 to 40 times a month.

“We’d find people passed out drunk in the park,” Boyer said. “Transients took baths in the park, they were urinating, defecating.... And then the subsequent problem was that they’d become victims. They’d get robbed, beat up. The park was a consistent problem going back 20 years.”

But now, calls for the park have “dropped to zip,” Boyer said. Seniors again use the center. They have tai chi classes, plant flower and vegetable gardens. And there are plans for concerts.

Boyer added that the park is “open to everyone.” But park rangers will chase out anyone with a shopping cart overflowing with their life’s possessions--a violation of a new city ordinance that forbids anything with wheels, including skateboards and bicycles, inside the park. Wheelchairs, walkers and strollers are exceptions.

Homeless advocates said they understand the city’s dilemma. But by gating a public park and creating laws to shuffle out the homeless, city officials simply end up “criminalizing homelessness,” said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

“We get concerned about setting laws that penalize people for being poor,” Boone said. Such laws, she said, are attacks on the symptoms instead of the problem.

“The real problem is that there aren’t enough places for these people to go. When the community doesn’t provide enough shelter beds to house these people, they can’t help but sleep in public places, and then they are breaking the law.”

Still, city officials are proud of the changes at the park and hope to repeat the effort in other parks. The city has earmarked about $27million for park improvements over the next few years.