By Katie Daviscourt – The Postmillennial
The Bay Area saw quite the scene on Friday when residents in an affluent San Francisco-area town went to war against the county council over a proposal for a new homeless hotel.
Angry residents of Millbrae, California packed the San Mateo County Council meeting to voice opposition to a proposal under “Project Homekey” that would house 100 homeless vagrants at the La Quinta hotel on El Camino Real, according to Daily Mail.
The meeting delved into chaos when residents disrupted county council members with loud boos and yelling, in which they voiced concerns about public safety and expressed fears that the homeless hotel will bring an increase in crime to their community. The meeting was so well attended that residents filled the room to maximum capacity, and hundreds had to listen outside the building.
Jordan Grimes, the leader of a grassroots campaign group for affordable housing, detailed the chaos on Twitter.
“Good evening, Twitter! I’m spending my Friday night in the affluent Bay Area suburb of Millbrae, where the county is presenting a plan to turn a hotel into ~100 homes for unhoused residents. It appears that the entire city is here, and they are *pissed*,” Grimes wrote.
“The crowd is rowdy and angry, booing the County Exec until he’s drowned out completely. Multiple times,” Grimes said, sharing a video of the incident.
Grimes claimed that things got out of hand when a Q&A session was organized by county personnel and swiftly derailed by “people having their conversations” and “yelling.”
Millbrae resident Ho Yeung told NBC Bay Area that he is concerned about the proposal due to the location of the hotel being within proximity to children.
“It’s very close to children, and it’s a block from three schools, so we don’t want to see that,” he told the network.
Patricia Lam, another Millbrae resident, arrived at the county council meeting equipped with a large homemade sign that read “Keep our children and seniors safe.”
“We’re concerned,” Lam told the network. “We’re concerned about this project. The reason why is because it’s right in the heart of Millbrae.”
San Mateo County Executive Mike Callagy, who was drowned out by residents during his speech with boos, yelling, and people giving him the “thumbs down,” encouraged residents to “give the project a chance.”
“Look, we’ve got these facilities all over the county,” he said.
‘They’re worried about crime, they’re worried about assaults, they’re worried about drugs and mental health impacting the neighborhoods,” Callagy told the network. “That has just not been our experience.”
The project will be under the direction of Episcopal Community Services (ECS) if it gets approved.
Beth Stokes from the service told NBC Bay Area that the homeless people would be “essentially living in an apartment.”
“In terms of safety, ECS will have 24/7 staffing on-site,” Stokes said. “We also will have case management staffing and that’s what supportive housing is. It’s services.”
San Mateo County has spent billions of taxpayer funds over the past few years to “solve” the homeless crisis, otherwise known as the “homeless industrial complex.”
In the San Francisco area, homelessness is a widespread issue, and Millbrae is only 15 miles south of Union Square, where the longest line of encampments is spread out in which thousands of people reside on the streets.
Additionally, the city is plagued by skyrocketing crime rates and a large number of vagrants are addicted to fentanyl.