By Fernando Alcantara/Garden Grove Journal
After enduring a year of homeless car dwellers parked around their businesses, Stanton business owners urged the Stanton City Council on Tuesday night to pass an ordinance restricting overnight parking in the business plaza at Mercantile Ave and Industrial Way.
Residents pleaded with the city council to understand how the ordinance would negatively impact them, as they live opposite the industrial plaza and there is no space for overflow parking in their neighborhood.
Business owner Jesse Sandoval said his problem was not with residents from the nearby neighborhood, but the homeless persons that have made the parking lots and streets their permanent home.
According to Sandoval, there are abandoned vehicles in the parking lot, recreational vehicles and transients that have transformed the business plaza into a homeless sanctuary.
“I’ve got people, in the middle of the day, in my dumpsters… people urinating in the planters,” Sandoval complained. “I pay rent. What gives these people the right to just park there?”
The council moved to take step-by-step actions; first banning overnight parking in the shopping center to remove the illegal parking activity and then to look into accommodating the residents at a later date.
The residents from Sunshine Village and Bradford Place have used the business plaza as their overflow parking lot due to lack of it in their neighborhood.
If the city passes the ordinance of banning overnight parking in the business area, many residents would lose spots for their cars.
Resident Greg Leach suggested to the council that perhaps the city would allow residents with current permits to their respective neighborhoods the ability to park in the shopping center.
“We need to fix what’s wrong with the streets now,” Mayor Brian Donahue said. “We do have this action we need to pass… to get rid of those cars that we don’t want there.”
