Homeless man takes over children’s Play Park

Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va 

A home­less man has tak­en over the chil­dren’s play zone at Irv­ing Park in San Fer­nan­do, leav­ing fam­i­lies too fright­ened to use the space.

Res­i­dents said the rest of the park re­mains un­touched, but the play area, once filled with chil­dren, is now cov­ered with tar­pau­lin and a mat­tress, with the man liv­ing in­side the struc­ture. They said he sleeps there dur­ing the day and be­haves er­rat­i­cal­ly at night.

One res­i­dent said she saw him walk­ing naked and no longer feels safe tend­ing to her gar­den.

“I saw him sleep­ing in the park, then I saw plas­tic go­ing up… then a big black­out tar­pau­lin. Next thing, he put a whole bed in­side. One night, he was naked and light­ing a fire.”

An­oth­er long-time res­i­dent said the park has lost its pur­pose.

“This is a chil­dren’s park. My chil­dren and grand­chil­dren grew up here. Now, no par­ent is com­ing with their kids. It is not right.”

She said fear has spread through the com­mu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly among el­der­ly peo­ple.

“I feel scared. Some of them are men­tal­ly ill.  They could at­tack peo­ple or break in­to cars. I’m sor­ry for them, but they need a prop­er place to stay.”

Res­i­dents are call­ing on San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris to in­ter­vene. He said he will re­quest po­lice as­sis­tance to re­move the in­trud­er and raised con­cern about the grow­ing home­less pop­u­la­tion in the city, say­ing peo­ple are now be­ing fed “up to eight times a day,” which draws more home­less in­di­vid­u­als in­to San Fer­nan­do.