Residents call for action as homeless occupy San Fernando play zone

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

What was once a joy­ful cor­ner of child­hood—the bright­ly coloured play zone at Irv­ing Park in San Fer­nan­do—has be­come a place of fear.

Slides where chil­dren once squealed with laugh­ter are now draped with tar­pau­lin, a mat­tress wedged be­tween the rails, and oc­cu­pied by a home­less man. Res­i­dents say watch­ing the park’s heart—the chil­dren’s play area—trans­form in­to a makeshift shel­ter has been deeply dis­tress­ing.

While the rest of the park re­mains un­touched, the play zone has been over­tak­en.

A res­i­dent, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said the man spends the day sleep­ing in­side the shel­ter and en­ter­tains vis­i­tors on near­by bench­es at night, of­ten be­hav­ing er­rat­i­cal­ly. Fam­i­lies now feel too afraid to use the area.

“When I saw him sleep­ing in the park, then the plas­tic and the big black­out tar­pau­lin go up … next thing, he put a whole bed in­side. One night, he was naked and light­ing a fire. I didn’t even want him to see me out­side,” the res­i­dent re­called.

An­oth­er lo­cal de­scribed the de­cline as heart­break­ing.

“This is a chil­dren’s park. My chil­dren and grand­chil­dren grew up here. Now, no par­ent brings their kids. It is not right,” she said, adding that the park is no longer san­i­tary or safe.

“Peo­ple used to come and play on the slides, but now chil­dren stay far away. It’s not a place for fam­i­lies any­more. Fear has spread through the com­mu­ni­ty, es­pe­cial­ly among the el­der­ly,” she added.

Res­i­dents are urg­ing San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris to in­ter­vene be­fore the park is com­plete­ly lost.

When con­tact­ed, May­or Par­ris said he would re­quest po­lice as­sis­tance to re­move the in­trud­er and ex­pressed con­cern about the grow­ing home­less pop­u­la­tion in the city.

He not­ed that Har­ris Prom­e­nade, once the heart of San Fer­nan­do, has al­so be­come a haven for home­less in­di­vid­u­als, pos­ing a dan­ger to stu­dents at­tend­ing near­by schools—St Joseph’s Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do Boys’ RC, and St Gabriel’s Girls’ RC.

Par­ris added that home­less in­di­vid­u­als are fed “up to eight times a day,” draw­ing more peo­ple in­to the area. He es­ti­mates there are now more than 200 home­less peo­ple liv­ing in San Fer­nan­do.

MP for San Fer­nan­do West, Dr Michael Dowlath, who re­cent­ly launched a city clean-up cam­paign, al­so promised to ur­gent­ly ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion.