Buena Park city crews have begun demolishing a church's makeshift homeless shelter after inspectors condemned the mobile trailers earlier this year. A judge granted the city an abatement warrant on Monday while the city posted notices of its intent to tear down the shelter.
The First Southern Baptist Pastor Wiley Drake says the church had been running the shelter for about twenty years without incident. "The city says, we don't care what you're doing. We're going to tear it down and drag it out."
Property located within the shelter will be moved to a nearby warehouse where owners have been informed they can retrieve their belongings for the next 90 days. About a dozen men and women who were living in the shelter were relocated to the church, while others had found housing through the city's homeless program.
Buena Park officials decided to get tougher on code enforcement after a fatal warehouse fire in Oakland killed 36 people.
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