Chico’s anti-vagrancy ordinance has been expanded to the entire city instead of just downtown.
The City Council voted on March 1 to expand an ordinance that forbids offenses against public property.
This will affect homeless people directly from storing personal items in public locations and urinating and defecating in public.
The original ordinance was approved in September of last year by a 6-1 vote. It dictated that offenses against public property would be prohibited from locations like waterways, repairing areas and the downtown plaza.
Last October, the council revisited the ordinance and told police to work with the city attorney and come back with a recommendation on how to make the ordinance city-wide.
“We had to go through line by line and decide which ones would be appropriate
to enforce as either an infraction or misdemeanor based on circumstance of the offense,” Dave Britt, deputy chief of the Chico Police Department, told the council.
The rules they decided would be appropriate to move city-wide were:
· unlawful camping
· storage of personal property in public spaces
· public urination and defecation
· the prohibition of consuming alcoholic beverages in public spaces
· damage to plants or property
Britt said other offenses -- removal and disposal of dog feces from public property, deposit of foreign matter in public ways and possession of an open container of an alcoholic beverage -- would be enforceable city-wide as infractions.
He also said the focus of the original ordinance was compassion and accountability.
“Our first priority has been connecting people to services and resources to try and stop the negative behavior that we are seeing in the community,” he said. “We want to help them function better within the community.”
If transients refuse help from the resources provided the ordinance will come into play, but the enforcement would always come second to those compassionate needs, said Britt.
The council also discussed the possibility of storage lockers for the homeless. Britt said they could be beneficial depending on how they were run and where they were placed. Storage lockers could immediately eliminate a lot of the property from public spaces, which is one of the main purposes of the ordinance. He also mentioned other benefits the community could gain from storage lockers, such as:
· It would protect property from theft and vandalism
· During the times of bad weather, clothing, bedding and other property ends up getting damaged or isn’t usable because it’s wet and the property then ends up getting discarded in public spaces
· Lockers could help keep the property out of the police department’s evidence system
Several people spoke both for and against the expansion.
Michael Medeiros, director of Stairways Programming, said people will be asking him in the next couple of months “how can he support this,” but he said this is something that has to be done as a community in order to have accountability.
“We are talking about human beings, we are talking about people that regardless of how they ended up homeless - they’re homeless - and often they are making decisions they have to make,” he said. “We have to realize that when we hold people accountable and they have no other choice we have to do this balancing act. This ordinance is just another puzzle piece and eventually we’re going to have to solve this.”
Carrington Forbes, 23, a former homeless man, said he is proud of the Chico Police Department. He talked about having a rough time with officers, and now he sees how much they are doing for the community.
“I’m talking with a lot of the homeless and I’ve noticed they aren’t really afraid of when the police show up in the park,” Forbes said. “Now they sit down and have a conversations with them and tell them about all of the resources available. A lot of the people here that are out on the streets can’t get any help because most of the time they didn’t even know there is help for them to get, and I think it has been quite amazing to see the police make an effort to go out and tell people about the resources available.”
Dan Everhart, president of the Chico Peace and Justice Center, said he’s against the expansion, and the only solution to homelessness is homes. He said it makes sense to offer services and shelter to those who don’t have any, but he doesn’t understand forcing people into services that don’t exist, referring to places like Safe Space, which is only open for the winter.
“Many anti-homeless laws like this one criminalize human activities necessary for human survival if they are conducted in public places, but if you don’t have a private space to conduct vital functions then your only option is to violate the law or cease existing,” Everhart said. “I feel certain that very few anti-homeless advocates actually want unsheltered people to simply die but once you remove the right of life sustaining functions the right to life itself is undermined.”
Before voting, Councilwoman Reanette Fillmer said,
“We cannot draw lines in the sand, telling people it’s OK for you to be on this street but not by that waterway,” she said. “That’s why I think it’s important to continue with the expansion of this ordinance.”
At the same meeting, the council also decided against providing 24-hour restrooms downtown. Public Works Director Erik Gustafson presented the Internal Affairs Committee's recommendations to buy a fixed model restroom without a trailer.
Instead, the council decided to put a portable restroom in the municipal parking lot as a temporary solution.
-Jovanna Garcia