California cities do not united response to homeless camps

From Marisa KendallCalmness

This story was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

Cleaning a camp is one of the most complex and completed tasks that every city California can take when it reacts to homelessness.

How they deal with this challenge varies greatly.

Calmatters have demanded nearly three dozen cities across California for copies of their camp management policies. The answers covered a wide range, emphasizing the lack of a unified strategy to deal with street homelessness throughout the country, even when the Gavin New York government is Insistence of more ranked rulesS

San Diego, for example, has a 10-page policy, which writes everything from when it can be removed (during the day-to-day hours, not if there is a 50% chance of rain) to how much preliminary warning the city should give the residents of the camp (at least 24 hours) and how to deal with personal belongings and registers.

But some smaller cities and counties have no rules or just guidelines for bare bones. Mendocino County has no camp management policy. 861 sheriff pages Guide It includes just over two pages about how MPs should interact with homeless people. Deputies are “encouraged” to consider directing them to shelter and consultation instead of arresting them for minor crimes. Mendocino County also does not track the elimination of the camp.

Disassembling a camp can be detrimental to people who call the camp home, many of whom have already experienced a significant trauma while living on the street. At the same time, cities say they have an obligation to remove bearings that are dangerous, non -sanitary, risk fire or block traffic.

Creating a policy so that people living in a camp know what to expect can facilitate the process of everyone, said Alex Visotsky, a senior associate of California for the National Union, to end homelessness.

“People need to know when this garbage truck is coming,” he said. “People need to know how long they need to move. And when there is nothing in place at all and people just fly to the seat of their pants, it causes more harm. This leads to more chaos.”

How cities and districts eliminate camps have become especially important recently as many places are Increasing the application After the US Supreme Court last year Gave them more freedom of movement For that. Cities throughout the country have adopted new laws Forbidding bearings that may or may not include provisions that require the city to give a prior warning before clearing a bearing or keeping people’s possessions.

Some counties, including Santa Cruz and Monterey, are only now writing camp policies for the first time, encouraged by a recent impetus by the Newsom administration. In May he summoned for cities In order to make illegally camp for more than three days in one place, while encouraging them to give people a 48-hour notice before clearing the camp and storing confiscated items during a clearing so that their owners can claim them.

The last application For state funding for homelessness, it requires cities and counties to present a connection to their camp policy. If they do not have such a policy, they must be committed to following the state’s directions for addressing the camps.

Both the governor’s office and the legislature have signaled that Next -What will not come by the budget year 2026-27-will require cities and counties to adopt camp policies to qualify.

“The governor cannot impose cities and local jurisdictions to accept a specific plan or ordinance,” Tara Galegos, a spokesman for the Governor Service, said in the email. “This said the governor shared a Modeling ordinance and called on any local authority to accept and implement local policies without delay supported by billions in state funding and authority Approved by the US Supreme Court Last year. “

Santa Cruz County has recently drafted a policy for the removal of bearings in unaccorpored parts of the county (nearly 600 square miles), which he will propose to the Council of Supervisory Authorities next month. Monterey County adopted a new policy earlier this year.

The current process of clearing a camp at a non -intruded Santa Cruz county may be “chaotic”, said Robert Ratner, director of Santa Cruz County Health Housing. It is not always clear which agencies should make the difficult decisions about which camps to clear, when and how.

Usually, the sheriff’s office makes these calls, Ratner said, but there are many suitable factors that the agency may not know – for example, how many shelter beds are available or whether the camp pollutes the near water road. The new policy puts the County Executive Service responsible for these difficult decisions and guidance on how long to store confiscated property (at least 90 days) and how to make profits (make a list of all residents of the camp and record details of their situation that will help them connect them to housing and other services).

“Unfortunately, it’s not easy,” Ratner said. “And I think the management is useful here. Because we carry it on the board and they agree to the principles and then give that direction to all the staff, so the staff do not guess.”

But cities and cities, including Santa Cruz, tend to be inclined to write strict rules that may have problems after later; It’s hard to promise a shelter bed when you don’t know if there will be one. As a result, many policies offer unclear guidelines, not enforceable decrees. US Supreme Court last year ruled Local authorities can ban the camps, even if there is no shelter. While some local camp policies indicate that cities and cities should try to offer a shelter bed before destroying a camp, few go so far as they demand it.

There is one thing that tends to make camp policies more binding: when they are written in court. This often happens after a group of stray residents is judging a city as it happened in San Diego and San Bernardino. When the two countries are established, they can agree on new rules for managing the elimination of the camp in this city and the city is legally obliged to follow them.

But this can also lead to drawn battles in the courtroom. Chico has been fighting in the last year get out of the bottom An agreement reached after eight homeless residents filed a lawsuit against the city in 2021, claiming that its implementation to camping laws was unconstitutional.

Thehe settlement Define strict new rules that Chico must now follow before he can clear the homeless camp. The city must make sure that there are enough shelter beds for all who will be displaced from the camp, to make a written notification to the plaintiffs’ lawyers more than two weeks before the meadow, to provide a seven-day warning to the residents of the camp and then conduct another 72-hour warning.

“People need to know when this garbage truck is coming.”

Alex Visotzky, Senior Policy of California Policy, National Union to Terminate Homelessness

Advocates of non -existent communities Say these ruleswhich are more stringent than in many other cities in California, provide decisive protection for people on the street who are simply trying to survive. The city, on the other hand, says after this “multi -week, busy” process, before imposing its camping regulations, prevents its obligation from clearing the camps in fires prone.

“The city of Chico is prevented from exercising reasonable actions to protect public health and safety (including the transitional camps themselves) from a fire hazard,” says city manager Mark Sorensen in email. “The city is held hostage by the seven other claimants and (their lawyers, Northern California Legal Services).”

The city tried last year to leave the settlement after The US Supreme Court has ruled That cities can make a campsite illegally, even if they do not have a shelter beds available, and was downloadedS The city is now Try againS Later this fall is expected to return to court.

Legal battles can also influence how cities deal with personal belongings taken from a homeless camp. San Bernardino, which last year regulates a case Related to the destruction of ownership of people who are not human should provide the residents of the camps of different colors to distinguish their property and garbage and to provide people with disabilities to pack their belongings.

Stockton, who cleared over 200 camps last year, instead complies with the policy of the police department, which is vaguely stated by employees, should “use reasonable care” with the property of a resident of homeless and avoid destroying it. If the owner of the property is unable to pack it, “measures” must be taken to ensure the objects.

Most jurisdictions lack resources to respond to all camps on their streets, so some of them have prepared policies that help them prioritize which camps to clear first. Fresno has a detailed indicator that ranks the bearings based on various risk factors. Camp received two points, if the fire department had to come out, four points, if it was the location of violence, and one point if a policy creator asked the city to clear the camp.

Having such a patchwork of policies throughout the country makes it difficult to solve the problem of homelessness, Ratner said. And while Newsom’s efforts to bring the cities on the same page seem to have some effect, tying these rules for state funding is by far not a perfect solution, he said. The smaller cities that do not receive funds for homelessness directly from the state have no incentive to accept rules, he said.

“This creates significant discrepancies,” Ratner said, “and more drama between jurisdictions.”

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.