Camping crackdown in Chico approved
More residents are expected to lose homes
CHICO » The bombshell first move of the new Chico City Council came Tuesday and means big changes for those who are unsheltered and camping in Chico, an issue that’s drawn controversy for years.
The new council quickly moved forward to make the contentious issues of camping in the park, along with other rules for rubbish, belongings, shelter and animals, misdemeanors as another tool for enforcement beyond citations.
Councilors Alex Brown and Scott Huber were the only dissenters, asking for other solutions besides making camping a criminal offense. There are currently no new solutions for shelter in the city.
Homeless Solutions Coordinator Suzi Kochems told the council there is only one emergency shelter, the Torres Shelter. The Jesus Center is working on its Renewal Center, which won’t open until April.
Kochems and other staff have visited “at least seven different properties in the last couple weeks,” and identified only a location at the Chico Airport for possibly meeting all habitability standards for emergency standards.
However “The ( True North Housing Alliance) board is in a holding pattern and not moving forward with that at this time,” she said.
The city is looking for other ways to possibly secure prefabricated shelter in the future.
Huber asked if there is any way to waive the requirements for sprinklers in space like churches to allow people to sleep there, particularly with the recent which have resulted in a “huge displacement of people in the last couple of years.”
“Not that we can find,” Community Development Director on Code Enforcement Tony Lindsey said. He added there aren’t temporary sprinkler systems to use, either.
Due to this requirement, if a warming center does open, people will not be allowed to sleep there.
In addition, while Safe Space Winter Shelter normally opens rotating shelters in local churches at this time of year, the nonprofit has been “turned down in many different locations,” Kochems said. Some churches’ facilities are too old, do not meet current standards for allowing sleeping like having a functioning sprinkler system or are simply “not interested in housing homeless, currently.”
Kochems said at this time there are on average 20 to 30 open beds at Torres Shelter, and said people can currently enter if they test negative for COVID-19. Fear of COVID-19 may play a factor in people avoiding shelters, she said.
However, Safe Space and True North Housing Alliance said what Kochems told the council Tuesday is not true. While the county is under the state coronavirus plan’s purple tier, the Torres Shelter, which is run by the alliance, is not admitting any new occupants.
True North Housing Alliance Director Joy Amaro said when the county entered Purple Tier, she decided with the input of Butte County Public Health that the shelter would not take new clients until the county moves to the next less restrictive tier for operation.
Amaro said the shelter has had only one COVID-19 exposure in nine months, which was successfully contained.
“I am concerned that anyone coming in for services would be turned away, knowing that they would have to sleep on the street another night,” she said. “The Torres Community Shelter had been at max capacity pre- Camp Fire in 2017, serving 160 people a night, and turning people away nightly. We knew we didn’t have enough beds then, and things are exacerbated now, due to the pandemic.”
That leaves anyone currently unsheltered out of options.
“I recognize the policy decisions I have made may not sit well with some members of the community, but I feel it is my job to protect my staff, and the current guests that are staying with us,” Amaro said. “My biggest fear is to have a mass exposure within the shelter, and ( be) unable to contain the virus; which you could imagine (could) be deadly.”
Kochems said she had not known about Amaro’s decision at the meeting Tuesday night.
“The county has not demanded that the shelter cease from accepting new entries; that was a call that Joy made based on local information and business operations,” Kochems said. “She didn’t share that with me, and I am not in a habit of demanding a daily update from our excessively busy service providers on how they are choosing to run their operations.”
Could the Torres Shelter’s current closure to new guests mean new laws against camping in the parks could violate the 2019 case City of Boise, Idaho v. Martin (which found governments may not enforce ordinances which ban public camping unless they first provide enough shelter where people can move to)?
The city’s attorney Andrew Jared declined to comment.
City Manager Mark Orme said Jared has stated “the ordinance is consistent with all federal and state laws as it was adopted and as it will be applied.”
He said the ordinances are focused on ”ensuring park rules are more adequately enforced — for all of the public — not based upon a single group of individuals.”
“The ordinance in question would have taken the same approval route regardless of COVID-19, purple tier, open beds or not; the ordinance is about so many things, but primarily about illegal activities in parks/playgrounds, a place where they have run rampant and the outcomes of those illegal activities have created subsequent environmental, fire and safety concerns for the citizens of Chico,” Kochems added Wednesday.
A worsening crisis
Knowing people can be handed misdemeanors for camping in the parks with no other shelter to go to is concerning for local service providers.
Nonprofit Chico Housing Action Team has been able to house some people in the last four years, but program director Bob Trausch (not speaking for CHAT) said he thinks there ought to be new solutions given the overwhelming demand.
“We can’t meet that demand,” he said. “We’re overwhelmed right now. We’re getting calls every day.”
“You can’t just punish people for something they can’t control,” he added. “You’re forcing them into a situation where they’re breaking the law, in many cases, unintentionally.”
Community Act ion Agency Butte County Program Director Tom Dearmore said the nonprofit is “preparing for an onslaught” of more people applying for aid after Jan. 1, when eviction moratoriums and different protections could be up.
Safe Space Shelter Operations Team and board member Siana Sonoquie said for three years the nonprofit has struggled to create a low-barrier emergency shelter for exactly this kind of crisis.
“Right around winter, something always falls through the cracks,” she said. “Had the ( proposed) Orange Street shelter been open, we might not be in the severe problem we’re in now.”
Sonoquie said she knows people whose appointments at the True North Housing Alliance were canceled when the county entered purple tier restrictions. She also disagrees with city staff saying people may not want to enter the shelter due to COVID-19. She said knows some who would risk getting the virus in a shelter to avoid being attacked or raped on the streets, but that choice is not available to them at this time.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit is “scrambling” as its usual churches who help shelter people have run into issues, mainly due to the pandemic and social distancing requirements. These include First Christian, Faith Lutheran, First Baptist and East Ave Church. Sonoquie said churches with larger facilities have not offered shelter aid.
Sonoquie is concerned the new council’s approach reflects viewing people who are unsheltered as one entity rather than a diverse population of individuals with unique stories and situations.
“You can’t look at an entire group of people and (put them) down to an experience they’re having related to poverty,” she said.
“The pandemic is making it so people aren’t able to survive,” she added. “Those in precarious housing situations who were struggling to make rent before the pandemic have become much more likely to get displaced.”
“We cannot arrest our way out of this,” she said.
This is especially concerning to her after the displacement of more than 20,000 after the Camp Fire and the North Complex fires.
“When disasters happen, especially what happens here that make people homeless, new people are homeless which also impacts homeless services,” she said. “Now all of these other people are coming in and homeless services become impacted.”
Without solutions
Kochems said there are not enough shelter beds to meet the current demand. A 50-bed True North Housing Alliance expansion cannot open until COVID-19 ”is substantially lessened.” Before that happens, two more facilities with 90 to 100 more beds each are needed to house people exiting Project Roomkey and at least 100 more who are “in precarious positions.”
First, shelters will have to be able to open to new occupants.
But as long as people do not have a choice for where to stay and can be punished by the law, things will worsen, Trausch said.
“You have to have a place for people to go,” he said.
Safe Space will continue to operate Project Roomkey until told there is no funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Sonoquie said it is hoped a small shelter option will be found soon.