City looks to expand loitering rules into Riverside Terrace

Houston City Council voted to schedule a public hearing on extending the city’s “civility ordinance” to the Riverside Terrace neighborhood, after residents drafted a petition with more than 400 signatures.

The ordinance, created in 2002, prohibits anyone from lying down or sleeping on sidewalks from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. It’s currently in place in the Central Business District, Midtown, Old Sixth Ward, Avondale, Hyde Park, East Downtown Management District, Historic Near Northside, South Post Oak/West Bellfort and Near Northside, according to a council agenda.

Citizens in violation of the ordinance can be ticketed. In 2022, 264 people were ticketed for violating it.

Riverside Terrace residents are following a familiar pattern to extend the ordinance.

Near Northside sought to be included under the ordinance after encountering issues of vagrancy and loitering. More than 100 area property owners signed a petition stating that these problems had become “intolerable and unacceptable” after the stabbing death of an 11-year-old boy. City Council granted their request in an October 2016 vote.

Sabrina Dean-Bass, board secretary of the Riverside Civic Association, said Wednesday that her neighborhood has seen an influx of unsheltered people setting up camp in neighborhood alleys over the past year and a half. Neighborhood residents have also seen people selling and openly using drugs, urinating in public and panhandling, she said.

As Dean-Bass did research on what she could do to help her neighbors, she learned about the civility ordinance. Neighborhood leaders had their first meeting with members of the Houston Police Department at the end of Sept. 2023, and they began gathering signatures from fellow residents and business owners the next month.

Dean-Bass said the idea of bringing the ordinance to Riverside Terrace has mostly been met with praise, but there are some homeowners who are worried the ordinance is an attack on the homeless population. She assured them this wasn’t the case.

“We just really wanted to see the criminal element reduced,” Dean-Bass said.

Council Member Carolyn Evans-Shabazz, who represents the neighborhood, echoed DeanBass on the concern.

“We want to be very clear that we’re not trying to push out the homeless, but certainly there are a lot of activities that are going on,” Evans-Shabazz said. “So we need to see what we can do to work with the neighborhood and the homeless.”

Dean-Bass spoke with a community leader in Midtown who told her that once the ordinance expanded to his neighborhood, issues like loitering and trash in the streets began to go away.

“I’m hoping that we get back to a sense of peacefulness,” she said.

Houston City Council will hold a hearing on the ordinance change on Feb. 21, with a public comment session scheduled for Feb. 20.