Creekside crackdown

Cynthia Gailey identifies herself first and foremost as an environmentalist, and she’s fully aware that homeless encampments have contributed heavily to the trashing of Chico’s waterways. The degradation, she says, is appalling.

Still, it’s not as if the camps’ inhabitants have access to household comforts such as toilets, showers, laundry machines or garbage pick-up, Gailey says. As the coordinator for Safe Space, the seasonal, cold-weather homeless shelter hosted at rotating locations, she argues that the solution is providing unsheltered people with adequate facilities and services, not creating new laws that only “further criminalize homelessness.”

That’s why she opposes an ordinance proposed earlier this month by Vice Mayor Sean Morgan that could be voted on as soon as the City Council’s next meeting. Toward the end of the panel’s last meeting, on Sept. 1, Morgan briefly outlined his Offenses Against Waterways and Public Property initiative, which would, in part, make environmentally hazardous campsites a cite-able offense. (Currently, police must issue a 48-hour notice before breaking up a camp.)

“The city’s waterways have come to attract—and this is kind of oxymoronic—a more permanent transient population,” Morgan said. “This isn’t a small problem with a few people. This is a big deal.”

The public’s call for Chico police to crack down on camps has been a “steady chorus” for the past several years, Deputy Chief Dave Britt told the CN&R by phone. And while police have recently teamed up with rangers to conduct early morning sweeps in Bidwell Park, he says enforcing the city’s existing “unlawful lodging” law is tricky because it requires catching campers while they’re asleep.

“Obviously, that’s very limiting for us,” he said. “These guys tend to be early risers. If we get there at 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., they’re up and about and we don’t have a [penal code] section to use.”

The proposed ordinance, however, would allow police to issue citations for “offenses against waterways”—essentially, making a mess by the creek.

Further, the “public property” aspect of the ordinance would extend to outside City Hall and the council chambers, including the alcoves of those buildings, mostly as a means of preventing overnight camping there as well.

The law would also apply what’s illegal in City Plaza—bicycling and skateboarding, damaging plants or other property, urination and defecation, alcohol, glass bottles, smoking, graffiti, amplified music, dogs off leashes and possession of hypodermic needles—to the entire city campus, Britt said.

“But it’s all about just being a good citizen, whether you’re homeless or not.”

Morgan put the ordinance on the fast track, directing city staff to prepare a comprehensive draft to be presented at the council’s next meeting on Sept. 15. Morgan did not return the CN&R’s requests for comment.

Chico is just one of many U.S. cities grappling with homelessness amid fallout from the Great Recession, which Gailey terms “a trickle-down effect from economic decline.” And it’s not the only city that’s considered passing controversial laws aimed at camping on public property.

The federal government recently condemned ordinances passed by the city of Los Angeles that make it easier to break up homeless people’s camps and impound and destroy their property. In a 12-page document, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness maintains that such an approach is not effective.

“We strongly advise against communities dispersing people experiencing unsheltered homelessness on their own or in camps,” Matthew Doherty, the task force’s executive director, told the Los Angeles Times. “It disrupts the ability to engage and develop trusting relationships to help them on paths to permanent housing.”

And in a pending federal district court case in Boise, Idaho, the U.S. Justice Department argued that banning people from sleeping on the street is unconstitutional.

“Sleeping is a life-sustaining activity—i.e., it must occur at some time in some place,” the Justice Department said in a statement last month. “If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless.”

Locally, more homeless people may be moving deeper into secluded spaces, according to the 2015 census conducted by the Butte Countywide Homeless Continuum of Care. The report notes that “more people experiencing homelessness in the county are retreating to more isolated locations and are less trusting of the community.”

The environmental impacts are serious. Last year, Butte Environmental Council’s annual Bidwell Park & Chico Creeks Cleanup—which aims to remove litter from the waterways before rain washes it downstream—pulled an estimated 30 tons of garbage from the creeks. It was a record amount of trash, far surpassing the previous high of 23,000 pounds in 2002. (BEC has tracked the trash haul since 1987.)

This year is shaping up about the same, based on accounts of volunteers who have worked in the waterways ahead of the cleanup, which is taking place on Saturday (Sept. 19), said BEC Executive Director Robyn DiFalco.

“We’re hearing the conditions are really similar to last year,” she said. “We’re expecting to collect just as much material so long as the same number of volunteers come out again.”

The volunteers pick up plenty of “typical everyday litter,” DiFalco said, but the vast majority of trash, by both weight and volume, comes from homeless encampments. However, she doesn’t want people blaming homeless people alone for the waste in the waterways.

“This is all part of the bigger situation in our community and society,” she said. “Our role at BEC is to facilitate the community having a positive impact and getting out there for the cleanup.”

Gailey and her husband, Mark, have been involved with BEC’s cleanup for the past 25 years. Despite her dismay at the unprecedented amount of trash in the creeks, she urges the community to consider other options, such as temporary housing.

“We need to change the public will and start looking at solutions and not criminalization, because it’s not going to do any good,” she said. “I’m all for anything that’s going to protect our parks and creeks, but we need to look at alternatives.”