City Council forms ad hoc committee on homelessness Lemner: "There isn’t a carpet big enough to sweep all these people under"

by Yucheng Tang
posted March 5

The City Council unanimously passed Mayor Kasey Reynolds’ motion to create an ad hoc committee to address homelessness at the March 4 meeting.

Reynolds noted that “the scope of the committee would be on the three items originally agendized,” including ordinances, code changes and programs distinct from anti-camping ordinance enforcement.

“The committee would have a time-sensitive due date of coming back in one of our June meetings,” Reynolds said, in making the motion for the ad hoc group. “We would bring a report back to Council with recommendations for the full Council to consider at that time.”

Reynolds suggested the committee include herself as chair and councilmembers Bryce Goldstein and Mike O’Brien. Goldstein had asked for the discussion on the trio of items.

Eighteen people spoke during the public comment period, all asking the City for more effective ways to address homelessness, without anyone in opposition.

“I see people in just the last couple of months sleeping on a real piece of sidewalk with no overhead and both night time and storm clouds moving in,” said a speaker from the audience, Margo Lemner. “We need the will, we need outreach, we need more shelter … There isn’t a carpet big enough to sweep all these people under.”

Summer Chapla shared that March 5 was the two-year anniversary of finding her brother in his tent after he overdosed. “I don’t know what the answer is,” Chapla said. “I know that there has to be a better one than what’s going on right now, and we have to treat these people with dignity.”

Councilmember Addison Winslow made a motion to improve utilization of the pallet shelters – the Genesis emergency housing – without impacting the schedule of enforcement sweeps, but the motion failed in a 4-3 vote. Reynolds promised the matter would come before the ad hoc committee.

Reynolds said the pallet shelter housing and the Eaton and Cohasset roads encampment “are having significant issues and impacts on the surrounding businesses and neighborhoods, some of which are close to possibly being legal problems for the City.”

“So I actually agree with a ton of what I heard tonight,” Reynolds said following the public hearing. “Whatever we do needs to work for everybody, our unhoused, our community members, and our businesses.”

Some of the speakers mentioned the Feb. 27 evictions — what the City calls an “enforcement sweep” — at City Plaza. When ChicoSol arrived at the Plaza that morning, some 10 homeless people with tents and luggage were scattered on the sidewalks after being asked to leave and cease camping.

An unhoused man said he had received a seven-day eviction notice on Feb. 19, but he had “so much stuff” he needed to figure out where he could move. “We have nowhere to go,” he told ChicoSol.

One of the speakers at the March 4 meeting protested the sweeps as ineffective in solving the problem.

“As it stands, the sweeps do nothing to help leverage folks out of homelessness who are there,” said Felix Mahootian. “These are just enforcement, not preventive.”

Mayor Reynolds said that according to her “quick math right now” the City might be spending close to $10,000 a year per unhoused person.

Following the meeting Winslow told ChicoSol the proposal for the ad hoc committee was a surprise to him.

“The more we have it in a public light, the better solutions we’re going to get,” Winslow said. “It’s an opportunity to get into some details about how the City has been blocking solutions to homelessness, what the City can do to make smart investments, and improving the outcome.”

President of North State Shelter Team, Charles Withuhn, has campaigned relentlessly for a managed, outdoor campground for unhoused people who don’t accept or can’t get into other shelters.

“It was a historic turn toward a wider variety of plans that offer a more effective shelter crisis strategy by our City Council tonight!” Withuhn wrote in an email to ChicoSol.

Goldstein said she was cautiously optimistic about the new approach.

“I’m grateful to see the Council working together towards addressing homelessness,” she said after the meeting. “It sounds like it’ll probably be me and Michael O’Brien and Kasey Reynolds [on the ad hoc committee]. I look forward to working with them.

“But we have tended to disagree on how to address homelessness,” Goldstein noted. “So I am a little worried that some of the ideas that I may come in there with and that the service providers in our community will want to talk about may get shut down in committee.”

Yucheng Tang reports for ChicoSol.