Vice mayor makes 11th-hour bid to postpone settlement
By Leslie Layton | Posted January 16, 2022
photo by Karen Laslo
Evicted campers leave their site after a sweep.
A settlement agreement in the lawsuit related to the city’s treatment of unhoused people, signed Friday by a federal judge, could end the spectacle of chaotic mass evictions that stranded campers who had nowhere to go.
Early last year, a newly-installed City Council began a series of sweeps in parks, near waterways and on patches of grass on public land.
Journalists watched as workers came in atop tractors, rumbling through encampments where displaced people had pitched tents and had failed to move their few belongings to who knows where – until we weren’t allowed to watch.
I remember the woman standing outside her tent under the Highway 99 overpass in Lower Bidwell Park, barefoot, politely putting up with my interview, who then asked me if there was any way I could get her a new pair of socks.read more
Chico police block media from watching; upset citizens decry policy
By Leslie Layton | Posted February 17, 2021
photo by Karen Laslo
An officer tells a homeless woman at Humboldt and Forest to be out by evening on Feb. 16 as she stares into a small mirror.
Chico Police Department today blocked the media from Boucher Street as officers informed homeless people camping there and at Forest and Humboldt streets that they had to move.
Unhoused people at both sites had been given 72-hour eviction notices that had expired. And as the rain ceased and the sun broke through today, police moved in on the encampments.
At Boucher and Wisconsin streets, community members offered to help campers load tents and possessions into trucks and move them if they had someplace to go. A few people chose to move to beneath the Highway 99 overpass in lower Bidwell Park. But with no shelter space available in the city, many didn’t know what to do.read more
