Three “significant” regional fires last year – including the Park Fire – contributed to an almost 9 percent increase in the number of Butte County residents experiencing homelessness this year, according to a new county report.
The 2025 Point-In-Time (PIT) survey also suggests that a shortage in the supply of affordable housing and more eviction proceedings contributed to the sharp increase.
The PIT survey, required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and conducted by local continuums of care (CoCs), informs funding for homeless services and offers insight into homelessness. The 2025 Butte County PIT survey was conducted on Jan. 29, and this reporter participated in the count as a volunteer.read more
A frustrated mayor responds; an advocacy organization for the unhoused applauds ruling
by Yucheng Tang | Posted April 4, 2025
photo by Leslie Layton
The Comanche Creek encampment was removed years ago.
In September of last year, the City of Chico began another legal journey – this time an effort to exit the Warren v. Chico Settlement Agreement.
On March 31, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California denied the City’s motion, which means the City has to abide by the five-year agreement that started in 2022 and ends in 2027.
The Settlement Agreement prohibits the City from enforcing anti-camping ordinances when adequate shelter is unavailable. In planning an eviction of unhoused campers from public spaces, the City must make a count of available shelter beds, advise plaintiff counsel Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC) and notice campers who will be assessed and referred elsewhere. Some City officials consider the process unnecessarily onerous.
The settlement was the result of a 2021 lawsuit against the City and its police department filed by Legal Services, a legal aid agency. The lawsuit argued that the City was violating the rights of homeless people when it razed encampments.
The order says that the City voluntarily entered the agreement and failed to demonstrate any changed circumstances that warrant the granting of relief.
Viewpoints on the ruling differ
Some City leaders and homeless advocates view this recent ruling in different ways.
After seven months of waiting for the court ruling, Chico Mayor Kasey Reynolds said she was disappointed that the City’s motion was denied.
“While we respect the judicial process, we firmly disagree with the Court’s ruling,” Reynolds said. “This will continue to limit the City’s ability to timely and effectively address the public safety issues in the City.”
In an emailed statement, Reynolds wrote that the City is reviewing the Court’s decision and evaluating its legal options going forward. “I would not rule out any possibility at this time, however cost and time will need to be carefully considered with any and all decisions made on the City’s behalf,” she said.
Reynolds also noted that this agenda falls into the “Existing Litigation” category, meaning that it will only be discussed in closed session rather than publicly at the City Council meeting.
LSNC, which represented the eight unsheltered people in the Warren v. Chico case, said it is pleased that the court held the City of Chico to the obligations it agreed to in the Settlement Agreement.
Will Knight, decriminalization director at the National Homelessness Law Center, views the recent Warren v. Chico ruling as good news. He is part of the team of attorneys and advocates dedicated to protecting the rights of the homeless and solving homelessness.
“Despite the shameful ruling in Grants Pass, it remains counterproductive, morally corrupt, and legally unwise for cities to arrest or fine people for living outside when they have nowhere else to go,” Knight said.
City watched U.S. Supreme Court ruling
The City’s motion followed the Supreme Court’s decision in the Grants Pass v. Johnson case, which overturned its previous ruling and allowed cities to evict and penalize individuals sleeping in public, even when no alternative public spaces or shelters are available.
“Instead of wasting taxpayer dollars by passing or enforcing laws that make it illegal to be homeless or reopening settled cases,” Knight said, “elected officials in Chico and across the country must focus on proven solutions to homelessness, like housing and care.”
But the Supreme Court’s ruling became one of the key arguments in the City of Chico’s motion.
The City contended that “it is inequitable for the Settlement Agreement to remain
unmodified because the decision in Grants Pass would not constrain their enforcement of the Anti-Camping Ordinances,” according to the judge’s order.
The court was not persuaded. “This is because defendants voluntarily entered into the Settlement Agreement, thereby agreeing to assume obligations beyond the minimum constitutional requirements, and did so for the purposes of resolving the litigation,” the order explains.
The court order also says that the City failed to demonstrate that some public safety issues, like fires and crimes, have worsened after entering the Settlement Agreement.
LSNC pointed out that “the overwhelming majority of unhoused people who have talked with us say they would stay at the Pallet Shelter if they were offered a spot, yet it is our understanding that the Shelter has never once filled since it opened.”
Members of the public indicated concern about the City’s approach to homelessness during the March 4 City Council meeting. Felix Mahootian protested the ongoing eviction sweeps launched by the City. “As it stands, the sweeps do nothing to help leverage folks out of homelessness who are there,” Mahootian said. “These are just enforcement, not preventive.”
In fact, despite the Settlement Agreement’s restrictions on ordinance enforcement, the City has published 15 notices of planned enforcement of camping ordinances since February 2024.
An unhoused man ChicoSol spoke with during the Feb. 27 eviction sweep at City Plaza said he didn’t know where to move his belongings. He said he might relocate to a parking lot or under tree cover for a few days. In the end, he said, he would return to City Plaza.
The man said he preferred the Genesis pallet shelter emergency housing over the Torre Community Shelter for its greater freedom. Though he had been repeatedly offered a Torres Shelter bed, he preferred to remain unsheltered.
“We look forward to continuing to work with the City to improve conditions and access to shelter for Chico’s unhoused residents, particularly by increasing opportunities for unhoused people to enter the Pallet Shelter,” says the LSNC statement.
Yucheng Tang is a California Local News Fellow reporting for ChicoSol.
Accessing mental health services a challenge for the homeless
by Melissa Herzstein and Amy Ballard | Posted March 18, 2025
photo by Karen Laslo
“I never know what day it is. I only know the time based on whether the sun is out.”
I (Melissa) was alarmed by this statement from an unhoused individual I interviewed as I helped with Butte County’s 2025 Point in Time (PIT) count, the biennial study that measures the number of unhoused persons through observation and response to a survey about their needs. This man was describing the challenges he faced in seeking mental health services at a walk-in facility. He was given an appointment for months out, making it impossible for him to attend because he had no reliable way to tell time.
Based on the accounts of this individual and others, it is common for unhoused people to be unable to access critical mental health and housing services due to overcrowded facilities. As social work students, we are concerned about this issue because it negatively impacts not just the unhoused population, but our community as a whole.
According to the 2023 PIT data, there are about 925 unhoused individuals in Chico. Although multiple homeless shelters exist, 40% of these unhoused persons are unsheltered.
Thirty-eight percent of unhoused individuals in Chico experience mental health issues, while the overall rate in California is even higher — at 50%-60%. Because there are insufficient shelter options and mental health services, this population is susceptible to engaging in substance abuse as a coping mechanism, or crime, including theft, to address their unmet needs.
The increase in substance abuse can lead to potential harm to themselves and others or possible overdoses. Higher rates of violence and crime can trigger negative psychological effects due to fear and safety concerns on the part of members of our community. Also, the lack of hygiene facilities for unsheltered individuals causes unsanitary conditions in public spaces where these persons are living.
During the March 4 Chico City Council meeting, community members echoed these safety concerns while also recognizing the issue of homelessness as a top priority. Currently, a large portion of the budget allocated to addressing homelessness is spent on clearing encampments, which is not only inhumane but also ineffective at solving the problem in the long run. The solutions brought to the Council’s attention were creating managed campgrounds, forming safe parking areas, and increasing the number of shelters.
In addition to supporting these solutions, we urge the new ad hoc homelessness committee to advocate for access to walk-in mental health services at managed campgrounds, facilities and shelters. We implore these organizations to train individuals to be culturally aware and sensitive to issues faced by unhoused persons.
We encourage shelters and law enforcement agencies to conduct regular crisis intervention training for staff to provide better support around substance abuse and mental health issues. We urge shelters to address intake, record keeping and communication issues so that unhoused individuals have consistent housing. Through these solutions, we can create a safer environment and improve the quality of life not only for unhoused individuals, but also for the community as a whole.
Melissa Herzstein is a resident of Chico and a first-year student in the Master’s of Social Work (MSW) program at the University of Southern California (USC). She volunteered to help with the PIT count, which she said was “eye-opening for me because it showed me how much mental health services for individuals experiencing homelessness are needed. I came across multiple individuals who mentioned their struggles with mental health and wished I could have done more than provide referrals to facilities they already knew of.”
Amy Ballard is a Los Angeles resident who is also enrolled in the MSW program at USC. Ballard said: “Based on our research, the aspect of homelessness in Chico that stood out to me the most was the long wait times for unhoused individuals to receive mental health services at walk-in facilities. Through the efforts of the ad hoc committee on homelessness and other community endeavors, we hope that the unhoused population will be able to obtain more timely and accessible services in the future.”
Changemaker: Charles Withuhn rolls the boulder uphill
by Yucheng Tang | Posted January 28, 2025
photo by Yucheng Tang
Charles Withuhn is president of the North State Shelter Team.
Editor’s note: This is the first story in a series called “Changemakers” that ChicoSol will run monthly in an effort to highlight some of the remarkable work underway in our community.
Standing in front of his booth at the Chico Certified Farmers Market, Charles Withuhn greets passersby on this winter Saturday.
He shakes hands with some and passes out newsletters or fliers produced by the North State Shelter Team (NSST). Some people stop to listen and some barely show interest. Even though some people ignore him, Withuhn — like the mythological Sisyphus who relentlessly rolled a boulder up to a mountain top only to have the boulder roll down — just keeps making attempts at conversation.
As NSST president, Withuhn appears at the market almost every Saturday at 6:30 a.m., erecting his booth and ready to talk to any passersby about the shelter crisis facing Chico.
In his own words, he is dealing with a lack of empathy among people, which he thinks is the “biggest challenge” in addressing the shelter crisis.
“People are busy watching sports, playing recreational games. Besides, they have to make a living to support themselves – it takes up all their time.
“The last two years, we have had somebody die outside about every other week. This is unprecedented. It is accelerating — the rate of deaths outside. It’s an indictment of our community that we are so brutal, and so ignorant, so uncaring of all the suffering going on around us,” Withuhn said.
(ChicoSol has confirmed 10 of 18 deaths of homeless people that the group Butte County Shelter for All says it recorded in 2024.)
Withuhn grew up in Modesto. In 1972, after dropping out of UC Berkeley and working in San Francisco for a few years, Withuhn came to Chico, where some of his relatives lived, and attended Chico State to study graphic design.
“It’s a little bit embarrassing,” he says, the blue sweater and scarf shifting with his hearty laugh. “I went to Chico State for 10 years, but I never graduated.”
Withuhn first ran a sign painting business, and then became an electric sign contractor with employees, earning up to $80,000 annually.
He didn’t get involved with homelessness issues until 2018 — after the Camp Fire destroyed many people’s homes and an increasing number of people began to live on the sidewalk and in streets and parks.
He says he wouldn’t describe himself as religious, but rather “spiritually and ethically directed.” He appreciates everything Jesus said, but he is more a Buddhist than a Christian. “I spent a month at a monastery, and I’ve studied Buddhism a little bit, and my brother-in-law is a Buddhist,” he noted.
But when Withuhn saw so many people without a roof, he thought of a tenet from the Bible: “We should do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
“It’s just one of my favorite phrases that I think people forget and very few people live by,” he said. “Maybe (if) we all speak it more, we remember it more and live by it more.”
He joined Chico Housing Action Team and joined the board of directors, helping build Everhart Village, a project that provides 20 tiny homes for unhoused people or people at risk of being homeless.
He co-founded NSST in 2021. At the beginning, the team collected clothes and shoes, distributed supplies to homeless people and cleaned up the parks.
One day, a homeless woman came up to Withuhn when he was cleaning up a park and told him, “I haven’t had a shower in a year.” Withuhn still looks shocked when he tells this story four years after the encounter.
Withuhn started talking to nurses and doctors, and was told that visits from people in the homeless community were clogging up the emergency rooms. If the unhoused had just “a little bit of basic hygiene” many medical problems would be minor.
“Instead with no hygiene, minor infections become serious and it’s been a burden on the emergency services,” Withuhn said.
So he sat down with some friends and drew up plans. They designed and built the first solar-charged shower trailer in Chico. In a comment he made under a ChicoSol article, he said the idea of the award-winning trailer was also inspired by Haven of Hope on Wheels in Oroville.
The trailer provides shower service to residents of the encampment — the so-called “Alternate Site” — at the corner of Eaton and Cohasset roads every Friday, usually serving 18 people every time.
Withuhn’s everyday life now centers around his work with the homeless community. On Monday, he puts everything together for Tuesday’s Mutual Aid, an event providing free food, first-aid kits and clothes. On Wednesday and Thursday, he prepares for Friday’s shower trailer service.
That requires a lot of work — he needs to drain off the gray water from the previous shower session, fill the freshwater tank with a special hose that doesn’t impart odor or taste to the water, and then clean out the shower stalls and the three filters.
He has repeated those actions for almost three years, every week.
Withuhn used to spend all his spare time sailing. He owned a sailboat that had a “big white pole, had a big sail, and you can glide on the water with making almost no noise.”
But he sold the boat two years ago, because it had taken up all the space in his backyard, and he needed a place to park one of the tiny homes. “I decided this is more important than sailing,” he said. “I miss the boat.”
His wife, Sally Withuhn, supports his work by “keeping our home together.” She often makes three tubs of hot coffee that will be brought to the shower service site. Sometimes, Withuhn calls his wife for things he forgets and she brings them.
Withuhn was honored Jan. 26 by the Theta Chi fraternity he joined as a student at UC Berkeley. The Greek letters translate to “helping hand,” said Withuhn, who was recognized with the annual Lewis Memorial Award.
“The homeless are part of our community,” said Matt Mattis, a Chico State student who belongs to the local chapter. “I have volunteered at Mutual Aid and I’ll continue to help Charles.”
Withuhn has made friends with many unhoused people during years of work, some of them having passed away, unfortunately.
One of them was Jason Merced. The board leaning against the pillar of the market booth still displays a picture of Merced helping the team pick up trash at the park.
During the Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day in December, Withuhn also mentioned his deceased friend while giving a speech.
“Our friend Jason Merced died on the Chico street. Jason was a fine young man. He worked with the North State Shelter Team on several occasions, pulling trash out of Chico parks. He would help you if you needed it.
“He was strong. He was intelligent. He was evicted from the pallet shelter. He was robbed of his belongings, and shortly after, died on the corner about a block from here,” Withuhn said in front of the Our Hands sculpture, choked with sobs.
Behind him, lit candles shone under the dark blue sky.
Withuhn’s ultimate goal is to eliminate homelessness in Chico and the related deaths outside.
“Several churches will have tiny homes in our parking lots and (Chico will) have a managed campground, maybe one on the south end of town and one at the north end of town,” he says.
Until then, at age 75, he wants to continue working on homelessness with NSST; he’s not pessimistic because just today, for example, he delivered his team’s research into managed campgrounds in other cities to Chico officials. “I’m gonna do [the work] until everyone has shelter, everyone has safe shelter, and the programs are steady,” he says.
Yucheng Tang, a California Local News Fellow, reported this story for ChicoSol. Photographer Karen Laslo contributed photos and quotes from the award ceremony.
Chico’s ordinances have long been used to carry out eviction sweeps, like this one at Bidwell Park.
Civil rights advocates have often accused the City of Chico of creating a “web of ordinances” that target unhoused people.
These advocates say the enforcement of anti-camping ordinances restrict the actions of homeless people by threatening fines, misdemeanor charges or jail time. Unhoused people in Chico have few options for where they may sit or sleep during the day or night or where they may place their property. They may face citations for violations, including for having a vehicle in which they sleep or for pushing a cart of belongings.
Chico was one of several cities that created a web of ordinances in the early 2010s that effectively criminalize homelessness, the ACLU said. In 2021, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California said the number of ordinances and how Chico officials were wielding them against unhoused people helped fuel “dehumanizing” attitudes.
The lead plaintiff in the Warren v. Chico lawsuit, Bobby Warren, was himself caught in the web. Warren had a court docket with a litany of various charges involving such ordinances, ChicoSol reported three years ago.
Today the City announced that it intends to seek judicial relief to remove itself from the Warren v. Chico Settlement Agreement that limited Chico’s enforcement of these ordinances.
The City’s municipal code contains ordinances cited by Legal Services of Northern California — the legal aid agency that represented Warren and seven other unhoused plaintiffs — in its list filed in the lawsuit. For example:
Title 9.20 restricts camping in public areas and affects unhoused people in multiple ways. It says that shelter space shall not be considered available if it requires mandatory participation in a program or separating family members, or disqualifies a person “due to any restrictions, rules or covenants beyond their use or control.” It also outlaws storing personal property in public areas.
The ordinance 9.44 (often called the sit/lie law) restricts sitting on sidewalks in commercial districts, except in a medical emergency or when using a wheelchair, and resting in a building entrance.
Section 9.27 restricts people’s use of shopping carts in public.
Title 12R restricts how people use Bidwell Park, such as preventing camping and enforcing the park being closed during night hours.
A resident of the Alternate Site, which the City was required to set up under the Settlement Agreement.
The legal aid agency representing plaintiffs in the Warren v. Chico lawsuit has indicated it will re-negotiate the Settlement Agreement that dictates how the City must approach homelessness.
But Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC) does not seem ready to give up one requirement: That the City show there are shelter beds available prior to evicting the unhoused from public spaces.
The City Council has discussed re-negotiations in closed sessions that were held July 9 and 16 and Aug. 6, releasing information when and as it chooses. The LSNC response letter was released today by dissenting Councilmember Addison Winslow, who noted that it’s a public document that may soon be released by the City.
The City began trying to extricate itself from the Settlement Agreement following the June 28 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson. In that ruling, the Court overturned a case that was the foundation for Warren v. Chico.
Attorney John Lam said last month the City was proposing “a new agreement that would supersede the Warren Settlement Agreement …”
LSNC, representing the unhoused plaintiffs, indicates in the letter it’s willing to streamline the eviction process. But when the City enforces anti-camping ordinances, it wants unhoused people assessed and referred to appropriate shelters or a campground, with 72 hours notice.
The legal aid agency says it’s willing to give up some steps that are required under the present Settlement Agreement to give the City “the discretion it says it needs to protect the public’s health, safety, and peaceful enjoyment.” Those steps can take, at present, up to two weeks.
LSNC said its proposal still “maintains some of the best practices … to assist unhoused community members with moving indoors and ultimately into permanent housing …”
It says that plaintiffs “are glad to know that the City is committed to keeping the Pallet Shelter open through the settlement period.” It warns that “if needed” it can “continue to litigate this case” or turn to the dispute resolution process.
The City, though, has said that under a new agreement, enforcement of anti-camping ordinances and regulations should be consistent with the recent Grants Pass decision and local, state and federal laws. That seems to suggest the City wants the freedom to evict the unhoused regardless of whether they’ve been referred to available and appropriate sheltering alternatives.
Winslow said he objected both to the City’s direction and its use of closed sessions.
“The Settlement Agreement takes a ‘multifaceted’ approach, not just scattering people to the wind, but the City Council is perfectly willing to walk away from all that as if we’ve learned absolutely nothing,” Winslow said.
(Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch described a “multifaceted” approach used by Grants Pass, Ore., in his ruling.)
“Every discussion has been in private,” Winslow added. “It’s unethical and undemocratic.”
On Aug. 5 he issued a press release calling for the “declassification” of various documents, including the Dispute Resolution Agreement. The City withdrew from the dispute agreement negotiation process after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June. The press release also said, “Protecting the City from the court of public opinion is not within the intention of open meeting exceptions in the Brown Act.”
The San Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition’s legal director, David Loy, said the Chico City Council may not be in violation of open-meeting laws. “Generally speaking, they’re not required to conduct negotiations in public,” he said. “In concept, it doesn’t sound like that’s a violation of the letter of the [Brown] Act because negotiations are ongoing.”
The Council would be required to “publicly report” after the closed session if it were to accept a “settlement offer signed by the opposing party,” the Brown Act provision reads.
In a startling move earlier this week, the City began a major clean-up of its Alternate Site campground for unhoused people at Eaton and Cohasset roads. Although campers had been noticed, no press release had been issued in advance as is typical with eviction sweeps.
Some people were evicted without a referral because they hadn’t been sent to the Alternate Site through the assessment process. Others were given motel rooms to occupy during the clean-up and re-organization that’s underway.
