|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The San Ramon City Council is set to discuss an ordinance Tuesday that would allow for criminal enforcement against homeless encampments as a “last resort” following a landmark Supreme Court decision earlier this year that allows local municipalities to ban sleeping outdoors on public property.
The proposed ordinance comes following the Supreme Court’s ruling over the summer in the Grants Pass v. Johnson case that overruled a previous decision in 2018 that banned municipalities with homeless populations greater than their shelter bed capacities from criminalizing public camping and sleeping in vehicles.
The new ruling means that municipalities are now permitted to make municipal code amendments that restrict sleeping on public property and allow for the clearing of camps on public property regardless of shelter bed availability.
“Here in San Ramon, irrespective of the new case law, the focus will continue to be on providing services for those who find themselves without shelter or an indoor place to sleep, rather than punish a person for homelessness,” city attorney Martin Lysons wrote in a staff report prepared for the upcoming meeting. “The police and other City personnel are trained to connect those who are sleeping or camping outdoors with available resources that can place them in shelters or provide other services.”
Lysons pointed to various shelters and resources across the Bay Area, as well as mental health resources available locally through Discovery Counseling Center.
“These and other resources essentially make criminal enforcement of any camping ordinance a last resort,” Lysons wrote.
Lysons called the proposed ordinance a “tool to abate encampments within city limits while protecting the rights and property of those who are without shelter”.
“The City will continue offering available shelter resources and a variety of other services, but this ordinance makes clear that camping on City property is prohibited, protects the waterways from debris and runoff associated with camps and human habitation, protects other areas in the City that may be sensitive to the ill effects of unauthorized camping, and gives structure to the abatement process,” Lysons wrote.
Violations of the proposed ordinance could be prosecuted as misdemeanor charges, but call for no criminal citations to be brought forward if violations are found to be occurring during the night or “at a time when there is no reasonably available shelter”, with disabilities and other specific circumstances taken into account, according to Lysons’ staff report.
“As stated above, the intent of the Ordinance is not to criminalize homelessness, but to give the City options to ensure that camping does not pose a threat to the community, the environment, or to the campers themselves,” Lysons wrote.
Lysons added that an update to the city’s municipal code in order to conform with this year’s Grants Pass ruling was necessary to maximize the city’s capacity “to maintain parks and other public areas within the City in a clean, sanitary, and accessible condition and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public”.
The proposed ordinance was a topic of discussion at the most recent meeting of the council’s Policy Committee on Oct. 15, which was supportive of it overall according to Lysons’ staff report, following a discussion with San Ramon Police Chief Denton Carlson.
“The Police Chief explained that the Police Department would typically make first contact with any occupants of the encampment, possibly accompanied by personnel from Code Enforcement,” Lysons wrote. “The strategy is to make the occupants aware of the resources that are available to people without shelter, that encampments are not allowed on public property in San Ramon, that the occupants will have 24 hours to remove their property before the City takes steps to abate the encampment, and that they will have the right to recover their property if the encampment is ultimately abated by City staff.”
The upcoming discussion by the City Council is set to be informational only. If councilmembers ask for changes, the proposed ordinance will be reintroduced at the Nov. 12 meeting. Otherwise, councilmembers will consider adopting it at their Nov. 26 meeting. If approved, the ordinance would go into effect 30 days after it is adopted.
The San Ramon City Council is set to meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday (Oct. 22). The agenda is available here.
In other business, the council is set to consider a proposed amendment to the City Center Mixed-Use and Downtown Mixed-Use zoning texts that would allow for outdoor commercial recreation development in those zones. It was previously discussed at the Sept. 17 Planning Commission meeting.
