Agenda Item # 9.9 - Tim Davis | Received 06/19/2023
thecompasioncenter.org | PO Box 233, Gilroy, CA 95021 | (408) 763-7120 | EIN: 45-2189365
June 19, 2023
Gilroy City Hall
7351 Rosanna Street
Gilroy, CA 9520
To City Council Members,
We are alarmed by the City Council’s move to pass the “camping ban” ordinance
despite many warnings that the measure will only serve to make homelessness more
expensive, more dangerous to those impacted by it, and does nothing to solve the
problem of homelessness, but, instead, only moves unhoused people from one
neighborhood to another.
This ordinance will worsen homelessness in Gilroy.
What you may not know is that this potentially illegal measure can actually derail
someone’s path out of homelessness and into housing. As mentioned during my
public comment at an earlier Council meeting on the subject, we have helped to
usher over 150 unhoused Gilroy residents into permanent supportive housing since
July 1, 2022, saving the City of Gilroy over $12.5 million this year, and every year
thereafter that they remain housed.
Many of our clients have been approved for housing and are waiting for their units to
be completed. If they are cited by this ordinance during that time, they will face a
court hearing for their misdemeanor charge. Because of the many obstacles faced
by individuals struggling to survive in a tent, most will not have the capacity to make
it to their hearing, resulting in a warrant. Before they can be admitted into their unit,
all outstanding warrants must be cleared. If they are unable to do this before their
deadline for housing readiness expires, they will lose their housing opportunity. Asa
direct consequence of this ill-conceived measure, homelessness in Gilroy will be
worsened. Had the Council requested input from agencies like ours, who serve this
population daily, you would have gleaned some insight into the unintended
outcomes of this measure.
The City has not provided sufficiently clear guidance to unhoused people about
where they can lawfully rest.
We are deeply concerned about the rush to codify this measure before the City
identifies, with clarity, any areas where unhoused Gilroy residents may lawfully rest
and sleep. There is large-scale confusion about the banned areas resulting from an
incomplete map and insufficient information about which areas are banned and
which areas are available for survival. Firstly, only a portion of the areas affected by
this ban were noted on the map presented to the council. If areas aren’t included on
this map, it presents a challenge for our unhoused population, some of whom speak
English as their second language. Furthermore, it was stated that this ban only
affects 25% of Gilroy, implying that the other 75% is lawful for unhoused to sleep
within. However, much of that area is completely off-limits to this population because
it is private property, or other restrictions apply. Without offering people clarity on how
they can comply with the law, they will be set up for failure and criminal penalty.
Furthermore, to say someone has no right to sleep at these sites, without identifying
sites where displaced residents can go to sleep, is akin to outlawing homelessness,
which is illegal.
This ordinance will harm our ability to provide critical services to unhoused people.
This ban will make it exceedingly more difficult to provide consistent life-saving
services to our clients which ameliorate the effects of homelessness on our clients
and the larger community. Specifically, every time there is a call to assist with an
impending sweep, our normal services are interrupted and diverted to sweeps
response away from our core mission. Our staff works very hard to provide supplies
such as food, water, hygiene items, and services that actually put folks on a track to
permanent supportive housing, with millions of dollars in savings to Gilroy (see
above). Resources we will spend on responding to sweeps, replacing lost property,
and attempting to mitigate lost housing opportunities as a result of this ordinance
will harm our ability to provide the lifesaving and cost-effective services to Gilroy's
unhoused residents.
I ask that you do not enact this harmful and costly ordinance, and take the
appropriate steps to develop sensible and cost-effective policies to actually address
the root causes of homelessness rather than creating dead-end, harmful
criminalization policies that further endanger the lives of our residents, and
needlessly add to the already expensive cost of homelessness in our community.
Sincerely,
Tim Davis
Executive Director