Eureka’s regular City Council
meeting on Tuesday may be a contentious one.
The council is scheduled to
vote on two homeless-related measures, both directed toward reclaiming the
public property along the bay from those living in tents and other impermanent
structures.
Eureka City Manager Greg Sparks
said both measures provide an opportunity for the city to make the targeted
public property available to all of the public.
“It made sense to really lay
out why this is important,” he said Friday, including the impact on the
environment and plans for trails through the area along Humboldt Bay. “We need
to address camping and the issues that surround it.”
First up is a ordinance
regulating the storage of personal property in public area. Essentially, if
adopted, personal property will not be allowed on public property on a
long-term basis.
A written notice will be issued
to remove personal property from public property — like the area behind
Bayshore Mall — within 24 hours. And that personal property cannot just be
moved to another location on the same public property.
There’s a different provision
for what the city defines as “bulky items,” such as items too large to fit in a
60-gallon garbage can with the lid closed. Tents, however, are not considered
bulky items in the proposed ordinance.
The ordinance states that bulky
items may be removed without prior notice.
The council will also consider
a multi-page open space property management plan for city-owned waterfront
properties, with the stated purpose of making those properties — including the
so-called Devil’s Playground — clean and safe for all residents as well as
available for the continued construction of the grant-funded waterfront trail.
The southern portion, the
Hikshari’ Trail, was completed in 2012. Construction of the next phase is set
to begin in 2016.
As well as enforcing the city’s
existing rules — no camping, no open burning, no off-leash or unlicensed dogs —
the proposed plan calls for enforcement of illegal camping, no off-trail use of
bicycles in the waterfront areas, no wood pallets, no propane or gas stoves, no
charcoal grills and no building materials in the open space. The latter, as
defined in the plan, include bricks, cement blocks, landscaping rock, fencing
material, wood and piping.
“An ordinance restricting these
materials in the project area will be drafted for Council review,” according to
the proposed plan.
The proposed Open Space
Property Management plan for the waterfront areas calls for the enforcement of
the city’s no-camping rules, but won’t revise the Eureka Police Department’s
response to illegal camping, Eureka Police Chief Andrew Mills said.
“It remains pretty much the
same,” he said. “When people become problematic, we take enforcement action.
We’re leaving it to the officer’s discretion.”
The best scenario is to find
housing or other solutions to the homelessness found behind the Bayshore Mall
and elsewhere in Eureka, Mills said.
Mills said he visited the
Devil’s Playground on Friday morning and spoke to several residents asking what
their plan was for finding housing.
One person, who Mills said was
addicted to heroin, said he wanted to go to Los Angeles. Mills said he
responded, “Let’s go,” with the intent of making that happen. The resident
reportedly said he’d go when the timing was right. Mills asked when will the
timing be right and was told, “I just don’t want to do that.”
“I talked to seven different
people,” Mills said. “Not one was ready. At some point, we have to say enough
is enough.”
Members of Friends of (PALCO)
Marsh expressed concern about evicting the campers without establishing
somewhere for them to go.
“They need to understand
they’re just pushing people somewhere else,” Linda Lewis said. “That’s not a
good answer.”
Erin Taylor, who has been the
public face of the group, said the residents would be better served if the city
postponed any action until after received the housing survey. The city’s
consultant, Focus Strategies, is in the process of determining the amount of
available housing in Eureka and is expected to report that information in
roughly a month.
“Give them a legal place to be until our
housing stock is determined in October,” she said. “These people have no place
to stay.”
Terry, one of the campers,
confirmed that she and others have no place to go.
“If we’re pushed out of here,”
she said, “we’ll just wait and come back.”
One of the issues is being told
to give up their dogs, Terry said, pointing to her brown-and-white 4-month-old
puppy playing nearby.
“We are not willing to give our
dogs up,” she said. “They’re our babies.”
Should the City Council approve
the proposed Open Space Property Management Plan, it would take effect
immediately.
The ordinance to prohibit
storage of personal property in public areas would take a little longer.
The council can vote to
introduce the ordinance at Tuesday’s meeting, make the final approval at the
Sept. 15 council meeting, and the ordinance would go into effect 30 days later.
The two proposals are not the
only items about homelessness on the agenda for Tuesday’s council meeting.
The council’s consent calendar
— a list of items approved or rejected with a single vote — includes the city’s
response to the Humboldt County Grand Jury’s report, “Homelessness in Humboldt
County.”
In its June 19 report, the
grand jury recommends the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors and the Eureka
City Council form a housing trust structured as a joint powers authority with
the Humboldt County Housing and Homeless Coalition and others “to coordinator
and administer Humboldt County’s efforts to address and end homelessness.”
The city’s response, included
in a draft letter to Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Joyce Hinrichs — the
presiding judge of the grand jury — notes that the purpose of such a joint
powers authority would be to create affordable housing, and points to the
city’s contributions to the Multiple Assistance Center and the North Coast
Veterans Resource Center.
The city also points to an
ongoing relationship with the county working to “address homelessness.”
At the moment, according to the
city’s draft response, it comes down to funding.
“With the elimination of
Redevelopment Agencies in California in 2012, current funding levels have been
extremely limited and other resources have been very competitive,” the draft
response states. “The City of Eureka would not currently have an ongoing
funding stream for a trust fund. However, the City of Eureka is open to the
development of a housing trust fund, if this would provide a better means to
address affordable housing in the future.”
August 29, 2015
Eureka
Times Standard
By Jessie
Faulkner
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