Blog note: This article refers to a 2019 Humboldt County grand jury report
EUREKA
— Over a year since COVID-19 deeply impacted Eureka’s service providers,
homelessness remains the city’s number one issue, placing city staff and police
alongside advocates and nonprofits.
It’s been years since the city revamped
its approach to handling the crisis, as a need to avoid any lawsuit involving
the 2019 Martin v. Boise ruling forcing cities to follow constitutional
standards for shelter. Eureka recently received scathing reports from the Grand
Jury in 2019 for its approach addressing homelessness — accused of criminalizing
people and not effectively coordinating with Humboldt County or providing
enough services for people.
Eureka
began with assigning Eureka Police Department officers to a team working in
tandem with behavioral health specialists, with a city department dedicated to
outreach and redirection. The model places police in the center, directing
unhoused people to services and providers.
Police
say it’s been effective, but homeless advocates are skeptical of centering law
enforcement in their efforts. There is no sanctioned campground, and other than
a small donated tiny home village, the focus is on local shelters.
Chico
police say they found ghost gun, narcotics after 2 hour search, arrest
Bryan
Hall, executive director of the Eureka Rescue Mission, said in December he
hasn’t seen an increase in the Eureka homeless population since the beginning
of the pandemic. He said he sees “a terrible influx of people that could end up
homeless and living in their cars, that were at one time a business owner,
simply because they have been mandated to either shut down or limited so much
that they can’t survive.”
Betty
Chinn, noted homeless advocate, said in December more than 1,470 unsheltered
people were counted in Humboldt County during the last count.
Chinn,
74 and known for her work connecting Humboldt County homeless residents with
shelter and resources, then said in early June homelessness has likely
increased.
“The
town’s like a ghost town,” she said. “You cannot run, you cannot hide and you
cannot protect anything.
So
“They get scared and they get violent.”
Chinn
works seven days a week, and said she can get local officials to respond if she
alerts them to excess garbage or a need for masks. She opened a campsite in
October for 97 people.
“Not
even one single day I skip (volunteering),” she said. “I cannot do that because
the people out there are so scared already.”
She
said she has been harassed and threatened with lawsuits as some residents do
not appreciate her efforts, and she’s scared for others’ safety.
“I
believe in what I’m doing. The homeless are not going anywhere.”
Advocate
Nezzie Wade of Affordable Homeless Housing Alternatives said June 1 the city
has been dealing with about 200 people on city streets on any day since 2016.
That year, people were moved out of an encampment with “incremental enforcement
tactics.”
That’s
when city staff created the system which “centered the police in their actions
for getting people into housing.”
“You
kind of have to work with the police to get in the queue for housing,” Wade
said, which results in some issues if people have trust issues with police and
struggle to work with them.
Wade
said recently, another anti-camping ordinance in the city passed, with
different rules on having personal property or dogs, using public restrooms and
many other issues of public visibility.
Wade
and other advocates offer a weekly mobile shower service with hygiene, food,
clothing, showers and haircuts. They typically give up to 22 showers before
running out of water, and work alongside the local needle exchange program.
There
have been some major camp sweeps recently, but there are technically always
shelter beds available by contract with the city, Wade said. For months
shelters were locked down to access due to COVID-19, but now people can enter
at a limited capacity.
Police response
Eureka
Police Chief Steve Watson said homelessness remains the number one issue in
Eureka as the epicenter for resources like health and mental care,
transportation and tourism. He called the new strategy “much less emphasis on
enforcement … more on collaboration with stakeholders and outreach based on
data.”
The
city’s co-responder program, headed by Sgt. Leonard LaFrance, partnering
officers with county mental health specialists, is only half the equation, Watson
said. The separate Uplift Eureka program uses a city coordinator and two
outreach workers to facilitate a pilot diversion program to avoid placing
homeless people into the criminal justice system.
A
person’s case will be held to avoid “burying the person in debts they can’t
pay” and instead they are directed to job or skills training, or a community
project.
”When
they successfully participate, their citation from the municipal violation goes
away,” Watson said.
He
said the goal is to not send police officers to every incident, with the key
philosophy that “Accountability has to be coupled with compassion.”
“There
is a need to maintain order, public safety and good health … But go about it in
a way that understand homelessness. Enforcement cant be the first and only tool
on our belt that we reach for.”
And
while local business owners express frustration with “quality of life issues
and crime that they associate with homelessness,” he said, his team also has to
follow standards set by the Ninth Circuit Martin v. Boise ruling.
Still
“The advocates really feel very strongly there should be no camping enforcement
at all,” Watson said. And he thinks ”Self governance hasn’t worked.
“It’s
got to be a well managed situation … not so high barrier you preclude so much
of the population, but you gotta have some rules and order.”
LaFrance
said the trauma informed model has to be part of engaging people, as more than
30% in Humboldt County have had at least four adverse childhood experiences.
“For
some people, housing first absolutely works,” he said. “But for the folks we’re
seeing on the streets, that’s not going to work unless you have transitional
housing and case managers.
”I
always tell people if you have only accountability, you grind people into the
ground and they can’t get off. If you only have compassion, you have chaos.”
Increased
mental health crises has grown worse in severity over the last five months, he
said. This contributed to a drop in proactive response by 15% because mental crisis calls are time consuming.
LaFrance said he knows people don’t like police addressing mental health
crises, but they are always involved even when social workers go to a crisis
first.
LaFrance
said he may officially add mental health professionals to the department’s outreach
team.
”Being
connected to people and knowing them helps to prevent people in crisis
escalating. It’s really about relationships and how you build compliance.”
Watson added the department has a
report on its transparency portal as rebuttal of the Grand Jury’s “scathing
report” on the state of homelessness in the city, which he said used old data.
Wade
is still skeptical of the city’s approach.
“When
we start opening things up again I think it’s going to be really interesting,”
she said.
“All
the people are adding up, and going to be back on the street because they
haven’t been able to get into housing.”
Wade
said advocates continue to ask city and county staff and the public health
department to allow people to stay in place.
“We
don’t want to focus the police in the middle,” she said. “We want to have a
good relationship with police if needed, but not that the police control
everything.”
She
said advocates hope funding will finally come through for alternative forms of
housing, like tiny homes or safe car parking, given the severe lack of
residences. But, “The city is not in favor of any kind of a camp.”
”People
are already pushed to the margins. They’re out as far as they can get.”
Perhaps
because of the strain COVID-19 placed on the existing homelessness crisis, “We
learned a lesson around the world,” Chinn said. “Rich and poor, it affects
everybody.
“This
is the first time I see the unity here,” she added.” (We) get each other good
ideas to make it better … right now.”
Isabella Vanderheiden
contributed to this report.
Chico
Enterprise Record
By Natalie Hanson
June 28, 2021
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