The California city makes “support” or “adherence” to the homeless camp illegal – Calmatters

The Fremont Municipal Council has given final approval this week to an ordinance that prohibits camping throughout the city, while making someone “support, conceal or conceal a homeless, guilty camp.

The support and maintenance clause has caused anxiety from local field workers who worry that they can be aimed at helping people living in camps and experts in the Homelessness Act who say they have never seen anything like this in California. Council members were considering changing this part of the regulation on Tuesday night, but eventually accepted it as 6-1.

“Our public spaces belong to the whole community, and it is not really compassionate to give way to our public spaces to selected several persons at the expense of all others in the general public,” said Council member Raymond Liu, who votes for. “Families must be able to take their children to the parks, to libraries, without fear and all residents should be able to use our public spaces without encountering any dangerous conditions.”

Council members discussed the long ban on camping at a five -hour meeting on Tuesday, where nearly 200 people were arranged to talk about and against the measure during a public comment. It was an unusual amount of fanfare for an ordinance, which the City Council was already adopted once this month – the vote on Tuesday was a “second reading”, which is usually only a formality that does not require discussions.

But the dispute over the ban that prohibits the camping of all sidewalks, streets and parks in Fremont and does anyone who supports or supports such a camp, subject to a fine of $ 1,000 or six months in prison, prompted the municipal council to reassess the ordinance.

Three members of the Council, plus the mayor, expressed interest either to remove the support and maintenance clause, or to add a language to specify that it will not be used to punish people to distribute food, water and other basic things in the camps For homeless.

This change seemed to be likely to pass within minutes before the final vote. But after the city prosecutor Rafael Alvarado has repeatedly said that the support and support clause will focus on people who are not out of people, they create illegal camps, not people who give food, council members have changed the course. In the end, they passed the measure as it is.

Changing the language would force council members to re -enter the ordinance, which means that they will have to go through two more votes. By the time the City Council voted on Tuesday, it was almost midnight.

The text of the ordinance does not specify what qualifies as support, suppress or conceal a homeless camp. This leaves some uncertainty about how the ordinance will be implemented, despite Alvarado’s assurances, said Alvarado’s law professor, said Prof.

“This may be their position during the adoption,” she said, “but there is nothing in the language of the ordinance itself, which does not allow to focus on people to make things as humane as they give to . “

In practice, local police often determines how they will impose an ordinance, Riley said. How to interpret the FreMont and maintenance clause can change when the city’s management has changed, she said.

The city’s lawyer’s statements were little comfort for Vivian Wan, CEO of Rebode Services, who provides food, tents, clothing and other services to people living in camps.

“We are worried about the” conceal “of the part, as PD/Fremont employees are known to be pressured to share confidential information, including where the participant remains,” she said in an email to Calmatters. “I think this ordinance can be used to force such information, breach of confidence with people who often need years to build.”

The measure also puts the city of Fremont, contrary to the US Union for Civil Freedoms of Northern and South California, which in a letter to the members of the Council, signed by several other human rights and human rights groups, will say and will state the city of legal responsibility. “

More than two dozen cities and cities in California or have adopted new regulations or have improved old regulations banning camping in recent months after the US Supreme Court gave them more freedom to do so. But it seems that none of these bans includes a specific language, which makes a crime to support or arrange a camp.

In a statement to Calmatters, Fremont’s prosecutor’s office said that the support language language is nothing new – it is already illegal in Fremont, as in many cities to help or support any crime. Asked about this by Council members during the Tuesday meeting, Alvarado said that even if the new camping ban did not have this particular clause, “in theory”, someone can still be punished for helping and supporting the homeless camp S

But Riley said it was important that the new camping ban explicitly makes a crime to support and bear, a language that he had never seen in any other active ban on camping in California.

“It seems to go further,” she said. “Because by explicitly bound by this section of the Code, for me, he signals that he intends to pursue according to this section.”

Legal experts Calmatters spoke with the said that this was extremely unusual. No other city, as far as Calmatters’ knowledge is, has not tried to use a common municipal fashion code that this ordinance would have been.