The Springfield City Council delayed a vote Sept. 3 on a controversial ordinance that would make “public camping” illegal and heard three hours of complaints from people who said the measure would be counterproductive and cruel to people experiencing homelessness.
“This is not a motivation to get off the streets,” Joshua Leingang told the council during public comments on the ordinance after council members voted unanimously to move the proposal to the Sept. 10 committee-of-the-whole meeting for more discussion.
Citizen Jack Paciolla said the ordinance would legalize “Gestapo-like tactics,” and Jenna Broom said, “Shame on anyone who supports this.”
The ordinance, which attracted scorn on public media and resulted in online personal attacks against the cosponsors, Mayor Misty Buscher and Ward 5 Ald. Lakeisha Purchase, was proposed to protect the public safety of “campers,” or unhoused people, Buscher said.
Violators would be given 24 hours’ notice before being asked to move and would be subject to progressive fines of $75 to $750 and up to two years in jail.
Josh Sabo, executive director of Heartland HOUSED, told Illinois Times the ordinance is similar to local ordinances that are being adopted in municipalities around Illinois and throughout the country in the wake of a June ruling by the U.S Supreme Court involving an Oregon city.
“I am convinced that criminalizing homelessness doesn’t solve it,” Sabo said. “We need to move forward very carefully so we don’t make the problem worse instead of better.”
Springfield’s proposed ordinance was based on a model ordinance drafted by the Illinois Municipal League since the court ruling. Similar ordinances have been debated in Peoria and adopted in the Tazewell County communities of Pekin and Morton.
Most in the overflow crowd of 150 people clapped and cheered when citizens who spoke to the council said the ordinance would punish people for being in poverty. Speakers said the plan would create fines and criminal records that would hinder the ability of unhoused people to move into stable housing and escalate tensions with local police agencies at a time when mistrust has grown after the July 6 police-involved shooting death of Sonya Massey inside her home in unincorporated Woodside Township.
Protestors said an informal “town hall” meeting is needed to allow a more wide-ranging discussion of issues raised by the ordinance and to allow citizens to question city officials and receive answers.
Complaints also focused on the fact the ordinance initially was scheduled for emergency passage, meaning it would have bypassed the traditional several weeks it takes for a first reading, discussion by the council’s committee-of-the-whole and final approval at a regular council meeting.
The council decided at the beginning of the Sept. 3 meeting, before public comments began, to abandon the possibility of emergency passage when Buscher said the concept has created “angst” in the community.
She said emergency passage was initially considered because of two recent incidents at an encampment at North Fifth Street and North Grand Avenue, the first a fatal drug overdose of a woman staying at the site and then a motorist who allegedly intentionally drove into a group of people Aug. 29.
There was initial interest by the police department in quick passage to prevent more harm, Buscher said. Police then would have a tool they currently lack to help convince people in encampments on publicly owned land to move from places where their health would be in jeopardy, she said.
In the long term, the intent was for the ordinance to give police the authority to use a “therapeutic nudge” with unhoused individuals so they would work with social-service agencies to obtain housing, economic assistance and mental-health or substance-abuse treatment, according to Police Chief Kenneth Scarlette.
The ordinance would be enforced rarely and at the discretion of police, Buscher said.
Scarlette said: “We’re not in the business of trying to get money from homeless individuals. I’m certainly not in the business of trying to take them to jail. … It’s about getting them the services they need.”
Police officer Chris Jones, one of the first members of Springfield’s homeless outreach team, said the team is modeled after a similar program in Wichita, Kansas. Wichita police never have had to cite or arrest anyone for violations of that city’s public camping ordinance, but Jones said the existence of the local law helps police convince people experiencing homelessness to accept services.
About 1,200 homeless people receive services in Sangamon County each year, Sabo, of Heartland HOUSED, said. Some are moved into housing, but they are replaced by more people who move through the area or become homeless and need services.
At any point in time, about 390 people are homeless in Springfield and the rest of Sangamon County, Sabo said. That number refers to people in shelters or outdoors in unsheltered settings.
A news release from Heartland HOUSED said the Springfield & Sangamon County 2022-2028 Strategic Plan to Address Homelessness was completed in late 2022 “and is our first comprehensive, communitywide framework to work toward functionally ending homelessness. Much work remains to create a community where the experience of homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring, but the collaborative efforts we have seen between organizations and government partners has been a promising sign.”
Purchase is a cosponsor of the ordinance because there are several homeless encampments in her ward, and she has felt pressure from neighborhood associations to do something about the sites, Buscher said.
“I get pressure in the mayor’s office all the time from businesses,” Buscher told Illinois Times after the council meeting. “I have never had a business call the mayor’s office and say, ‘Would you please let people camp in front of us?’ But I’ve had lots of them call me and say, ‘People are camping in front of my business. You need to move them.’ And we have to say we can’t by law, and that frustrates them and upsets them.”
Buscher said people who have “trashed” her on social media “have no idea what I walk through on a daily basis.” She said she has a brother in the area “who is homeless all the time. My brother does have an addiction, and he doesn’t want to live by rules, and he doesn’t want to work. He would love for you to give him a place to live and use, but that’s not reality.”
Several homeless people camped out in the public right-of-way on the east side of North Fifth Street, just south of North Grand Avenue in Springfield, said they don’t want to be forced to leave and oppose the proposed ordinance.
Heather “Megan” Cochrane, 48, said she is working with a social-service agency to get into stable housing, “but it’s not happening fast enough.”
She said she doesn’t want to go to the Helping Hands shelter near South Dirksen Parkway because it’s too far from St. John’s Breadline at 430 N. Fifth St., where she likes to eat. She said she likes to be outside.
“Here you can be free,” Cochrane said.
Maceo Euells, 42, said volunteers sometimes bring food for him and the other unhoused people in the group, and most people don’t bother them.
“It’s a free country,” he said, adding that he is waiting on documentation – including a birth certificate and Social Security card – that can help him get a slot in public housing.
Tommy Keller, 63, said he, too, is working with an agency to get into housing.
Keller, who said he has been homeless almost five years, said he hopes he isn’t forced to move.
“I’m crippled,” he said. “I can walk, but not very far.”
Looking at a handful of other unhoused adults at the campsite, he said: “These are my friends. I love it here.”
Related Stories
Helping the unhoused
Hope Springs eternal for Enos Park housing project
This article appears in “A message of freedom and joy”.
After 30+ speakers, if anything, what clearly showed is just how disconnected and in the bubble the Mayor, administration, and many of the Alders really are. This ordinance should be permanently tabled.
The continued antics of Ward 5 Alderwoman Lakeisha Purchase are reprehensible. Besides being forced out-of-state job for stealing, continuing code violations of rental housing she owns, total non-transparency in city government, and unconstitutional blocking people from public social media She continues to not tell the truth.
Enough; she should have resigned from office after the mess she created at the state, which was no one’s fault but her own. She should step down immediately.
Stop trying to use the police as social workers; this has never worked anywhere! Blaming the police or city attorney is extremely poor leadership. They never do anything unless directed to do so by others.
The Mayor and Alders have been there long enough now; they can’t blame this on anyone else. They own this one. Another embarrassing episode for our city!
In the free world, this is called a peaceful protest.
It isn’t rocket science. There are 264 homeless people in Springfield. In the last 3 years $160,000 was spent to study the homeless problem, 8.2 million was spent to build a shelter, and 2.3 million on unspecified expenditures. This is in addition to regular annual funding. We’re being ripped off.
“The 27-page document, finalized in fall 2022, was the product of a $160,000 study that involved the city of Springfield, Sangamon County, the Heartland Continuum of Care and several nonprofits, including Memorial Health, HSHS St. John’s Hospital and the housing authority.”
“The report said 264 people are homeless in Sangamon County on any given day. That number includes people living on the street or staying in emergency and transitional shelters, but not those who may be temporarily living with friends or relatives.-Illinois Times
Federal COVID-19 relief money is paying for an $8.2 million renovation in an unoccupied section of a building in the 2200 block of South Dirksen Parkway that houses the Sangamon County Juvenile Detention Center and Regional Office of Education. The section will be rented to Helping Hands for a 141-bed facility that will put its homeless shelter and housing programs under one roof.
The City of Springfield will receive an allocation of $2,380,397 of HOME – American Rescue Plan (“HOME-ARP”) appropriated under section 3205 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (P.L. 117-2). The purpose of the funds is to address the needs of households experiencing homelessness and other households that face housing instability.
Dean Olsen. (August 17, 2023) Housing first.
A coordinated approach to end homelessness. Illinois Times