Public Comment

The "Pathways Project", Berkeley's proposal to address homelessness, has some obvious faults. It isn't, for instance, the campground Berkeley so obviously needs for anybody passing through who just wants to tent for a few days and check the place out. A homeless-only tent city, ironic after a thirty-year war on tents, courts a stigma it often can't outrun. 

But one thing is clear. If we snapped out fingers and manifested this system of temporary shelters overnight, we would only address approximately 15% of the people on our street by the city's own numbers. The other 85% are still at risk of being repeatedly moved, ticketed, and jailed for simply being poor. 

There are things Berkeley can do immediately that won't cost a dime. We need to demand the "Pathways Project" headed for the Berkeley City Council April 4th includes them: 

1. Stop the raids on tent groups. The wording in the Pathways Project proposal insists that "camping" laws will still be used to clear groups of tents from unpermitted places after "robust" outreach. This needs to end. Criminalizing people with nowhere to go is unethical, a ridiculous assault on the dignity of everybody involved including the police, a civil rights violation according to many legal decisions, and (a politician's most persuasive factor) expensive. Berkeley's public was tired of paying for the public destruction of poor people's tents decades ago, let alone picking up the tab for circling them through courts and jails. Maybe you can persuade the ten percent of Berkeley's unhoused poor people to utilize the new Pathways Project opportunities when they manifest. But until then, it is unfair to ticket the ninety percent left over for simple existing. Cost? Zero. 

2. Legalize sleeping in one's own vehicle. It is absurd, not the mention dangerous, that homeless and poor people who at least have a personal vehicle to sleep in can be ticketed for simply sleeping inside it on a public street. We may not have made sleep itself a crime, as has neighboring Santa Cruz, but we've come close by insisting that people can't legally sleep in their own property if it happens to have wheels. Cost? Zero. 

3. Facilitate port-a-potties and garbage services for tent groups that want them. The majority of objections to even out-of-the-way collections of tents have to do with unsanitary conditions made almost inevitable by the lack of bathrooms and garbage pickup services. It is true that portable amenities cost money, but (a.) not as much as having to send hazmat teams and police in after conditions become filthy and (b.) generous citizens have in some cases paid privately for port-a-potties for groups of tents and been threatened by city staff for their trouble. Cost? Not zero, but less than what we're spending now. 

4. Vacate all laws that target the poor and homeless. The new council booted the two square foot law, if I'm tracking correctly. But Berkeley is among California's top cities for anti-homeless laws. The council needs to commit to eliminating them all. Cost? Zero. 

5. Commit to realistic mental health options. The $300,000 just spent on Robust Outreach Teams (admit you love the acronym) still leads straight to the police, the worst- equipped group on earth to address mental health issues, which currently take up a huge percentage of police resources. We have the policy clarity throughout the commission system and at the Public Health Department. We need the political commitment to offer more realistic options to situate people who will only suffer more in jail. Cost? Again, not cost free, but a cost saving in the long run compared to what we're spending repeatedly sending people with mental health issues through courts and jails, where their health inevitably deteriorates even more. 

6. Require the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) to step up to the plate. More than a million dollars in property-based fees goes to the DBA's budget for downtown promotion, which has worked for decades not to take practical steps to end homelessness - that would be housing - but rather to criminalize homeless and poor people's visible existence on our streets. The DBA's current director, John Caner, ran the expensive campaign to criminalize sitting in Berkeley, violating campaign finance laws along the way, and has sat with both city staff and council representatives in back rooms helping craft anti-homeless laws according to their own records.. The bulk of their budget comes from publicly owned property either owned by the city, the university, or other public entities within their business improvement district map's footprint. That means that when the DBA lobbies the city for civil rights violations tailored to dog the lives of our most vulnerable, the public is paying for it on the front and the back end. 

The Mayor Jess Arreguin and the City Council are in a position to ensure that the DBA's next campaign be more practical, more consonant with the recognition that circling people through the courts is not working, and is the costliest approach to homelessness, substance abuse, and mental illness. The DBA is in a position to create a team within the business community to create housing and job options open to people in need. 

We need housing options for people with mental illness which aren't just a pathway back to the streets. We need housing for people making the minimum wage. We need, as a community, to leverage the suffering the DBA's and the city's short-sightedness has caused for decades into a real partnership to help meet community needs as a simply practical matter as well as a requirement for continuing any DBA contract. If our new mayor and city council are more than just "Bates lite", they will ensure that April 4th's "Pathways Project" is passed with additional, practical, cost-free elements, to make sure chasing homeless people from lawn to lawn and park to park becomes a thing of the past.