Extra

Sidewalk Laws Redux - Speak Out Thursday Night -

Carol Denney
Monday April 23, 2018 - 05:52:00 PM

Sidewalk laws are a political stunt. But that's not stopping the Berkeley City Council from breezing past common sense and heading straight for a plethora of fresh regulations aimed at people with all their belongings with them and nowhere to go, including:

  • the invention of a "path of travel" which varies from six to 10 feet wide depending on the width of the sidewalk
  • a prohibition on objects on sidewalks "except for authorized objects and objects in transit"
  • special rules for those parklets once described as open to anyone that preclude having any "unauthorized" objects there
  • prohibitions on having any objects within three feet to either side of a building entrance or from the building wall to the edge of the sidewalk "except between 10:00 pm and 7:00 am
  • prohibitions on lying down in a BART access corridor
  • prohibitions on lying down "on sidewalks in all residential and mixed use residential districts[1] which vastly expands the prohibited area to most of downtown
  • Prohibitions on lying down on sidewalks in all commercial districts and in the manufacturing, mixed manufacturing and mixed-use light industrial zones (MULI) between 7:00 am and 10:00 pm Monday through Saturday, 10:00 pm and 6:00 pm on Sundays and holidays
Are you following this? Because most people won't be able to. If they don't fit the preferred profile, they'll get ticketed, bench warranted, jailed, you know the game. This city council got into office promising not to do this, while the entire Homeless Coalition watched.

The proposal is on the City of Berkeley website here. 

There's some pretty funny stuff in there, like absurd descriptions of "cushioning material." It gives merchants a chance to argue that the poor are having an impact on their business, as if that was something new. But the most important aspect of new anti-homeless laws is that these laws are used in a discriminatory way, and that the criminalization of poverty is not just immoral - it's pointless and much more expensive than simply housing people in the first place. The Downtown Berkeley Association is in the best position to situate people in empty spaces and provide people who can with work. 

Thursday night at 6:00 pm at Longfellow Middle School, 1500 Derby Street in Berkeley, the Downtown Berkeley Association will show up to plead for relief from the burden of having to see homeless people downtown. Again. Please let them know you'll shop elsewhere if the poor are made unwelcome. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



[1] https://www.cityofberkeley.info/uploadedFiles/Planning_(new_site_map_walk-through)/Level_3_-_General/LandUse[1].pdf