Updated Version: War on the homeless heats up in Berkeley

War on the homeless heats up in Berkeley

by Lynda Carson June 28, 2007

Berkeley -- Berkeley's war on the homeless heated up
recently when on June 12, it's full city council voted
yes on some measures to give the police it's marching
orders to sweep the city streets clean of it's
homeless population.

Berkeley's Mayor Tom Bates and the downtown merchants
have teamed up to get tough on the homeless in an
effort to bring more business to the city, despite the
fact that everyone knows that parking problems are the
main obstacle to bringing shoppers to downtown
Berkeley.

Cynically called the Public Commons for Everyone
Initiative (except the homeless, advocates say), the
latest proposals being made are an assortment of
incoherent whacky punitive measures that are meant to
harass the homeless out of the city of Berkeley.

According to Berkeley City Councilman Kris
Worthington, Roland Peterson was behind the initiative
against the homeless, and Councilman Gordon Wozniac
was originally going to take credit for it as his own
proposal. "As it turned out, they felt that Wozniac
was to right-wing to get enough support for the
initiative, so they decided to let Mayor Tom Bates run
with it," said Worthington.

Roland Peterson is executive director of the Telegraph
Business Improvement District and chairman of the
Berkeley Chamber of Commerce.

"This was a victory, because they did not get
everything they wanted. No new laws have been passed
yet. We stalled them until the end of the year, and if
enough people step forward to speak out against these
proposals we might be able to stop them from going all
the way with these attacks against the homeless," said
Worthington.

More anti-homeless proposals are being scheduled to
come up for another city council vote sometime soon
during the fall. The proposals being considered
include strict enforcement of laws against noise
disturbances such as yelling, parking a bicycle
against a window or on a parking meter, smoking near
buildings, unauthorized possession of a milk crate,
obstructing or restricting use of the sidewalk,
reducing warning provisions for sitting or lying down
on sidewalks, littering, hitching animals to fixed
objects, unauthorized possession of a shopping cart,
increased fines for using the great outdoors as a
lavatory, public drunkeness or drug abuse, and
anything else that city officials can dream up as an
excuse to run the homeless out of town.

Currently, People’s Park bathroom which is frequented
by the homeless closes at 10 pm and all other public
restrooms in the city close at the same time most
businesses shut down, leaving the homeless stranded
without facilities throughout the night.

In return for instituting the draconian measures being
proposed against the poor, the city is offering to
install better directional signs to public bathrooms,
raising parking meter fees and plans to install more
parking meters to cover the expense of targeting the
homeless for removal.

Osha Neumann is an attorney that defends the homeless
in Berkeley, and has much to say about the
anti-homeless proposals. "What was passed recently by
the city council is a watered down commitment of laws
meant to harass the homeless. They did'nt get what
they wanted, but it was enough to send a message, and
to give the police their marching orders to go after
the homeless."

"The homeless know what is going on, they feel
frightened and some are already talking about leaving
town. The downtown police bike patrols get to know the
homeless hot spots and get to know the homeless on a
first name basis, making it very easy to target them
for removal," he said. "None of this makes sense
because they are talking about raising parking meter
fees and installing more parking meters downtown,
which will be a further obstacle to shopping in the
city."

"They've cut funding for meals and drop-in services
for the homeless, theres never enough shelter beds for
those in need, and most people avoid shelters due to
the problems associated with the stringent rules that
apply."

"I believe that people need to do whatever is
necessary to stop this attack on the homeless by
calling city council members, writing letters, and
showing up at future city council meetings to speak
out against this attack on the poor," said Neumann.

During May 2006, in a case known as Jones versus Los
Angeles, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided the
8th Amendment forbids the police from arresting the
homeless on grounds of public intoxication or drug
abuse, unless other contributing factors involved a
misdemeanor or felony offense. In addition the ruling
states, "We hold only that, just as the 8th Amendment
prohibits the infliction of criminal punishment on an
individual for being a drug addict, ... or for
involuntary public drunkenness that is an unavoidable
consequence of being a chronic alcoholic without a
home, ... the 8th Amendment prohibits the City from
punishing involuntary sitting, lying, or sleeping on
public sidewalks that is an unavoidable consequence of
being human and homeless without shelter in the City
of Los Angeles."

Berkeley officials are trying to skirt the higher
courts vague ruling against the Los Angeles Police
Department's policies of arresting the homeless during
a crackdown on quality-of-life public nuisance
violations, by limiting their approach in Berkeley to
only targeting homeless hotspots, rather than
targeting the city as a whole.

Lydia Gans works with Food Not Bombs to feed the
homeless at People's Park in Berkeley, and is very
concerned. "We feed the homeless 5 days a week, and It
seems that most of them are Vietnam veterans. We serve
around 50 to 100 people a day, and life is hard on
them. With the new proposals targeting the homeless, I
think it will only add to their burdens and believe
that the latest anti-homeless proposals are
unconscionable.

Berkeley's housing authority has recently been
shattered by funding cuts, corruption and
incompetence, while in Oakland and San Francisco there
are proposals to tear down much needed public housing,
in the name of replacing them with higher income mixed
use housing projects. Meanwhile, as the poor are being
dumped from their low-income housing units and many
become homeless during the process, right-wing
liberals in public office follow up with more
draconian policies to criminalize the growing homeless
populations as fast as possible.

During March of 2006, Harvard University’s Joint
Center for Housing Studies concluded that the nation
is losing around 200,000 mostly low-rent housing units
to demolition per year, while theres only around
100,000 more expensive housing units being built per year
to replace those lost, putting the squeeze on the
nation's low-income populations. “We are taking one
step forward and two steps back as gentrification in
some neighborhoods and continued deterioration in
others leads to the removal of vitally needed
lower-cost rental housing,” said Nicolas P. Retsinas,
director of the Joint Center.

As the nations housing stock rapidly declines,
according to the Population Division of the U.S.
Census Bureau, the U.S. population is rapidly rising
and has surpassed 302 million by 2000. In the U.S.,
during June of 2007 it's estimated that there is one
birth every 7 seconds, one death every 13 seconds, one
international migrant every 27 seconds, and a net gain
of one person every 10 seconds.

As Berkeley moves towards being one of the nations
meanest cities for the homeless, at last ranking
according to the National Coalition for the Homeless,
the top 10 meanest cities are; 1. Sarasota, Fla.- 2.
Lawrence, Kan.- 3. Little Rock- 4. Atlanta- 5. Las
Vegas- 6. Dallas- 7. Houston- 8. San Juan, Puerto
Rico- 9. Santa Monica, Calif.- 10. Flagstaff, Ariz.

Lynda Carson may be reached at, tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com