Escondido OKs new rules to restrict homeless encampments

ESCONDIDO — The City Council replaced its current law banning all homeless encampments on public property with regulations identifying specific prohibited locations just days before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of cities to enforce outdoor camping bans.

The council approved the new ordinance by a 4-1 vote on June 26, replacing the municipal code banning homeless encampments on public property with language specifying the need for more enforcement against encampments to protect city waterways, parks and other public spaces.

Additionally, the new ordinance establishes protocols for properly notifying unhoused individuals when an encampment is to be dismantled. 

The city was already storing belongings from encampment cleanups prior to the new ordinance, but according to city staff, unhoused individuals only knew where to go to retrieve their items through word of mouth. 

Under the new ordinance, notices of encampment cleanup will be provided 24 hours in advance and impound notices with directions on where to retrieve belongings will be left at the former site.

According to staff, the new ordinance will make it easier for city police and public works to enforce the ban and quickly remove encampments. The ordinance reiterates the city’s obligation to help protect the lives of its citizens and environmentally sensitive lands from trash and other pollutants. 

“The protection of waterways is a critical component of what we’re trying to do here, and I think all would agree that the city has an obligation and a duty to do so,” said City Attorney Michael McGuinness.

The new ordinance specifically states it is unlawful to:

• Build or erect structures within or along city waterways (Escondido Creek, Kit Carson Creek and other tributaries, headwaters or drainage channels) or affix objects to trees or vegetation
• Move boulders, rocks or reconfiguring the landscape in any form
• Leave shopping carts or wheeled vehicles along waterways
• Dig into waterway banks
• Discharge garbage, refuse or human waste into local waterways
• Camp on public property, including streets, sidewalks, parks, open spaces and waterways – particularly if it poses a threat or unreasonable risk of harm to people or public safety, or disrupts government services
• Camp within 500 feet of schools, 500 feet of shelters and within transit hubs, parks and open spaces.

The city intends to work with local schools and other organizations, such as the North County Transit District, to place signage warning about the encampment ban within the appropriate boundaries.

The city anticipated the Supreme Court’s decision on the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson case before the end of June. However the law changed – whether it would further restrict the rights of cities to ban encampments on public property or make it easier to enforce bans – Escondido staff and council could revisit the new ordinance to change it as needed.

In its 6-3 decision on June 28, the conservative majority upheld Grants Pass, Oregon’s ban on camping, finding that laws criminalizing sleeping in public spaces do not violate the Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment in the U.S. Constitution.

“As we learn more about the result in the Grants Pass case, we can examine additional steps that may be taken to effectively enforce local laws to protect our public spaces and environment, which is something I think all of our citizens want,” McGuinness said.

McGuinness cautioned that the impacts of homelessness on the city and region wouldn’t be resolved regardless of the Grants Pass decision.

“Even if the Supreme Court reverses Grants Pass, the myriad of issues with the impacts of homelessness will not be resolved on a local level,” McGuinness said before the decision was released. “As the city policy on homelessness acknowledges the problems and multiple root causes, cleaning up encampments – while certainty necessary – is addressing only one problem. We will look for opportunities to address other causes and effects of homelessness.”

McGuinness drafted the new ordinance following direction from the city’s Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Homelessness, composed of only Mayor Dane White and Councilmember Joe Garcia, who have been researching and discussing solutions to address homelessness in Escondido in meetings that have not been open to the public yet.

The City Council previously approved the subcommittee’s policy statement on homelessness in February.

Councilmember Consuelo Martinez was the sole vote against the ordinance. She described it as lacking input from stakeholders and service providers who work closely with the city’s homeless populations. Martinez suggested revising the ordinance to include such input before bringing it back for final approval.

The other four council members strongly supported the new ordinance as it was written.

“We’re making incremental steps in the right direction,” said Deputy Mayor Christian Garcia.

Before approving the ordinance, the City Council received several emails and public comments from members of the public — including from homeless advocacy and support groups — who opposed it because it appeared to criminalize homelessness.

Garcia said many of those emails the council received were “hateful” and “masked in compassion.”

“The current state of what we have now is cruel,” Garcia said. “Compassion without order is chaos, and order without compassion is tyranny – what we have here walks that fine line. It’s not compassionate to let people do what they will, it’s irresponsible and chaotic.”

According to Julie Crandall, a litigation assistant for the Civil Rights Practice Group at Disability Rights California, the new ordinance would criminalize homeless individuals.

“We believe the proposed ordinance will result in the criminalization of unhoused individuals in Escondido for simply not having homes and nowhere else to go,” Crandall said at the meeting.

Councilmember Joe Garcia, who sits on the subcommittee with the mayor, disagreed.

“I’m not trying to criminalize homelessness, I’m trying to find something we can do in the absence of a real policy to begin to deal with this,” he said.

White and Councilmember Mike Morasco noted that the subcommittee members, as well as other council members, have been listening to stakeholder input from residents about issues related to homelessness for quite some time, which helped influence the ordinance.