Get ready for rampant arrests of homeless people.
City Manager Eric Batista revealed his new strategy (although it is not new and I will address that) with an ordinance that includes a general anti-camping ordinance. Like Gavin Newsome before him, Batista often waxes poetic about trying to help people who are in dire circumstances.
He has given awards and plaudits to the city employees who have been on duty as the homeless population in Worcester surged (just like the rest of the nation). He seems concerned.
Yet, this Tuesday’s proposed ordinance is a direct result of the 2024 Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson. This decision made is easier for cities to criminalize homelessness. At the core of this decision was the ordinance in Grants Pass, Oregon that made it illegal for anyone to camp on public property. This is not a new form of municipal government.
Most studies have shown that this policy has failed in every city it has been tried in . In, ‘Anti-Camping Ordinances, State Preemption, and the Arrest of People Experiencing Homelessness: Evidence from Orange County, Florida’ authors Andrew Sullivan and Jennifer Royce lay out a detailed study showing that anti-camping ordinances have one universal result: arrests of homeless people rise dramatically.
In California, which was a party in the Grants Pass case, arrests surged across the state, as municipalities encouraged by Newsom started enforcing laws like the one our City Manager is suggesting to the City Council. These arrests were not scattered in conservative bastions, they ripple out across all types of political situations. San Francisco saw an increase of 500% in arrests. The news media is covered in quotes like this one:
The people making the case for enforcement argue it’s a type of “tough love” that’s sometimes necessary to get people off the street. If someone refuses multiple offers of help, the threat of arrest might make them finally say yes, said San Diego Police Department Capt. Steve Shebloski.
“I hope nobody has to go to jail, and I hope everybody takes services,” he said. “I just dont think that’s the reality of where we’re at with certain individuals.”
Compare this with the paragraph at the bottom of City Manager Batista’s letter to the council supporting the new policy:
“Makeshift encampments in public outdoor spaces pose serious health risks to the unsheltered individuals living there and create public fire risk and environmental degradation. We must act, but at the same time, I want to be clear that being unhoused is not a crime and will not be treated as such. Rather, in the full context of ‘Disrupting the Cycle’ the order will provide an enforcement system with the necessary teeth to make outreach, connection to services, and voluntary compliance more attainable.”
Gotta love that ‘voluntary compliance.’ At least the cop above had the guts to say he knows a bunch of people are going to go to jail because of this. You may have read This Week in Worcester’s article on September 1st where I pointed out that city leaders were not including people with lived experience in this conversation. Present at that meeting were Police Chief Paul Saucier, District Attorney Joe Early, and Sheriff Lew Evangelidis.
If you were planning a new ordinance that would help people get services and not get arrested, why would you have the leader who arrests people, the leader who prosecutes them, and the leader who incarcerates them all at the same table? Could it be that Eric Batista, as he is now known for, just thinks we are all idiots who can’t see through his plans?
To be honest, it makes sense that he would plan for a surge in arrests and that he would include those three men. All three have publicly talked about a new police station and a new jail for years. They think, like most law enforcement people, that the way to convince the public about new law enforcement apparatus is to ‘show’ how much work they are doing. To lock ’em up! The current data (lowest crime in years) doesn’t reflect the need to ‘clean up’ downtown or get those new digs. So, here comes yet another anti-homeless measure couched as a ‘caring’ approach.
This policy has failed everywhere in America it has been applied. Unless, of course, the goal is to make the people go out of sight. In that case, Batista is leading the way.
Nothing to see here. No one to notice. Just lock ’em up.
This City Council will pass this ordinance 8-3 (at least). Not one of the 8 will ask about the fact that this does not work. While it is nice that the City Manager admitted that the policy has not worked for the last 15 years, he leaves out the most important factor: lack of affordable housing. You can’t ‘house first’ without real housing.
In the end, talking at the podium doesn’t work. I will make my dutiful trip to City Hall and say these words, and no one will listen. The only thing that I know works is a non-governmental community approach. Leave them out of it, because they just want the money that comes with arresting the most vulnerable. Believe them when they tell you who they are.
Now, before the cabal comes for me, let me direct and clear: I am not against a new police station or a new county jail. The police station is decrepit, ugly, horribly maintained, poorly designed, poorly located, and majorly unsafe. It needs to be replaced, and so should the other 9 fire stations yet to undergo the process that South Division is now undergoing.
The county jail is an absolute disgrace. It is dangerous for the guards, the nurses, the staff, the volunteers, the families, and of course the inmates. The fact that the state has consistently denied funding because they don’t like Sheriff Lew Evangelidis is a joke, and that joke falls on our local delegation. This is not a new issue.
But the willingness to ride the money needed on the backs of the vulnerable is a bridge too far! Batista’s plan to arrest people and stack legal trouble on them is not only untenable, it is the single worst choice of all the choices he has. It is my opinion that he hates the homeless population, just like the angry hordes of townies. Sure, he will throw a winter coat onto a pile to give away, but to truly invest in the housing first approach involves courage. Courage that he, nor the mayor, have. The cabal wants development, and the homeless are the easiest scapegoat. Who is going to stand up for them?
Well, I will. With facts. This policy approach is riddled with lies, but for the sake of the argument lets look a few cities that have managed to have success.
The Transformational Model
Several U.S. cities have shown that moving people into permanent housing does in fact work. Worcester has failed in this model because it does not in fact possess the housing stock needed, nor is it inclined to convert existing unoccupied spaces at the speed and cost needed to make major impacts in this area.
Two cities stand out: Houston and Denver.
Houston has reduced its homeless population by 63% over the last decade. Several other Texas cities have had similar drops. Notably, they have not employed an ‘enforcement’ model like the one described by Batista above. They utilize a model called The Way Home, a coordination among hundreds of agencies. They have housed 32,000 people since 2012 with a 90% success rate. That rate means that the person does not return to homelessness within 2 years. Almost all models agree that 24 months of being stable leads to long-term stability for the vast majority of all people the system encounters. One of the major accomplishments of this system includes eliminating almost all veteran homelessness, something that Worcester continues to struggle with.
Denver has reduced its homeless population by 45% moving almost 800 people into permanent supportive housing. Denver’s population is close to four times the size of Worcester with 740,613. Interestingly, Denver’s budget is only about 1.6 times Worcester’s at 1.68 billion. With a much larger area and population, Denver is able to manage resources well enough to reduce homelessness.
Both of these models focus on using existing housing stock that is underutilized and moving people into those units. Worcester lacks those programs, and in the case of the 50 Oriol Drive project, it has been met with public resistance and a lack of developers with serious capital.
Several other cities like Chattanooga, TN, Bakersfield, CA, Philadelphia, PA, and the State of New Jersey have had serious success in reducing veteran homelessness. These programs all involve including permanent housing and resisting the carrot and stick approach that enforcement models use.
What City Manager Batista avoids in his letter is that the homeless community in Worcester is afraid of the Worcester Police Department and the Quality of Life team. They have visceral fear of city services, and it has created the unfortunately named ‘whack-a-mole’ phenomenon. People are forcibly moved, and their property destroyed and confiscated. They move further into invisibility and further away from the services.
One would hope that there would be a majority of city councilors who would do the bare minimum and read the research available. I know at least one councilor loves Google. The enforcement model is a failure on arrival, and frankly it is just more of the same. The police are being put in a bad position here. As much as I believe in a strong accountability model, this is a poor move by the manager. If I were a police officer, I would resist this terrible, horrible, and very bad policy.
I won’t hold my breath on that hope.
