An Evolving Warren v. City of Chico Court Case
In Chico, the “City of Roses” in Northern California, in the Sacramento Valley, the fight to help the growing number of unhoused involves what could potentially become a new landmark court case, climate refugees from devastating fires, efforts to establish an emergency pallet village, and acrimonious battles, online, at protests and during government meetings.
Tensions were stoked further when on Sunday the Chico Police Department responded to a call about a stabbing near the main encampment at a place called Comanche Creek on the south end of the city. The male victim was later reported dead.
While Chico is smaller and there are many differences with Reno, there are also similarities, such as occasional tragic deadly violence at encampments, opaque decision making at City Council, passing the buck between the city and the county, raging Facebook commentary and dedicated allies of the unhoused. The court effort to stop the sweeps also could eventually have wider ramifications throughout the West.
The next hearing in the Warren v. City of Chico case is currently scheduled for Aug. 30. Bobby Warren is one of eight unhoused individuals who with the Legal Services of Northern California is seeking to stop the City of Chico Police Department from enforcing various ordinances that purportedly prevent them from “sleeping, sitting, lying, resting and simply existing in the City of Chico.”
Temporary Site Falls Short of An Earlier Court Decision
In previous rulings, the District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California Morrison Cohen England Jr. has issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting new sweeps and then converted it into a preliminary injunction.
In an effort to abide by the court and resume sweeps, the city opened a temporary resting site with a bit of shade, hand washing stations, water and portable restrooms near the Chico airport, but that failed as Judge England refused to call it a shelter: "Under none of these definitions is the airport site a ‘shelter.’ It is an asphalt tarmac with no roof and no walls, no water, and no electricity. It is an open space with what amounts to a large umbrella for some shade. It affords no real cover or protection to anyone,” the judge said.
The Martin v. Boise 2018 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was followed in 2021 with an agreement ensuring that in the West the unhoused will not be cited or arrested for sleeping outdoors when no shelter is available. The follow up also guaranteed Boise will take steps to put every person experiencing homelessness on a path to permanent housing.
Cities such as Reno have relied on Martin v. Boise to conduct sweeps when there are shelter beds available. In Chico, local leaders were aiming for the same strategy but so far failed repeatedly in the face of federal rulings.
"The judge says you don't have to build the Taj Mahal, but the question is what does the word shelter mean? Does shelter mean a tent where you can rest or does it mean individual tents with beds? The Boise case doesn't say that,” Chico City Council member Sean Morgan has been quoted as saying.
Trying to Establish a Pallet Shelter
One of those striving to instead establish a pallet shelter village is Julie Wood. With two grown kids, and a past as an English teacher, who also worked in PR and on a family farm, the 57-year-old is now working her way toward a master’s in social work.
“We need many more social workers,” she said of her new direction during a phone interview with Our Town Reno. “The funding that goes toward punishing people should be going towards prevention. If we spend money giving people a hand up it’s going to save money in the long run. If that’s all people worry about is the money, it just makes fiscal sense to have an army of social workers.”
The pallet shelters would come from a company of the same name, with both 64 and 100 square feet models, and efforts already underway in Los Angeles and established elsewhere.
Wood sees the pallets as being the “most comfortable” solution. “They are heated and cooled and can be locked. There could be fencing so smaller groups of women or men or families or low barrier could have their own area. There would be bathrooms, laundry facilities and lockers. There would be unhoused people who manage disputes and manage the cleanliness of the camp and they would be paid for that service. We wouldn’t have guards. There would be facilities for social agencies on the premises for offices and there would be electricity so people can charge their phones. It would be close to services and transportation.”
The idea of having the unhoused themselves take care of their community comes from the Safe Organized Spaces organizer Daniel Barth, based in Richmond, CA.
Looking for Solutions and Combating “Politics of Divisiveness”
Wood says she is working “on a good plan” with a group of allies and advocates to find a site near downtown which could house a few hundred people in pallet shelters. Wood says the county is willing to pay $1.5 million to pay for infrastructure, including electricity, water, sewer, and trash. She said about a fifth of Chico’s unhoused are from the thousands who came to the city after the major Paradise fire in 2018. “We’ve got this climate refugee syndrome,” Wood said.
Those in support of the sweeps, including NIMBYs, according to Wood, are well organized, backed by powerful local politicians and representatives, and like in Reno use terms such as “just get a job.”
“Those are politics of divisiveness,” Wood told us. “Those are just dog whistle terms to get people to fear and to hate each other so that they can remain in power. It is easily demonstrable that people fall into homelessness because of a chain of unfortunate events, a hospital bill, a loss of a job, and the next you thing you know they don’t have any place to stay. It’s a systemic failure.”
Allies, she says, are not as well organized but are resolute.
“We are not satisfied with the city council’s effort to criminalize the homeless. They’re not solving the problem. They just move people around. They are creating chaos with changing laws and secret meetings, doing things without oversight that we can’t keep up. What people really want to see is nobody unhoused. Their tactics are never going to solve the problem. We’re being proactive and not reactive.”
One group she is part of, the Affordable Housing Creation Group, is trying to figure out solutions with different developers, government officials, city planners, lawyers, social agencies and others to come up with a cohesive plan.
“We’re going back to the drawing board for our own agenda, and that’s an agenda of solutions,” Wood said. “You have to create a continuum of care and also a continuum of building codes. There should be a comprehensive plan from tent to permanent housing and the most urgent need being emergency shelter with safe organized campgrounds in conjunction with surrounding neighbors and social workers so people can be integrated into the community and let them able to stay there for as long as they need to, to transition into other housing. The long term plan also has to be permanent and transition housing built. “
Our Town Reno reporting, August 2021