Berkeley community members and merchants spoke out against the city’s civil sidewalks measure at the Berkeley City Council’s Agenda Committee meeting Monday before the Berkeley City Council decides Tuesday whether or not to place it on the November ballot.
About 20 people showed up at the meeting at City Hall to tell city council members why they opposed the measure and to encourage other residents to continue to place pressure on the city. The event was planned in response to the council’s June 12 decision to draft language placing the measure on the November election ballot.
According to the recommendation, the measure — which would prohibit sitting on sidewalks in commercial districts between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. and result in a misdemeanor after a third violation — aims to improve the cleanliness and accessibility of sidewalks in the city’s commercial areas.
However, community members and several business owners at the meeting said the measure deliberately criminalizes the homeless, diverts police attention from more significant crimes and has been ineffective in other cities.
“It is a crime to attack the homeless and poor because the economy is so low. It could happen to anybody,” said Berkeley resident Lori Kossowsky. “If this gets on the ballot, a lot of other things won’t pass that are needed … I have never been bothered by (the homeless).”
Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, who also opposes the measure, released an alternative Tuesday before the meeting. The Compassionate Sidewalks plan promotes bringing various city groups together to talk about the issue of homelessness and review what existing city laws and programs can be expanded to improve the situation.
“We shouldn’t waste money punting a needlessly divisive issue to the voters when we can come together and adopt a proposal now that will help those in need and make our sidewalks accessible to everyone,” Arreguin said in the release.
At the meeting, many demonstrators held signs that read “I am a Berkeley voter. I stand up for my right to sit down.” Others sang at the agenda meeting to express their feelings against the measure. Among the people attending the event were UC Berkeley students Ana Reyes and Nolan Pack, an incoming CalSERVE senator.
While speaking at the meeting, Pack referred to a letter sent to Mayor Tom Bates and City Council members by the ASUC executive officers expressing their opposition to the measure.
“The city of Berkeley has grown to be a very vibrant and unique community that is shaped by its community members,” the letter reads. “Placing the sit-lie ordinance on the ballot would be a detriment to our city as it unfairly targets certain areas, would hinder recent progress and does not address the root of the problem.”
Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who spoke to the gathered community members said the measure is “immoral, impractical and extremely expensive.”
Worthington said there are other alternatives to the measure that are not being enforced, mentioning an ordinance that prohibits people from piling bags and garbage on city sidewalks.
“I think the public is more offended by 20 to 30 (other) things than somebody just sitting on the sidewalk …” Worthington said. “You can make it cleaner and neater without criminalizing the person.”
The community members at the meeting also said they planned to gather around 200 people to sing and rally at 5 p.m. before the Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
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All the Telegraph merchants I’ve spoken to support the measure. Perhaps by “merchants” the author means “sidewalk vendors”?
So they are protesting letting the residents of Berkeley vote on the measure? (I do realize they actual are trying to kill the measure before the residents of Berkeley can vote and make their own collective decision). If the residents of the city really are opposed can’t they just vote against it themselves in the election? This really sounds like a perfect example of democracy at work. Someone noticed a problem, proposed a solution, and is asking that it be given a chance to be voted on by the people of Berkeley.
Some folks say that they’re shopping elsewhere because of people on the sidewalks, but they don’t seem to have much company. From Arreguin’s Compassionate Sidewalks Plan: “the recent decline seen by many local businesses is neither confined to,
nor worse in commercial districts in Berkeley with a visible homeless
population. In fact, steeper declines have been seen in other commercial
districts with virtually little to no visible homelessness, according
to sales tax information provided by Economic Development (2009-2010
Sales Tax Geographic Area Summaries). To the extent that the presence of
homelessness has negatively affected local business is not supported by
a review of sales tax data. ”
Which is a side issue anyway. The real issue is that we’re willing to use physical violence on people–in the form of police enforcement–because we don’t like seeing them on the sidewalks. It doesn’t matter why they’re there; the fact is that we’re talking about hurting them for the crime of sitting down.
Berkeley’s Fourth Street area, which doesn’t have gutter punks sitting on the sidewalks, has been having a major economic boom. Restaurants and businesses there are doing so much business that they have to worry about crowd management.
More lies from the anti Civil Sidewalks crowd.
Do you support people sitting on the sidewalks in your neighborhood, Berkeley Resident?
Sounds like a good idea to me. When I shop, I generally do it on line or outside of Berkeley. Just not worth the hassle of dealing with the aggressive and mentally unstable people all over Telegraph and Shattuck.
I vote with my $, and my tax revenue is definitely not going to the city of Berkeley.
Again, educate yourself. Berkeley just built two-story penthouses, which are approximately 1,600 square feet, will be in the $4,500 range. Addressing real low-cost or shelter housing needs? Get real. Your anecdotal experience with a “gutterpunk” is not representative. Read the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty report and speak to the real issues.
Wait–*Berkeley* just built them? Did the city pay for the construction?
Or do you mean that they were built in Berkeley by developers?
Please educate yourself. In a 2010 survey of 27 large cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors observed that 52 percent of cities have seen an increase in overall homelessness, 58 percent have seen an increase in family homelessness, and an average of 27 percent of homeless people were turned away from emergency shelter due to lack of space. Berkeley has the same approximately 240 shelter beds it had more than 20 years ago for the estimated 800-1,000 people in need on any given night, and nowhere to go during the day. You can fill your heart with hate, but again, the City Fellows report on San Francisco’s law shows that moving people around who have nowhere to go is just pointlessly cruel, especially if you’re carrying everything you own.
My heart has nothing but love for the homeless of Berkeley. I’m all for helping them. Again, you’re mischaracterizing the situation in Berkeley: the itinerant young wanderers I speak of – a subject you’re trying to avoid delving into – are a totally different phenomenon and it’s the catalyst for this whole event. I’ll educate myself when you open your damn eyes and look at the crowd in front of the BART rotunda and the ones hanging out on the ave.
This IS about targeting the homeless and poor instead of building low-cost housing that honestly addresses real needs. I can’t believe people think there is anything compassionate about jailing people for sitting down, which is the ultimate result of the piles of citations poor and homeless people end up with. Berkeley could acknowledge that its “affordable” housing is for police officers’ and teachers’ salaries (if that), it could join Rhode Island in supporting a homeless bill of rights, but some of the city council prefers to be politically opportunistic even at the cost of (after circling people through the courts) an estimated $100,000 – $140,000 taxpayer expenditure per homeless person. It would be cheaper to hire them to spend the day at the beach. And yes, I live and work in Berkeley.
Those damned police and teachers get affordable housing?! My, our priorities really are mixed up, aren’t they? Look, why don’t you complain about Marin or Walnut Creek being unfriendly to the homeless before you dare criticize Berkeley. Give us a break. And let me clue you in: no one will say it, but this is about targeting a rowdy subculture of young itinerant bums -”gutterpunks”- who are sometimes called “the Seattle crowd”. They travel between Seattle, Portland, and the Bay Area setting up camp in public places and aggressively panhandling. They are not interested in getting off the street and are generally not interested in the many city services we offer. Again, this is not about the homeless and poor.
I would be interested to hear where people at the meeting like Lori live in Berkeley. It is very easy for people who do not have to walk along Telegraph near the university or Shattuck by the Bart station to say that they are not affected by people sitting on the sidewalk. Simply put, having people sitting on the sidewalk shows that the people at the city council meeting don’t really care about the homeless. When you think that allowing the homeless to sit on the sidewalk is really helping them, then you are just heartless.
Lori Kossowsky is one of those Warm Pool crazies. She wants to tax everyone in Berkeley so that she can build a new multi-million dollar pool complex and is scared that if there are too many ballot measures, voters might wise up and reject her stupid pool measure AGAIN.
That’s right, this pool measure was already rejected by the Berkeley voters 4 years ago, but they’re wasting $52,000.00 of taxpayer money to put it on the ballot AGAIN.
This is not about the homeless and poor. This is about people who prefer a lifestyle of vagrancy. We have TONS of resources available in this city and we are often serving people who aren’t even from around here, so we are by far one of the most compassionate cities when it comes to homelessness. We’re just being shat on too often and the citizenry is finally saying enough’s enough.
As much as I liked going to school at Berkeley, the one thing I don’t miss are the vagrants and homeless sitting on Telegraph and Shattuck. Obviously homelessness is a big problem and we should all look for compassionate and effective ways to help the homeless who need helping, but there also always seemed to be a lot of people in Berkeley who chose to live that lifestyle. In my mind, there’s really not a good reason why the city shouldn’t keep people from lying on the streets that make up a big portion of Berkeley’s commercial retailers, especially when the city is already pretty lenient in regards to park spaces.
The arguments by sources in this article also don’t make much sense to me. Worthington says to focus on bags and garbage and ignores the fact that these people are often the source of such garbage. Why would you waste resources continually cleaning up after people who don’t contribute to the city when you could solve the problem at the source? That’s like mopping up a water puddle every day when you could simply fix the leaking pipe it’s coming from.
I also don’t know if I buy the argument that this ordinance would divert police resources. I’d be willing to bet that police resources are already being pretty heavily diverted by the homeless and vagrants on the streets. I know I’ve been harassed by them on more than one occasion, and had to call the police on one particularly threatening person. If the ordinance does what it is supposed to do, which is to essentially relocate the homeless to less busy, noncommercial areas (NOT criminalize them), then I would think there’d be fewer incidents, students would feel safer, and businesses would not have to suffer. The homeless would have a harder time getting handouts from students, but I don’t think that’s a particularly effective way of helping the homeless anyway.
I’d be interested to see if the Daily Cal will look into this issue from a police perspective, and to see how many incidents actually occur among the homeless in Berkeley’s busiest commercial districts.
I don’t know your experience being harassed on the street, but IMHO people standing are much more threatening than those sitting or lying down.
Also, if it’s about public safety, why doesn’t it apply at night (10pm to 7am) when risks are greater?